So there I was, sitting in my office, slits of light emanating through the slats of my Venetian blinds, penetrating the smoky haze that filled the room. I had no reason to suspect this day would be unlike any other day, until she came in.
She. That dame could make a fella stop on a dime with just one glance from those doe eyes. She waltzed into my office like she owned the place, kicking up her suede pumps on my desk.
"What's your business here, lady?" I asked.
"Intrigue," she said.
"Well today's your lucky day, kid," I cracked with all the wit I could muster, "Intrigue's my business, too."
"Well you're not doing such a hot job, gumshoe. Be a gem, won't you, and see if global warming's got anything to do with this week's bizarre weather, darling."
I knew this dame would be trouble from the moment I saw her, but that hit me like a '47 Cadillac Coupe DeVille. I'd have a tougher time connecting those dots than Fred MacMurray had with Barbara Stanwyck in "Double Indemnity." After all, how could global warming cause a snowstorm? The pieces just didn't fit. But a case is a case, and this one was mine.
I started where I always started-the one joint that always brought the juice on campus gossip. But JuicyCampus bit the dust just a few weeks back. So I had to settle for the next best thing-Google. I hit the trail for any clues I could work with, starting with average temperatures in March. On average, March in Durham packs about as much heat as Plaxico Burress in a crowded nightclub; average temperatures creep from about 45 degrees on March 1 straight up to 54 degrees on March 31. But this March 1 and 2, Durham had lows of 34 and 23, respectively. We see about 4.68 inches of precipitation total in an average March; we've already got 1.31.
But all that jazz could be chalked up to a freak occurrence, a roll of the dice, a crapshoot. Maybe I was looking at a one-hit job. Unfortunately for this private dick, the chips didn't fall that way. The entirety of North Carolina was listed under drought classifications "Abnormally Dry," "Moderate Drought," or "Severe Drought," according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
A drought and a freak snowstorm at the same time? Clearly, something fishy was afoot.
Could I actually chalk this up to global warming? I had gotten wise to some of the effects of global warming by sleuthing around cinema houses and watching classics like "The Day After Tomorrow." That helped bring the puzzle pieces together. In that movie, global warming caused freak super-storms that turned the planet icier than Sophia Loren. Like any good detective, I hit the Google trail to hear it from a second source, and a team of bookworms up at Colgate dug up this gem: increasing water temperatures due to global warming might explain an increase in snowfall in the Great Lakes area during the 1990s. The plot thickened.
Now it was looking like I've got the dime on global warming for this caper, but where did that dame play into this whole thing? She had a voice like a canary, so I checked out the most logical source for a scoop: the Canary Coalition. The Canary Coalition, as it turned out, was actually a green advocacy group based in North Carolina that had been in the middle of an investigation into Duke Energy. Duke Energy had begun expansion on a coal-based power plant in Cliffside, allegedly without all the necessary air quality inspections. When pressed with a lawsuit, Duke Energy suddenly revised its estimates on hazardous emissions to just below the cutoff point. The North Carolina Division of Air Quality accepted these estimates and issued the final permit Duke Energy needed to push the construction through. But here's where the cookie crumbles: N.C. politicians involved in the decision might have been dipping their beaks into the Duke cash cow. Crooked politicians, climate change and a cold day turning the Gothic Wonderland into a Winter Wonderland. It all made sense now.
Duke Energy muscled its way into developing a greenhouse gas-emitting plant. That plant, and others like it, aided and abetted global warming. Global warming caused a snowstorm. And that brings us right back where we started: Duke. Duke Energy hatched its plot to guarantee the day off for its kid sister institution, Duke University.
Case closed.
Danny Lewin is a Trinity junior. His column runs on Thursdays.
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