Clear and cold this late-afternoon Friday here on California’s north coast — best to enjoy the sunshine as rain is forecast for Saturday, and will supposedly continue until maybe Monday evening.
Along with the wet, high winds expected for at least tomorrow.
Just a couple of sunny days next week, then more rain called-for starting on Thursday.
Time of the season…
Near normal our daily weather, a period of rain during winter, adjusting to the changes in the climate, of course, which is warming. The climate crisis creates shit beyond weather — via Lost Coast Outpost last week and environmental effect on the northern California commercial Dungeness crab season due to poor meat quality:
The northern Dungeness crab fishery is delayed until 12:01 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 16, 2019 pending another round of testing tentatively scheduled on or around Dec. 1.
If these results indicate good quality and there is no area under an additional domoic acid delay, the fishery will open Monday, Dec. 16, and be preceded by a 64-hour gear setting period that would begin 8:01 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 13, 2019.
If tests continue to show low quality crab, the season will be delayed again, but no later than Jan. 15. The last two years that happened.
Some background per the Guardian last Wednesday:
Crab season in California has been shrinking for at least half a decade because of factors related to climate change.
Marine heatwaves have moved krill, the whales’ preferred food, closer to shore, luring more whales into the waters that crabbers have traditionally trawled.
Warming oceans have also lead blooms of toxic algae that made shellfish potentially unsafe to eat, shutting down the fisheries for months in 2015 and causing delays in 2016 and 2018.
This year, the delays along California’s central coast due to the presence of whales aren’t the only setback for crabbers.
Along the coast of northern California, Oregon and Washington, fishermen have had to push back their start date because of concerns the crabs have not grown large and meaty enough — another sign that the climate crisis may have shifted the ocean food webs and left crabs without enough to eat.
“To me, all of this is a case study in human institutions failing to keep up with changes in the ocean driven by climate,” said Noah Oppenheim, who heads the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, a local industry group.
As if in tandem, also reported that same day, and also from the Guardian:
The world may already have crossed a series of climate tipping points, according to a stark warning from scientists.
This risk is “an existential threat to civilisation”, they say, meaning “we are in a state of planetary emergency”.
Tipping points are reached when particular impacts of global heating become unstoppable, such as the runaway loss of ice sheets or forests.
In the past, extreme heating of 5C was thought necessary to pass tipping points, but the latest evidence suggests this could happen between 1C and 2C.
The planet has already heated by 1C and the temperature is certain to rise further, due to past emissions and because greenhouse gas levels are still rising.
The scientists further warn that one tipping point, such as the release of methane from thawing permafrost, may fuel others, leading to a cascade.
The researchers, writing in a commentary article in the journal Nature, acknowledge that the complex science of tipping points means great uncertainty remains.
But they say the potential damage from the tipping points is so big and the time to act so short, that “to err on the side of danger is not a responsible option”.
They call for urgent international action.
“A saving grace is that the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping could still be under our control to some extent,” they write.
“The stability and resilience of our planet is in peril. International action – not just words – must reflect this.”
No matter the horror of climate change, maybe an even bigger horror is the pathologically-unhinged orange-turd in the Oval Office — most-likely humanity’s biggest enemy.
Alarming view by way of E&ENews, and once again, from last Wednesday:
Ask environmental experts what would happen to the global climate fight if President Trump were reelected, and the answer is often the same.
“God help us all,” said David Hayes, executive director of the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center at the New York University School of Law.
“A second term would be a disaster in general,” said Dominick DellaSala, president and chief scientist of the Geos Institute.
“It will not be good,” said Andrew Light, who served as a senior adviser on climate change under former President Obama.
Their grim outlook reflects broad concern about the intersection of Trump’s reelection and the planetary battle against climate change.
A big reason is time.
A second Trump term — ending in January 2025 — would overlap with a shrinking window to avert the worst impacts of global warming, including loss of sea ice, more intense heat waves and accelerated sea-level rise.
…
A recent Rhodium Group analysis looked at what would happen to carbon dioxide emissions if all of Trump’s major environmental rollbacks took effect in his second term.
It found that CO2 emissions would soar by 1.9 to 3.1 gigatons cumulatively from now through 2035.
The climate impact of that increase cannot be overstated, said Hannah Pitt, an analyst at the Rhodium Group and the author of the analysis.
“That’s more than the annual emissions of 70% of countries on Earth combined,” Pitt said.
“So it’s a lot of emissions.”
Put another way, pumping up to 4.2 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere would take the world closer to a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, a point at which irreversible climate change could be locked in.
Unfortunately, we’re in a situation seemingly best described by Pinball: “I don’t know how to tell ya this, Cyrus, but we are three white guys short. Or as they say in Ebonics, ‘We be fucked.'”
(Illustration found here).