Biblical Shit

The NCAA tourney shifts time for a couple of weeks, and by the time it’s over, it’s April. I’m a super casual college basketball fan, really only paying attention during the conference tournaments and the Big Dance in March. It’s one of those communal things that only happens a few times in sports here in the U.S., like the Super Bowl or the Olympics. It’s something every sports fan here keeps their eyes on, and it even draws in folks who don’t care much about sports but love to be part of the hype. It’s good energy.

 The single elimination style of March Madness, a lot like the NFL postseason, ramps up the excitement for any of the 64 teams that are participating in it. However, unlike the NFL, there are upsets at every stage of the college hoops tournament. Hearts are broken and dreams are given life at the same swish of a net, in the final seconds of any game.

David slays Goliath. The shit is Biblical.

And perhaps what follows next in this blog can also find a connection to the Bible, a spicy mention in some “End of Times” passage. I’m positive we could follow a thread that connects that apocalyptic rhetoric the with our current state of affairs. I’m sure of it, and I’m sure we’ve been down similar roads throughout modern history, any time things get interesting. Whenever it happens, it’s the end of times. Well, things are pretty darn interesting right now.

Ongoing war in Europe that threatens global stability? Check.

Artificial intelligence breaking through into the mainstream, about to cause a shift in the economy? Check.

Said economy is already swirling around in the toilet? Check.

Climate change smacking us across the face with it’s weathery dick? Check.

This last one is one that scares me the most.

Arizona Bay

I love TOOL even though they wrote a song about my beloved home state of California slipping into the Pacific Ocean as part of a natural purge of the scum, the cunts, the filth, the shit. It doesn’t help that this song, “Ænema”, absolutely slaps.

At the track’s climax, Maynard James Keenan, TOOL’s frontman, bursts out with a call to God, a prayer for rain, for tidal waves, and for earthquakes. He wants to watch it all go down.

Truly, it’s a brilliant song.

It was a wild winter in California, particularly the last three months of the season. This state was hit with something like twelve atmospheric rivers over that stretch of time, which dumped [several inches] of rain across all parts of the and several feet of snow across its mountain ranges. This was historic amounts of rain and snow not just over the period of time that we experienced this weather, but with each system itself there were old records being broken and new ones being set. In my part of California (the Inland Empire), we received around ten inches of rain ABOVE normal. The mountain communities out here, up around Big Bear, were buried under snow. We got too much of it all at once pretty much every week from the end of December until last Thursday.

“Nick. Big deal. We get snow and ice and all that every damn winter where we live, and sometimes it doesn’t stop until April.”

I get it. There’s always a bigger fish. There’s always a worse situation. We’ve needed rain up and down California for years now, but not like this. These storms have been destructive, and they’ve blown across the country, causing more damage in other places across the U.S.. The the severity of these storms in California has been remarkable. Most of us living here have seen different weather events happen here that we had never seen before. From the monstrous waves that crashed into Capitola and pushed the surge into the streets of Santa Cruz, to the F1 tornado that touched down in Montebello last week. It snowed about an inch in my neighborhood last month.

I’ve lived in Southern California for most of my life and in the dusty I.E. for over 20 years. This year was the first time I saw it snow in my neighborhood. We’re at around 1,200 feet (or approximately 365 meters for my overseas friends). The average low temperature out here in the winter is 44°F (approx. 6°C). It just doesn’t snow here.

Maynard might have been right. California might wash away.

As we leave behind the wildest winter most Californians have ever experienced, and the northern hemisphere of our wounded planet moves into spring, and our days get longer, and our weather (hopefully) gets warmer, my thoughts once again drifted to the great climate change debate because I’m fairly sure this is no longer up for debate.

I listened to a recent, short interview that NPR’s Steve Inskeep (from Morning Edition) had with Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist from Stanford University, on the topic of California’s weather, and Mr. Diffenbaugh said that what we have just experienced in California these past several weeks is “consistent with our understanding of climate change,” (Morning Edition, March 24, 2023).  He went on to elaborate that climate scientists back in the 1980s predicted that global warming would cause California to have long, severe droughts followed by extreme precipitation.

This sounds a lot like what happened here in California over the last decade. We were in a bad drought for a few years, but we got doused by heavy rains during the 2016-2017 winter. Then, we were pretty dry up until this winter, like “the lakes are so low the dead bodies are popping up” dry. Rural communities ran out of groundwater dry. Now that we’ve had the deluge, we shouldn’t expect to see this type of rain for another few years, according to the climate predictions that Mr. Diffenbaugh referred to in his interview.

“Nick, why are you trippin’ over this, man? What are you worried about?”

Two things:

1.      Our societies—local, national, global— are not prepared for what we’re already dealing with, so we’re not adapting to the changes quickly enough to avoid more catastrophe.

2.      There’s no way we’re prepared for what’s to come if we’re not ready for it now.

 This is the third or fourth time I’ve blogged about this topic, the second time on this current site, and while I’m not sure what the next decade of weather will bring to California, and in effect the rest of the country, but I’m 100% it’s going to change how we live, and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it.

Positive Vibes

I don’t want to end on a downer, so have yourself a fabulous April!