More on this El Nino thing...

The limitations of a cell phone camera are heigtened when you're trying to take a picture of the small, fuzzy, soft-green buds that have prematurely sprouted on these trees in Prospect Park. I looked around for blossoming cherry trees, but I guess there aren't any in my end of the park.

So about this whole El Nino thing - at first I was amused by it. Not by the weather phenomenon itself, but the fact that the press is latching on to it with both hands and shoving it down our throats. Like we're supposed to breathe a sigh of relief and forget that anyone ever mentioned global warming in the first place, and that it's okay to continue our luxurious carbon-rich lifestyles without worry.

This is just the wrong message to send, especially since we've been able to get a majority of the mainstream media outlets and a fair number of big politicos to hop on board the climate change band wagon. While this unusually warm NYC winter might legitimately be attributed to El Nino, isn't helping to educate the American public about the complexities of climate change.

Climate change is a long term thing that we're not going to see the full effects of for several decades, but we must be aware of these small yearly changes in weather, the changes in migratory patterns of animals and bugs and how these things will affect our agriculture, our water and energy supply, and our global economic society. This continual denial, or lack of acknowledgement (ie. blaming it on short term weather phenomena) will not help us learn how to cope with (or adapt to) our changing planet.

So get out there and enjoy the 68 degrees in NYC in January, but I don't want to hear complaining on those 100+ days in NYC in August, nor do I want to hear any whining if your basement floods because of excessive, torrential rains in March...