PICKING UP from the recent cutting of trees at the town plaza of Magalang, let’s dig up some history. About 20 years ago, Chicago state in the US was swept by a five-day heat wave that killed hundreds, mostly those who lived by themselves. After that, the city came out with a “heat master plan.” It planted thousands of trees, put up neighborhood “cooling areas,” and developed a text messaging system that would enable local folk to help each other.
With wayward weather worldwide, our government has not taken significant steps to ward off such hot scenario, despite the warning of local experts who foresee hotter weather in the years ahead, with related deaths rising to 12 times more than before by 2080.
The beat of the drums of the Apocalypse (not the end of the world, Catholic mystics of our times have insisted) is rising to rapid crescendo weather wise.
Before she died in 2004 Venezuelan mystic Maria Esperanza de Bianchini, known as the female Padre Pio for her charisms, had warned that the axis of the world was tilting, a phenomenon that experts only recently confirmed. Nay, as she asked to be driven while she prayed around the Twin Towers before these were attacked by terrorists in New York City after her death, Esperanza also warned that the US economy would collapse neither from terrorist nor nuclear attacks, but from the plagues of weird weather.
In its recent issue, the New York Times noted such weirdness, as it reported that “in Chicago, officials warned about the risk of almost instant frostbite on what could be the city’s coldest day ever. Warming centers opened around the Midwest. And schools and universities closed throughout the region as rare polar winds streamed down from the Arctic.”
The phenomenal change in weather was also noted by The New York Times in other parts of the world, as follows:
“At the same time, on the other side of the planet, wildfires raged in Australia’s record-breaking heat. Soaring air-conditioner use overloaded electrical grids and caused widespread power failures. The authorities slowed and canceled trams to save power. Labor leaders called for laws that would require businesses to close when temperatures reached hazardous levels: nearly 116 degrees Fahrenheit, or 47 Celsius, as was the case last week in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia.
“This is weather in the age of extremes. It comes on top of multiple extremes, all kinds, in all kinds of places.
“‘When something happens — whether it’s a cold snap, a wildfire, a hurricane, any of those things — we need to think beyond what we have seen in the past and assume there’s a high probability that it will be worse than anything we’ve ever seen,’ said Crystal A. Kolden, an associate professor at the University of Idaho, who specializes in wildfires and who is currently working in Tasmania during one of the state’s worst fire seasons.
“Consider these recent examples: Heat records were toppled from Norway to Algeria last year. In parts of Australia, a drought has gone on so long that a child in kindergarten will hardly have seen rain in her lifetime. And California saw its most ruinous wildfires ever in 2018, triggering a bankruptcy filing this week by the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric.
“Is it climate change?
“Heat and drought extremes are consistent with scientific consensus: More greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere bring a greater likelihood of abnormally high temperatures. Also, broadly speaking, scientists say, a hotter planet makes extreme weather more frequent and more intense.
“The real-life numbers bear out the climate models. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher than they have been in 800,000 years, and average global temperatures have risen. The last four years have been the hottest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization, and the 20 warmest years on record have all come in the past 22 years. Ocean temperatures have broken records several straight years.
“As for the extremely low temperatures this week in parts of the United States, they stand in sharp contrast to the trend toward warmer winters. They may also be a result of warming, strangely enough.
“Emerging research suggests that a warming Arctic is causing changes in the jet stream and pushing polar air down to latitudes that are unaccustomed to them and often unprepared. Hence this week’s atypical chill over large swaths of the Northeast and Midwest.”
The New York Times also reported: “Now comes a cold spell that a generation of Chicago residents has never experienced, with Wednesday night temperatures that dipped to minus 21 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 29 Celsius (the city’s record low is minus 27 Fahrenheit, recorded in January 1985). The city said it would send out five buses to cruise the streets as mobile warming centers for homeless people. It has issued instructions on how to warm pipes so they don’t freeze.”
In the Philippines, many have put to a distant backburner the prophecies of and for our times, despite many manifestations of their unfolding. Take Pres. Duterte. Or tandem him with Pres. Trump. They may not be weather, but they are as unpredictable.
