The weather outside is frightful, but is it the apocalypse?

If you’ve gone outside in the past few weeks, you’ll have noticed something very weird is going on. Even though the calendar clearly indicates it’s the first week of December, all the material evidence, and by that we mean snow, ice and cold, strongly suggests there’s been a time shift and it is now February. As far as we know, the Earth did not slip into a wormhole in the cosmos and emerge three months later, and indeed, the first official day of winter, according to all this axial-tilting business, is still three weeks away.

Full data for November is not yet in, but according to independent weather watcher David Page, the fall of 2018 has shattered many records. For starters, he says, the snowfall in the Quebec City region of about 80 cm will be a record. Page says “it may well be the coldest November on record as well. Many records were set for low minimums and low maximums for the date during the cold snap that lasted for two weeks and only ended on November 25.

“I don’t remember a month of November being so consistently cold though I do remember very cold periods at the end of the month back in the 1970s … Moreover, it follows a month of October which was also colder than normal with measurable snow on at least one occasion.”

Ski hills are reporting a five-week jump on the opening of the slopes, cities and towns are already blowing their snow-clearing budgets, shovel sales are off the charts, and those car-owners who didn’t believe the early snows would stick have been spinning their wheels waiting for an appointment to get their winter tires installed. And on and on.

So what gives? What’s up with this stunningly premature arrival of fullblown winter weather? Is this incontrovertible evidence the environmental apocalypse eco oracles have predicted for decades is now truly upon us?

Elsewhere in the world, manifestations of climate change are much more harrowing than early snow in the north. The devastating and deadly wildfires in California in November, for example, prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to declare “this is not the new normal, this is the new abnormal.” To twist the song a bit, “the trouble with abnormal is it only gets worse.”

Despite decades of warning and repeated attempts to rally governments around the planet to some kind of determined commitment - Montreal (1987), Kyoto (1997), Paris (2016) - greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase with no abatement in sight and little hope of achieving the 2-degree limit in global temperature rise by 2030, a target many experts feel is inadequate to avert disaster.

Nations of the world meet again in Poland this week to try to keep up the pressure to meet the Paris Agreement commitments. The meeting comes on the heels of reports that conclude the planet is increasingly in hot water, so to speak, in terms of putting the brakes on global warming.

Even the fact that polls show 60 percent of Republicans in the United States now actually believe in climate change does not boost the chances of halting the melting of the glaciers. Perhaps when Mar-a-lago becomes more sea than lake will the White House take rising waters seriously.

Here in Canada, what seemed a short while ago to be relative unity among governments in addressing the commitments of the Paris Agreement, has now dissolved with the change of people in power. Provinces are rejecting or backtracking on plans to reduce carbon emissions.

Average citizens must be feeling some frustration that their commitment to “think globally, act locally” seems to all be for naught. As much as folks recycle

Tand compost in support of the cause, it doesn’t seem to matter a jot if the leaders of the world can’t get their act together.

We hardy northerners accept and embrace the freakishly premature winter. Yet, while such weather may seem to contradict the dire predictions of global warming, the prophets of climate change would say it’s a sign of worse things to come.

“Oh, the weather outside is frightful …” he Quebec Association for the Defense of the Rights of Retired and Early Retired Persons (AQDR) decries the situation described in the report of the Protecteur du citoyen 2017- 2018 and is not surprised to see that there is still organizational maltreatment in CHSLDS.

"When seniors are housed in CHSLDS, they need a decent living environment as much as health care. Unfortunately, as mentioned by the Ombudsperson, CHSLDS are no longer living environments, but a basic care environment. Are we in a situation where seniors are forced to sacrifice their quality of life for health care? Let's not forget that our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents are paying the price of the lack of resources in many long-term care homes,” said Judith Gagnon, President of the AQDR.

The organization says there are commitments, but few results. In May 2018, at the Forum on Best Practices, users, CHSLDS and Home Support services, CEOS of Health and Social Network Institutions, and social services committed to ensuring that CHSLDS provide a "pleasant and interesting" living environment as well as "the privacy, security, dignity and physical and psychological well-being" of residents. However, the Protecteur du citoyen's 2017-2018 annual activity report notes that services such as weekly baths and oral hygiene care are often postponed. The watchdog mentions that: "Given the mission of CHSLDS, we find ourselves in situations that are similar to organizational mistreatment - a hot topic for the AQDR In 2017.

The Québec Association for the Defense of the Rights of Retired and Early Retired People (AQDR) has the exclusive mission of collective defense, the protection and promotion of the rights of individuals, retired seniors, and pre-retirees. It has 25,000 members grouped into 42 local chapters.