Let's Talk About Doom. I Mean - the Weather.
I went to a book reading by an Environment Canada scientist named Mark Tushingham - a waste of a damn good porn star name, if you ask me - last night at the library. His book is called "Hotter Than Hell" and it's a novel set 50 years in the future - where it's "hotter than hell".
Gawd. Scientists. Even the Pope says Hell isn't real.
Anyway, I'm not much interested in science - or anything, really - but my beau is interested in all sorts of things and so we ended up attending the reading.
Did you know that climate change is real? And that it is essentially man-made? Which - and Mr. Tushingham didn't say this, exactly, scientists not being known for their great faith in unscientists - means that it can be man-unmade?
Okay. Enough about climate change. The fact that I now know what it is and that it is real is all you need to know for the purposes of this blog entry because on the walk home I had a great idea on how to make climate change real and understandable for lots of people. (Trust me - if someone can help left-handed me understand and accept the reality of a complicated scientific discovery like climate change in just over 1/2 an hour - this can be done on a vast scale in probably... say... half that - 25 minutes.)
The weatherman. Yes, that's right. You know - that slap happy punch drunk dork who delivers the weather "news" every night? Well, what's with the roundheaded circlefaced delivery of what should be an informative and detailed scientific rundown of what's going on with the weather? I mean, they're weathermen, dammit. They must know about climate change. And if they know about climate change, they know about our impending doom if we don't do something about it. Now! Gawd. Information non-disseminating bastards.
So, here's where you come in. I have this wild and crazy idea that maybe viewers could start demanding (write-in, phone-up, stand outside stations with placards) that the job of weatherman be tweaked A LOT to include daily bits of climate change info until VOTERS finally catch on that climate change is real - so real that there's a whole segment of news what used to be a dog and pony show that is now a serious and purposeful part of the daily newscast.
That way, maybe even Canada's New Conservative Environment Minister, Rona Ambrose, might realize, too, that climate change is real and that it is her responsibility to take legislative action to deal with it. Although, lest poor Mark Tushingham end up in a gulag somewhere up North, she needs also to realize that "Hotter Than Hell" is a novel. And a novel is a work of fiction: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2006/04/13/ambrose-climate.html
So, yah. Tomorrow's entry? "Who Elected the Goon Squad?"
