I should keep the shift - even less of a life but more than double the pay!
The Earth's atmosphere now contains a percentage of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that is higher than it has been since the end of the Cretaceous. This means more heat from the sun is being trapped in our air, and the high-pressure cells we saw this year are bigger, warmer, and loft higher in the tropical atmosphere. Many common jet-stream patterns have been disrupted, and the storms spiraling out of the Tropics have gained in both frequency and intensity. The hurricane season in the Atlantic ran from April to November, and there were eight hurricanes and six tropical storms. Typhoons in the East Pacific happened all year, twenty-two all told. Mass flooding resulted, but it should be noted that in other regions droughts have been breaking records.
So the effects have been various, but the changes are general and pervasive, and the damage for the year was recently estimated at six hundred billion dollars, with deaths in the tens of thousands. So far the United States has escaped major catastrophe (New Orleans notwithstanding), and attention to the problem has not been one of the administration's central concerns. "In a healthy economy the weather isn't important," the President remarked. But the possibility is there that the added energy in the atmosphere could trigger what climatologists call abrupt climate change. How that might begin, no one can be sure.
That was an easy shift. I knocked off more patrols than I usually do, mostly to stave off the boredom. You'd think a boring place would be incentive to do something, but apparently I'm not really blessed with guards who work like that.
And my folks brought me wonton and potstickers. Yay!
But my useless weekly graveyard guy was extra late relieving me. On the one day of the week that transit shuts down earlier. Yup, cab ride. I should really beat the twenty bucks out of him, but I only have to hold out for another week and then he's gone. My teeth are going to be ground down to nubs by then.
The cab driver couldn't believe that I'd just worked that long. "You look so fresh!" he exclaimed.
Those who know me know that I've never looked fresh in my life. I look fresh in the way that a shirt at the bottom of a hamper is fresh by dint of having been in there the longest.
I tipped him anyway. ;)
So the effects have been various, but the changes are general and pervasive, and the damage for the year was recently estimated at six hundred billion dollars, with deaths in the tens of thousands. So far the United States has escaped major catastrophe (New Orleans notwithstanding), and attention to the problem has not been one of the administration's central concerns. "In a healthy economy the weather isn't important," the President remarked. But the possibility is there that the added energy in the atmosphere could trigger what climatologists call abrupt climate change. How that might begin, no one can be sure.
That was an easy shift. I knocked off more patrols than I usually do, mostly to stave off the boredom. You'd think a boring place would be incentive to do something, but apparently I'm not really blessed with guards who work like that.
And my folks brought me wonton and potstickers. Yay!
But my useless weekly graveyard guy was extra late relieving me. On the one day of the week that transit shuts down earlier. Yup, cab ride. I should really beat the twenty bucks out of him, but I only have to hold out for another week and then he's gone. My teeth are going to be ground down to nubs by then.
The cab driver couldn't believe that I'd just worked that long. "You look so fresh!" he exclaimed.
Those who know me know that I've never looked fresh in my life. I look fresh in the way that a shirt at the bottom of a hamper is fresh by dint of having been in there the longest.
I tipped him anyway. ;)
posted by Rimmy at 02:05
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