Plenty of seasonal cheer can be found this winter
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Our schizoid winter is playing with Pittsburghers' minds.
My neighbor Tom had the top down on his '66 Mustang convertible in January, when it felt like May and even bald guys went hatless. He called me to say I should be bold and come out in favor of global warming.
I told him there were island nations in the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific whose people feared for their very existence if Arctic ice melts and oceans rise.
"So we're losing an island," he said. "I just met three guys who played nine holes of golf."
That round would have been on January's last day, when the temperature hit 60. It was the 13th day of the year on which the normal high temperature was exceeded by at least 10 degrees. Sure, it's snowed since and it could be slippy today, but my neighbor sees the trend as our friend.
Tom sees a future of fewer heart attacks from shoveling snow, less obesity because people will have more chances to go outside and play, and less Prozac because we'll all be in better moods.
I'm not so sure we can link the temperature with the waistline. I know a fat guy in Miami. I also have trouble understanding the quirks of climate change, a.k.a. global weirding. (Warmer northern seas can bring a colder European winter?) But if rising oceans force people to flee the Maldives or Tuvalu or south Florida for Pittsburgh, well, "man is migratory," saith Tom.
As flippant as that sounds, an unseasonably warm winter month does get us wondering if it's a harbinger of a warmer planet. With National Academy of Science findings lambasted by many of the nation's eminent radio talk show hosts, that's a volatile subject. For the sake of argument, though, let's say scientists know more than recast deejays.
What does that mean for Pittsburgh? I mean besides more peach and cherry trees. (The U.S. Department of Agriculture's new "plant hardiness map" has adjusted Pennsylvania's growing zones to reflect average temperature data that is about 5 degrees warmer.)
My neighbor's musings had me retrieving an April 2007 story in The Atlantic magazine by Gregg Easterbrook: "Global Warming: Who Loses -- And Who Wins?" Even suggesting there could be winners stirred controversy because, as one angry letter-writer put it, "If a drop in the Shanghai stock index is felt immediately in New York, imagine what would happen if Shanghai dropped into the sea!"
First Published February 12, 2012 4:36 pm
