Fog-bound again this early Friday on California’s north coast — temporary if the recent past reflects the current future.
Most-likely sunny and breezy in a coupe of hours.
Climate-wise the past is killing the future (via Scientific American): ‘Climate change has claimed its first confirmed mammal extinction. The tiny Bramble Cay melomys (also known as the Bramble Cay mosaic-tailed rat, Melomys rubicola) has been declared extinct…‘
And further south, the Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) are approaching the same fate (National Geographic) as ‘…new research from the University of Delaware suggests that unique 21st-century climates may pose an existential threat to many of the colonies on the Antarctic continent.’
(Illustration: Salvador Dali’s ‘Exploding Raphaelesque Head,’ found here).
Help might be too late — per Gizmodo this past Wednesday:
Barring some incredible new carbon capture technology, the window for limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius appears to have closed.
That’s the stark conclusion of a report out in Nature today, which finds that the carbon reductions pledges penned into the Paris Agreement are ridiculously inadequate for keeping our climate within a safe and stable boundary.
Meanwhile, closer to home — from the Guardian on Thursday:
Scorching wildfires that are raging throughout the American south-west are being fueled by climate change and require new strategies from states to prevent ever-greater destruction of people’s lives and property, a group of experts have warned.
High temperatures, drought and wind have combined to create a number of fires that have caused at least two deaths in California.
The first large wildfire of the summer has this week broken out in northern California, burning through more than 1,200 acres and threatening thousands of homes in an area around 50 miles north-east of Sacramento.
And onward — via yesterday’s Raw Story:
Climate scientists this week expressed alarm after “unprecedented” data showed the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream crossing the Equator.
In a column on Tuesday, environmental blogger Robert Scribbler noted that the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream had merged with the Southern Hemisphere Jet Stream.
“It’s the very picture of weather weirding due to climate change. Something that would absolutely not happen in a normal world,” he wrote.
“Something, that if it continues, basically threatens seasonal integrity.”
“Like many extreme events resulting from human-forced climate change — this co-mingling of upper level airs from one Hemisphere with another is pretty fracking strange,” Scribbler explained.
“Historically, the Tropics — which produce the tallest and thickest air mass in the world — have served as a mostly impenetrable barrier to upper level winds moving from one Hemisphere to another. But as the Poles have warmed due to human-forced climate change, the Hemispherical Jet Streams have moved out of the Middle Latitudes more and more. ”
And happy Fourth of July as Americans hit the highway (Climate Central): ‘This winter, for the first time since 1979, carbon dioxide emissions from cars, trucks and SUVs surpassed the carbon pollution from electric power plants, which have been America’s chief climate polluter for more than 35 years, U.S. Energy Information Administration data released this week show.’
On the way to grandma’s house…the past, not the future.