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What climate change?

It’s March, right? The middle of March? As in, still winter, not yet spring? And I’m living in Ontario, not Hawaii? This is Canada, referred to by some as “The Frozen North” – correct?

OK, just checking.

I’m going to apologize right up front for the seeming triteness of this post – that is, “let’s talk about the weather” – but I’m just so gobsmacked at what’s going on in my part of the world these days that I feel the need to write about it.

In case you’re wondering, the impetus for this post is that yesterday it hit 22 degrees Celcius, today it’s 23, and they say it’s expected to get to 24 tomorrow! (For those of you in non-metric countries, that’s around 72-75 degrees Fahrenheit. You’re welcome. :))

I don’t quite know how to process this information.

On the one hand, from a shallow, self-centred perspective, I’m delighted with the “winter” we’ve experienced here in Windsor, our first year living in the city. Snowfalls have been few and far between, and any snow that did fall only stuck around for a day or two before it was washed or melted away. Now, with this week’s shorts and t-shirt, iced tea and barbecue weather, it seems at this point as though we pretty much skipped winter altogether. Very, very comfortable indeed.

Climate change? What climate change?

From a “bigger picture” perspective, though, thinking about the reasons behind this unseasonable weather gives me distinctly uncomfortable chills. There’s an element of fear, as we’re warned of severe thunderstorms in our area, and the Detroit radio station playing in my office keeps interrupting the music to broadcast tornado warnings… the first time I’ve heard an emergency broadcast NOT followed by, “This has been a test of the emergency broadcast system.” And there’s anger and frustration, too, remembering when in the winters past, supposedly witty radio and television personalities made quips about “global warming” in the midst of violent snowstorms.

(As an aside… whoever came up with the term “global warming” and expected non-scientific people to “get” what it meant, or to try to dig a little deeper and learn what it meant… well, you pretty much shot yourselves in the foot. I’m telling you, you should have called it “climate change” right from the start and you might have avoided all sorts of nonsense and wasted breath. Just my humble opinion.)

I’ve been told I should relax and just enjoy this treat of unexpectedly lovely days… and I am… yet the fear, the anger and frustration, the regret and helplessness – those feelings are never far from the surface, wondering, worrying, what will be in days to come.

Laurel Storey, CZT – Certified Zentangle Teacher. Writer, reader, tangler, iPhoneographer, cat herder, learner of French and Italian, crocheter, needle felter, on-and-off politics junkie, 80s music trivia freak, ongoing work in progress.