Archive for the ‘Tornadoes’ Category
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
I was watching ABC news about the 900 mile swath of 21 tornadoes that were active from western Michigan to Missouri last night and remembered watching a special on TV about one of climatologist’s biggest fears, tornadoes that unite to become multi-vortex mega storms. Is this what we’re beginning to experience? The NOAA website reports: “There is a statistical trend (as documented by NSSL’s Harold Brooks) toward wide tornadoes having higher damage ratings. This could be related to greater tornado strength, more opportunity for targets to damage, or some blend of both. However, the size or shape of any particular tornado does not say anything conclusive about its strength.” So there is a trend but it appears to be downplayed, while tornadoes are becoming rampant across the heartland of our country, destroying more and more properties every year, and occurring out of season.
Residents in the Missouri area said they witnessed 4 distinct heads of the multi vortex tornado that covered a 5-mile swath of land. This tornado was also described by the newscaster as a bouncer, touching down, going up, and then touching down again. The same NOAA website states that tornadoes don’t literally skip. It says: “By definition [] a tornado must be in contact with the ground. There is disagreement in meteorology over whether or not multiple touchdowns of the same vortex or funnel cloud mean different tornadoes (a strict interpretation). In either event, stories of skipping tornadoes usually mean
1. There was continuous contact between vortex and ground in the path, but it was too weak to do damage;
2. Multiple tornadoes happened; but there was no survey done to precisely separate their paths (very common before the 1970s); or
3. There were multiple tornadoes with only short separation, but the survey erroneously classified them as one tornado.
So was this multi-vortex, bouncing tornado possibly a new phenomena? Is there anything that can be done to limit the increasing velocity and strength of tornadoes? Well, “Daniel Barrie and Daniel Kirk-Davidoff of the University of Maryland concocted an experiment. They took the pattern of expanding turbine fields to an extreme, and used a computer model to calculate what might happen if all the land from Texas to central Canada, and from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains were covered in one massive wind farm,” according to an article on Discovery Channel website. It said, “[They] acknowledged the hypothetical wind farm was far larger than anything humans are likely to build. But meeting the Department of Energy’s goal of wind power generation by 2030 would require that scores of huge wind farms be built throughout the Midwestern United States. The total disturbance caused by turbines could be enough to steer storms.”
Interesting!
Although the NOAA website states that it is unlikely we could ever come up with anything that could stop a tornado that wouldn’t be worse than the tornado itself, it does talk about dissipating one, which means to slow down or cause it to break up. The website’s FAQ’s page said that tornadoes do need a source of instability and a “larger-scale property of rotation (vorticity) to keep going.” It went on to say that a lot of processes surrounding a storm could rob the area around a tornado of either instability or vorticity. Cold outflow is one. This is the flow of wind out of the precipitation area of a shower or thunderstorm. It’s been observed that cold outflow causes a tornado to go away. It also says: “For decades, storm observers have documented the death of numerous tornadoes when their parent circulations (mesocyclones) weaken after they become wrapped in outflow air — either from the same thunderstorm or a different one.”
Could that different outflow of air possibly be produced by large wind farms in the near future? Could they produce enough wind to replicate the outflow air of a thunderstorm? If so, it’s incentive enough to develop wind power. There are far too many homes and properties destroyed every year from increasingly bad weather. If we thought the stock market dive was bad, imagine insurance companies going bust?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=7582543
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/25/wind-farms-weather.html
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado
Posted in Discovery Channel, Extreme Weather in U.S., Global Warming, NOAA, Tornadoes, U.S. Weather Patterns, Weather/Climate, Wind Power | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
If you ever had any questions about a anything relating to earth and its functions, how it all happened, how our climate is changing and why, how we know this stuff, and many other things, watch National Geographic’s presentation “Planet Earth.” This is family stuff, enlightening, interesting, and a little bit scary.
Some of the presentations are explosive. It’s a little mind boggling how they are able to present prehistoric earth with video footage of events and places from the present. I watched the one about ice mass, and last night was about earthquakes, ending with volcanic eruptions. There is as much action as the latest Rambo movie. My husband was perturbed we changed channels from the movie “Mash,” but said it was really a great presentation and he wants to see more of it now. You’ll find yourself saying “Wow” and “I didn’t know that!” more than once.
I know some people don’t get the National Geographic Channel, but the DVD set of “Planet Earth” is available. It’s better than any encyclopedia books I was brought up with. Maybe if they had this type of learning tool back then more of us would have went into science.
“Planet Earth” is on every night this week, beginning at 9:00 pm on the National Geographic Channel. Tune in.
Posted in Climate, Cyclones/Hurricanes, Earth, Earthquakes, Fires, Floods, Global Warming, National Geographic Channel, Polar Ice Melt, Snowfall, Tornadoes, Volcanoes, Weather/Climate | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
For those of us in Michigan or anywhere else that think global warming or any of the climate events happening elsewhere won’t/don’t affect us guess again. Just like yesterday’s blog about Dead Zones that affects our penchant for shrimp, crab, and select fish like grouper, the California fires are in wine country. So that perfect glass of wine to accompany that already vulnerable seafood dinner may not materialize at all.
Floods in the Midwest have caused a huge loss in corn crops also. So much for ethanol as an alternative. The loss of corn is going to cause an even greater problem with food shortages worldwide, which really can’t take another hit. As a result we’ll soon see food prices climb even higher here.
It simply amazes me that we’re experiencing such drastic degrees of bad weather at the same time. Look at the flood risk this year: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hic/nho/. Hundreds of people have lost homes and irreplaceable keepsakes due to flood damage.
Does anyone remember some of the prophecies about the future from the likes of Nostradamus, Cayce, and Dixon? One of the prophecies was that the U.S. would be divided by water eventually. The water rose through the middle of the country separating the east from the west. This doesn’t bode well considering the middle of our country is flooding.
As for fires, it looks like a fifth of California is burning: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/sto/cafw/. Eighty homes and other structures have been destroyed by fires, while more homes are still threatened. If fires sweep through wine country there will be zilch for the year 2008.
And for those of us that have always grown things we know weather problems affect our little gardens, fruit trees, and whatever we grow just like the big guys. The wind that ripped the shingles off my house on Monday would have caused a big loss in my vegetable garden had it been later in the season when the plants were bigger. I’m saying this because I see many more gardens planted this year than ever before, and I just wonder if the novices realize that the survival technique of growing our own food can backfire on us easily if Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate. The idea of living like our forefathers or Grizzly Adams if we have to won’t cut it without the support of a decent environment, so relying on ourselves for survival may not be viable if the weather continues to be extreme. Like the old commercial for butter used to say: “It’s not nice [or wise] to fool with Mother Nature.”
Posted in Climate, Drought, Extreme Weather in U.S., Farms/Farming, Fires, Floods, Global Warming, NOAA, Soaring Temperatures, Tornadoes, U.S. Weather Patterns, Weather/Climate | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
So Monroe, MI, how about that weather last night? Monroe doesn’t usually get anything that bad, especially my area near Lake Erie. Usually the lake just sucks out the storm, but last night blew the shingles off my roof. And they were only 2 years old! Straight-line winds just dropped in out of nowhere. I actually went to sit in the bathroom with my bird and one cat that doesn’t like storms. I wasn’t thinking tornado, but I was thinking scary thoughts. My only clue that it wasn’t going to be too bad is that there were birds, and mallard ducks eating under my bird feeder up until the moment that wind hit.
It could have been worse. Bloomfield Hills and counties North of us really got walloped with trees landing on houses and no power since Friday for some.
It’s no wonder weather events are extreme. Our country is experiencing some pretty diverse climate conditions all at once. Washington state was in the 30’s and expecting snow today. Places like Racine, WI got flash floods. Racine is bewildered because that NEVER happened before. And parts of Arkansas and N. Carolina are drought stricken. Mix snow, floods, heat, and droughts together and it’s little wonder we have climate explosions where bad weather just drops in like the 117 mph winds that ran through the Columbus, OH area last night.
We’re already greeted with a pretty wicked windy season and it’s only June 10th. I’ve lost some shingles. I just hope I can hang onto my new awning until windy season is over, and I hope no one suffered anything worse.
Posted in Drought, Monroe, Michigan, Snowfall, Soaring Temperatures, Tornadoes, Weather/Climate | No Comments »
Monday, May 12th, 2008
Since the Myanmar (Burma) hurricane, with already 100,000 people reported dead and 200,000 more missing, China was hit by a massive 7.9 earthquake with nearly 9,000 people dead and thousands missing or injured along with devastating tornadoes that ran through the middle of the U.S. all the way to Georgia leaving 23 dead, and there were very few reports about a tidal wave that hit S. Korea May 4th, but it killed at least seven people when it hit a pier and seaside rocks sweeping away tourists and anglers. Who knows how many were in the area.
So it’s been one heck of a week for big disasters. The tornadoes that keep hitting the center of our nation worse and worse every year are taking more and more lives. It wasn’t long ago that we could honestly make the statement that while tornadoes wreak a lot of damage across our country; very few usually die from them. Not so anymore.
Hits like this from Mother Nature are getting noticeably worse and more and more frequent. According to Wikipedia, as of May 8th, 819 tornadoes have been reported in the United States (of which at least 465 have been confirmed), with 98 confirmed fatalities. This already makes 2008 the deadliest year for them since 1998, and it’s not Memorial Day yet!
People can pooh pooh extreme weather all they want. I reported a long time ago in one of my blogs that I was curious about reports of global warming relative to increased disastrous weather/climate activity and researched the recorded events myself. This was back in 2000. I went to the NOAA website and printed extreme weather events worldwide from 1990 to 2000. 1990 events took up 1/3 of a page. By 2000, 3 ½ pages printed out for that year.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how fast weather events are advancing. We don’t hear enough about them in the media. We need to see it, and hear it, over and over until we have some notion of what some people are going through because of Mother Nature, not just look out our windows and say “Well, it’s not me.”
Great explanation and map of active fault lines and what causes earthquakes @:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7807001/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornadoes_of_2008
Posted in Climate, Cyclones/Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Extreme Weather in U.S., Global Warming, Global Warming Reports, Tornadoes, U.S. Weather Patterns, Weather/Climate | No Comments »
Monday, March 17th, 2008
St. Patrick’s Day is a good, green holiday that didn’t turn out well for many when festivities began on Friday for this holiday. Savannah, Georgia had terrible thunderstorms that knocked out power to at least 150,000 customers and blackened the streets in Savannah, home to the second largest St. Patty’s Day celebration in the country. At least it was that large back in the 80’s. I was there.
Apparently that storm was the result of conditions that also produced a tornado that hit downtown Atlanta in a 200 yd. wide swath, 6 miles long at 130 mph!!! It never happened before. All I could think of: What if something like this hit downtown New York or Chicago? I think of a domino effect on the buildings. And I’m back to the analogy between terrorism and Mother Nature. Both are extremely destructive, but one always trumps the other, trumps everything, and it’s the weather. Extreme weather kills randomly and is getting worse, and more erratic. It’s caused enough destruction in Florida that insurance premiums are outrageous. Even though the debate continues about our responsibility in global warming, it’s not illogical to think we’re polluting way beyond bounds. Our demands for oil and food increase yearly as our populations grow. It is plausible that it is affecting climate conditions that many scientists admit have happened before to our world, BUT NEVER AT THE RATE IT IS PROGRESSING NOW.
This is the point I tried to make to someone I got into an argument with at a bar (Clamdiggers) during Friday night happy hour. The Irish were already getting tuned up and will appreciate this. It was a beautiful afternoon on Friday. I stopped with friends to a really crowded and loud bar. Good thing it was loud in there, because before I finished one drink, my friend announced to 2 guys next to us that we were environmentalists. All I could think was: “Oh no!” I don’t want to argue with anyone about that.
I ended up in a face-to-face argument with a guy who was proud to be a polluter, who had already got into it with another friend of mine who owns a Prius. He didn’t know what he was talking about relative to electric cars, and then announced to me that the oil industry contributes the most money to alternative energy research. I know BP has invested, and Conoco Philips, but do all of them invest—not Exxon Mobil? I caught parts of his argument while he was in my face asking if I was naive. It ended when his buddy started laughing as he realized the steady degradation of events that took place in a matter of 20 minutes from smiling to yelling, and said he was dragging his workmate out. Well the argumentative one put on a Lion’s jacket, which just invited my sport’s minded friends to jeer: “That explains it all,” where they proceeded to do the loser “L” at him. I had one more cocktail and left. The best made intentions can just go awry, can’t they? My friends and I started with lively conversation about classic poets and novelists. I was heading toward limericks in honor of St. Patrick’s day and all just ran amuck and got rude.
That’s why there was no blog Friday night, but I did decide to investigate the polluter’s argument. How much do our oil companies invest in alternative energy? It’s a good question. I caught the BP commercial about investing in alternative energy. I’m finishing a post for tomorrow that shows how much American oil companies contribute to alternative energies, and also each company’s current net earnings. I know BP stands for British Petroleum, but they bought our Amoco in 98, I think.
It’s one thing to hear statements that the oil industry is investing millions in alternative energy, and like polluter guy, assume it’s a lot, probably more than anyone else. But since I did accounting, I want to know what percentage is invested as compared to net earnings in the billions and climbing? I’ve already seen some of the numbers. It’s a pretty paltry picture compared to the wealth streaming in from oil. So, Stay tuned.
Posted in Alternative Energy, BP, Climate, Conoco Phillips, Conservation, Environmental Spin, Environmentalism, Extreme Weather in U.S., Exxon-Mobil, Global Warming, Industry, Oil Industry, Tornadoes, U.S. Weather Patterns | No Comments »
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
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.
Posted in Bush Administration, Conservation, EPA, Environmental Legislation, Environmental Spin, Environmentalism, Extreme Weather in U.S., Federal Government, Global Warming, Global Warming Policy, Global Warming Reports, Health, Legislators, NASA, Politics, Science, Stress, The Denial Machine, Tornadoes, U.S. Weather Patterns, Weather/Climate | No Comments »
Friday, January 11th, 2008
I blogged about the Farm Bill and the changes that are needed if we are ever going to get healthy and get the nation turned around so that the small farmer thrives once again. Not going to happen. The November 12th, 2007 issue of Time Magazine had a scathing article by Michael Grunwald called “Down on the Farm” about the farm lobby and the lopsided business of farm subsidies. The article is too long to outline here. But our future for free range chicken, pork, or beef, more fruits and vegetables, and less tainted meat and food supplies in general instead of the top five commodities—corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice is mighty bleak.
The article warns if you “eat, drink, or pay taxes—or care about the economy, the environment, or our global reputation” the Farm Bill is a big deal. We still subsidize farmers billions of tax dollars every year. The trouble is that it is redistributed to millionaire farmers mostly when 60% of small farmers get no subsidies at all. Some of the subsidies even go to farms that are no longer in business!
Besides wasting billions of our money by staying status quo and helping the rich, the way our Farm Bill is laid out:
It contributes to our obesity, and illegal-immigration epidemics and to our water and energy shortages. It helps degrade rivers, deplete aquifers, elimiate grasslands, concentrate food-processing conglomerates and inundate our fast food nation with high-fructose corn syrup. Our farm policy is supposed to save small farmers and small towns. Instead it fuels the expansion of industrial megafarms and the depopulation of rural America. It hurts Third World farmers, violates international trade deals and paralyzes our efforts to open foreign markets to the non-agricultural goods and services that make up the remaining 99% of our economy.
And this description is in the first column of a long article on just how construed our Farm Bill really is. Small farmers get next to nothing in help, and are forced out. This says much about our free market system that conservatives like to tout causes competition and keeps everyone in check. Baloney. I’ve been screaming that there is no such thing as a free market system in America any longer as long as we have lobbies and big interest groups throwing millions at Congress. Again, the wealthy rule and find all sorts of loopholes to get rid of the little guy. Some free market system!
For you and me, that means we will continue to be force-fed high fructose corn syrup in everything we eat. Type II Diabetes will continue to rise. The organic industry will continue to struggle. If you’ve ever complained about the high prices of organic, now you know why. The big guys producing the top 5 crops don’t want you buying that stuff. And you won’t at $1.00 per apple. I’ve walked into the organic section of my store more than once with determination to buy what I know is better for me. The prices drive me out. I look for sales instead and go home with half of what I planned on. Example: If you want to buy cranberry juice, and I mean real cranberry juice, no other fruit juices in it, no corn syrup, no additives, full strength, not from concentrate it’s over $7.00 for 32 oz. Thank the big megafarms and our Farm Bill for that. Or then again thank Nancy Pelosi. As a matter of fact, read the article, then contact Pelosi and tell her what you think of her accommodating the same ole farm lobby once again.
Thank goodness I have fruit trees, a vegetable garden, and know how to do good old-fashioned canning. But if our weird weather keeps up, I won’t be able to do that. If we have a water shortage and hot searing sun, I won’t be able to water like it’s needed. I lost most of my fruits this past season when the trees were in bloom and we had a freeze. By fall, the very few small apples I had also had a black, oily residue all over the skins. We’ve yet to determine what it is and where it came from. I’m leaning toward jet fuel and just peeling the skins before I eat the stuff. This is going to get about survival. People who only buy from major stores, who don’t eat healthy anyway aren’t going to notice until it gets really bad. But for people who are health conscious, and raise the things they plan to eat, much like the small, unsubsidized farmer, we know what can happen, and happen fast in a bad way.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1680139,00.html.
http://www.house.gov/pelosi/contact/contact.html.
Posted in Africa, Bureau of Land Management, Bush Administration, Conservation, Countries/Continents, Drought, Energy Costs, Environmental Legislation, Environmentalism, Ethanol, Extreme Weather in U.S., Farm Bill, Farm Lobby, Farms/Farming, Federal Government, Food, Food Supply Contamination, Health, Hormones in Food, Industry, Legislators, Meatpacking Industry, Politics, Soaring Temperatures, Time Magazine, Tornadoes, Type II Diabetes, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, U.S. Food Supply, U.S. Weather Patterns, Water Shortage, Weather, Weather/Climate | No Comments »
Monday, July 9th, 2007
Nine states have large burning forest fires, with 2 million acres burned already this year. Nine hundred structures have been destroyed. That’s almost a fifth of our country on fire.
Here in Michigan the Santa Ana like winds we’ve had for the past couple of days has dried things up so badly some spots in the lawn are outright picky feeling to bare feet. I see now how a state with lakes could actually burn. A cigarette tossed in the right place around here could light things right up.
So far, I think we’ve had a pretty good summer in Michigan but it’s noticeable the weather is different from when I was a kid. It seems like the path of tornadoes through our state is shifting. When I was young, the lost peninsula off of Summit Street going south just before the Ohio line got hit all the time. As a campfire girl, our group was doing an overnight at a cabin when a tornado passed over Monroe but never touched down. Slowly the path of tornadoes has risen farther north. Wayne County first, now mostly Oakland and Macomb country get hit with the windy stuff. And today storms with bad wind and possibility of hail are way up North.
Tornadoes usually run in a diagonal path from Southwest to Northeast. Are the air currents shifting? Is it because our climate in Michigan is getting warmer? How long before we have weather much like Tennessee because it’s sure heating up fast in the west side of our country, much faster than I think anyone anticipated.
As temperatures get hotter, more air conditioning is used, more coal burners fire up for energy for the A/C, the extra CO2 from the coal plant aggravates global warming, and the temperatures get hotter. It’s a big circle and not an ideal one. An ideal circle is to gather the energy from the sun to power the A/C so there is no CO2 released at all, and eventually the temperatures go back down. So far this proves to be too simple for this country. Imagine the energy we could get from cities like Vegas if the buildings were big sun collectors. Who knows they might produce a surplus of energy that could be sold elsewhere.
Posted in Alternative Energy, Coalburners, Conservation, Environmentalism, Extreme Weather in U.S., Fires, Fossil Fuel, Global Warming Policy, Methods for Lowering Energy Costs, Michigan/Great Lakes, Pollution, Public Lands, Public Lands, Soaring Temperatures, Solar Energy, Tornadoes, U.S. Weather Patterns, Weather, Weather/Climate | No Comments »
Monday, May 28th, 2007
One of my blogs was about the forests lost to forest fires and that it was really odd to see the woods of Minnesota burn since the state is noted for its many inland lakes. Then I read that the global warming impact of forest fires in our western states is the equivalent of a more severe hurricane season in the gulf. But hurricanes are over in a few days, forest fires can burn for months. About.com stated: “Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Arizona found four times as many large wildfires occurred in Western forests between 1987 and 2003 compared to the previous 16 years.”
Everything about fires has increased due to global warming. The latest fires burned 6.5 times more land, increased from around 8 days to 37 days in duration, and the whole fire season has expanded 78 more days. Here’s the interesting part. You know there are television personalities like Regis Philbin who make fun of a one degree weather change, but most of the increase in our fires corresponds with a simple 1.5 degree rise in temperature out west during the same time frame of 87 to 2003. The slightly warmer temperatures lead to longer, drier seasons that are ideal for a flash fire.
This is the first study that links global warming and forest fires. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “The researchers examined U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service records of every forest fire that burned at least 1,000 acres from 1970 to 2003. They found that of 1,166 fires in that period, four-fifths of them, or about 900, occurred after 1987.” The article went on to say, “Steven Running, a professor in the School of Forestry at the University of Montana who wrote an accompanying article about the report for Science hopes to include Westerling’s findings in a report on the ecological consequences of climate change for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
I don’t doubt that sooner or later science will find a link between all major eruptions on earth such as volcanoes, and earthquakes with the rise in hurricanes, flooding, fires, etc., that are due to man’s impact on this same environment with some form of pollution. We simply haven’t given much thought to our ever increasing world population in ratio to its output of pollution. Imagine if every growing population turned into a capitalist society like ours where demand for everything under the sun in huge amounts is an everyday occurrence. Capitalism to me is more a throw away society than a recycling society right now. It doesn’t have to be that way, however. We’re into supply and demand and haven’t caught on that some of the supply can come from what has already been used. It’s simply not a good thing for the earth to start from scratch every time when there is perfectly good base material out there to be recycled.
This has just given me an idea to blog about what is currently offered in the recycled goods market and for what use. I do know that recycled plastics offer picnic tables, park benches, and even parking curbs out of high density plastic material instead of wood that rots or concrete that eventually cracks. Every Parks and Recreation Commission in all cities should be looking into recycled products like these for all of our recreational areas. It would make all of us feel a little better about all the plastic products we consume and throw away into a trash dump versus the local park or for some future use wouldn’t it? We should see how truly efficient we can be. After all our country should be viewed as a business and isn’t that the essence of business anyway to garner the greatest profit with the least overhead, and the least waste?
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Posted in Conservation, Drought, Earthquakes, Environmental Legislation, Environmentalism, Extreme Weather in U.S., Fires, Global Warming, Green Products, National Forest, National Parks and Forests, Nature, Plants, Public Lands, Recycling, Science, Soaring Temperatures, Tornadoes, Trees, U.S. Weather Patterns, Volcanoes, Weather, Weather/Climate | No Comments »
