Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Cheer up, Brian! Things could be worse! (#3)


That's the line from the final scene of Monty Python's "The Life of Brian".  As they are being crucified.

I've been quiet here for a good while, because I was trying to only post positive stuff.  There really hasn't been much, has there?

So. Moving right along.  Going with the flow.  Bad news, it is.

Spice asked me this morning when climate change was really going to hit.  The answer, of course, is; it already has.  Yes, it really is too late to take any actions that will prevent truly major climate disruptions, that will affect humans around the world - drastically.

“ 'We have not arrived in our climate of the future, but we have certainly left our climate of the past,' said Deke Arndt, chief of the National Centers’ climate monitoring branch. "  That's from an article in Bloomberg a couple days ago,  "Climate Disasters Cost U.S. $46 Billion as Flooding Leads List"

Floods?  What floods?  The news is all full of - you know what; and Meryl Streep.  Not about the current disaster in Thailand, which is wrecking their tourist income again and has 700,000 people homeless;  nor about the current "atmospheric river" bringing huge floods and storms to California; nor the highly unusual heavy flooding in - Nevada??  They're sandbagging in Reno and Sparks- and worried the floods could get into downtown Reno... ?

News?  Nah.  Happens all the time.  Going to get worse; boring news now.

And here in the Big Woods- 3 nights ago, our thermometer registered -16°F; "sixteen below zero".  This morning; it was +34°F - and - first raining (on a landscape that was at 16 below = bad ice on everything) - then; we got a lovely, typical snow.  Typical for - mid April.  In early January.  (Sorry about the crummy video quality here- trying to keep my bandwidth consumption down...)


Leaving us, a little later, with beautiful woods, and more broken trees-


Normal April snow.  What is NOT normal about this storm is the wind that is following it- April storms don't work that way...  


The kind of thing that breaks even healthy trees.  Radical temperature swings continue- down to +9 last night; going to -5°F next night- and up to near +40°F by next week.  Really, really not normal here.

AND - in case your lust for doom is not yet sated; have you heard about the immense chunk of Antarctic ice that is going to break loose any day now?  The one- the size of Delaware, and 1,100 feet thick?  

The part about "things could be worse!" ?  Count on it; they will be worse in the decades ahead.  100% of everything points that way; no, magic technology is not going to fix this.

If you currently live on a flood plain- or a sea coast - seriously; find a way to move your family elsewhere, and right now.  While you can still find climate change deniers to sell to...

Depressing.  Yes it is.  Hang in there.  Anyway.  

3 comments:

Toni said...

Actually, not so bad. Things COULD be worse!

Ari said...

We're actually on top of a hill and had the road covered in running water last winter after heavy rain - not the one at the bottom of the hill (well, not ONLY), but the one along the ridge and had squishy paddocks for weeks. Weather's getting weird everywhere.

I'm working on improving my little patch and community and hoping it spreads out from there. It took time to screw it up, it'll take time to fix it. And time's going to just keep going even when we're done, it'll get there.

shadowfoot said...

Good to "see" you! Good news or bad, nice to see your posts.

Heather G