I was laid off from my job as a software engineer in January, and I went back to work selling solar power systems for a local firm called Second Generation Energy, LLC. I prefer this line of work to writing systems for the 1%!
A couple of weeks ago, I took the company Prius for a drive through a neighborhood in Brimfield, MA, which had been devastated by killer tornados in June of last year. While no single unusual weather event can be traced directly to climate change, patterns of unusual weather certainly can be, and these torndos are part of a pattern of crazy weather we've had in the northeast these last few years. The winter of 2010-2011 saw so record setting snowfall, but this past winter saw almost no snowfall, except for a freak blizzard around Halloween! Floods, hurricanes, killer tornados - think of a towering Barry Bonds home run and his use of steroids, while you may not be able to track that specific homer to the steroids, it's highly unlikely that you would see the one without the other. We are, today, experiencing wild weather swings and climate change is the culprit.
The damage is still evident - play the short video below to see some of the after effects still in evidence today:
Once upon a time, that area was heavily forested - now, not so much. One person was killed in Brimfield, and I spoke with a man who told me how he, his wife and their 4 year old daughter huddled in the basement while their house was ripped off the foundation over their heads. Follow me past the orange squiggle of doom for more discussion...
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