Local Warming Vs Global Warming
These days it is not uncommon to hear an avalanche of information about global warming. Especially since most of us are wilting in the heat. The British have been baking in temps at or above 40 degrees Celsius. For those of us who live in a Fahrenheit world, 40 Celsius is 104 degrees. The Indian subcontinent has had temps as high as 49.5 degrees Celsius. Translated into dog years, that’s 121.1 degrees Fahrenheit. And so it goes.
The story has been much the same in the U.S. From Las Vegas to New York City some 100 million Americans have been slogging through temps hovering around 100 degrees Fahrenheit and Dallas recently hit 112 F. Until recently, the heat was somewhere else on the globe and so long as that was the case, global warming was no big deal and we could ignore it.
But what happens when global warming becomes local warming? In recent days in our little corner of the world in Cumberland County, temps have been in the upper 90s for multiple days and last weekend my thermometer, in the shade, hit 100F. The air was thick and oppressive. Now that things are local, we tend to pay attention. This heat isn’t your grandfather’s heat.
What we’re learning is that the heat is coming more frequently and staying longer, less a “wave” and more the new normal. We’re also learning that the freakish heat in all those faraway places is actually linked and connected to we experience locally. This is unfortunate for a couple reasons. The first is that we can’t pass it off with a “sucks-to-be-you” sentiment and beyond that, it means we’re in for some tough days ahead.
While the science is a little above me, it seems that all the stuff we’ve managed to pump into the environment on our way to becoming civilized has played havoc with the jet stream. So much so that we now routinely have “heat domes” that trap hot air in a spot and there it sits for days on end. Instead of the freakish heat being something that happens rarely, it is now happening regularly.
Thinking “globally” is not easy and it does not come naturally and the only thing I can hope is that the scientists and those tasked with “global leadership” get serious about figuring out what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it. The best I can do is think locally and what that translates into is worrying about our neighbors making through these brutally hot days.
I think a lot about how fragile things are these days. Talk to people at the electric company and they’re running at full capacity with unbelievably high demand. It makes me think we’re one bad transformer away from I-don’t know-what. The same holds true for water as 7 counties, Monmouth, Ocean, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Somerset, and Union were all placed on restricted use. We can’t take comfortable for granted.
For those without air conditioners and no real way to get to comfortable, the county has designated cooling centers. In Bridgeton, the Public Library (856-451-2620) is a cooling center as is the Senior Center (856-455-4323) in City Park. Nearby, the Cumberland County Library (856-453-2210) serves as a cooling center.
In Millville, the public library (856-825-7087) and the Millville Sharing Center (856-825-8779) serve that community. In Vineland, their public library (856-794-4244) serves as cooling center and there are various locations in the townships including the West Cumberland Senior Center (856-455-1055), Maurice River Township Senior Center (856-785-0325), the Louise Moore Senior Center (856-785-9817) in Port Norris, the Edgar Joyce Senior Center in Seabrook, and the Charlotte Brago Senior Center (856-455-6902) in Rosenhayn.
The “ready.gov” link https://www.ready.gov/ has resources and tips for dealing with the extreme heat. There is information about heat-related illnesses as well as information about caring for those people who may be more vulnerable to medical problems from the heat. There is also information about protecting pets during exceptionally hot weather.
The bottom line is that we’re dealing with local warming. The heat is here and it will stay longer and will impact us no matter our politics on global warming. The take-away is that how we prepare and make ourselves more resilient and better equipped to deal with this heat will be something that must necessarily happen at all levels of government, locally and globally.