Our World and Everything in It

There are still arguments whether or not global warming has contributed to the onslaught of wildfires in California that certainly appear to be getting worse. As a matter of fact, I read an article that suggested it is because of invading populations of people moving into fire prone areas, and/or forest management practices instead. But a scientific paper published a year ago stated “that the changing climate was a greater influence on wildfire activity and intensity than forest management.” http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/Global-Warming-California-Wildfire-47102305.

As for people moving into fire prone areas, sure there would be more likelihood of fires, and more property damage, but Mother Nature is seriously contributing to the wildfire fiasco with a record drought, temperatures in the 80’s-90’s instead of the 70’s for this time of year, and winds that are clocking at 60 and 70 mph, with gusts up to 85! Besides authorities declared that the wildfires in California this past July set a record. There were over 1781 fires burning at once, but luckily most were in sparsely populated areas. So much for the “people-cause-the-fires” theory. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/california-wildfires-set-a-record/.

What I find odd is that the same people that deny the fire activity in California is due in part to global warming but instead caused by people, simultaneously deny that people cause global warming. Is this not selective reasoning? Certainly the smoke from these fires contributes heavily to air pollution.

Even an article in Business Week suggested that if we don’t do something soon about global warming the costs of the bad weather produced by it could be devastating for California. It stated that there could be “as much as $3.9 billion in annual damages caused by wildfires, rising sea levels and extreme weather events.” I say ditto for many other parts of the country. http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D94EAOUO1.htm.

California isn’t the only area of concern. Hurricane ravaged Galveston, Texas did not get enough press during the presidential campaign. There are still what can be termed “Katrina victims.” I’ve noticed a pronounced change in path and verocity of tropical storms up the east coast of America. We do not want to see anything that resembles a hurricane hit NYC. This past spring our midwest was hit with horrible floods. Tornadoes in the South in November are becoming common. And let’s get real here. Five states in the SW have experienced huge growth, even though 4 of those states collectively rely on one and the same Colorado River for all of their water needs. Add the mentality that wants to maintain a steady growth in population in America, and we have to ask, “Just where is everyone supposed to live that won’t pose some sort of weather and/or uninhabitable terrain problem in the U.S.?” Can’t run, can hide from Mother Nature.

Is it just me or are there more earthquakes happening in more spots around the world? Not long ago, Ohio had tremors, and now Virgin Island residents woke to a 6.1 rumble on Saturday morning. Luckily no injuries or problems were reported.

This was the strongest earthquake to hit Puerto Rico in 20 years according to an article on Newsday.com, and it happened on the 90^th anniversary of the worst earthquake to ever hit Puerto Rico, “a magnitude 7.3 quake that killed 118 people in the western half of the U.S. Caribbean territory.” What are the odds of that happening on the exact same day?

Since earthquakes seem to be making the rounds in unlikely places, maybe Michigan will hear a rumble or two again. Earlier this year in April, earthquake tremors were felt in Kalamazoo from the 5.2 earthquake in Illinois. And I remember the Michigan earthquake in the 70’s. I want to say 1978, but I don’t remember the exact year. I do remember what most people report, “it felt like a truck hit the building,” and that’s exactly what I thought. The way my apartment shook at Charlotte Arms, I thought someone overshot their parking space and rammed the building.

I’m not keen on feeling that again anytime too soon.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-cb-virgin-islands-earthquake,0,5022590.story.

Between the presidential campaign and financial crisis, we haven’t really absorbed the enormity of devastation from hurricane Ike. This time around it wasn’t just houses along the Galveston coastline but actual property that disappeared. Imagine being a homeowner without a home or the sandy beach where it once stood. What now? We’ve been told the storms are only going to increase in intensity, but we still refuse to believe we have a connection to any of it.

I’ve been watching the storms that continue up the eastern coastline. If something big makes it to New York—it will be catastrophic. By all indications more and more hurricanes are traveling that eastern seaboard path. It’s only a matter of time, and it’s too bad we will have to be kicked that badly before we pay attention to our role relative to the environment.

The other devastation that hardly got any media play is the half a million gallons of oil that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from damaged oil rigs. Fifty two rigs were hit with thirty two severely damaged according to ABC news.

The Gulf of Mexico already has a “dead zone” that is miles wide where runoff pollution, mostly agricultural fertilizer, has killed the ecosystem in the gulf to the point there is no life all the way to the bottom. It’s caused by oxygen depletion. Fishermen say that they can tell when they’ve entered the dead zone. The water appears deep, murky and lifeless. Well now it’s oily too.

My whole point here is that the little jingle “Drill, baby, drill” that so many seem to want, will add hundreds more of these oil platforms in the gulf and along the eastern seaboard. The platforms are right in the path of worsening storms. Inevitably there will be more oil spills, killing more sea life above and beyond the devastation from the storms. And the storms will get worse as global warming continues to fire up from the pollution created from using oil to begin with. Can we not see we are our own worst environmental enemy in this instance?

It seems to me we’re on a destructive path literally rubbing salt in the wound of global warming by adding yet more oil drills along our coastlines, especially since we are currently witnessing what conservation can do, albeit forced conservation. Over six hundred thousand jobs have been lost in the U.S. so commuting to work is at a low. As a result of lowered demand, oil prices are dropping. In light of this drop in oil prices, doesn’t it seem prudent to conserve first before we rush to drill for more oil? After all, I don’t know too many parents that continuously fuel their kids with money when the kids haven’t shown that they are responsible with the cash in the first place by blowing it on everything they can. Ditto for U.S. oil usage. We consume way too much oil, and just as spoiled children have no business asking for more until we bring our oil habit under control.

Gas will more than likely shoot to $6 per gallon because Ike is now the size of Texas itself and will more than likely destroy rigs and pipeline. So we are to drill elsewhere for more? Isn’t that perpetuating a problem?

We’ve been told by science, not politicians that man may have a hand in the rapid global warming we’re seeing. The administration in play for the past 8 years is an oil administration. They would do and say whatever to keep oil flowing and have. As a result, Americans are doubtful about global warming; more so than citizens of other developed countries that don’t simply shrug global warming off on Al Gore. Other countries are trying to affect change.

Meanwhile, this administration has flat out lied to us about a war, what would make us think especially after the latest news that government regulators party with oil lobbyists that maybe we’ve been lied to by this government about the environment?

And what about all the offshore drilling that everyone wants? Those rigs aren’t hurricane proof either. Hurricane Hannah ran up the side of the east coast, the gulf is getting lambasted now, and the west coast took a beating late winter and early spring this past year. There really is not safe place for a rig, except maybe in your backyard.

But why should we open up our backyards to more oil exploration in the first place when we have almost 70 million acres leased for oil that is producing NADA—absolutely nothing. That type of production would boost our oil by 5 million barrels per day, and enough time to progress with alternatives. Alternatives will insure we no longer have to worry about pipelines and oil rigs getting damaged from what will assuredly be intensified storms due to global warming we’re helping to grow. 

The real fear is that hurricanes running too closely together might join into one mammoth and frightening proposition. Ditto for tornadoes.  Oil is only an interim fix, we need to harness the power of some of that nature we’re seeing attack us.

I wonder how much energy Ike is putting out?

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/23/news/economy/oil_drilling/index.htm?cnn=yes.

The floodwaters in the middle of our country may be dangerous. People are lining up for tetanus shots. If you figure this is America’s farm country, then figure there is a lot of animal dung, pesticides, and fertilizer floating around. Oh and some 55 gallon drums labeled, “corrosive,” are in the swill, like the raunchy flood waters needed any help. 

People returning to their flooded out homes are frightened because the smell is a mix of all the above along with the gas slick that appears on top of stagnant water. One man said he could hardly stand it. And another woman who had a gas mask on said she could still smell it. I’d be worried about someone lighting a match!

Water damage is one thing but to not really know what just traveled through everything in your house is a health hazard. That and the millions of mosquitoes that are spawning from all the standing water. I’m looking around to see if anyone is reporting what the water samples turned up.

Meanwhile, read more about this horrible disaster. Pray that the 27 questionable levees along the swelling Mississippi stay in place, and be thankful that we haven’t seen this kind of action here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25198134

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.”

I ran across an interesting article on Environmental News Service about our changing forests and desert areas. One of my first blogs was about the influx of people to the Southwest where four states depend entirely on the Colorado River, which is supplied with water in the summer months from glacier melt. But the glaciers are slowly disappearing.

The article says that the changes will continue. In that case there will be a big exodus from those states in the future back to places like Michigan. We must keep our Great Lakes clean. Some day those lakes may mean survival for many.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2008/2008-05-28-091.asp

 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 4^th, 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

While I was on the NASA website I couldn’t help but click on ” Forests Damaged by Hurricane Katrina Become Major Carbon Source.” That article stated that, “a research team has estimated that Hurricane Katrina killed or severely damaged 320 million large trees in Gulf Coast forests, which weakened the role the forests play in storing carbon from the atmosphere. The damage has led to these forests releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.” The satellite pics in the article show the devastation from Katrina. It was quite a wipe out.

The NASA article also stated that “[t]he carbon cycle is intimately linked to just about everything we do, from energy use to food and timber production and consumption. [] As more and more carbon is released to the atmosphere by human activities, the climate warms, triggering an intensification of the global water cycle that produces more powerful storms, leading to destruction of more trees, which then act to amplify climate warming.”

So one event, like a massive hurricane, results in deforestation and decay that cause more CO2 to be released, and more overall warming for more massive hurricanes. Destructive cycle seemed to be formed rather easily. Not good for us.

Read more and check out the web short “In Katrina’s Wake” @ http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2007/katrina_carbon.html.

Good news and just in time I think. The Great Lakes Compact looks to be signed off by the last, (Wisconsin), of 8 states that are involved in the agreement to keep Great Lakes water from being diverted elsewhere. The deadline for Wisconsin coming on board is April 17th.  Wisconsin was holding out for changes to the compact that many claim would unravel the whole thing. So either Wisconsin conceded or something changed.

I say this happened just in time because the March 31st issue of Time magazine featured an article on Lake Mead drying up. It looked like the photographs of Lake Chad in Niger Africa that I blogged about in 2006.  Lake Chad was once 10,000 sq mi but is now a mere 500 sq mi., probably less now in 2008. Lake Chad is comparable to some of our Great Lakes. It’s drying up, as is Lake Mead. The Time article said the marks on the surrounding rock show past water levels of Lake Mead that were100 ft. higher.

After that article, I picked up my latest Reader’s Digest May 2008 issue and the special report was titled as a question: “Are we running out of water?” That article highlighted Atlanta’s latest drought, as well as Lake Mead. The whole time I’m thinking about Wisconsin holding out on signing the compact because they are worried about communities outside of the basin getting water from the Great Lakes.  The wells that one of the communities used to rely on are full of radium, so they need lake water more than ever.

But without the compact and as the law reads now for this Wisconsin out-of-basin community, the governors of the Great Lakes basin states can say no to a diversion from the Great Lakes for no reason at all. At least the new rules in the compact set up standards a community must meet to get the water, and as long as the treated wastewater is returned, that community wouldn’t be denied access.  Did Wisconsin ever stop to think that they shouldn’t tick off the other governors by holding up this valuable compact, that those governors could veto the water to this out-of-basin community in the future? It’s doubtful that would happen, considering the moral and ethical implications, but Geez.

I think that we’re all a little spoiled. That Wisconsin community was used to just getting the water without a big hassle before. All they have to do is comply with standards outlined by the new compact, which they probably have been doing all along. So do the paperwork involved for the compliance and get your water already!

And the rest of us in the Great Lakes area are spoiled as well. I live right on the water. It is higher this year than all but one of the past 20 years I’ve lived here. Yet I read about fellow Americans suffering drought and fires elsewhere in the country. The dumb thing is that if climate gets so bad that drought forces millions of Americans out of their homes and migrating back toward the Great Lakes basin to settle, we will be using the water up anyway now won’t we? Instead of pumping it to them, they come here for it. What’s the difference? We’re simply delaying the process with this compact because if the scenario for water scarcity gets worse, we’ll be packed in like sardines around here, and just counting the days to our demise anyway.

We shouldn’t be fooling around about conservation in this country any longer.  We’re seeing some pretty drastic changes in a very short period of time, a lot shorter than ”oh we-don’t-have-to-worry about global warming for ten years!” Right. 

Read about the Great Lakes Compact: http://www.glc.org/about/glbc.html

About finalizing the compact: http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/page/community/post/coryliebmann/C27D

About the holdup in Wisconsin: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=718988