Climate Lynx

  First, if you do not care what kind of extreme weather your kids or grand kids will deal with in the future there is no reason to read this column. How extreme the weather becomes is a direct result of the cumulative carbon dioxide we emit. Transportation is attributed with 25% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. Of this 25% about 45% is passenger vehicle pollution, road freight is 30%, shipping is 11%, passenger and freight rail is 1%, and aviation is accountable for 11%.   (2% Other). If we want to travel producing the least carbon pollution what are the considerations? If you are serious about reducing your carbon footprint, I suggest you do a little research as there is a lot of interesting reading and a lot of nuances. This column is only an introduction. In most situations, air travel creates the most carbon pollution per mile traveled. The takeoff and climb are particularly fuel intensive because the plane is lifting you, your buds, a load of fuel, and the ai...

  In my first 70 years I dreamed very little but lately I dream much of the night. Sometimes I am back on the outdoor ice-rink in Minneapolis playing hockey. All my buds and I are outside giving our all to push a black biscuit into the mouth of a makeshift goal. Sometimes I am back at the Air Force Academy where I was introduced to downhill skiing which fueled my dream of being a ski bum. Perhaps I am lucky the Air Force had other ideas for me as my friends, observing my skill vs speed, told me I would not live to see 30. Now, the knees won’t let me be a ski bum but that does not mean I can’t dream of skiing with my old buds and girlfriends. My best dreams come from the UP. When I was stationed at K.I. Sawyer AFB my roommate introduced me to cross-country skiing. This was the pinnacle of pleasure. I could ski every evening. There was no driving to ski slopes, no lift lines, just the silence, splendor, and slide on snow. Cross-country ski dreams are very pleasant. When I was in ...

Warning: This is not a three-minute read. When confronted with weather and climate, if one does not know the science, it seems both are beyond understanding and in the realm of TV meteorologists, gods, or magic. After all, the weather arrives on a wind, is often invisible, and forms giant white mountains of fury right over our heads. It was not until the mid-1850s when the famous Royal Navy Admiral Fitzroy applied science to forecast weather that we began to understand weather. Due to his diligent work mankind began attributing weather to science phenomena rather than the wrath of God. Climate science and the resulting extreme weather can seem closer to cruel magic than science. Years ago, I set out to understand it. What puzzled me was why a mere one degree C rise in global temperatures, that is only 1.8 degrees F rise, could give us so many floods and areas of drought. I had figured out why carbon pollution from burning coal, oil and gas was heating the earth and why the ocea...

  My partner and I have been planning to visit some of my relatives in British Columbia and ski. On the 15 th of November she sent me a message. Eleven BC roads to Vancouver were cut by floods. I did a search. Not only were all roads to the third largest metro area in Canada cut, but the mighty Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railroads were too. The rails, and many of the roads, remain washed out or covered with mudslides. One train derailed because of washed out tracks. This area, in two days, received a months worth of rain via an atmospheric river. Climate change laid siege to a city of over 2 million. There hasn’t been much coverage of the plight of British Columbians in the US media. I wonder why? Flooding is the most expensive of all the climate change carnage in the USA. Perhaps we are getting tired of hearing about the obvious. Flooding is increasing everywhere in places like La Paz, Vancouver, Sardinia, Germany, Egypt, Sri Lanka, China, and India. Houston in ...