The Nature of Things

This is mesmerizing and rather frightening. The animation shows how temperatures in various countries and continents have heated up since 1900. By the time we get to the present day, all of the lines are some shade of red.

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...

I'm melting...melting!!!

In December of 2010, I wrote this post about the complicated effects on weather that the warming of the planet generates in various places. Those effects continue and are intensifying as the underlying causes of global warming continue to go unchecked. The effects on the deniers of global warming seem to be intensifying as well. Thus, every winter, as soon as the first snow falls, we can count on the usual suspects to start chortling about all those "liberal lies" about Earth getting hotter, and we can expect some of our elected representatives to throw snowballs around on the Senate floor , claiming that that proves that "global warming is a hoax."  Of course, these are the deniers that live in the northern hemisphere. They never mention what's going on in the other half of the planet, the southern hemisphere, when there is snow on the ground in Washington. But then perhaps the southern hemisphere doesn't exist in their world - at least not in their conscio...

More bad news from the global warming front . It seems that there is never any good news to report from this front. Scientists report that this week, for the first time, their sensors have measured a daily average of more than 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the primary fuel that is heating up the planet. Now, if you are like me, that figure by itself may mean nothing to you. But prior to  the industrial revolution, the proportion of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere hovered around 280 parts per million. As late as 1958, when scientists began measuring average carbon dioxide levels at an observatory on Mauna Loa in Hawaii, the figure was around 320 ppm. This means that in the last 50 years we have added more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than in all the 100 years prior.  Scientists say that the last time carbon dioxide levels were this high was about 4 million years ago while Australopithecus still walked the Earth.  We a...

All across North America, the adjective that has most often been used to describe the winter we are currently experiencing is "mild." January and February which often bring the harshest winter weather with plenty of snow and ice and below-freezing temperatures have been unusually warm this year. Although there have been isolated snow storms and some periods of cold weather, they have been few and far between and of short duration. Scientists considering the implications of these weeks of relative warmth in what is usually the coldest part of winter speculate that when all the data is collected, this winter may be close to an all-time record breaker . While a mild winter in North America is still considered a rare event, it is likely that such winters will be much less rare in the future. And that has serious consequences for plants and animals whose lives are bound to the cycle of seasons. Plants are flowering earlier than ever and, while it is a boost to the spirits to see ...

As the Great Texas Drought continues unabated, many Texans are facing another horror arising from the drought.   Wildfires are raging right across the state and more than 1,000 homes have been lost.  More importantly, at least two young lives, a mother and her baby, have been lost. The worst of the fires have been in the Hill Country around Austin, but here where I live in Southeast Texas, we are being touched by the flames as well .  Montgomery County (where I live) and adjoining Grimes and Waller Counties have been hit by big fires in the last couple of days.  The fires were made worse by the strong winds that we received as a result of Tropical Storm Lee.  All we got was the wind - no rain. Although climate scientists continually warn that we should not ascribe any single weather event to the phenomenon of global warming, it is very difficult not to conclude that our more than year-long drought is not at least exacerbated, if not entirely caused, by the hea...