Sunday, January 11, 2015

What Can I Say, It's 2013 In May, But On This New Day, My Heart I Will Obey, From A Straightened Arrow I Won't Stray, Pointed In Direction Of No Decay, And A Healthy Smile Display

What Can I Say, It's 2013 In May, But On This New Day, My Heart I Will Obey, From A Straightened Arrow I Won't Stray, Pointed In Direction Of No Decay and A Healthy Smile On Display

Snapping Through The Snow & Ice
Below you will find some early versions of my Morning Meme-Oh from September 2013!, which has changed to have a consistent rhyming theme in October and November of 2013, then purely rhymes in December of 2013. About that time it also became a once a day, every day of the month event rather than on weekdays alone. It took its present format, one rhyming word per line, on May 18, 2014, but I would later drop the My from the title, so as of this posting, it looked like this sample.

Before getting to my historical archive of tweets, I have the following little ditty.

Crossing The Threshold Of Climate Change

The world is being drastically changed by us. Besides what I've read, amazing and often devastating climatic changes are evident in things we see happening now that we have never seen before. The adjacent photo was taken in central Minnesota at Lake Maria State Park. The photo is a stunning example of the bizarre changes occurring. It was taken by me in late April of 2013.

The scene shows a snapping turtle crawling across a dirt road in the park. In the background a small body of water can be seen with significant ice still remaining on the surface. It is April 28, and ice is usually completely off small lakes by mid April or sooner. It would be another week or so before the ice was completely gone, almost a month after the normal thawing for this part of the state. I have been hiking and running in this park for over 20 years, every three days or so, and I am not aware of seeing turtles moving around when ice was still on the lake. While it may not be an odd event in the history of the world, it can be added to a much longer list of events including the most egregious examples like the melting of the glaciers and Hurricane Sandy that do seem to fit what climatologists have feared from manmade climate change.

Of course, at least some may question why ice on a lake would be part of global warming or climate change? While you should read other sources to get the real picture like this data and explanation from Skeptical Science, here is my take as far as I've been able to understand it.

First, both global warming and climate change are terms that only partially explain what is going on. Think of both terms together, and then you get a more complete picture of what is going on (than what you can from two terms). The climate is always changing, but it usually takes a very long time. For example, there are long term weather patterns like El Nino and El Nina that may cause some swings in the weather, which may only occur in 50 or 100 year patterns. That means many people may forget how it was then or just weren't alive when those changes occurred.

However, you must understand there is more than just one metric to follow beyond how hot or cold it is in one place. Among other things, you need to add in the rise in CO2 in the last 100 years, and that temperatures are rising faster than climatologist found in the fossil and sediment records. Temps have never risen so fast in such a short time, except maybe after sudden cataclysmic events like huge meteoroids hitting the earth, Yes, climate change "like this in many ways” may have happened in the past without cataclysmic events but that would have taken thousands of years. It would be like watching grass grow versus seeing a rocket takeoff. That is my analogy, not a scientific one, but think of any actual CLIMATE change in similar turns as no one could see this happen except if they lived 500 or more lifetimes at least.

Second, the reason we see lots of snow like in Buffalo, NY in late 2014, inches of snow in Temecula, California, and ice on a lake is because the rise in temperature is going to screw up the weather in various ways. Basically, winters may not go away for many decades (and probably not completely for 100s of years) but what will happen is wild swings in the weather rather than a consistent reduction of snow over time, like a slowly and evenly deflating air mattress.

Rather, expect it be like a climate balloon bouncing around, deflating, reflating and over inflating, while wreaking all kinds of havoc, like torrential rains, floods, and severe heatwaves as well as heavy snow. Amazing events which have never occurred before all together or in thousands of lifetimes. It may be that internal parts of the country may be more consistent than coastal states where the warming oceans affect things more quickly and drastically. Think some consistency depending on where, yet many wild swings almost everywhere at some point, but consistently worse over the decades.

Finally, remember it is NOT the weather we are concerned about but the climate. Animals and ecosystems can survive bad weather, but a drastic change in the climate over just a few decades or even a century or two can be like a slow motion cataclysmic event for them. Humans may be able to survive by going inside or digging underground, but these creatures and systems cannot change their "survivability code" to adapt that quickly. It is especially difficult for higher life forms or any with very strict boundaries like rainforest frogs, polar bears and such.

Once again, I am not a scientist, so I may be off in some of my comparisons, or even facts, but it's what I understand so far. I hope it helps you in some way to get, or start to get, your head around it if you were struggling up to this point.

Sincerely, RTC

















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