Our World and Everything in It

The tornadoes disaster that struck the south Tuesday was different. We’ve seen interviews of people after a tornado struck their home, or threw them around. They’ve always been curiously stoic, that they are alive and that’s all that matter. The reporter ends by saying something like “looking at the debris and destruction, it’s amazing no one was killed.” Not so this time.

People were visibly shaken, edgy, overwhelmed. There didn’t seem to be any warning.  An aerial view of a touchdown on Union University campus shows signs of the whirring motion that hit like a blender. The middle of the campus is gone, while the outward spirals of wind blew apart the dorms that were clustered around it. One student got sucked out of a hallway while holding onto a heavy gumball machine. He didn’t have enough time to run inside far enough. Part of the building collapsed on him but he made it. Up to 60 other people didn’t.

The death toll keeps climbing as people look through the debris. I’m tornado phobic. Not so much of the actual funnel but because caught off guard, these storms are deadly. And the chances of being caught off-guard are greater than you think. I found a good website, WeatherEye, that based its info on results of Project Vortex, the world’s largest storm-chasing project. What better info than people that sit in those weird mobile units gathering data at the edge of a huge twister.

It’s always been believed that a tornado takes 20-30 minutes to form, and we have detectors everywhere. Try 5 to 10 minutes, and tornadoes many times come from small weather patterns that develop between weather stations. So what happened Tuesday is something like this. You’re sitting there in Tennessee in February. There are storm predictions. The storm starts.  And out of nowhere drops a funnel cloud. You’re not prepared at all, just hanging onto your breeches. It lasts a few minutes, but your life is changed forever—no mementos, no trophies, no pictures, nothing to wear, no paperwork, no purse, no pets…absolutely stripped.  The teeth of some of the people interviewed were still chattering. I don’t ever want to be surprised like that, not living in a frame house with a 4 ft. crawlspace, along with 2 cats and a parrot. All I visualize is the entire contents of our pole barn whisking around and mowing my house to shreds, while I’m trapped below listening to it.

I’ve got good reason to be afraid. Our weather is getting more and more erratic, and it’s those warm days that don’t want to budge when the cold moves in that cause the problems.  After this week’s tornado fest, everyone should be a little more respectful. You would think by now we would have better predictions.

According to WeatherEye, NASA launched an OTD or Optical Transient Detector satellite in 1995 that was able to view lightening strikes even in the daylight. That satellite passed over a storm and picked up 200 lightening flashes while our sensors on the ground picked up only 9. It also detected plenty of cloud-to-cloud strikes. While they seemed to reach their peak, a tornado touched down. There seems to be a correlation between cloud to cloud lightening activity and the materialization of a tornado. This satellite picked up as much as 20 times more cloud-to-cloud activity than detected on the ground.

That was back in 95, why are we still being surprised by tornadoes like those on Tuesday? It’s 2008. We have a state of the art satellite that can help predict bad weather patterns before they strike, far better than any other before. It’s sitting in a warehouse somewhere. President Bush didn’t allow money for it. He wants to pursue the space station project. The shelved satellite was to replace one that is soon to be obsolete and out of service. In view of the bad weather that we are experiencing, and it’s only going to get worse, I think it would be prudent to urge whoever is the next president to get it launched, and quickly.

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=186

http://weathereye.kgan.com/expert/tornadoes/predict.html.

http://weathereye.kgan.com/expert/tornadoes/predict2.html.

I just got through reading some current worldwide environmental news and have to say, we don’t seem to have a clear-cut view of anything. What we profess, what we say, and what we actually do is all contrary.  First, I saw the Pope give his blessing and speak on behalf of peace and the environment over the Christmas season to over one billion Catholics. And the World Council of Churches that represents 560 million Christians worldwide is calling concerns over global warming a matter of faith. The WCC has had a program about climate change since 1992 and books about ecotheology (I’m interested).  Dr. Samuel Kobia the Secy. General of the WCC stipulates that Christians are well aware that dominion over all living things was given to us. He said that meant, “We were entrusted with the care of the rest of God’s creation.” The emphasis is on the word “CARE” here.

Care doesn’t come under savagely taking a machete to an orangutan trying to defend it’s young, or hooking a live dolphin in the side and sending it to be stripped of skin before it’s even dead, while the resulting meat is basically poison from ingesting too many pollutants, or shooting 6 elephants dead for stepping into a coffee field that is supposed to be their sanctuary. We should actively try to get this stopped, but our demands for things like lumber and coffee encourage it.  Oh and don’t forget about native animals and the latest Internet hunting websites that have yet to be banned in over 20 states.

I run into a lot of people who apply basic logic to the idea of global warming. I too apply basic logic to most things so I understand when some people don’t get upset that many large glaciers are melting. They know that the amount of water released by a melting glacier will not make sea level rise anymore than the displacement from the original frozen mass. An example of displacement is watching to see how much the pool water rises when good old fat uncle Charlie and aunt Rose get into the pool, or why we always want the largest person to do a cannonball.

But there is this phenomenon called Thermal Expansion that really compounds the rise in sea level. Since 1993 thermal expansion accounts for 57% of the sum total of rising water. So more than half of the increased rise in sea level is due to thermal expansion. Not to talk down to anyone but I found a grade 6-8 school project to do that demonstrates the thermal expansion of water. http://www.usc.edu/org/cosee-west/glaciers/ThermalExpansionActivity.pdf. It’s a pretty neat project that explains much I think.

According to a Nova article on science.org: “In its 2001 assessment of global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected that global mean sea level is expected to rise between 9 and 88 centimeters by 2100, with a ‘best estimate’ of 50 centimeters.” This is around 20 inches. So thermal expansion accounts for 11.4 of those inches? That’s a little scary. Only 8.6 inches of extra water is actually present, but turns into 20 with heat. Siberia is melting at a rate right now that is gorging 3 rivers that lead to the seas and the Arctic Ocean. The Gulf Stream around the British Isles is slowing for what is speculated to be from lesser salt concentration because of dilution off of Siberia. Salt concentration has a huge bearing on our gulf streams, and the air masses above them.  

The article explained further on: “The reality promises to be a little grimmer. In many places, 50 centimeters would see entire beaches being washed away, together with a significant chunk of the coastline. For people living on low-lying islands such as Tuvalu, Kiribati or the Maldives, where the highest point is only 2-3 meters above current sea levels, an extra 50 centimeters could see significant portions of their islands being washed away by erosion or covered by water. Even if they remain above the sea, many island nations will have their supplies of drinking water reduced because sea water will invade their freshwater aquifers.” Here that Michigan? Here we have emphasis on drinking water again. Read my blog about Kiribati: http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=48.

 For Australia the consequences of even moderate sea level rise is multiplied. The same Nova article, by Australia’s Greenhouse Office states: “Each centimeter of sea-level rise will lead to increasing impacts on low-lying coastal land. Modeling predicts the inundation would cause sandy beaches on the Australian coastline to recede by the order of 100 times the vertical sea-level rise. For example, if the sea level rises by a meter, the coastal beaches could retreat by about 100 meters unless some preventative action is taken. Given that about 85 per cent of Australia’s population lives within an hour’s drive of the coast, this is particularly relevant.” Make note this is based on IPCC’s 2001 assessment. Much has changed. http://www.science.org.au/nova/082/082key.htm. 

Keep up to date with our ever-changing environment. Read the most current reports from the IPCC from December, 2007: http://www.ipcc.ch/.  The IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize honor for ‘efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.’ http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5383964.html. This panel had a series of four conferences dealing with current global climate change topics and many categories within each topic. Hopefully many answers to most questions are contained in these reports.        

So Al Gore went to the Whitehouse today. Interesting isn’t it? I would love to have been there to observe. President Bush honored the Nobel Prize winners and Al was among them. Considering the Bush administration altered reports of global warming (read my blogs below), and there was that voting outcome back in 2000…things could have been awkward.

Apparently, Al had nothing to say to the press as he left. There is very little coverage about the meeting. I just know it was probably uncomfortable since the president is still punishing NASA who complained about censorship. He cut their funding by a hefty percentage, yet is giving plenty of money to the space station project. Lack of those funds has shelved a state of the art satellite that would allow scientists to accurately measure the amount of direct sunlight that hits the earth at one time. It’s in a warehouse somewhere. The satellite would also allow meteorologists to more accurately predict bad weather a lot sooner. Really sound judgment here–space station and/or trip to Mars trumps an accurate picture of what’s happening on earth regarding solar heat via the new satellite.

A good article that speculates about the meeting today is:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/10/16/101926/97.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h8nwMDNrp_DbQkdrAynlv0NN_RYg

My blogs about altered reports of global warming:

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=94.

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?m=200611

It’s really funny to me that scientists from around the world declared global warming to be real and that we are the cause of a lot of it, and people–senators, judges in England, all types, argued and some are still arguing the point, but once again capitalism and the old pocketbook is the catalyst for change in America.

Rising oil prices have industry scrambling to invest in energy saving technology. Wind is taking off so fast, GE, one of the biggest producers of wind turbines, are strapped to keep up with demands. Four billion gallons of ethanol were produced last year. We have 100 ethanol plants already, although I don’t like this trend. Wind good, corn NOT.

The MSNBC article I read stated that it’s no wonder. Industry consumes 1/3 of all energy. Without cutbacks, their profits get squeezed. Since there are some government incentives to invest in alternative energy sources, high oil prices are just the catalyst needed to drive industry into conservation ur umm going green, never mind that without massive change we suffer bad, bad consequences. Fires, floods, tornadoes, no matter, the real motive is profit.

I say, whatever works! I’ve read other articles that predicted the retail and industrial market is what will drive environmentalism forward. Those articles speculated that governmental policy in this administration would not likely be the catalyst, duh. The article also said what I blogged about before, there is more and more capital available for going green.

It’s a very encouraging article about how companies are cutting costs, making changes that are driving the market forward. This is good folks. The more interested industry is, the better the innovation gets, and the lower the cost to us.

Read: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12040418/.

Now we’re finally getting solid documentation that man is indeed having a great impact on the environment. The NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found that humans caused nearly ½ of the bad weather we experienced last year. This is not a U.N. conspiracy like some like to call environmentalism. This is that voice on the weather band on your car audio: “This is NOAA weather and hazard” at least that’s what it sounds like. This is our national weather service that did the study spanning 1998 to 2006.

The NOAA ran 42 different tests using data of weather conditions relative to human activity and El Nino’s. The article I read on MSN went into detail how they did it, why it took awhile, and the not so surprising results. At least a growing majority of us are seeing and believing. It’s a pretty good weather page from MSN.

Look at some of the weather reports on there for just this past week:

A cyclone hit the coast of Bangladesh with winds up to 155 mph.  At least 425 people were killed, 1000 fishermen, and hundreds more are unaccounted for. The summer floods there just killed 1000 people.

Vietnam flooded last weekend. 100,000 people have no food. They lost it all, 190,000 houses are submerged. The flooding has been going on for a month with over 250 dead.

A major 7.7 earthquake in Chile “crushed cars, damaged thousands of houses, blocked roads and terrified people for hundreds of miles around Wednesday. Chilean authorities reported at least two deaths and more than 150 injuries.

The quake, which struck at 12:40 p.m., shook the Chilean capital 780 miles to the south of the epicenter, and was felt as far away as the other side of the continent — in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1,400 miles to the east.”

The next day the northern part of Chile was hit with huge aftershocks of 6.2 and 6.8 injuring about 100 people and killing 2.

Atlanta’s out of water.

This is a wake up call. The longer we wait for policy, the more it’s not going to be pretty. On the NOAA weather site they have listed the major catastrophic weather events going back to 1990. I did the same about 2 years ago, and wouldn’t have now that I see how nicely they’ve compiled it!  I went back to 1990 and printed a list of all catastrophic events per page for each year to 2001. 1990 barely filled a quarter of a page. 2001 was 2 ½ pages printed no double spacing. I don’t think I used NOAA, but another International Weather Service that had the events by year but not in a neat little list.

Check out the NOAA website yourself and scan the climate events. There are many recently and as you scan down to 1990 it dwindles to about 2 or 3 events. That’s a scannable eye opener. Every line scanned represents a catastrophe somewhere in the world where someone died.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20481186/wid/18298287/.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/hazards/index.php.
 

This should be pretty good. I watched the one on the Science Channel. It answered quite a few of the questions I’ve heard floating around and showcased some of America’s most energy efficient cities like New York. I will be blogging about that soon.

 CNN appears to be more accessible to the general public than the Science Channel but I still think that every major network should keep the environment in our faces until we realize duh, it sustains us, we should take better care of it than stripping it bare of everything and leaving a trail of pollution.

As a quarter million people flee the fires of the Santa Ana winds in southern California, Atlanta’s water supply dwindles and without relief will be gone by January, and floods and tornadoes have steadily pummeled the middle of our country. It’s a little obvious something’s up. Is it global warming and how worse can it get? A lot.

In light of all that’s happening, I searched global warming on the internet and there was a whole new cache of naysayers. Something set them off and I’m thinking it was Al Gore getting the Nobel Prize. I was a little surprised. I checked again today and the opposition has leveled off. Looks to me like the fossil fuel industry turned up the heat against going green. For a few days their bloggers put out a surge of propaganda like: Global warming is a U.N. conspiracy. Watching the news about California tonight, I don’t think so, and when are we going to start thinking about the other guys, especially other Americans?

Global warming affects the entire population of the world and everything in it. Isn’t it wiser to err on the side of caution if things aren’t certain? Besides what’s wrong with cleaning up after ourselves, the outcome of which would be:

The oil money that feeds terrorism will literally dry up.

We get away from fossil fuels for good. No more of the landscape will be destroyed with incessant stripping and drilling.

We could get agriculture involved. Instead of subsidizing them for loss, part of their land will be set aside for wind and solar farms bringing in alternative income.

A new economy gives everyone a chance at new jobs. New investments can be made in the stock market. New people will be able to offer new innovation to sustain us for years to come, creating more jobs.

Disease will dwindle. Clean up the air, earth, and water and possibly ease someone’s suffering.

Low utility bills or none at all. Trying to cut back on energy use, my last combined gas and electric bill fell even more. I paid $103.00 last month for my gas and electric. I’m home all day. The PC is going, TV is on, and an air cleaner. I haven’t taken everything off of standby yet…another TV, Roomba, printer, stereo, DVD player, etc. But by changing my light bulbs, unplugging the old fridge in the garage, adding two overhead fans in the house, regulating my window coverings, and hanging my laundry out on a line, what a difference!

Finally, if we do heat up all at once, chances are our power grids won’t hold up. So we’ll be miserable. Wouldn’t it be better to use that which is going to fry us to cool us? Solar energy could run our a/c units, keep the fridge going, and many other things like boil water.
 

Today is blog action day. And I don’t want to talk about the environment per say, post the latest news, or try to convince anyone man’s part in global warming is real. Today I would simply like to thank the thousands of volunteers of many, many organizations that give their time, energy, and passion to helping the environment and every creature in it, including humans that won’t get off the couch to save their own lives. To these volunteers and spokespeople we owe you our lives, many of us  just don’t realize it yet.

Volunteers for the environment are tireless in their efforts. I’ve been to meetings where the person holding that meeting drove an hour at night, leaving family at home, to offer a presentation of information about what is happening and what can be done, only to have 8 people show up.  They have to pack it all up and drive an hour to go home to a household already asleep. Yet they are never daunted in their determination to inform possibly one new person. That’s dedication, discipline, and selflessness.

While we sit in our comfortable living rooms there are countless organizations of people like Greenpeace on board ships in the freezing cold to stop whale hunts, or fisherman using nets that trap dolphins, others like Earthjustice, Environmental Defense, and NRDC holding oil drills at bay in some pristine part of our country, or The Sierra Club lobbying in state’s senates against industry pollution, or Waterkeeper Alliance that has joined Sierra Club’s fight against CAFO’s. Their volunteers took 3000 plus photos of CAFO’s and produced DVD’s to expose that industry’s pollution.  There are the many, many meteorologists that have ventured to the N. Pole, Greenland, and Iceland in small boats to get photographs and gain first hand knowledge of crashing ice falls from glaciers not 50 ft. in front of them in order to inform the masses about what they’ve seen, and the brave and undeterred efforts of the scientists who testified before congress that they are fed up with being censored by the Bush administration relative to reports of global warming. They’re brave, bold, and forthright while much of the population flounders in a sea of apathy.

Take for instance what is called “junk mail.” It’s tossed without a thought. But in those envelopes are the voices of those that I’ve just described that are trying to get the truth out, trying to stop the insanity of pollution, trying to stop further fossil fuel endeavors, or simply trying to save the lives of animals that have no one to speak for them. It’s valuable information that took research, time, effort and skill to produce with the hope one more person will open and read the contents in lieu of being tossed without conscience or concern. Ditto for the many TV networks like The Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and Sundance that dedicate themselves to saving the environment by showcasing the marvelous inventors, scientists, and engineers from around the globe that have solutions for our ailing earth already.

To all the wonderful, passionate, faithful people that see the Almighty in their surroundings and fight to save and nurture what we were given as a blessing, I want to say thank you heart and soul. The road you travel is new and like any other time in history, your fellow humans are not quick to follow a new revolution. Go with peace and passion in every step because most assuredly you have one Traveler that will remain by your side always. Nature is Earth’s Metaphor for God and you “get it.” Bless you. Keep the faith, keep up the fight.  
 

So Al Gore gets the Nobel Peace prize. That pretty much says it all for me. But he still has detractors that say his movie “An Inconvenient Truth” has about 9 misleading points, like tornado activity being linked to global warming. There is no scientific proof of that. But scientists will tell you we have never experienced what we’re seeing now. Doesn’t that go against the arguments by scientists that say global warming is a natural phenomenon that operates in cycles anyway? And, of course there is not scientific proof for tornado activity, or earthquake activity relative to global warming. It’s too new!

So will we all be in dire straights by time it’s a proven fact that tornadoes, earthquakes, droughts, or whatever are a result of global warming or use our noggins to figure out that if the population of the world has quadrupled in the last decade and we dump 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the air every day there will be consequences. And those consequences are the increasingly horrendous, house destroying, life destroying streaks of bad weather that caused major fires to destroy our forests, displace critters, burn down homes, or floods that wiped homes off of foundations in the Midwest, or tornadoes that ran in packs of 5 at a time, leveling everything around, or the drought that is hitting southeast and southwest America right now.

What else would be causing an increasingly horrible weather pattern to hit many of the states? The natural, cyclical occurrence that many say it is. If it were that easily tracked as part of the history of weather patterns, why weren’t we warned? See, I have questions that have never been answered. Natural occurrences can be traced and this one is upon us without warning because it’s MANMADE, not natural at all. Mankind has been side-blinded by the intensity of this climate pattern.

So say what you want about Al Gore, someday the realization will hit everyone, he was right. Unfortunately, if we don’t get moving in unity, it will be too late. As it is now, I think it’s going to get a whole lot worse.