Climate Denial Ain't Just a Climate River in Climate Egypt

No, that's an ice cube.  It's different.

Climate change deniers up and down the Northeast Corridor are snickering in their little snow boots. Over the past week in the Delaware Valley, every resident was treated to 50,000 cubic feet of snow per acre. That's enough snow to build a 50,000 cubic foot snowcube!

We've also gotten twice as much snow at this point in the year as the average. The word "snowpacolypse" is now the most common search phrase, overtaking "is facebook shutting down?" But before we throw a Phew, That Was Close! It Looked For a Minute As Though Man May Be Irreversibly Altering the Climate, But Thankfully, No, It Was Merely Some Zany Scientists That Love a Good Hoax party, let's actually remind ourselves of what's going on up there.

Not to scale.  Which is the problem.

Starting here on the surface of the earth and rising 15 kilometers is the troposphere. The next 35 kilometers comprises the stratosphere. Another 40 kilometers, that's the mesosphere. Above that, for 250 more kilometers, is the thermosphere. Those four layers make up the Earth's atmosphere, the space beyond which we typically refer to as, well, space.

To understand how the cumulative volume of what we call "atmosphere" relates to the size of the planet itself, picture an image of Earth as photographed from space. Now draw a circle just outside Earth's perimeter, only one percent of the radius of the planet. That's how relatively thin all the gases are that control life on Earth.

Due to limitations in dry-erase marker technology, this diagram is not to scale.  The atmosphere is actually five times thinner than as shown above.  It should be noted that while the inner circle was an outlining of a compact disc, the outer circle was drawn by hand, and I should be applauded for it.

For more mental imagery, envision a basketball as Earth. How big would the atmosphere be around old Spalding? A mere one-tenth of an inch thickness all the way around. That's not much, and that's my point.

Our atmosphere is a highly-delicate environment. It's evolving on its own just like any grouping of organisms that lay within its realm. But even in the midst of its natural evolution, we - you, me and all of humanity - are precipitating far greater rates of change than the 'background noise' of gradual progressions of millions of years.

The deniers, still in their snow-boots (and in the house, no less), then ask: Who says?

Ice cores: nature's most perfect murder weapon.

Ugh. Fine. The answer lies in the decades of empirical data, studying the proportions of gases in the atmosphere and how it changes over time. It's in the findings within ice cores that reveal temperature changes over hundreds of thousands of years. It's in the geological examination of ancient rock, revealing what organisms lived when, what the climate was like, and indications as to disruptions (extinctions, natural disasters, etc.).

Does any one individual want to pore over all this data? Frick no. But once you do, you'll likely come to the same conclusion that 97% of accredited scientists have come to: something drastic happened right around the mid-1700s. When we consult our history books, we see that the Industrial Revolution coincides fittingly with that timeframe. Could it be that the exponential rise in carbon dioxide spewed into the air from factories and vehicles and overall mechanization not only direct correlates - that much is fact - but directly caused the severe uptick in the very same gases as currently represented in today's measurable atmosphere? Those that honor logic would unequivocally say yes.

This looks complicated, and its implications may attack my personal wealth, therefore it must be a fiction someone created to gain power over me.  Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a hole in the ground that's missing my head.

Climate science is a hell of a venture.  It has required the aggregate work of generations of interested parties.  It's all documented, transparently viewable to the general public.  Is it difficult to understand?  Sure it is.  But so is chemotherapy.  So is molecular physics.  And yet we don't impugn these as falsehoods.  We only challenge the nearly-settled science because of the massive and yes, inconvenient, ramifications.  It really is going to suck to put up with rising sea levels, intensified natural phenomena, and the loss of biodiversity.  But anticipated suckiness does not a hoax make.

I believe that was Descartes.

My Trash Can is Trash? I Refuse!

The idea of throwing away a trash can is one of those meta-paradoxy things.  Like when you see a sign that says "SIGN" on it.  Or a door that has a smaller door inside it.

My wager?  This kid gets a tractor-trailer stuck under an overpass in about 20 years.

I don't expect much out of a trash can.  There's really only two qualities I demand - capaciousness, and the ability to remain stationary.  The white, elliptical one in my kitchen has been serving me just fine for several years now.  Oh, the things I've placed into it!

But as of late it's been causing me more trouble than it's worth.  The lid stopped working.  How?  See, I had one of those fancy lids.  You merely press down on a plastic latch, and the lid rises, granting you unfettered access to the garbage within.  The wonders never cease.

The problem came when I decided to pull a Danny Tanner and clean the trash can itself.  I took her outside, sprayed her down, gave her a decent scrubbing, and rinsed.  Was that gleam in my eye the feeling we call pride?  No, it was just some Formula 409 that splashed into the old ocular cavity, but still, things felt right.

Reassembly time.  The reassembly of a trash can is one of the easier home improvement projects one can undertake.  Step 1: put the lid back on the container.  Step 2: Hey, it's 10:30 AM - isn't Frasier on?  And yet, I blew it.  Suddenly the latch that should be flinging the lid from horizontal to vertical was laying down on the job.  It was no longer spring-loaded.  It no longer had springs.

The search was on for those pesky buggers.  It went on for days, weeks even.  In the meantime, I tried a variety of configurations so as to continue using the waste basket: 

"The Gaga"

"The Kareem"

"The This Guy"

None were particularly pleasing.  I learned it takes some serious dexterity to manually open a lid while carefully balancing a swept-up pile of dog hair and debris, while also trying to program the Bluetooth on your iPhone, because it's 2011 now, and you have to multitask.

Torsion springs.  Obviously.

Many people would declare this trash can ready for the great landfill in the sky, or even just the regular landfill.  Not I.  Not now.  What with my deep consideration for this planet, and my utter, utter lack of money.  They're merely springs, I thought.  I refuse to be impeded by tiny coils of torsion-loaded aluminum!  And if I didn't think in those words then, I surely did after a web search or two.

A trip to my local home improvement store resulted in purchasing a pair each of three different springs.  Two didn't fit.  One did, but offered far less resistance than needed to fling the plastic lid up.

Something about "can hardly contain myself".  That should work.

In a fit of rationality, I decided to contact the manufacturer and see if they'd send me some freebie replacements.   Sterilite Corporation.  Makers of all things plastic in your home.  Doing their thing up near the northern-most border of Massachusetts.  Good looking website.  Contact Us form.  It's on.

I wrote, explaining my springless circumstance.  A few days passed.   Sandra LaPointe in the Customer Service Department wrote back.  Sentence One: "Thank you for contacting Sterilite."  Great start; offering the customer gratitude.  I'm liking it.  Sentence Two: "We apologize for the spring problem you experienced."  Already got my apology - a lot of people would stop right here.  And she specifically referenced "the spring problem".  Unlikely to be auto-generated. Sterilite, you're off to a great start.

She went on in detail describing how I could locate the product code so they could see if such replacement springs were available.  I hit her back with the info within hours.  A few more days pass. Yesterday I get an email.  It's LaPointe.  She doesn't waste any time and jumps right into the resolution:

Hell yeah.  Sterilite straight up delivers. 

Now that the logistics of the matter are behind us, let's address this story's moral.  Was it simply an example of fine customer service?  A socially-conscious corporation doing the right thing?  A softened stance on the part of Big Spring?  Nope.  This here's about me.

How easy would it have been to walk - forlorn - to my curb, trash can in hand? Stupid easy.  I resisted.  If I had done so, my next step would be a trip to any of myriad retailers within a five mile radius: Home Depot, Lowe's, Target, Walmart, Kmart, or dozens of smaller purveyors of home goods.  I'd be out $25.  Relatively little harm - but major foul. 

If we're going to make it as a species - that's right, I'm taking this argument humanity-wide - we need to properly make use of our things.  That's one less structure of injection-molded polypropylene that needs to be produced.  It's what we call a baby step.

Now I haven't received the springs yet.  For all I know they may be the wrong ones, or brittle or rusted, or maybe they'll belie a terrific misunderstanding and be tickets to see Bruce at Madison Square Garden.  But for the time being, I'm satisfied.

EDITOR'S NOTE:  I know what you're thinking and I agree - I passed on too many good 'spring' jokes.  Right at the end there - after "I'm satified" - the classy phrase "Hope springs eternal" would have been a dynamite drop-in.  I took a pass.  Something seasonal would have been appropriate - "More like spring of our discontent!".  I would have also liked to have used the onomatopoeia boing, but it didn't come naturally.  I could go on and on about similar regrets, but I better bounce.  I leave you with the only spring that has its own song.

Slinky's one of those words that if you say too many times, it loses all meaning.  Marginally fun fact.