From Pine View Farm

Weather, or Not category archive

The Climate They Are a-Changing 0

So says the fungus among us.

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The Fire This Time 0

Map of the Solar System with Earth renamed

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Afterthought;

Yesterday, we finally got a break from two weeks of oppressive heat.

I must say, I cannot remember a heat wave which felt so oppressive as this one. I’ve been known to ride my bicycle in 90s Fahrenheit weather and still enjoy the ride, but this time I stuck to the inside bike.

I am not sanguine.

I fear we are well past the tipping point.

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The Climates They Are a-Changing 0

Current events do not give cause for complacency.

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A Questioning of Priorities 0

Scene:  Under a blazing sun.  Sparky:  There have been record-breaking temperatures across the globe.  Wildfire smoke has made the air unbreathable for days.  Do you believe in climate change now?  Man:  Eh, you liberals are always such alarmists!  It's just summer.  It's always been hot during the summer.  The real danger is that giant monster over the horizon.  Sparky:  I don't see any giant monster.  Man:  Are you kidding me?  It's right there.  A huge woke blob consuming everything in its path.  It wants to turn our children transgender and take away our guns.  Sparky:  There's nothing really there.  Man:  Open your eyes, man.  It's an extinction level threat and it's headed right for us.  We must focus our resources on destroyting this insidious menace before all it lost.  Oh my Gog!  It just destroyed another traditional America value.  The horror!.  Sparky:  So that's

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Denial Is Not Just a River in Egypt 0

It’s a flood where there’s never been a flood before.

Man driving car as waters rise arougn it says,

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A Record-Setting Year 0

Frame One:  Burning forest captioned

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The Hot Car 0

Voice rises from a house saying,

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I Read the News Today, Oh Boy 0

Climate change is no longer a prediction.

I fear that we are well past the tipping point, for it’s all around us every day.

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Dinosaurs Redux 0

I saw pick-up truck yesterday with a bumper sticker reading, “This vehicle is fueled by recycled dinosaurs.”

I thought of that when I saw Brian Greenspun’s column in The Las Vegas Sun. He notes that temperatures in Vegas and around the world are breaking records and argues that dinosaurs are still with us. A bit of his article:

Barring an asteroid, which could destroy the Mother Earth we know and love, the application of scientific solutions and changing human behavior can save us from a dinosaur-like demise.

That is if the dinosaurs of today — let’s call them the elected leaders who insist on doing the bidding of the carbon-based industries around the globe — will start making decisions designed to prolong life rather than shorten or downright end it!

Personally, I am somewhat less than optimistic.

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The Climates They Are a-Changing 0

Two women having coffee.  One says,

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The Climates They Are a-Changing 0

Meanwhile, a Kansas Republican wants to have his cake and eat it too.

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The Climates They Are a-Changing . . . 0

. . . and threats from climate-change deniers drove this TV meteorologist to leave has job. Here’s a bit frome the story in the Des Moines Register:

“18 years. 7 stations. 5 states. I am bidding farewell to TV to embark on a new journey dedicated to helping solve the climate crisis,” Gloninger said in the statement. “After a death threat stemming from my climate coverage last year and resulting PTSD, in addition to family health issues, I’ve decided to begin this journey now.”

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Where There’s Fire, There’s Smoke 0

Many of the northeastern and mid-Atlantic states have been under air quality warnings because of smoke from wildfires in Quebec. Yesterday, we could smell the smoke and see the haze, though we are hundreds of miles south of the Canadian border (today, the air is clearer, but the warnings are still in effect). This is unprecedented in my experience, and I’ve lived in this general area my entire life.

Yet, as Michael in Norfolk points out, Republicans continue to pretend that climate change isn’t.

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All the News that Fits 0

Caption:  Murdoch right to know.  Image:  Rupert Murdoch holding up heavily redacted document titled

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“Always Look on the Bright Side of life” 0

For example.

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The Climates, They are a-Changing 0

When I was a young ‘un, growing up these parts (actually about 40 miles north of where I type this), tornadoes were unheard of.

They were something that happened in Kansas.

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The Climates They Are a-Changing 0

At the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kevin McDermott runs the numbers–and calls out the misdirection plays. A snipped snippet:

For at least the past 800,000 years, heat-trapping carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere never rose above 300 parts per million, according to tests of prehistoric ice core samples. That began to change with the onset of the Industrial Age, when humanity began large-scale burning of fossil fuels. By the 1950s, carbon dioxide levels crossed the 300 parts per million mark and were rising every year. In May 2013, for the first time in human history, the average level of atmospheric carbon dioxide passed 400 parts per million.

(snip)

For a while, a favorite strategy of the pro-industrial climate-change-denial crowd was to point at every cold snap as if it was incontrovertible proof of the “global-warming hoax,” as they called it. This is as idiotic as, say, showing footage of people milling around peacefully during lulls in the violence of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and citing it as proof that there was no riot. Yet they got away with that skewed logic for a long time.

I fear for my grandchildren.

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The Climates They Are a-Changing 0

Image of giant tornado approaching a farm house.  Voice from house says,

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The Climates They Are a-Changing 0

Today, I was running errands in my convertible. With the top down.

In February.

That is not–or at least didn’t used to be–normal in these parts.

Also, we haven’t had snow in at least four or five years.

When I was growing up about 40 miles north of where I type this, we usually had two or three snows a winter. True, they were seldom more than three or four inches (the biggest I remember was eight inches), but they were real white fluffy stuff falling from the sky in freezing weather.

Climate change is real and it’s now.

I fear we are well past the tipping point, and I fear for my grandchildren.

Addendum, the next morning:

Oh, yeah, and today we has to turn on the AC.

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The Climates They Are a-Changing 0

I ran an errand today and put my convertible’s top down because the temperature was in the low 70s Fahrenheit. I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt because it was not long-sleeved weather.

In February.

This is not the weather that I knew when I grew up 40 miles north of where I sit.

I fear for my grandchildren.

I fear that they will be faced with relentless peril because we refuse to admit that the peril exists.

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