Thursday, June 19, 2014

Culture Change?


     An article (of faith) in Slate magazine touted NASA’s claim that May 2014 was the warmest May, globally, in recorded history. “El Nino-fueled ocean warmth is supercharging the Earth’s temperature, which could help make 2014 the warmest year since human records have been kept, and probably for much longer”. Said article went on to state that “NASA uses a baseline set from 1951 to 1980 to determine how much a month’s temperature deviates from normal”.

     1951-1980? To paraphrase the Church Lady from old SNL skits, “Isn’t that convenient?”! The 60’s and 70’s were so cold, scientists were penning articles about how Global Cooling was going to dramatically change the planet as we knew it.

     What if we chose the same 1951 to 1980 period as our baseline to illustrate culture change? Let’s see, we went from ‘Father Knows Best’, ‘Bonanza’, ‘Little House on the Prairie’ & ‘Welcome Back Kotter’ as popular television shows during this period to ‘Real Sex’, ‘Californication’,  ‘Jackass’ & ‘2 Broke Girls’ today. How much of a deviation from normal is that?

     This article closed with the statement, “On our current path of minimal attention, scientists say warming…could have devastating effects (by the year 2100)”.

     Culture change will have devastating effects long before then.

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