writeaboutwarming

July 3, 2019 Last Friday, the temperature reached 115 degrees Fahrenheit in Gallargues-le-Montueux, France, a record for the entire country. France was not the only country in Europe suffering from record-setting heat: Germany, Poland, Spain, the Czech Republic, Italy, and others were sweltering. Why? Scientists have their eyes on the polar jet stream, the fast-moving flow of high-altitude air currents at the top of the world. When the jet stream wanders, cold Arctic air can spill southward, or hotter air from the middle latitudes can move north. These scientists theorize that the melting of Arctic ice, along with the decreased temperature difference between the Arctic and lower latitudes, is causing the jet stream to weaken, leading to its wobbly flow. Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State, says a "meandering, slowed jet stream . . . favors stalled extreme weather regimes like the ones we are seeing right now." The hotter the Arctic, the weaker the jet stream. ...

September 14, 2015 - The news just isn't getting any better, is it?  Heroic people all over the world are working very hard to keep climate change from reaching the tipping point, but governments continue down the same road they've been following for decades.  Sadly, their inertia means the bill that's coming due just keeps getting bigger.  And oh! how badly they and their super-wealthy citizens don't want to pay it.  That's ok.  This bill collector is never turned down.  It will all work out in due course.  After all, it's only humankind that may face extinction. Actually, I do believe there will be survivors.  I don't mean that in the sense of "me and my family have this all figured out."  I mean that in the sense that the odds favor it.  Somebody, somewhere, will get through this.  Maybe a lot of somebodies.  Humanity's chance to influence a more favorable outcome is just about over, however.  Much as we human beings ...

December 16, 2013 – The end of the year is a time for taking stock, so that’s what we’ll do today.   To a large degree, I will simply be lifting information from an article that first appeared online in Climate Progress. There’s a lot to talk about, and really very little analysis warranted; the facts speak for themselves, and very loudly, too.   None of the news is good - we appear to have much in common with the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. CO2 levels hit 400 ppm – the highest level in recorded history.   This fact notwithstanding, Americans rejoice in being told that our country is once again energy independent, thanks to the fracking of oil and gas.   At the current pace of increase, there will be 450 ppm within three decades, which will drive catastrophic climate change. Hotter, faster – In its fifth assessment report, released this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) determines that the world as a whole ...

August 19, 2013 – Back in the halcyon days of warnings about a far off event called climate change   (as opposed to   the actual occurrence of climate change, which is what we’re stuck with now), Americans were warned that if certain tendencies in the climate asserted themselves, they would encourage the climate’s unpredictability, thereby leading to more change.   When an action leads to results that reinforce the original action, a feedback loop has been established.   Say, for instance, that a student who dislikes school because he gets poor grades, decides that because of his disliking school he’d rather play soccer with friends than study for a test.   The consequences are quite predictable: because he doesn’t study for the test, he performs poorly on the test, leading to an even greater dislike of school.   That’s a feedback loop. In the early days, right after World War II, all that scientists knew was that the earth was warming.   Becaus...

June 17, 2013 - Perhaps no one word describes climate change better than volatile .  There are a number of words like volatile that can help clarify what is meant by climate change: mercurial, fluctuating, and transient all can be applied - at times - to this emerging phenomenon.  As it emerges, it will grow in geographical impact, grow in severity of effects, grow in variety of effects, and grow exponentially as a result of positive feedback.  Last year will always be better than this year.  It will outpace us - our inability to act collectively will result in millions of individual actions.  Most of them will have been poorly thought out. For now, we must learn to accept that many of our poorly-informed collective actions only serve to compound errors.  Sequestration - a puzzling action at best - has stripped $50 million from the Forest Service's budget, eliminating the jobs of 500 firefighters.  Those still employed w...

August 20, 2012 - You know, it's hard to decide what to write about these days.  Climate extremes are happening all the time now, and I don't ever want to treat what people are going through as if it were unimportant.  On the other hand, it's very easy to tell what my readers like, and want: you guys want to hear some good news.  Last week's blog article was the most popular I've ever written, bar none.  So this week I'm going to mix it up.  First, let's all admit that it's impossible to ignore the fires burning in the western United States. I know - they're getting a lot of coverage, and it's pretty scary stuff.  There's nothing I can say to make the situation less horrible than it is.  We all want so very badly for the fires to just stop burning!  Fact is, dead trees as dry as tinder are always going to catch fire when they're struck by lightning.  This is a good time to remind ourselves of one of those basic facts of life: we c...

June 11, 2012 - Do you ever play that game: which would be worse - a fire, or a flood?  Once something burns up, it's irretrievably lost.  With flooding, there's the possibility, however small, of saving things.  Fires are terribly polluting, and add a lot of carbon dioxide to the already overloaded atmosphere.  Dirty or polluted water could ruin a home or even a town. In the event that clean-up is possible, it's a labor intensive, dangerous job.  A home with smoke damage might be similarly hard work to clean up.  A home that's burned to the ground probably requires a bulldozer, once the surviving possessions have been sorted.  Insurance is available for both kinds of catastrophes.  In either case, nature is capable of repairing at least some of the local environmental damage.  The psychic, emotional, and physical toll on humans is another matter entirely. The cost of fires begins with the training of firefighters, and t...

Hi Everybody - Well, once again I must apologize for my tardiness. This time, Google/blogspot isn't allowing me to copy and paste my articles into their posting app, so I had to re-type. Sorry for the delay. July 4, 2011 - It just keeps getting better: during a meeting of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski (AK) sorrowfully pointed out that, if the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA) of 2003 had only been fully implemented, the forest fires out West wouldn't be burning. It's all the fault of the Forest Service, she lamented. Come to find out, the HFRA was never - you guessed it - fully funded (as was the case with so many of GWB's "great ideas"). Furthermore, says Roger Sedjo of Resources for the Future, Murkowski, along with other members of the committee, fails to account for the type of forests found in the Southwest - pine. Pine trees have evolved to go to seed as the result of being exposed to the heat...

June 28, 2009 – Before proceeding to more serious matters, I really must mention the new, online version of The Ecologist magazine. What a gift! It’s ALL covered here: the global warming effects on housing, transporta-tion, energy use, family, education, farming, social effects, political effects, psychological effects and more, More, MORE: every facet of life and how it is or will be affected by the changing climate. The authors are not only passionate, but knowledgeable. The articles are, bless us, well written, and they convey an enormous amount of timely, useful information. I don’t understand why my blog link doesn’t go to their website, unless it’s because they’re overseas. However, you can definitely find this marvelous publication at www.theecologist.org . READ IT! By Julie Cart April 9, 2009 “Reporting from The Murray-Darling Basin, Australia -- Frank Eddy pulled off his dusty boots and slid into a chair, taking his place at the dining room table where most of the criti...