No, It’s Not Really a Lovely Day
It’s a clear sign of global warming and we should be very concerned.
by Andrea O’Ferrall
I packed heavy weight pants in shades of brown and black, a herringbone patterned dress and thick cotton sweaters for my trip to visit family in New York. No wool. I knew it wasn’t winter weather yet.
I haven’t been able to wear half of it.
Each day is ‘beautiful,’ sunny and warm. I am seeing the fall colors and they aren’t going away. The Japanese Maple across the street is glorious in its shades of green and red. But shouldn’t the leaves have fallen by now?
People in shorts and tee shirts are frolicking in the sun — picnicking, playing tennis, basketball, soaking up the rays. I can’t know what thoughts are in their heads, but they seem delighted.
Times like this bring me back to the poem Anthropocene Pastoral by Catherine Pierce that I first read in All We Can Save: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, a collection of essays and poems.
Anthropocene Pastoral
In the beginning, the ending was beautiful.
Early spring everywhere, the trees furred
pink and white, lawns the sharp green
that meant new. The sky so blue it looked
manufactured. Robins. We’d heard
the cherry blossoms wouldn’t blossom
this year, but what was one epic blooming
when even the desert was an explosion
of verbena? When bobcats slinked through
primroses. When coyotes slept deep in orange
poppies. One New Year’s Day we woke
to daffodils, wisteria, onion grass wafting
through the open windows. Near the end,
we were eyeletted. We were cottoned.
We were sun dressed and barefoot. At least
it’s starting gentle, we said. An absurd comfort,
we knew, a placebo. But we were built like that.
Built to say at least. Built to reach for the heat
of skin on skin even when we were already hot,
built to love the purpling desert in the twilight,
built to marvel over the pink bursting dogwoods,
to hold tight to every pleasure even as we
rocked together toward the graying, even as
we held each other, warmth to warmth,
and said sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry while petals
sifted softly to the ground all around us.
This poem causes a crushing weight sadness to well up in me. I cannot read it out loud without crying at the “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” part. I realize she’s invoking an endless spring, but we’re experiencing an endless summer.
So what is the reaction on the news?
From WGRZ in Buffalo (bold emphasis my own):
Saturday didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity to enjoy the warmth too and two more records were set. Temperatures on Saturday hit 79 degrees, which breaks the old record of 76 degrees set back in 1948. To give you a little context, this was the second warmest day in November record books in Buffalo.
But also, we set a record high low temperature too. Early on Saturday morning, temperatures did not cool down all that much. 61 degrees was the overnight low and that breaks the record from 1902 of 59 degrees.
To give you some context on how odd these types of temperatures are around this time of year, our average daytime high should be 52° and average overnight low should be 37 degrees.
Here’s a clip from a CBS article highlighting how the nice weather can be enjoyed:
Record-breaking high temperatures possible in the Tri-State Area this weekend. No matter what time you rise and shine, options for outdoor entertainment seem endless this weekend. From a hike outside city limits to absorb the final colors of fall to city street fairs.
Emily Strauss, CEO and founder of Mural Painter, says her team will be participating in the Hoboken Art Walk and Studio Tour.
“We’re going to be live painting. There’s going to be music. There’s going to be wine,” she said. She expects a great turnout
“Thank goodness it’s going to be warm, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to paint,” she said.
Shifting Baseline Syndrome
Through reading books like Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Or Place in the Universe by Jeremy Lent, I have become more attuned to the natural world around me. I am keenly aware of the phenomenon known as shifting baseline syndrome.
It was first discovered by Daniel Pauly, a fisheries scientist researching the reduction in size of the catch of fish off the eastern seaboard of North America. He realized that each generation viewed a normal baseline as the amount they had caught at the beginning of their career. This lead to “what he called ‘the gradual accommodation of the creeping disappearance’ of fish populations. (The Web of Meaning, p. 272)
This is not as it should be. Our institutional memory, our long term memory of seasons and harvests, the ebb and flow of life has been forgotten. Shifting baselines are changing what normal means.
In terms of weather, scientists are updating how they calculate average temperatures, altering our reference point of a “normal climate.” Because 1991–2020 was warmer than 1981–2010 in nearly every part of the U.S., the update means what we classify as normal temperatures now will actually be higher because the baseline for what’s considered normal has shifted.
In a study using Twitter to gauge people’s reactions to unusually hot or cold weather, researchers found the baseline for “normal” was weather experienced just two to eight years before — not long enough to accurately perceive the changes due to global warming.
When friends and family see me coming, they know what I’m going to say. Anyone saying to me I should just enjoy the moment is telling me that they haven’t really taken to heart the level of danger.
No way should it be this warm in New York in November.
Andrea
November, 2022
If you’d like to support my writing by becoming a Medium member, use the link below. Half of the membership fee will go to me. Thanks for your support!