Foggy-dark-already this early-evening Monday here on California’s north coast, closing time to another dark day which did carry occasional sparks of sunlight through low-hanging clouds, briefly shinning, then returning to dismal.
Supposedly wet the next few hours — according to the NWS, there’s about an 80-percent chance of rain tonight, drawing-down to maybe 30-percent tomorrow.
Fog again by mid-week.

Although right now, our weather can be depressing, but it’s a way-lot more comfortable than most other places. Our climate makes some good weather, which has been pretty much the same for a long time. Wrench-in-the-works, of course, is climate change and there’s no escaping it.
Time is way-way-crucial.
Kelly Levin, a senior associate at the World Resources Institute’s climate program (today’s Business Insider): ‘“The choices that we make today are going to have profound impacts.”‘

One measurable characteristic of a heating climate is sea-level rise from melting polar ice, and especially a concern for us along the California coast, melting ice in Antarctica puts us essentially “in the bull’s-eye” for heavy shoreline flooding.
Last February saw the release of California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment (pdf), which covered climate change forecasts for Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, Del Norte and Siskiyou counties, indicating temperature rise and sea-level rise (via Times-Standard):

“Humboldt County has approved a number of flood plain developments where in essence we are saying ‘it’s OK to build on the plain as long as you build 2 feet above the 100-year flood level,’” said Jen Kalt, executive director of Humboldt Baykeeper.
“We can’t plan for these things by looking in the rearview mirror anymore.
“We have to plan moving forward in a time of abrupt climate change.”

As if on cue, as reported last week at CBC/Radio-Canada:

New research says major climate threats to Arctic communities, ecosystems and infrastructure could come much sooner than expected as vast areas of permafrost continue to thaw.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, says permafrost thaw in the region will likely drive “abrupt” climate change that will happen with “little or no warning.”
Most alarming, the authors found the severity of wildfires in the Northwest Territories and Yukon could double from one year to the next and stay at that higher rate.

Bernardo Teufel, one of the study’s authors and a PhD student at McGill University: ‘“One of the main takeaways is just to … not keep this idea that climate change is going to be slow or that climate change is not a problem until …  the end of the century.”‘
Although directed toward Canada, the info is for everybody.

A confirmation maybe of that shit yesterday at the Guardian — a new study on how our altering environment is allowing the spread of disease, previously geographically limited:

“There’s long been concern that melting Arctic sea ice could allow disease to pass between the Atlantic and the Pacific,” Tracey Goldstein, an expert in marine animal diseases at the University of California, Davis, and one of the lead authors of a report, said.
“Now here we are.”

“Why-ain’t-they-turnin’?”

Yes, indeed…

(Illustration found here).