Temperature Fluctuations in New York City Traced to Global Warming
The temperature lately has been inconsistent and unpredictable. Students have been catching cold as a combination of one random cold day nestled in a week of warm days, and even worse, the ever present air conditioning that either freezes us out of house and home or shuts itself off to make way for the heat that boils us out of house and home.
Because I teach ESL, my students hail from all over the world. In many of their countries, the air conditioning doesn’t crank from April to October the way it does here. In recent years, it was predictable. Wear something warm for outside, and bring a heavy sweater to work. However as we quickly sail through May, there has been no consistency. On one particularly cold day last week, the air conditioner was on full blast. Students shivered and complained. After complaining to the building authorities, by late in the day, the heat was switched over to accommodate the chilly weather outside. However, the next day we were slammed with a hot and sunny 76 degree day and nearly boiled alive with the heat pumping out air hotter than air outside.
This is the second year in a row that my fellow colleagues and I had to tell our foreign students that this was a particularly “warm” November or a “cold’ day for May. As the world sees many climate shifts due to both natural and preventable occurrences, people are left with the arduous task of adapting to these conditions.
I can remember as a child, living a short time in south Florida. We made it just in time for hurricane Andrew to slam through our neighborhood, post pone school and shock us. For a long time it was one of the worst and most expensive US natural disasters. It seemed like nothing to trump Andrew. And then there was Katrina. Are these purely part of our planet’s natural weather cycle? Or is man contributing to these monstrous weather phenomena?
There are still skeptics, but I think it is pretty safe to say that Global Warming is alive and well, and should be considered. But how can we solve the problem effectively and realistically? Here in America, particularly, public transport is a luxury only bestowed on a few of the larger cities. I haven’t relied on my car in year, since living in New York. I am always shocked when I visit my parents (who live in a NYC suburb). Even if I wanted to walk or take a bike, it would be impossible. The town is not accommodating to anyone or anything except the automobile. Men, women and children have hectic schedules that to not always coincide, so the result is that each member of the family often owns a car. Gas efficient cars and hybrids are nice, but not affordable to the average American.
I am always shocked when I talk to my students who come from Europe, in particular. Several of them come from villages the size of my high school, and yet they describe intricate forms of public transportation. Why has America fallen short of this convenience? Is it the cost in taxes that would be required to reconstruct a town’s infrastructure with subways and buses? Is it the idea that freedom of mobility would be limited?
I’d argue that there are pros and cons to both. As a New Yorker, subway fares are expensive at $2 a ride, however, an unlimited monthly card is only $76. It pays for itself in two weeks with how often I take advantage of the subway. On the contrary, there are many times when I am limited. I cannot shop for large quantities of groceries, clothing or furniture. I can only go where a bus or subway goes. However, the amount of gas saved as 8 million New Yorkers share a subway, rather than a car is invaluable to the environment.
Public transport is one of many ways to help regulate or rapidly changing weather patterns. Clich�© as it may seem, Greenland is melting, temperatures are erratic, hurricanes are larger and in a few more years penguins will need sunblock in order to survive in Antarctica under the vanishing ozone layer. So the choice is ours. Even those who are skeptical of global warming should consider environmental issues for the multitude of other reasons that make the environment important.
