Climate Lynx

  Inflation is getting worse in the age of rapid human-caused climate change. What causes inflation? Supply and demand govern economics. Here are the basics: If there is not enough bread and people are hungry, the price of bread goes up. If people have plenty of bread or decide they would rather eat turnips, the price goes down. During Covid, essential quarantines were imposed here and in China. The economic worry then   was that consumers would not have money to spend. This would have collapsed the economy into a depression. The Federal Government and the Federal Reserve jumped in and injected money. Adding money to the economic system is inflationary, but while inflation is ugly,  we must be thankful we did not slide into recession. Also, during COVID-19, the Chinese manufacturing base and the supply chain from China to our retail stores were ravaged. Before this, we had a steady stream of cheap Chinese goods, so the marketplace jacked the prices up when these bec...

More than ten years ago, I decided to investigate the claims that we were warming our earth with potentially devastating consequences. I spent a long time going through the websites of reputable science organizations like the IPCC, NASA, NOAA AMS, AAAS, ACS, AGU, NAS, and many others. The results were repetitive and 100% in agreement. The earth was warming. Humans burning coal, oil, and gas were the cause. Temperature records were being set worldwide. If we wanted to avoid extreme weather, the challenge was to transition to energy that does not emit greenhouse gases (ghgs). When I got into this, scientists' rough timeline for success was to cease emitting ghgs around 2080 to 2100.   After months of digging into the issue, the massive accumulation of ghgs plus the tipping points we were triggering, made me skeptical of the scientist's timeline. "When is Mother Nature going to make her run?" I muttered to myself. "It must be soon."   The Paris Climat...

The WMO is the World Meteorological Organization, an agency that promotes international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology, and geophysics. It has 193 member countries and territories. The WMO's roots started in 1873 with the formation of the International Meteorological Organization. Its name changed in 1950 when it became an intergovernmental organization affiliated with the United Nations. The WMO sets the standards for meteorological observations. It is the international authoritative voice on the state and behavior of the Earth's atmosphere, its interaction with the land and oceans, the weather, and climate. Since weather, climate, and the water cycle know no national boundaries, international cooperation at a global scale is essential to making weather forecasting better. Thus, the WMO has a decisive role in contributing to the safety and welfare of humanity. As such, one of the goals of the WMO is immediate disaster risk reduction via weathe...

  Courage is the first of human qualities because it's the quality that guarantees the others. –Aristotle When it comes to saving our kids' future, there may be no person who has been on the front line longer and more courageously than James Hansen.  Climate Scientist James Hansen has devoted his life to solving the climate crisis. From 1967 to 2013, he was the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He is best known for his 1988 testimony to Congress on Climate Change. Many well-respected scientists like Carl Sagan had, over the years, previously testified. Still, as head of one of our premier science agencies, it was Hansen who officially sounded the alarm.  ] Hansen testified that "Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming...It is already happening now," and "The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is...

My girlfriend and I cruised along on our bikes riding the Iron Belle Trail last week.  We passed a man walking his bike. Wondering if he had mechanical problems, I slowed down and asked if everything was OK. He said he was a little hot and decided to walk in the shade. We rode on but, knowing the insidious nature of heat disorders, we turned around and offered him some water. He had his own and thanked us. We checked our smartphones for the temperature. It was 75F. I watched a touching program on Sunday morning TV. One of the grocery baggers for a woman in a Texas grocery store was an elderly veteran. He was 90 and working in 90-degree heat. The good Samaritan woman felt the bagger, at 90 years old (or maybe in this case,90 years young) and working in 90-degree heat, was serving beyond the call of duty. She raised a considerable sum of money for him via GoFundMe. Now, if he wishes, he can retire. I wonder if he will. He seemed like an old workhorse content with the noble princi...