The Nature of Things

I've been battling a minor health issue for the past few days, so if you are a regular visitor here, you might have noticed my absence. Or not! Just to ease back into blogging, here's a placeholder for you from five years ago. This blog started out as mostly my commentary on issues of the day before I folded in the two other blogs I was writing at the time, one about birds and one about gardening, and also decided to include reviews of the books that I read. At that point, it became truly eclectic and I could write about whatever was on my mind on any given day. One thing that has been on my mind pretty constantly over many years is climate change because it affects all of the things that I care about. I've probably written more words on that subject than I have any other, and I was writing about it five years ago when a new study came out about the effect of erupting volcanoes on the climate. This is a perilous time in the history of our country and the world, not least of...

Are you a Jimmy Kimmel fan? I confess I've never watched his show and I'm only dimly aware of him. I mean, I know who he is but that's about it. So when this YouTube video featuring him showed up in my reading queue I was tempted to just delete it, but I decided to view it and I'm glad I did. Kimmel gives a very cogent and persuasive argument as a rebuttal to Sarah Palin and the know-nothings who are promoting a film called "Climate Hustle." Most importantly, his argument is boosted by some actual climate scientists, a few of the 97% that agree about the human factor in the heating of our planet. How much longer, I wonder, will our language and the truth continue to be tortured by Palin? Just as long, I suspect, as someone is willing to pay her the big bucks to do it.

"This Week in Birds" is taking a Thanksgiving vacation and will return next week. Instead, this week on the eve of the big conference on climate change in Paris, I am rerunning a post that I did in April 2012. It concerned a New York Times poll that found that a majority of Americans believed that global climate change was affecting the weather. However, the comments from Times readers about the story told a very different tale of climate change denialism. Three-and-a-half years later, has anything changed? Is there any more acceptance of the truth of human-caused climate change and the urgency of taking action to stop it? Well, certainly not in Washington where denialism still prevails in Congress.  *~*~*~* April 18, 2012 Climate change affecting the weather? Ya think? Headline in The New York Times today:  In Poll, Many Link Weather Extremes to Climate Change . The story under the headline relates how  a large majority of Americans believe that this year’s unusually...

Since his installation as pope, the man known as Francis has been something of a breath of fresh air in a staid and stodgy old institution. Not only that, he has also been an inspiration to non-Catholics and even to non-religious people with his welcoming and non-judgmental attitude.  Now, with the encyclical entitled "Laudato Si," translated as "Praise Be to You," which was released yesterday, Pope Francis has staunchly aligned himself and the Catholic Church with the overwhelming majority (97%) of climate scientists who firmly place the blame for our rapidly warming climate on human activity and human release of greenhouse gases. He further pointed out that the impoverished people of the world bear a disproportionate burden from the effects of such pollution, whether they live in a rich country or a poor country. Thus, his encyclical can be seen as just one more step in his attempt to refocus his church on the problem of poverty and working to better the lives of...

Some parts of the country continue to be hit by some pretty freaky cold winter weather. How can this be happening if global warming is for real and not a hoax as the right-wing deniers claim? Well, very easily actually. Here's a short film that was put together with input from several meteorologists that explains it all rather succinctly.

Maybe we should have more sympathy for the climate change deniers. After all, it's complicated, right? For one thing, climate change, even the more rapidly changing climate of our time, happens over the long term. We, with our lives that are only a blink in time in relation to Earth's history, experience weather as a day to day, week to week, month to month event. We might remember what the weather was like a year ago or five years ago but our memories are probably distorted by other events that happened at the time or since. That's just the way we are. So how can our puny little minds even begin to comprehend the enormity of the threat of a changing global climate? Luckily, there are humans whose minds are less puny than yours and mine and they  can understand these things. And some of them, like Bill Nye the Science Guy, can explain them to us in terms that even we can understand. If I had the power, I would force all of our elected representatives in Congress to watch t...

Last week President Obama made a major speech which got very little attention. He spoke about climate change, its challenges to our way of life and to human life in general, what could be done to slow or reverse the unprecedented warming of the planet, and, finally, the actions which he plans to implement - things which don't require congressional approval - to begin rolling back the onrushing wave of global warming. In spite of the fact that it was not widely reported, it may turn out to be one of the most significant speeches he has made as president, the one which will have the greatest impact upon the future of the planet. The United States has been a laggard in the battle against global warming because the Republican Party, backed by Big Oil, refuses to accept that it is happening, or, if it is happening, that it has a human cause. They have devoted themselves to gumming up the works of our government so that it cannot address this threat to human life on Earth. And no one is...

This is incredible, but not really surprising, I guess. It seems that if a conservative is given a choice of buying one of two light bulbs at the same price and is told that one of the bulbs is "greener" and more environmentally friendly, he will inevitably purchase the other one ! A study out Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined attitudes about energy efficiency in liberals and conservatives, and found that promoting energy-efficient products and services on the basis of their environmental benefits actually turned conservatives off from picking them. The researchers first quizzed participants on how much they value various benefits of energy efficiency, including reducing carbon emissions, reducing foreign oil dependence, and reducing how much consumers pay for energy; cutting emissions appealed to conservatives the least. The study then presented participants with a real-world choice: With a fixed amount of money in their wallet, r...

Headline in The New York Times today: In Poll, Many Link Weather Extremes to Climate Change . The story under the headline relates how  a large majority of Americans believe that this year’s unusually warm winter, last year’s blistering summer and some other weather disasters were probably made worse by global warming. And by a 2-to-1 margin, the public says the weather has been getting worse, rather than better, in recent years. Can this really be true? After years of being in denial despite climate scientists' best efforts to make the case that human-caused climate warming is happening and that we need to try to slow or reverse it, is the public finally ready to accept the truth of climate change? “Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,” said  Anthony A. Leiserowitz  of  Yale University , one of the researchers who commissioned the new poll. “People are starting to connect ...

Earth's climate and the cycles of warming and cooling that it goes through is one of the more fascinating subjects in earth science. It's a subject that has become fraught with passion in recent years as climatologists have repeatedly tried to warn us that humans are upsetting Earth's cycles and science deniers have done their best to shout them down. But looking back at the historical data is perhaps a little less controversial. Scientists have recently been doing research on the period from the 1200s to the 1900s, a very cold time in the northern hemisphere that has come to be known as the "little ice age." There have been many theories over the years about what might have caused this prolonged cold period which, in many ways, shaped the culture of Northern Europe, Asia, and North America. At the time it was happening, some people blamed witches. The ignorant always find a scapegoat. But this new study may give a definitive answer to the question of why it happ...

The southwestern part of the country, from Texas right west to California, has had one of its driest years on record. Moreover, it has also been one of the hottest on record. It has been the all-time worst fire year in Texas and has seen the biggest and most damaging wildfires ever in Arizona and New Mexico. The summer just past was the hottest ever recorded in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and New Mexico. In my part of Texas, we endured an August where every single day except one had high temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit - often well above 100. If you've enjoyed this year's weather, you are going to love the future here, because there is every indication that this year has been a harbinger of things to come. Drought, heat, wildfires and extreme storms may well be the norm for this region in the foreseeable future . We should no longer talk of climate change in futuristic terms. Climate change is not happening only in some distant future. Climate change HAS happened and...

Texas has set another unhappy record.  It has become the hottest state on record .  During June, July, and August of this year, the state had an average temperature of 86.8 degrees.  Temperature-related energy demands in the state were more than 22 percent above normal for this period.  That is the largest increase since record-keeping of energy demands began more than a century ago. Combine the fact of our record-breaking heat with the fact of our record-breaking drought and you've got a real disaster.  Add the fact that much of the state is on fire and you've got a catastrophe.  Wildfires have so far consumed an area that is the size of Connecticut.  The Texas Forest Service which has primary responsibility for fighting the fires (and which has had its budget cut drastically by our prescient state legislature and governor) issued a statement last week which said in part:  "No one on the face of this earth has ever fought fires in these extrem...

Remember last winter?  It was cold.  At times, it was very cold, even breaking some records.  There was snow and ice, and on the Fox News Network, people like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, Stuart Varney, and Eric Bolling could not contain their glee.  After all, this proved what a charlatan Al Gore was!  Global warming was a hoax and there was no reason to amend our lifestyles.  Keep driving those gas guzzlers!  Hang on to those old incandescent light bulbs!  Drill, baby, drill! Fox spent hours covering winter storms, making fun of Al Gore and suggesting that the cold completely undermined the science supporting global warming.  They never mentioned that, for at least 40 years, climate scientists have warned that the warming of the planet will cause more extremes in weather, both heat and cold, drought and flood.  No, that was an inconvenient truth which did not fit the narrative they were selling on the instr...

Scientists warn us that we should not try to relate any one weather event to the phenomenon of global warming, but what about a whole series of weather events? When does a series of "coincidences" become a pattern? Consider these coincidences: * The Amazon has just emerged from its second hundred-year drought within the last five years. * There have been unprecedented floods in Australia, New Zealand, and Pakistan in the past year. * The Arctic has melted for the first time in thousands of years. * Last month was the most active April in U.S. history for tornadoes. And looking at the Midwest this week, it appears that record of activity is continuing into May. * Texas and the adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico are drier than they've ever been . The drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl years. To make matters worse, much of Texas is being devastated by wildfires. * This year's record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest have resulted in reco...

A new study published in the journal Science today explores the effect of global warming on the agriculture of the world and whether or not it is affecting the price of food worldwide. The researchers found that in many parts of the world the warming of the earth is already having a profound effect on agriculture. For example, wheat yields in Russia are down by about 10% in recent years while also declining by a few percentage points in places like India, France and China. Likewise, corn yields are down in many of these places. On the positive side of the ledger, the researchers noted that the excessive carbon dioxide that we are pumping into our atmosphere does act as a fertilizer to encourage plant growth and this offsets some of the losses from higher temperatures. Plants can only adjust to higher temperatures to a certain extent, though, and may quickly reach the point of diminishing returns, or even the point of no return. Indeed, as temperature increases are expected to acc...

There was an interesting article on the DailyKos website yesterday about Earth's climate . It was published before the latest and most devastating round of tornadoes that hit the South, killing (at last count) more than 200 people, injuring many more and virtually destroying some small towns. The timing of the publication thus proved ironic. The article talks about the warnings that have been given repeatedly by climate scientists over the last 30 years or so about what we can expect from global climate change, especially if we continue to refuse to acknowledge our part in it and take steps to reverse some of the damage we have done. The bottom line is that we can expect to see a dramatic increase in extreme weather - storms, droughts, floods, extended heat waves. The planet's normal climate regulators, such as polar ice caps and the troposphere, are being overcome, damaged and even destroyed by Earth's unnatural warming, with disastrous results. One always has to ackn...

Remember Hurricane Katrina? Remember the response of certain evangelical Christians - most notably Pat Robertson - to that terrible storm? Robertson and his ilk gloated that Katrina was God's wrath made visible. God hated New Orleans and America because of our so-called soft-pedaling of homosexuality, among other sins, and so hundreds of innocent people - children, women, and men - had to suffer horrible deaths and a great city had to be virtually destroyed to appease an angry God. As far as I am aware, the same characters who denounced New Orleans as it was drowning have had little to say about the state of Texas that is now frying. It seems to me, though, that if God can send a flood to drown New Orleans, He could probably take the water away from Texas and let it parch in the hot, drying sun and the relentless wind that has been blowing here for weeks now. Virtually all of the state is now officially in drought . Some of us are already in what is termed an "exceptional...

Mass extinctions are nothing new in the history of this planet. Scientists have identified at least five events in the history of Earth in which an estimated 75 percent of all species then on the planet disappeared in a few million years or less. Many scientists believe that we are now in the midst of a sixth such event and that this one is largely being caused by human beings. The impetus for this suspected mass extinction is human-caused climate change . Scientists suspect that their study which identified this phenomenon may actually be underestimating the impact and just how many species might disappear. Although it is virtually impossible to link any one species' fate to global warming, there is no doubt that animals' ranges are changing in response to the changing climate. I saw an example of that just today on a road trip here in Southeast Texas. I saw a bunch of Black and Turkey Vultures at a carcass next to the road and when the birds flew up, I noticed that one o...

It is very frustrating and at times downright appalling to be an average citizen of reasonable intelligence and to see the direction in which the new leaders of our House of Representatives are taking that legislative branch of government. Elections do have consequences and, in this case, the consequences for the environment and for our descendants will be dire indeed. But, if it is frustrating for the average citizen, imagine how galling and downright apoplectic-making it must be for the decent congressman or congresswoman who is trying to do his or her job and make the country and the world a better place to live for us all. Consider Henry Waxman, D-California. When the Democrats held a majority in the House, Waxman was the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He worked on policies in behalf of health, telecommunications, energy and environmental legislation, including the sweeping climate change and energy bill that passed the House but stalled in the Senate and ...

Much of the East Coast is struggling to dig out from under four foot snow drifts . Much of Northern Europe, too, has been stopped in its tracks by giant storms and in some areas people have died as a result of the cold weather. At the same time, the World Meteorological Organization has just released a report showing that 2010 will be among the three warmest years on record - possibly the warmest on record. Moreover, the decade ending with 2010 will be the warmest decade on record. How does one resolve the seeming dichotomy between the fact of four foot snow drifts and the fact that the world will be setting a record for heat this year? According to Judah Cohen, writing today in The New York Times , it is all due to the topography of Asia. The high topography of Asia influences the atmosphere in profound ways. The jet stream, a river of fast-flowing air five to seven miles above sea level, bends around Asia’s mountains in a wavelike pattern, much as water in a stream flows around a...