Before you read any farther, sit down. I’m about to share a headline from The Washington Post that’s going to jar your preserves. I’d break it to you more gently if I could. But I can’t. By the same token, I don’t want to keep you hanging or to be overly dramatic. And I really won’t blame you if you think I’m making this whole thing up. But I’m not doing that, either. This stuff is really happening.

So, here goes. (Hold the drum roll, please.):

Fall is sweeping into the Lower 48 states. Here are 4 things to know.

Can you believe that? This what follows that bomb in part:

The number of daylight hours are [sic] now steadily shrinking by 1 to more than 3 minutes per day … Besides a general cooling of temperatures, one of the more noticeable impacts of shorter days is earlier and faster cooling in the evenings. That’s because of the increasingly earlier sunset time and because, in many parts of the country, the fall brings drier air that cools off more quickly when the sun goes down.

General cooling of temperatures. Shorter days. Earlier and faster cooling in the evenings. Good Grief. We should have seen this coming. It’s what we get for having failed to dump more government (taxpayer funded) subsidies into variable energy resources (VERs), variable renewable energy (VRE), variable solar resources (VSRs), variable wind resources (VWRs), video cassette recorders (VCRs), VHF (very high frequency), Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), and myriad other causes and intermittent renewable energy sources (IRES) that would have left our power grids even more unreliable than they already are if we’d done it right.

We blew it, kids.

What Did We Expect?

Make no mistake: These historically unprecedented phenomena are precipitated directly by the atmospheric effects of anthropogenic climate change. If we weren’t here, none of this would be happening. But we are. And it is.

If you’re curious about how and why this is happening, here’s the atmospheric process that’s causing temperatures to cool. Please refer to the graphic below:

• Because warm air rises, the warmer air at the surface of the earth, warmed by anthropogenic climate change, begins to elevate into higher levels of the atmosphere.
• As it elevates, it displaces the cooler air at those higher levels.
• Because cold air falls, as the cooler air at the upper levels of the atmosphere is displaced by the rising warmer air caused by anthropogenic climate change, it falls to the surface of the earth.
• Once that cooler air reaches the surface of the earth, it’s warmed by anthropogenic climate change, causing it to rise again.
• The cycle continues ad infinitum until the planet spontaneously combusts — or freezes, or floods out, or something — depending on which side of the anthropogenic climate change narrative you happen to be on. In any case, this is all our fault.

What Can We Do?

A number of things can be done to accommodate the devastating seasonal effects of anthropogenic climate change. You needn’t do them in any particular order, but all of them will be helpful:

• Buy a rake. Changes in daylight hours and temperatures will cause deciduous trees to prepare for climate change. As cells at the base of their leaves weaken, they cause the leaves to detach and make a mess of your yard. Even if you don’t mind looking at the mess, at least give your neighbors a break.
• Buy a hat. Contrary to popular fallacies which hold that 40 percent of your body head is lost through your head, just seven to ten percent is lost that way. But that’s okay. There are other reasons to wear a hat. In addition to fall weather, climate change is known to cause tornados, hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, gullywhumpers, hailstorms, and occasional light breezes. And if you’re anything at all like me, it’s better to be safe than to run the risk of having a bad hair day.
• Stock up on firewood. The Climate Police won’t let you burn it because burning wood emits carbon dioxide (CO²), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxides (NOx), methane (CH⁴), and good cheer, especially around the Holidays. And we can’t have any of that shit. But cutting, splitting, and stacking it will make your wife think you’re busy.
• Renew your subscription to The Washington Post so you can keep up with the climate-change hysteria. You can’t afford to be caught without a rake, a hat, or firewood.

Have a lovely autumn.

Originally Published on https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/category/lifecolumns/notes-to-self/

Mark O'Brien Writer, Blogger

I'm the founder and principal of O'Brien Communications Group (obriencg.com) and the co-founder and President of EinSource (einsource.com). I'm a lifelong writer. My wife, Anne, and I have two married sons and four grandchildren. I'm having the time of my life.