Summer arrived after winter this year. It snowed at the end of March because the polar vortex, which is a wall of wind that circulates the air at the poles, split and could not push the warm air away from the Arctic. So, in February and March it was warmer at the North Pole than in Rome. Now that the snow is gone, every day the temperature is close to 30 C. My children comment on the weather from time to time. Since they are the future, I am briefly recording what they say.
Edward: "Everything will ripe fast and in the same time because it's so hot. Then most humans will disappear. It's like in Jules Verne's book".
Edward: "I like Jules Verne because nobody important dies in his books. In this one he only kills most of humanity, and some stranded English soldiers."
[Edward is 7. We've been reading "Hector Servadac" -- it's our 5th Jules Verne book to date. The children call it Hector SavesADuck because it's funnier to say. The protagonist is stranded on part of Earth that travels through the solar system on top of a hard-core comet, which somehow has an atmosphere. It gets closer to the Sun and heats up and then further away and everything freezes. We have not reached the end yet. I do believe that they return to Earth in another close encounter and everyone important lives happily ever after -- not the English, of course. The English float away on another piece of the comet because they are too proud to work with the French, the Spanish and the Russians + one Italian girl (20some total) even when there is literally nobody else left. We were disappointed to find that Hector does not save any ducks - only the non-English people and a pigeon.]
David:" Will Romania become a desert? will it be like California or Sahara? how long will desertification take? a year or two or will it be decades?"
[David is 11. He asks lots of question to which I don't have an answer. I keep telling him that to avoid desertification we'd have to keep existent forests and plant a lot more trees. We could count all the trees and stop cutting them, but our governments are formed from people who are too old to care. When/if this changes, will we be able to change enough to avoid major disasters? I am not sure.]
[I am not ungrateful. I am thankful for warmth. We visited England in the beginning of April and it was rainy and chilly almost every day. But I also know that hurricanes get strong quicker when the ocean is warm, and that harsher storms are expected to come. I raise three little boys, and I worry: will they grow up? will they be safe? am I doing enough to help them prepare for whatever lies ahead?]
