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TODAY Wednesday 24 September 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: The Boy Who Stalks California

"They're doing our roof the first week of October!," a friend in San Francisco just told me. There was an elation in her voice not generally associated with home improvements. Roofers all through California are turning away as many customers as they can service. Everyone wants a watertight cover over their heads. El Nino is coming.

The consensus of climatologists is that El Nino, the warm Pacific weather system which this year came early, hot, and big, will provoke a wet stormy winter for California. Perhaps it will exceed the tempestuous winter of 1982-83, when coastal flooding caused record damage. The Federal Emergency Management Administration is urging shoredwellers to take out special insurance policies. Bulldozers berm beaches. Boats are drydocked. Homeowners are pruning trees and patching leaks and piling seedbags to stop mudslides. The Salvation Army is laying in canned goods. The radio talk shows fret all day long; Californians cherish their natural disasters.

In the meantime, though, it's heaven. September has been unusually warm and clear and dry. Ground-level ozone is at low levels. And, most surprising of all, you can actually swim in the ocean. Last week the temperature of the Pacific Ocean at the northwest corner of San Francisco measured 73 degrees. Surfers stay in forever, no wetsuits needed. Charter fishermen are able to take their clients on runs for marlins and other new tropical visitors; the demand and the profits are enormous.

No one really knows exactly what El Nino portends. The system could spend itself out before the winter storm period; it could bring wet but not raging conditions, much like Seattle's; there are even parts of the state that could be hit by an El Nino drought.

The Machiavellis among us might wish for a devastating storm to lash Southern California in mid December as the international negotiations on climate change convene in Kyoto. The moorings at Marina Del Rey smashed like matchsticks; water in the streets of San Pedro; The Santa Monica Pier collapsing in wreckage. Hollywood stars would battle the elements at Malibu, their images flashed around the world. God forbid, but a celebrity death or two could do wonders.

Even if nothing else happens but some beach erosion and some house-smashing mudslides, it's gratifying to see 30 million people go bonkers about the weather. As Carl Pope has said, climate change is the one environmental issue that people talk about every day; they just call it weather, as in "The weather sure has gotten weird." Californians are now blaming anything unfortunate on poor overburdened EL Nino. Prolonged allergy attacks? El Nino. Crop loss? El Nino. Bad sales quarter? El Nino.

Another friend was watching his daughter's soccer team lose a game to a usually inferior opponent. What's going on here?, asked the dad next to him. El Nino, he said.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE:

Check out Tom Turner's piece about environmental turncoats in this weeks edition of In Other News.... Tom paints some telling thumbnail portraits of polluters becoming whistleblowers and enviros turning Wise Use. Good stuff.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

9/23: Fire!
9/22: More Logging and Fishing
9/19: "Here, Sir, the People Rule"
9/18: Dr. Pangloss and the Land Mine Treaty
9/17: Outsourcing Pollution
9/16: In the Preservation of the Funky
9/15: The Problem With Health
9/12: The Automobile Crisis of 2020
9/11: Gratifyingly Inept Adversary
9/10: The Porkbarrel Works for You

To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.