Interesting morning, isn't it. The trains are all flooded. The tracks between Lawrence and Court in Brooklyn lost power due to flooding. My co-worker was stuck getting from Governor's Island. Sewage was backing up in my apartment (despite my building's $300,000 sump pumps, but at least the pumps kept the backup from becoming the fountaining river it used to be). The research facility I work at in Manhattan is flooded in the basement (I don't have access to the animal facility, so I can't check it, but it is in the basement!) and the elevators are out. And Brooklyn, technically speaking, had a tornado.

Did you know a tornado passed over Brooklyn this morning? Passed very close to where I live. I wouldn't have known except my wife watches the weather channel for about an hour every morning.

At 6:30 AM the weather channel reported:

6:30 AM the tornado was passing over Bay Ridge

6:40 AM the tornado would pass over Flatbush and Crown Heights

7 AM predicted to pass over JFK...(I now write at 6:55 AM)

Sometime between 6:30 and 6:40 it must have passed right by my apartment. Rain was heavy (even our building's sump pumps couldn't hold back all the water) and it was quite dark. No other indication of a tornado as far as we could tell. They tell you to get in a basement...well, I LIVE in a basement!

It finally snowed in New York City! This will certainly cheer up my hairless monkeys, especially Thing 2.

Thing 2 has been having "nightmares" with global warming, especially after he saw the previews for "An Inconvenient Truth". He's scared about the prospect of the New York City 'drowning' if the polar icecaps melt. Needless to say, he doesn't want to see the Al Gore documentary.

I asked him why. I wanted to know why he was scared by a documentary but when he watches movies like Lord of the Rings and plays games like Half Life or Halo3, he barely blinks.

His answer?

"Mommy, those are fantasy; but global warming is real".

Scientists say 2007 may be warmest yet - Yahoo! News:

"The short-term effects of global warming on crop production are very uneven," said Daniel Hillel, a researcher at Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems Research. "I warn against making definitive predictions regarding any one season's weather."

What is clear is that the cumulative effect of El Nino and global warming are taking the Earth's temperatures to record heights.

"El Niño is an independent variable," Jones said. "But the underlying trends in the warming of the Earth is almost certainly a result of the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."

You know what pisses me off the most?

The year it's going to be a brown winter is the same year I bought my kids snowboards. Every previous year they were the only kids without them. Every time it would snow I'd slap my forhead for the lack of sleds and snowboards.

So here I am, feeling like a good mother for getting them their snow gear early and .... it's not going to snow.

Photo Courtesy of the New York City Public Advocate's Office

Four more years of the phantom New York City Public Advocate. There is a photo of her allegedly giving food out in Queens. Nice? WHAT THE F&*#K IS HER PROBLEM!

The Public Advocate should be voice of moral outrage of the people of New York. Handing out sandwiches is the best Gotbaum could do?

It utterly pains me to see how this woman has turned that post into a charade. I don't care if Bloomberg stripped the position of any actual governmental mandate. Then raise hell, use the media access you've got with the post and raise utter, raging hell. No media access? Then take it to the people. Take it to the streets.

There is no reason whatsoever for people in Queens to be in the situation they are at the moment.

Facilitating the implementation of alternative sources of energy for emergency situations like this ought to be the #1 priority of New Yok City, especially after the 2002 Blackout. And if it is not on the agenda of the mayor or City Council, then shame them publicly for their oversight.

I just posted a rant about the government's use of "the weather" to clear themselves of any responsability over at culturekitchen. My pet peeve? The refusal to link the freakishly hot and stormy weather to any environmental upheavals caused by the last hurricane season, including Hurricane Katrina.

I mean, if Puerto Rican's and countries all across the Caribbean have created preparedness plans for not just the before and during of a hurricane but particularly the environmental upheavals that come after it, why can't U.S. Americans? Do y'all really believe the U.S. is above any laws of nature?

Funny Bouldin would write :

New Yorkers should also ponder what would happen if - rather, when - we ever face a disaster again. Bush's FEMA has just glaringly demonstrated their lack of competence. I hesitate to think what would happen if we ever need to evacuate the five boroughs.

I published the following yesterday over at culturekitchen : A link to New York Presse's kick ass article about what would happen if a hurricane hit NYC --an article that was published on the 20th of July. Which makes it a warning article, since the hurricane season starts in late August and runs through October (sometimes November) :

[New York Press | THE BIG ONE by Aaron Naparstek]

For a taste of what will happen to the city's infrastructure, we can look at the damage wrought by the great nor'easters of the early 1990s. During those storms, the L train had to be backed out as the 14th Street tunnel began filling with water, and the FDR highway was so badly inundated that 50 motorists had to be rescued by dive teams. In the event of a direct hit by a category-3 hurricane, surge maps show that the Holland and Battery Tunnels will be completely filled with sea water, with many subway and railroad tunnels severely flooded as well. The runways of LaGuardia and JFK airports will get flooded by 18.1 and 31.2 feet of water, respectively.