Stephan: More data confirming climate change. Even if we did something now the momentum of the current trend would continue for a number of years. And we aren't going to do much because it would reduce the profits on old energy. People like the Koch brothers fund Heartland Institute in part to achieve their goals.
If you read SR regularly you know my passion about this subject. But it is but a pale echo of what one sees when the effects of climate change are vast, and visual on a majestic scale.
I have spent the past two weeks, as you know, cruising Alaskan waters, ultimately spending days in Glacier Bay, and up the Chatham Strait. It was dramatically beautiful, and alarming at the same time. In 1794, when British Naval Officer George Vancouver, captain of HMS Discovery, introduced modern Caucasians to the area there was no bay. Instead he and his men saw the face of a glacier that was 4,000 feet thick up to 20 miles across, extending back 100 miles to the St Elias Mountain Range. In 1879 when John Muir visited, a bay 30 miles deep had been carved out by melting. Today one can go in a bit more than 73 miles. This is climate change in your face.
I know that many of my readers live now in states that are experiencing the worst of the extremes plaguing their states. All I can say is that it is going to get worse. You must prepare, and it is best done through communal effort.
More than 2,000 temperature records have been matched or broken in the past week as a brutal heat wave baked much of the United States, and June saw more than 3,200 records topped, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Monday.
From June 25 to July 1, some 2,171 record temperatures were either broken or matched, the NOAA said. For the 30 days of June, that number rose to 3,215.
Accuweather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said the number of records broken was very unusual. He said that while some aspects of the heat wave are unknown, much of it is because of a lack of snow cover during the late winter on America’s plains.
Instead of the sun’s heat melting snow, it instead heated the ground, which in turn warmed the air. The increase in temperature even made crops grow ahead of schedule until now; Sosnowski said the lack of rainfall has stunted crops’ growth.
Sosnowski added that while some areas are not unusually warm, namely New England and the Northwest, the center of the country will experience high temperatures for the next several weeks, possibly into August.
Five states had more than 100 record temperatures broken in June. Texas had 237 records broken, followed […]
