We Have A Problem
The new predictions for this year’s hurricane season are out, and they are not comforting.
The Mid West is experiencing a record number of tornadoes and people are dying. Plants are budding and blooming sooner than ever. We have 100-year floods occurring every 10 years. The fire season has started sooner than ever. The world is in trouble, and the weather patterns are changing.
When do the powers that be figure out that it is time to do something before we run out of options? Will reducing pollution and greenhouse gases cost money? Absolutely. Will it cost as much as the tornadoes, wild fires, floods, droughts, and hurricanes we are currently experiencing? Not bloody likely.
6 comments
Meanwhile, the air in Houston smelled so wretched last night that it literally made me physically sick. After dashing as quickly as possible from Stella’s apartment to my own, holding my nose along the way, I checked the TCEQ air pollution web site. The Houston area reported only a “moderate” level of particulates, so I drilled down to the individual monitor locations. While the levels were not at their highest, almost every location within the area that ever reports pollution was reporting it last night; I’ve never seen that before. Tonight, two more monitors are reporting “moderate” levels of particulates, in addition to all of those from last night. I’d try cowering under the covers, but I think the air would find me anyway. And we don’t even live that close to the major industrial areas.
The short version: as a society, we are putting so much crap in the air that no one should be surprised if weather patterns are beginning to change. And it may be (or may not, but probably will prove to be) a done deal… i.e., the changes we needed to make to avoid this needed to be made over a decade ago. Heaven help us all.
Meanwhile, Bryan, I suspect both of us need to start checking our hurricane stockpiles early this year.
In the midwest, it’s been kind of scary, and it’s just the beginning of the season. I was at the nightjob, for one of the storms. We didn’t have to go anywhere, though, we were already in the basement. We just kept on working. Those sirens were noisy.
To paraphrase the “Queen of Mean”, Leona Helmsley – “Only the little people suffer from natural disasters”.
My supplies keep getting rotated, Steve. It’s a habit.
This year is just freaky. It’s raining where it never rains and not raining where it should. It is just too unpredictable.
I was thinking of you, OWL, and the Mule from Blondesense when those storms roared through. There have always been storms, but this early and not this many.
We should have been doing something for a while, but that doesn’t mean it won’t help to start now to do something to improve things starting with the power plants.
Meanwhile, the polar ice pack is getting thinner and soon won’t support the weight of polar bears. Since the ice pack is their only feeding ground, I think every greenhouse skeptic and world leader should be required to share their bedroom with a displaced polar bear until the ice pack returns. It’s only fair that they should face the consequences of their opinions.
In Arctic survival we were warned that the polar bear is one of the few creatures on the planet that is not afraid of humans and will hunt them. If the ice packs don’t form the bears will hunt the people along the shore instead of seals.
It is past time to do something and waiting will only make it more expensive.