Misty ground fog this early Wednesday on California’s north coast — a couple of hours ago, from all appearances, we were going to be treated to a lately-rare sunshine morning, with clear skies eastward, and the first, startling rays of sunlight topping the mountains.
However, this tale has been told.
Shoreline weather has a life of its own — fog nearly-always trumps sunshine, though, wind actually carries the day.
Changes in the environment up here are a bit muted…
(Illustration found here).
Not so in many parts of the world, out beyond our deep, wet-gray blanket. Even quick, too. This year is supposedly on track to be the hottest year ever, but 2015 was a tough one to beat — in all categories, all linked to increasing heat.
From the Guardian yesterday afternoon:
The world is careening towards an environment never experienced before by humans, with the temperature of the air and oceans breaking records, sea levels reaching historic highs and carbon dioxide surpassing a key milestone, a major international report has found.
The “state of the climate” report, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) with input from hundreds of scientists from 62 countries, confirmed there was a “toppling of several symbolic mileposts” in heat, sea level rise and extreme weather in 2015.
“The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” Michael Mann, a leading climatologist at Penn State, told the Guardian.
“They are playing out before us, in real time. The 2015 numbers drive that home.”
Last year was the warmest on record, with the annual surface temperature beating the previous mark set in 2014 by 0.1C.
This means that the world is now 1C warmer than it was in pre-industrial times, largely due to a huge escalation in the production of greenhouse gases.
The UN has already said that 2016 is highly likely to break the annual record again, after 14 straight months of extreme heat aided by a hefty El Niño climatic event, a weather event that typically raises temperatures around the world.
The oceans, which absorb more than 90 percent of the extra CO2 pumped into the atmosphere, also reached a new record temperature, with sharp spikes in the El Niño-dominated eastern Pacific, which was 2C warmer than the long-term average, and the Arctic, where the temperature in August hit a dizzying 8C above average.
Other than that…
Nothing heavy, only mankind’s survival — the jarring white noise of life is apparently drowning-out the scream of quickly-impending calamity, then just for real-good measure, throw in the blare of a really, really fucked US presidential race, and bingo…downplaying the serious.
As if — ‘“…get the baby out of here.”‘