This is a new one!
Argue all you want about the cause of climate change. The 911 calls still come.
No one dials 911 to report climate change. They call because the water is over the doorsill. They call because a neighbor on the third floor, in an apartment with no air conditioning, stopped answering the door. They call because the road they were told to evacuate on is already under two feet of water.
In my 20 years wearing a badge in East Providence, I learned that the public rarely argues with a police officer about causation. They want the problem handled now. That instinct is worth borrowing for a debate that has been stuck for a generation.
So set aside whatever you believe about carbon, computer models, and international accords. Look at it the way an investigator looks at a case. What does the evidence on the ground actually show, and what does it oblige us to do about it?
What it shows, first, is a workload changing under our feet. Ambulance dispatches nationally rise somewhere between 6% and 18% during heat waves. Boston EMS has measured call volume climbing roughly 14% once the temperature clears 90 degrees. A research letter published this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association found heat-related EMS activations rose 65% nationwide between 2019 and 2024, with the sharpest acceleration in lower-income ZIP codes, which is to say the same neighborhoods that already generate the heaviest call volume for everything else.
You know what happens when it gets cold? Ambulance dispatches rise, as do 911 calls. Meh, probably also your fault for driving a fossil fueled vehicle.
How about a poll here on the cause of the reflecting pool catastrophe damage
A. An attack by SEAL trained Antifa ninjas armed with box cutters
B Improper installation of the rubber paint by Trump’s ‘pool guy”
C. Global warming causing the reflecting pool to boil
D. Choosing to use American citizens to do that hard labor including using muriatic acid to etch the concrete instead of using experienced Mexican workers
Mr. Teach,
Thanks for the read, and for proving the point better than I could have.
You quoted the opening and then spent the rest arguing about cause. That’s the debate I asked readers to set down, and you picked it right back up. I didn’t ask you to believe anything about carbon or models. I asked whether Market Street floods on a clear day, whether ambulance runs climb in a heat wave, and whether the road someone was told to evacuate on is already underwater. Those aren’t articles of faith. They’re a tide gauge and a dispatch log.
You can drive whatever you like and think the whole business is overstated. I don’t need you to change your mind about the thermostat of the planet. I need the culvert cleared and the cooling center funded before the next call comes in. That’s not ideology. It’s the same actuarial math we already do for police and fire staffing, and nobody calls that alarmism.
So keep your skepticism. It costs me nothing. The 911 calls come either way, and when they do, the person on the other end doesn’t want a lecture on etiology. They want the problem handled. That was the argument. It still is.
Joe Broadmeadow