Weather, or Not category archive

We’re running the air conditioner.

In March.

This is not didn’t used to be normal in these parts.

It’s stupid tactic practiced by stupid, selfish people (and smart, selfish people whose selfish overcomes their smarts).

Nevertheless, the climates they are a-changing and pretending otherwise won’t change that.

A report released by the World Meteorological Organization on Tuesday found that not only was 2024 the warmest year in a 175-year observational period, reaching a global surface temperature of roughly 1.55°C above the preindustrial average for the first time, but each of the past 10 years were also individually the 10 warmest on record.

Follow the link for details.

And you can see it, if only you will look.

Here, the thermometer hit 79 Fahrenheits on the last day of January.

This is not normal. It’s not even a normal aberration.

Speaking of tipping points . . . .

It seems that we may be witnessing the greening of Antarctica. Here’s a bit from the report at SFGate:

According to an October 2024 study published in Nature Geoscience, vegetation is taking over the Antarctic Peninsula, turning its edges into a verdant landscape worthy of plein air painting. After analyzing satellite data collected from 1986 to 2021, scientists from the universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire were shocked to discover that the greenery grew from 0.86 square kilometer to 11.95?square kilometers, spreading much faster than initially thought. It seems to have grown quicker in the last five years in particular, the paper continued.

And, in related news . . . .

Climate change doesn’t care whether you are a climate change denier. It’s just gonna keep on keepin’ on, and I fear we are well past the tipping point.

Aside:

It’s 70 Fahrenheits here as I type this. In December.

I fear we are will past the tipping point.

. . . but many persons don’t seem to (want to) notice or care.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Bob Doppelt explores why. Here’s a tiny bit from his article:

The future will thus be punctuated by ever-more-life-threatening storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, and other extreme weather disasters. These calamities will be difficult enough to deal with. However, people will also contend with escalating breakdowns to the ecological, social, and economic systems they rely on for food, water, shelter, jobs, incomes, health, safety, and other basic survival needs.

(snip)

Many Americans, however, remain psychologically dissociated from what is happening. This is a psychological protective mechanism people use to separate themselves from and mentally cope with extreme distress. It results from “fight or flight” reactions that are built into the nervous system to protect us from threats.

The process can be beneficial in the short term if it helps people get through troubles and then quickly reconnect with reality. When dissociation persists, however, and people continually disconnect from the real world, it can have very serious consequences.

This is widely occurring now regarding the C-E-B (climate-ecosystem-biodiversity–ed.) crisis.

The other day, I flippantly wondered whether the Florida legislator who proposed outlawing manipulating the weather would go after the fossil fuel industry.

Yesterday, I learned that a town in North Carolina is suing Duke Energy for precisely that reason.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, as I type this, I can look out my window and see trees that still have leaves on them.

In bleeping December.

I once visited Lake Powell and went tubing in the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam.

Apparently, it now bears little resemblance to what I saw there three decades ago. Here’s a bit from the article by Zak Podmore:

But since the year 2000, Lake Powell has been in decline. Climate change has reduced runoff throughout the Colorado River Basin by around 20% compared to the previous century. In 2022, the reservoir—the second-largest in the country after Lake Mead—was less than a quarter full.

Nearly every boat ramp on Lake Powell was unusable last spring, and there was barely enough water to sustain hydroelectric generation. One more bad snow year would have pushed the Colorado River system to the brink of collapse, dropping the reservoir’s surface toward the lowest outlets on the Glen Canyon Dam—a point known as “dead pool.”

The lede, from Truthout:

Decades of mismanagement of water resources, deforestation, and the fossil fuel-driven crisis of global warming have put “unprecedented stress” on the Earth’s water systems, according to a new report, and have thrown the world’s hydrological cycle out of balance “for the first time in human history.”

The Global Commission on the Economics of Water, affiliated with the Dutch government and comprised of global experts, published the study on Thursday, warning that policymakers must urgently “reframe the hydrological cycle as a global common good,” recognizing that it is “deeply interlinked with the climate and biodiversity crises.”

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.