Tag: Climate Change

Biden Pulls An End Run

Dems have been fighting the GOP for decades on this climate change thing and the things we need to do to avert the predicted disaster that is awaiting.

Biden is tired of Congress and their games and has decided to take matters in his own hinds.

After being thwarted by Congress, President Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style climate initiative that will serve as a major green-jobs training program. In an announcement Wednesday, the White House said the program will employ about 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels, and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires. As the AP reports, such a program had been proposed in early versions of the sweeping climate law approved last year, but it was jettisoned amid strong opposition from Republicans and concerns about cost. Democrats and environmental advocacy groups never gave up on the plan and pushed Biden in recent weeks to issue an executive order authorizing what the White House now calls the American Climate Corps.

The program is modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps, created in the 1930s by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, as part of the New Deal. “This summer, our country saw heat waves, wildfires, and floods that destroyed communities, uprooted families, and claimed hundreds of lives,” the Sunrise Movement and other organizations wrote on Monday in a letter to Biden’s White House. “While previous executive orders and legislation under your administration demonstrate tremendous progress toward meeting our Paris climate goals and your campaign promises, this summer has made clear that we must be as ambitious as possible in tackling the great crisis of our time,” the groups wrote.

More than 50 Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also encouraged Biden, saying in a letter that “the climate crisis demands a whole-of-government response at an unprecedented scale.” The lawmakers cited deadly heat waves across the nation, as well as dangerous floods in New England and devastating wildfires on Maui as recent examples of climate-tied disasters. The White House didn’t say how much the program will cost or how it will be paid for, but Democrats had proposed $10 billion. Republicans have largely dismissed it as a do-gooder proposal that will waste money and may even take jobs away from workers displaced by the pandemic. “We don’t need another FDR program, and the idea that this is going to help land management is a false idea,” Arkansas Rep. Bruce Westerman, Natural Resources Committee chair, said in 2021.

Of course the GOP is opposed to anything related to climate change….but they blindly throw cash at the Pentagon and its many tentacles in our society.

Biden is not my favorite but at least he has stepped up to do something….for that I thank him.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is Litigation Good For The Climate?

There have been many attempts to solve the problem of climate change….protests do little…..debate does nothing….but could litigation be the answer?

Recently in Montana there was a climate trial…..

Young environmental activists have scored a huge victory in Montana, where a judge has agreed that the state violated their constitutional right to “a clean and healthful environment.” In the first-of-its-kind Held v Montana case, District Judge Kathy Seeley ruled that it was unconstitutional for the coal and oil-producing state to allow fossil fuel development without considering the effect on the climate, the AP reports. The 16 plaintiffs in the case, ages 5 to 22, argued in June that the state was violating its own constitution—and destroying their future. Rikki Held, the plaintiff the case is named for, said climate change was hurting her family’s ranch.

Experts say the win could “energize the environmental movement and reshape climate litigation across the country,” per the Washington Post. Julia Olson, an attorney representing the young Montanans, describe the ruling as a “game-changer that marks a turning point in this generation’s efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human-caused climate chaos.” “This is a huge win for Montana, for youth, for democracy, and for our climate,” said Olson. She is the founder of the Our Children’s Trust nonprofit, which has filed similar lawsuits on behalf of young people in every state since 2011.

This was the first such case to go to trial, though a district court ruled in June that a federal case brought by the group can proceed to trial, the Guardian reports. Another case in Hawaii is expected to go to trial in June next year. The Montana victory sets an important precedent, experts say, though since bringing the law into compliance with the state constitution will be left to the GOP-controlled state legislature, it’s not clear whether it will lead to major changes, the AP notes.

With this small win could it be a template for further activism?

On this front, various efforts have been made to call for the acceleration of climate actions around the world. In the past years, advocacy campaigns, strikes, public demonstrations, and activists’ protests have been increasingly reported across media platforms, lobbying for countries to fulfil their climate pledges. Although some progress has been made, they are not enough to catch up with the fast-rising global temperature.

Increasingly individuals and non-governmental organizations are turning to climate litigation as part of the social movements, using human rights law as a strategic instrument to enforce climate actions.

Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, the number of climate change-related lawsuits has doubled from just over 800 cases (1986 -2014) to over 1,200 cases (2015 – 2022), with most cases based in the Global North (particularly in the US) and a growing number of cases from the Global South.

Human rights law offers strong grounds for litigation against states as states hold the primary responsibility and duty to protect human rights. At the European Court of Human Rights, three climate cases are pending before the Grand Chamber of the Court.

Among others, the climate cases were made on the grounds of the human rights violations of the right to life (Article 2), and the right to respect for private and family life (Article 8) as enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights.

(ipsnews.net)

Is this the way forward?

Keep in mind that here in the US SCOTUS will have the last word and we all know how corruptible these political hacks can be, right?

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

When Did Climate Weaponize?

My granddaughter asked this the other day….and me being an old fart I tried to explain it to her…she knew that I had been around in the early days of the debate.

I explained that it pretty much began in earnest in 1973 with the formation of the Heritage Foundation, a GOP think tank…..and in 1981 they offered up the first of the conservative programs that become the platforms for candidates and elected officials….

Not much has changed in all these years….the newest incarnation of their ‘policies’,

The Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project released the ninth edition of Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise in April, and that mandate includes significant rollbacks to federal efforts to tackle the climate emergency, as E&E News reported Wednesday.

“Make no mistake: this is a battle plan,” End Climate Silence founding director Genevieve Guenther tweeted in response to the news. “The war being waged is against our children’s future.”

The document would essentially serve as a policy blueprint for the first 180 days if Trump—or another Republican—were to gain control of the White House in January 2025, as E&E News explained. Climate and environmental rollbacks in the document include

  • Axing the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations;
  • Stopping the focus on “grid expansion for the benefit of renewable resources or supporting low/carbon generation” and instead expanding natural gas infrastructure and overall fossil fuel use;
  • Downsizing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA offices including the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, and the Office of Public Engagement and Environmental Education;
  • Preventing other states from adapting California’s stricter environmental standards for greenhouse gases; and
  • Banning the use of scientific studies including private health data in setting EPA regulations.
  • (commondreams.org)

More than 400 people contributed ideas to the final document, which was written by former Trump staffers, industry lobbyists and consultants, and conservative policy experts. The section on the DOE was penned by Trump Federal Energy Regulatory Commission appointee Bernard McNamee, while the EPA section was written by Mandy Gunasekara, who served as the agency’s chief of staff under Trump.

The document doesn’t limit itself to climate and energy policy, but rather contains a chapter on each of the major federal departments.

So when asked who weaponized the climate then you have your answer….The Heritage Foundation.

Behind all the lies and denials of the GOP stands the Heritage to offer disinformation to help make a spurious case.

Then there is social media which these days is leading the charge on disinformation…..YouTube is a major contributor to this situation…..

Google-owned YouTube is again facing allegations of profiting from not enforcing its own ban on the monetization of climate misinformation, this time in a report published Friday amid legislative battles in Brazil over policies on the Amazon rainforest, Indigenous rights, and social media.

Google announced in October 2021 that for advertisers and publishers along with creators on its video platform YouTube, the company would “prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.”

For four weeks, researchers with Ekō—a group formerly known as SumOfUs that works to curb the power of big corporations—reviewed 60 YouTube videos in English and Portuguese that contained disinformation and conspiracy theories about Amazon deforestation, Indigenous rights, and the climate emergency.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/youtube-climate-disinformation

I made my thoughts known on this debate 10 years ago….

Climate Change Debate

We have been waiting for an honest debate on the climate since 1977….and we wait….and wait….

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Memories Of An ‘Eco-Commie’

The hot topic these days in blogs is that of the climate change persuasion….everyone is predicting and debating the end times for the planet….but where was all this concerned 10 years ago….5 years ago….even last year?

‘Eco-Commie’?

WTF?

I will explain that term shortly….but first….

After Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast I lost most of my saved earlier work but it was whisked away by the storm until the other day when I found a plastic bin that had been saved that I had forgotten about and in this bin were some writings I did on the environment and such.

Now for the Eco-Commie thing….after Vietnam I became deeply involved in the antiwar scene and by extension I also was a protester for the environment and because we were so animated some starting calling us ‘Eco-Commies’ because back in those days if you protested oil companies and other polluters you were anti-American.

I kinda liked the label to be honest.

Now to flesh out why I am writing this post…..

I have heard people ask just how did this become a problem unforeseen.

It was not unforeseen.

Back in 1977 during th early days of the Carter administration a memo was passed around.

n 1977 Star Wars hit movie theaters, New York City had a blackout that lasted 25 hours, and the Apple II personal computer went up for sale. It was also the year that a remarkable one-page memo was circulated at the very highest levels of US government.

Years before the climate crisis was part of national discourse, this memo outlined what was known – and feared – about the crisis at the time. It was prescient in many ways. Did anyone listen?

memo

Click to view the full memo.

Did they see this coming?

“Fossil fuel combustion has increased at an exponential rate over the last 100 years. As a result, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is now 12 percent above the pre-industrial revolution level and may grow to 1.5 to 2.0 times that level within 60 years. Because of the “greenhouse effect” of atmospheric CO2 the increased concentration will induce a global climatic warming of anywhere from 0.5 to 5°C.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/14/1977-us-presidential-memo-predicted-climate-change

Carter signed 14 major environmental bills as he foresaw climate change coming.

Jimmy Carter Signed 14 Major Environmental Bills and Foresaw the Threat of Climate Change

I would say they were ahead of the curve.

Carter was the first world leader to recognize the coming problem.

No one was listening…..and then in 1981 with the formation of the Heritage Foundation the battle was on between facts and misinformation.

Gains made under Carter’s presidential leadership in the early 1980s might have bought the planet precious time. Instead, for the next 12 years, under Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the U.S. government would view global warming as largely unworthy of study, much less action. Then came 25 years of stop-and-start efforts under administrations of both parties, followed by a return to denial under Trump and, then, re-entry into the Paris process under President Joe Biden.

Then there was the environmental summit of 1992.

I located some of me notes from this summit…..

178 nations sent delegates to the environmental summit of 1992….it was billed as ‘coming together to save the earth’….that did not work out so well now did it?

On the agenda was forest protection,biodiversity and climate change….

On climate change the industrialized nations agreed to try and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000….they failed miserably.

The US held out so they could force a treaty without specific levels of greenhouse gases and as usual the US never ratified the treaty….and as they say….here we are today scorching and sweating our asses off.

Some in the US have tried numerous times to head off the coming doom but each time the government did what it does best kick the can down the road and that has lead us to where we are today.

Every administration has issued this attempt or that and thanx to the silly notion of ‘bi-partisanship’ nothing has been done….and every year the situation got worse and worse until….BANG!  Here we are today with dire results of all that inaction.

For instance we just lived through the hottest month on record and yet BP made $2.6 billion in profit….so are they doing their part to help the situation…..NOT a chance!

The people can also shoulder some of the blame for they have ignored the warnings and in turn have let the government do little to nothing…..and once again….BANG!  Here we are today sweating our asses off.

If only someone had taken us ‘eco-commies’ seriously we might be talking about some other problem.

There you are the history of inaction and the results of an uncaring people.

Maybe you should have listened when you had the chance.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Don’t Forget Your Umbrella

That would be sage advice for my friends in the UK……but I do not believe they need to be reminded.

Since the rising heat on earth and the fact that this topic is generating a lot of  post and Chatbot writings I would offer a post on how to ‘cool’ the planet down.

The ‘umbrella’ I am speaking about is plan for our space projects and a way to help control our climate change.

Scientists think they have come up with a new approach to mitigating global warming: put up a giant “umbrella” in space to protect the Earth from excess sunlight.

István Szapudi, an astronomer at the University of Hawai’i Institute for Astronomy, said a workable design for a solar shield could be ready in decades.

“In Hawai’i, many use an umbrella to block the sunlight as they walk about during the day. I was thinking, could we do the same for Earth and thereby mitigate the impending catastrophe of climate change?” he said.

According to ongoing temperature analyses, the average global temperature on Earth has increased by at least 1.1 Celsius since the Victorian era. It has led scientists to pursue new ways of reducing the effects of climate change.

The solar shield plan would require an exceptionally large structure to prevent solar radiation, and it would need to be heavy enough not to blow away. Therefore, the study published recently in the journal PNAS proposes using a captured asteroid as a counterweight.

Researchers said they wanted the “umbrella” to reduce the impact of solar radiation on Earth by about 1.7 per cent to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperatures.

Using a tethered counterbalance, such as an asteroid, would reduce the weight of the shield to 3.5m tons. That is light as a feather compared to previous estimates without a counterweight, which were about 100 times heavier.

Even the largest rockets in operation today can only lift about 50 tons to a low Earth orbit, however.

Looks like we’ve got a little time to wait before we get our giant interplanetary parasol.

https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/space-umbrella-climate-change

We could speed up the process by making it a massive profit generating program….that would bring Musk out of the woodwork.

Anyway….good idea or BS?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What Is The ‘Cost’ Of Climate Change?

The big fad on blogs these days is the debate about climate change and the weather….something I have been writing about for about ten years and until today no one could be bothered or for that matter could give a crap….and now all of a sudden it is BIG news.

Here is my attempt from 10 years ago to start a dialog….a failure by the way….

Climate Change Debate

But that was then and this is now……

We all know just how hot it has become….we all know that it is dangerous to be out and about during mid-day sun….we all know…

But what do we know?

Do we ever stop to ask what the ‘cost’ of climate change is or will be?

So I attempt to keep your head from exploding at trying to figure out the possibilities….just my small way of making your life a little easier.

How many people are dying due to climate change? How does climate cause death, and what are the omissions, deceptions, and confusions about this interaction of climate and death? In the U.S., climate-related deaths are narrowly classified as heat-related, so googling this question came up with 106 deaths for 2022. On the other hand, vector-borne diseases that proliferate due to heat, like malaria, dengue, zika, account for 700,000 deaths/year. Monbiot wrote that the burning of Indonesia’s tropical forests for biofuels (alternative to coal) from sugar cane/palm oil plantations, caused air pollution leading possibly to 15,000 child deaths. And the U.S. oil war for fossil fuels and the UN Iraqi oil-for-food program led to millions of deaths, including ½ million child. In 2021 the Guardian reported that extreme temperatures kill 5 million people/year and that deaths were on the rise. There is the question about accuracy: the World Mortality Database found that the number of people dying in the 2015 Egyptian heat wave was 20,000, not the reported 61, and that in 2022, heat waves in Europe killed more than 61,600 people. “Two decades ago, 71,000 excess deaths were recorded in Europe after intense summer heat” but this was not enough to jar any changes, and this is just about European deaths.

On July 13, 2023, James Hansen wrote that the Earth is heading into a new frontier of global climate in which “the moisture extremes are more important than the temperature extremes.” It is unclear how this affects ground-level humidity and human life; Hansen writes that “higher absolute humidity and deeper penetration of moist convection cause a larger portion of the rainfall to occur in intense thunderstorms.” Rarely mentioned in the news are the inevitable, unpreventable deaths due to wet-bulb conditions that occur when relative humidity is above 95% and temperatures are at least 31.1°C (88°F), a wet-bulb temperature of 35°C . When the wet-bulb temperature reaches 35 C, it crosses a threshold at which humans can no longer lose internal body heat and cool themselves. But research shows that even wet-bulb temperatures lower than 35 C can be fatal. That was the case in 2010, when Russia experienced a deadly heat wave, where wet-bulb temperatures didn’t pass 28C. In Iran, “a combination of heat and humidity this week pushed the heat index at the Persian Gulf International Airport to 152 degrees Fahrenheit, with a dew point above 90°. That’s close to the limit of what the human body can survive, but there is no information about fatalities.

he Global Humanitarian Forum, under Kofi Annan, only lasted between 2007-2010 when the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs announced that it was over-indebted and needed to cease its activity. It issued a report to the 2009 Copenhagen climate meeting, stating that this was only the beginning of addressing the human impact of climate change. Its report estimated that since 1991, developing countries experienced 99% of the casualties, and that with the current global policies projected to result in about 2.7C warming above pre-industrial levels, there was an urgent need to address Loss and Damage. “If we do not reverse current trends by close to 2020, however, we may have failed. Global warming will pass the widely acknowledged danger level of two degrees, since there is an approximately 20 year delay between emission reductions and the halting of their warming effect.” This is one of many facts omitted from the carbon budget. As of 2009, the Report indicated that 315,000 lives/year were lost due to climate change, principally due to malnutrition, diarrhoea, malaria, and weather-related disasters brought about by climate change. It reported that women account for two-thirds of the world’s poor. The Report quoted many poor, uneducated people on the ground who were well aware of climate change and its consequences.

What is the ‘Cost’ of Climate Change?

The price we are paying now is from the inaction of governments and the lazy attitudes of the people for over 40 years.

People do not want to do anything but they will bitch about inaction…and this is what we get for that laziness.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

But What Will Happen?

Lots of noise on blogs about climate change and the extreme weather but very little about the news of a possible collapse of the Gulf Stream in about 2 years.

Why?

I few days ago I wrote about the report that the Gulf Stream was fading and could be gone by 2025….that’s right! We are talking about 2 years or so.

To remind you what was written….

There Is A Change A’Coming

If you more detail then this article may help….

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/gulf-stream-current-could-collapse-in-2025-plunging-earth-into-climate-chaos-we-were-actually-bewildered

Now for the meat of this post….if and when the current collapses what can we expect?

But what happens when AMOC runs amok? A sudden influx of freshwater from Greenland will inevitably stop the salt water from sinking as it usually does, causing havoc in the cycle. People living in Europe and the U.S. are likely to experience extremely unpleasant changes to their environment in addition to enormous sea level rises that could submerge East Coast cities like New York and Boston. Those not sweating it out due to rising temperatures will live in a frozen hellscape and all of us will be battered by unpredictable weather.

While you may associate climate change with increased warming — this is only part of the terrifying tale. A sudden disruption of the Gulf Stream’s helpful currents could cause a return to ice-age-like conditions in the world’s already chilly North.

You may remember this effect occurring in the silly but entertaining disaster flick “The Day After Tomorrow,” albeit in the film it happens way too quickly and in a sensationalized fashion. Still, sudden drastic changes could potentially happen quite quickly; when AMOC was last disrupted — during the last Ice Age — temperatures changed by 10 to 15 degrees in just 10 years (via CNN).

Europe is likely to be particularly severely affected because, in truth, the continent should be much colder than it is given its latitude. It is only the ocean currents that prevent Europe from being enveloped by icy cold conditions. The U.K., for example, is parallel with Northern Canada but doesn’t get particularly cold. In the worst-case scenario, the sea ice that currently blankets the Arctic would become a common sight much further south. Speaking to Vice magazine, climate scientist Peter Ditlevsen remarked “We would probably get a climate in Western Europe more like the climate in Alaska.” In the tropics, on the other hand, temperatures would continue to soar.

Read More: https://www.grunge.com/1350443/what-would-happen-to-earth-if-ocean-currents-collapsed/

Soirée to be a bummer but it is best you see for yourself and not depend on idiot politicians to try and make it sound less threatening than it is.

Hide your heads if you will but that solves nothing is just it easier for you to show your ass.

I do believe change is coming and you will have to deal with it whether you want to or not.

But hey….what do I know?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Are We Beyond Global Warming?

The hot (pun intended) topic of the week is that of global warming and the extreme weather we are all experiencing.

Since everyone on blogs is fascinated with this extreme heat I thought I would bow to social convention and focus on the weather as well.

We all are suffering somehow with the climate these days…..I live in the Deep South and for us it is extreme heat, 100-115, most days and the lack of rainfall.

And of course people ask the rhetorical question, will this agony ever end?

Is the answer for which you search?

According to the UN research we have moved past global warming and into global boiling……

July has been so hot that scientists calculate that this month will be the hottest globally on record and likely the warmest human civilization has seen, even though there are several days left remaining to sweat through. The World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service on Thursday proclaimed July’s heat is beyond record-smashing, the AP reports. They said Earth’s temperature has been temporarily passing over a key warming threshold: the internationally accepted goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius—2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Some scientists calculate that this month is the hottest in about 120,000 years.

Temperatures were 1.5 degrees higher than in pre-industrial times for a record 16 days this month, but the Paris climate accord aims to keep the 20- or 30-year global temperature average to 1.5 degrees. A few days of temporarily beating that threshold have happened before but never in July. This month has been so off-the-charts hot, with heat waves blistering three continents—North America, Europe and Asia—that researchers said a record was inevitable. The US Southwest’s all-month heat wave is showing no signs of stopping while also pushing into most of the Midwest and East with more than 128 million Americans under some kind of heat advisory Thursday.

“Unless an ice age were to appear all of sudden out of nothing, it is basically virtually certain we will break the record for the warmest July on record and the warmest month on record,” Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo told the AP. Scientists say that such shattering of records is a harbinger for future climate-altering changes as the planet warms. Those changes go beyond just prolonged heat waves and include more flooding, longer-burning wildfires, and extreme weather events that put many people at risk. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged world leaders, in particular of rich nations, to do more to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases. Despite years of international climate negotiations and lofty pledges from many countries and companies, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.

Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning,” Guterres told reporters in a New York briefing. “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.” Buontempo and other scientists said the records are from human-caused climate change augmented by a natural El Nino warming of parts of the central Pacific that changes weather worldwide. Copernicus calculated that through the first 23 days of July, Earth’s temperature averaged 16.95 degrees Celsius, 62.5 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s nearly one-third of a degree Celsius (almost 0.6 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the previous record for the hottest month, July 2019.

https://www.unilad.com/news/world-news/un-says-were-entering-the-stage-of-global-boiling-834409-20230728

With the news that the Gulf Stream could collapse by 2025 the news is not looking too rosy for the planet.

I hate to tell you(which is a lie) ‘I told you so’….but people like me have been saying this would happen and few listened especially politicians….they had rather bow to the slugs that throw money at them than care for the planet.

Are we getting what we deserve?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing thought–27Jan23

Yep more climate information for us to consider…..

Last year shattered all kinds of climatic records, and not in a good way. In parts of western Europe, the Middle East, central Asia, China, and northwest Africa, it was the warmest year on record. Per Axios, that’s a sampling from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, which found 2022 to be the fifth warmest year overall; furthermore, taken together, the past eight years were the eight warmest on record. Copernicus researchers called 2022 “a year of climate extremes” and warned that the world is perilously close to reaching temperatures 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, a key limit flagged in the 2015 Paris Agreement, per CNN, and a threshold beyond which many climate scientists warn of dire and irreversible consequences.

n its report, Copernicus notes a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane concentrations, which are now at the highest levels in the satellite record, not to mention the highest in 2 million years for CO2 and 800,000 years for methane. The list goes on: both polar regions saw record high temps, and Antarctic ice conditions hit record lows; Pakistan and northern India endured an extreme heatwave followed by a highly destructive, deadly monsoon; likewise, much of China saw extreme heat and drought. It seems La Nina was one saving grace that might have kept surface temps down a little, but that phenomenon appears to be waning, and El Nino may soon return, bringing the opposite effect.

North and South America are not mentioned in the Copernicus report, but as Time reports, climate-related disasters cost the US $165 billion last year once one adds up the wildfires, floods, mudslides, droughts, and Hurricane Ian, the third costliest storm in US history. The trend may continue in 2023, as Jan. 1 was the single warmest January day since 1940. The New York Times reports what Ukraine and its allies certainly see as one silver lining in the fact that a warm winter may dull one of Vladimir Putin’s most potent weapons: access to Russia’s natural gas supply.

As always it is nothing to worry about…just ignore the info and just shrug it off and be stupid.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–19Oct22

The lack of rain has the rivers around this country running dry…..my river, the Mississippi, is so low that barges are grounding as they try to move around the heart of the nation. There is also some ideas to suck the water out of the Mississippi and send it West…..I informed my readers to this problem…..

Water….Is Not Everywhere

The low level of the Mississippi is revealing some lost history…..

A shipwreck has emerged along the banks of the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as water levels threaten to reach record lows in some areas. The ship, which archaeologists believe to be a ferry that sunk in the late 1800s to early 1900s, was spotted by a Baton Rouge resident walking along the shore earlier this month, per the AP. The discovery is the latest to surface from ebbing waters caused by drought. During the summer, receding waters in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada and Arizona revealed several skeletal remains, countless desiccated fish, a graveyard of forgotten boats, and even a sunken World War II-era craft that once surveyed the lake.

“Eventually the river will come back up and (the ship) will go back underwater,” said Chip McGimsey, the Louisiana state archeologist, who has been surveying the wreck during the past two weeks. “That’s part of the reason for making the big effort to document it this time—because she may not be there the next time.” McGimsey believes the ship may be the Brookhill Ferry, which likely carried people and horse-drawn wagons from one side of the river to the other before major bridges spanned the mighty Mississippi. Newspaper archives indicate that the ship sank in 1915 during a major storm. Roughly a third of the 95-foot vessel is visible on the muddy shoreline near downtown Baton Rouge.

 

McGimsey expects more discoveries as water levels continue to fall, having already received calls about two more possible shipwrecks. But the unusually low water level in the lower Mississippi River, where there has been below-normal rainfall since late August, has also led to chaos—causing barges to get stuck in mud and sand, leading to waterway restrictions from the Coast Guard, and disrupting river travel for shippers, recreational boaters, and passengers on a cruise line. In Baton Rouge, the river depth is about 5 feet, its lowest level since 2012, according to the National Weather Service. Water levels are projected to drop even more in the weeks ahead, dampening the region’s economic activity and potentially threatening jobs.

But not to worry….the GOP will protect us from all evils when they are in charge.  (sarcasm)

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”