Climate Lynx

Today I pulled out a couple sewing projects. One was a pair of old jeans. I guess I will never be a fashion guru, I still mend the holes. I adhere to the old saying a stitch in time saves nine.   My sewing project coincided with listening to the CNN Climate Townhall and reading the Time magazine article on Mississippi River Flooding. Climate wise, the last time we could have pulled out our climate needle and put in a couple climate stitches was 1989. In 1989 the United Nations assembled the best climate scientists to assess the challenge. There was widespread agreement among the scientists of all participating nations. Despite Republican President George Bush’s pledge to confront the greenhouse effect with the White House effect, he directed his Chief of Staff, John Sununu, to torpedo the UN effort.   We cannot go back to a single stitch inexpensive solution.   The opportunity was lost. Except for a carbon fee and dividend, (HR763), there are no low budget easy fixe...

I am going to unashamedly plagiarize Elizabeth Kolbert’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, “The Sixth Extinction”. As you know I have affection for forests. Perhaps because of her in-depth research she has even more affection based on her deeper understanding. At a minimum she is far more articulate so you might consider reading her book. The earth is big. When I went to work on the other side of the world it was a trip I dreaded. It took twenty-four hours, and sometimes , in cramped accommodations to cross the massive Atlantic or even bigger Pacific ocean. Crossing the ocean on our MSC ships took over a week running 24 hours a day. When ferrying helicopters from Alaska to Texas it would take three full days of pushing the aircraft along as fast as it would go. Most of this was spent traversing the great Canadian Boreal Forest. Ms Kolbert takes us on an imaginary trip from the North Pole to Peru. She entertainingly describes the different forest regions on the way. Even though I h...

I think I can safely say we take energy for granted. Most of us think of energy only when we put gas in the tanks of our cars. If you think of energy in the form essential for our survival, it is what we eat. In the natural world survival is the balance between calories eaten versus calories expended finding something to eat. This bare bone view of life was emphasized by my military survival instructors. Later, biologists refined my understanding. Before I pass on what the biologists patiently explained to me, let’s take energy understanding back one page. For all practical purposes the sun provides all sustainable energy. Plants, via photosynthesis, compete for the sun’s energy and turn photons (light energy) into sugars, starches, proteins and fats, we call food. Their ability to do this is what makes the third rock from the sun a blue green vibrant sphere instead of just a hunk of stone. Each plant at germination, has a game-plan to compete with, and sometimes to partner with,...

I spent many hours taking notes from various science magazines on the pace of climate deterioration the last couple weeks. Summing them up, the globe is still warming, and the weather spawned by the warming is progressively becoming worse. Prior to the election, in an aspirational and optimistic mood, I hand painted signs saying, “Vote Joe Climate Hero”.   I am not going to write about our new administration. I am going to write about another positive action which occurred prior to President Biden being sworn in.   It is called the bus, the omnibus. The omnibus is a way of moving legislation forward when all else fails. It happened at the end of 2020. Here is how Wikipedia describes omnibus legislation: An omnibus bill is a proposed law that covers several diverse or unrelated topics. Omnibus is derived from Latin and means "to, for, by, with or from everything". An omnibus bill is a single document that is accepted in a single vote by a legislature but packages togethe...

82 weeks ago, 82 columns ago, climate change awareness was perhaps 50/50 equally divided between those who accepted overwhelming science and those mired in unsupportable denial. Each were entrenched in their ideological fighting positions. My hope, by starting this column, was to bring awareness to as many people as I could. To be honest, I was not optimistic. My first columns focused on how people form opinions; the psychological fallacies we trick ourselves with, our underlying weakness to ignore truth to meet social pressure, and our primitive tribal wiring. The columns moved on to the long history of climate science and the remarkable geniuses we have ignored. Here and there I sprinkled in the obvious climate changes. Now and then I mentioned the basic physics and chemistry that underpin all science. Have the columns made a difference? Certainly, the American climate awareness has become much higher in the last three years. It is my hope the column WNBPA has graciously give...