HEAT WAVES AND CLIMATE CHANGE

 

 

We are experiencing unprecedented heat waves throughout most of the northern hemisphere.  The ten hottest years ever recorded in Maine have occurred over the past twelve years.    Heat waves in Europe have caused massive deaths and infrastructure failures. 

 

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the world climate temperature has increased by two degrees.  

 

It is hard to understand how a two-degree increase in temperature can cause such climate extremes.  Even knowing that that two-degree increase is an average of temperatures across the globe, it is not until we realize that during the Ice Age when most of the northern hemisphere was covered by glaciers, the global temperature average was just eight degrees cooler than at the advent of the industrial revolution.    

 

Small changes in global average temperature can cause massive changes in the climate.  

 

Adding to the problem, arctic ice is melting at an unprecedented rate, uncovering tundra that has been buried for thousands of years.   This tundra is releasing carbon dioxide which further adds to global warming.   

 

Even decreasing carbon emissions now can only slow down the slide into a future climate that is unknowable in its relation to human habitability.

 

 

I often defer to Neil de Grasse Tyson when trying to understand difficult science concepts.

Stay cool

the Ol'Buzzard

BEND OVER AND PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS - CLIMATE CHANGE IS HERE!

One out of four people do not believe in climate change; but that doesn’t matter.   As Neil deGrasse Tyson stated, ‘People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.’

Ninety-seven percent of climate scientist agree that climate change is happening and it is the result of human activity – the consensus is in. Now the question is how bad will it be.

The results are visible now.   NASA has charted:

·       Global temperature rise

·       Warming of the Oceans

·       Shrinking of the Ice Caps

·       Glacial retreat

·       Decreased snow cover

·       Sea Level Rise

·       Declined Ice Sheets

·       Extreme Weather Events

·       Ocean acidification

Carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere, increasing global temperatures, leading to a greenhouse effect.

The carbon release from industry, farming and consumption is increasing carbon emissions at an unsustainable rate; and still, the global population is steadily increasing, resulting in a further increase in consumption of energy and natural resources;  and as the ice sheets in the arctic recede, tundra that has been trapped below the ice for thousands of years is releasing carbon dioxide, further accelerating the effect.

 

Atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 400,000 years, according to NASSA, has never exceeded 300 parts-per-million – until 1950.   Today it is 400 parts-per-million, and climbing at an unsustainable rate.

The results are, by 2050 we can look forward to Extreme droughts, higher flood stages, severe food shortages, wildlife extinction, cataclysmic sea level rise and mass movement of climate refugees.

What can we do about this?   The reality is that nothing will be done. 

 

All capitalistic societies main concern is making money and creating a rich, elite social class.   The very wealthy, invested in fossil fuels and polluting industries, will oppose the elimination of their carbon footprint.  They will decry climate change as a hoax and fund politicians to champion their claim.     The average citizen will not be willing to carry the burden of increased cost in taxation to move the country to sustainable energy.   And no one is willing to give up their beef.

We talk about cow farts.   Adults and kids alike love fart jokes, so we do not take seriously the effect the beef industry has on the global environment.   

Actually, it is cow burps.     As cows digest greenery they burp methane gas, that is thirty times more potent than carbon dioxide.  Beef production is the worst climate offender in agriculture.   The world cattle population has the third highest emissions on earth, behind the United States and China.  In the United States beef farms require forty percent of the agriculture land to produce three present of U.S. calorie intake. 

So, here we are.  Incremental changes over a period of time will not have a significant effect on the rapid rate of carbon dioxide increase; and the time is too short. 

The UN Climate Chief, Patricia Espinosa, stated: “If we continue to produce, consume, to function as we are doing now, we know that we are going toward a catastrophe.”

It would be interesting to live in the distant future and look back on how global warming drastically changed human society.


I am looking forward to a nice beef chuck roast stew, cooked in my slow cooker, tomorrow night.  

I saute onions, garlic and celery; cube the roast and liberally cover with Paul Prudhomme meat magic; add one cup of beef broth and one half cup of Madeira wine.   I cook on high for six hours then add boiled potatoes, carrots and onions (I find vegetables that cook with the meat take on the flavor of the meat.)

the Ol’Buzzard

CAPITALISM: THE DEATH OF THE ENVIRONMENT

GLOBAL WARMING: THERE IS NO ANSWER

BECAUSE

the Ol'Buzzard

WHY TICKS IN MAINE?

Maine is now one of the highest states for incidences of lime disease.  This is understandable because so many people work in the woods and Maine is an outdoor paradise for sportsmen.  

During the sixties and seventies I was a survival instructor in northern Maine.  We put as many as fifty students through our courses a week and never once did we have a tick on any instructor or student.   

Ticks came into Maine sometimes in the nineties.  Now they are a major concern whenever you go into fields or woods. 

BILL MAHER EXPLAINS WHY WE HAVE TICKS IN MAINE

We live in a new world
and we can't go back
the Ol'Buzzard

WINTER IS COMING

This year in Maine weather scientist are predicting a record breaking snow season.  

1.    The warm temperatures this October broke all previous records.   October temperatures have been a hall mark for predicting snow levels:  Of the twenty years of highest recorded October temperatures, seventeen of those years were the seventeen highest recorded snow falls.

2.    A  La Na Nina in the Pacific is an indicator of winter trade wind routs across New England.  The Alberta Clippers follow the trade winds, and the more advanced the La Nina the more snow fall we received in Maine.    This year there is a La Nina in the Pacific and it is due to peak in mid-winter.

3.    Ocean waters off the coast of Maine are the warmest on record.   Warm waters in the Gulf of Maine tend to create more frequent winter storms and more severe snow events (nor-easters.)

This year we are looking at a trifecta, with snow falls in the western mountains of Maine expected to be in excess of 100 inches.  

 My wife and I are winter people, and I love this.

the Ol'Buzzard

FOUR HURRICANES IN TWENTY-SIX DAYS

Four hurricanes of a category three our higher have been recorded since Harvey hit the coast of Texas twenty-six days ago.   This is not an all-time record, but it is among the records. 

According to Bob Henson, a meteorologist for Weather Underground, a forecasting service, “We are running about twice the pace of a typical season.”    Henson notes, “Ten of the fifteen most active hurricane seasons since antebellum America have occurred in the past two decades.”

It is not possible to trace any of these hurricanes to a particular incident of climate change; but, it is an accepted scientific conclusion that man made climate change, caused by the uncontrolled dumping of carbon into our atmosphere, will result in more frequent hurricanes and more violent hurricanes.  

'The good thing about science is that it is true, whether or not you believe in it."   Neil deGrasse Tyson

As ice caps melt sea levels will rise and the salinity of the ocean waters will change.   As seas become diluted oceans currents will shift causing a change in climatic zones.   Warmer oceans, the results of greenhouse effect, will spawn more frequent and more violent storms.

All of this is already happening. 

the Ol'Buzzard

GLOBAL WARMING MY ASS

No I really mean it – my ass is hot!   The temps here in northwestern Maine are in the high nineties for the second day.  

Tomorrow will be back in the seventies where it belongs; but this can only be seen as somewhat normal because we had a few days like this last year at this time.  

We have no air conditioning at our house because we don’t actually need it.   Our house is well insulated and the day temps, even though most of the summer will be (should be) in the upper seventies and low eighties with night temps dropping fifteen to twenty degrees.  

It is so hot today that my wife has opted for yogurt and fresh fruit for lunch and I am having a potato chip sandwich (two pieces of bread liberally spread with mayonnaise and filled with potato chips) and a cold beer.

If I wanted to live in these temperatures, I wouldn’t have left the south – that and other reasons.

the Ol’Buzzard

WHAT OLD PEOPLE TALK ABOUT

TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT THE WEATHER?

YOU CAN ALWAYS TURN IN TO POLITICAL DEBATES 

When we were younger I use to laugh with my cousin that the old people we knew seemed to only talk about the weather or their illnesses when they got together.

Well now I'm fucking old.  I am not on the make, I am not partying, I am not traveling, I am not having wild adventures, so I claim the right to talk about the weather (I'll spare you my aches and pains.)  

  Yesterday (February 12th.) the high temperature was 9 degrees; today the forecast is for 13 degrees; tomorrow 2 degrees, the next day 23 degrees and the next 46 degrees - what the fuck?

This is February, Maine's deep freeze month; to wear long johns or not to wear long johns - I've never had to make that decision before...   I'll just keep on the long johns and complain.  

the Ol'Buzzard

WHERE THE HELL IS WINTER?

It has been raining all day today and is forecast to rain all day tomorrow.   The rain doesn’t bother me – I actually like being in the house with the rain drumming on our metal roof while I read, sleep or use the computer (retirement is a tough act.)   But the thing that does bother me is the warm temperatures.

   Last year at this time we had day temperatures in the teens and twenties with two feet of snow on the ground and snow events happening about once every week or ten days.   This year there is no snow and the temps have been ten to fifteen degrees above normal all month and the next fifteen-day forecast is predicting more of the same.   When the temperatures are high thirties to mid-forties it is too warm to use the wood stove and so we are using expensive oil to keep house temperatures comfortable.

I miss the snow: I love the snow.   We live in western Maine because we like the four seasons.   We are willing to endure mud season and bug season because we know fall season and winter season are to follow. 

We lived in Florida for a couple of years and there were no markers to changing seasons – I much preferred the twenty-four hours of daylight and twenty-four hours of darkness in arctic Alaska to the monotony of the never ending summer time of Florida weather. 

This is a crazy weather pattern and I hope it doesn't become the norm.

the Ol'Buzzard

  

CLIMATE CHANGE HAS PAST THE POINT OF NO RETURN!

If you haven't seen VICE on HBO; or if you don't have HBO, here is a program aired two weeks ago on the ice melt in Antarctica.    If your computer can handle the extra ram memory I suggest you click the icon lower right and watch it in enlarged screen view.  

The talk about the need to stop climate change is over - we have passed the point of no return; now it is just a matter of how to adjust to it.  

the Ol'Buzzard

2050: A BRAVE NEW WORLD

It all started in the year of 2050; what we now call The Great Slide.  

The population of the earth had breached ten billion.  That is when the environment tipped over the edge: the CO-2 levels reached an historic high; ocean levels rose by two feet; the ozone layer all but disappeared; oceans acidified; the air became barely breathable; temperature rose to extreme high norms and the sun became deadly.    What resulted was a mass extermination which killed off most of the primitive third world populations and practically all animal life – the rats survived – and humans that were left became nocturnal – most living underground.  

The surface of the earth is now a fearful place.  The sun is deadly and daytime temps reach well above one hundred degrees, the humidity is always high and there are constant violent storms. 

The Slide was strange: Christians claimed it was the Apocalypse, and identified a God figure they proclaimed as savior.  The Christians became militant and Christian militias roamed the streets killing and torturing and looting in the name of the new Jesus.    Finally after a decade the government had to put them down.

I don’t believe in the Apocalypse or Gods; but a strange thing did happen at the beginning of the Slide: the dead came back to life.   They were reanimated, but only the fresh dead walked.   The recently deceased arose from the morgues and from shallow graves.    They staggered around in a grotesque semblance of living persons.  They weren’t dangerous except as disease carriers, but the noises they made as they tried to speak were unbearable.   It was quickly discovered that the best way to exterminate them was with fire; and most were burned within the first few weeks.

 

However, it is still eerie to walk through a cemetery, because your steps result in a cacophony of moans and shrieks from beneath the ground, from the corpse locked in caskets, entombed in concrete crypts and buried six feet below the earth.  The newly dead no longer walk but are cremated as a precaution – otherwise the rats would dig them up and eat them.  

 You are welcome to add to it - or not.

the Ol'Buzzard

MANKIND'S CONTRIBUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING - AGAIN

Throughout our history there have been times when people felt despondent and helpless about their immediate future: The civil war; first and second world wars; times of plague and pandemic sicknesses.  

But now, in our unique age, we have the ability to predict future calamities not immediately identifiable with mankind’s bungling.

Another trait of mankind is the ability to ignore circumstances that do not affect our immediate condition.   Such is global warming.

The saying goes that ignorance is no excuse: but I disagree.

The partnership that exist between business and government and the influence of money wielded by big business and the idea that religion trumps science results in laws, public records and even opinions skewed to the interest of business and religion over facts and reason. 

Mankind’s contribution to global warming has never before been and issue, or even on our radar, until the last twenty-five years – and there is a concrete reason.   

Our world population did not reach one billion until some time between 1915 and 1920 – around 1970 our world population exceeded three billion.  Today our population has exceeded seven billion people: both China and India each have a population greater then the entire world population of 1915.  

The pollution caused by this burgeoning population and the industrialization of third world countries cannot be denied as the obvious responsibility for climate change in the form of global warming over such a short timeline. 

We can ignore this problem as green house gasses increase and scientist warn that the earth is beginning to destabilizes that delicate balance that allows life on our planet; but we do it at our own peril – for the hand that reaches out of the mire to grab us will be worse than anything imagined by the inventive mind of man.  

the Ol'Buzzard