Tag Archives: global warming

Too Hot

Posted on by

I love how there are still scientists out there who will not commit to saying that climate change is at least part of the cause of our recent severe weather. July was the hottest on record of any month since such records have been kept, and the last 12 months were the warmest such stretch. This isn’t a new thing here people. How many times do we get to hear “last month was the warmest on record” before enough of us wise up to the problem. The New York times reported this today, interviewing Jake Crouch, “a climatologist at the agency’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.” They wrote “Asked whether the July heat record was linked to rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, Mr. Crouch said he could not draw that conclusion.” I get the impression that scientists are afraid to draw the obvious conclusion not because they are scientists but because they are afraid.

At least three scientists, James Hanson, Makiko Sato and Reto Reudy, have been willing to state that climate change is making a difference is out weather. In their report, Perception of Climate Change, they write:

“Climate dice,” describing the chance of unusually warm or cool seasons, have become more and more “loaded” in the past 30 y, coincident with rapid global warming. The distribution of seasonal mean temperature anomalies has shifted toward higher temperatures and the range of anomalies has increased. An important change is the emergence of a category of summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations (3σ) warmer than the climatology of the 1951–1980 base period. This hot extreme, which covered much less than 1% of Earth’s surface during the base period, now typically covers about 10% of the land area. It follows that we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small. 

Note the last sentence. They took some heat for this. There are plenty of people who, mysteriously, continue to look (or not look) at the science and fail to see the problem for what it is. I am a bit mystified by what anyone has to gain by perpetuating the “hoax” of global warming. What scientist wants to be wrong? Why claim something isn’t true? In the science community a falsehood will get found out eventually. It’s not like this is a good thing. That is why it is a problem. Sure, you can call global warming a theory and say it isn’t proven. You wouldn’t be wrong. But you can say gravity is a theory, too. Go ahead and tell people that isn’t real.

Anyway, it has been to hot around here this summer. When we get rain, we get a big storm blasting through. Eighty degrees is now a normal daily temperature. That used to be hot, and plenty uncommon for me. We now use an air conditioner at night too often. What gives with that here? It is not just because we are getting older and can’t stand the same old heat. It ain’t the same old heat. Somebody needs to put in a lake at our house.

Call it controversial. Call it a theory. Call it a debate. Heck, call it Fred. It is not going away. It is hot and the weather is crazy. At some point human caused climate change will be a matter of general knowledge in the United States. We’ll catch up to the rest of the world eventually. In the meantime I am going to go make some cool drinks.

 

UPDATE: Here is another Times article that offers some perspective on the “new normal” with this gem: “it is increasingly clear that we already live in the era of human-induced climate change, with a growing frequency of weather and climate extremes like heat waves, droughts, floods and fires.” That cool drink is going to come in handy.

Eating Around Here

Posted on by

I made dinner tonight and let me tell you it was good stuff.  It was simple, really, but a simple pleasure.  I scrambled up eggs and cheese and we ate it with greens. The greens were as simple as the eggs–leeks, garlic, peppers and kale with some salt and butter.  The combination was tasty, tastier than I thought it would be.  It felt good to eat food so wholesome and healthy.  And it felt good to know that almost everything came from right around here.

The leeks and kale came from our farm share. Our last pick up was Tuesday and we got a lot. We used some of it tonight. The peppers came from our garden–the last of them to be picked. The butter was Cabot butter, so also fairly local. The cheese in the eggs was also Cabot, and the eggs came from Maple Meadow Farm in Salisbury (the eggs could be more local, I admit, but this wasn’t bad). The olive oil traveled far to get to us, as did the salt, but those are hard to get from local sources.

The one thing that was questionable was garlic. That came from a farm somewhere, but that’s all I know. Our farm share did not include garlic several times in a row–they didn’t have a great year. I missed the farmer’s market last Saturday–I couldn’t get there until too late. And our local market, which often has good local produce, didn’t have any local garlic, so I bought what was there, even though I hate not to know the source of my food. Part of the reason we had no garlic was that the garlic I bought at the farmer’s market a couple weeks ago I planted in the ground. I want to make sure I have plenty next year, so I planted all the cloves and hope for them to burst out of the ground in spring. That would make things local, eh?

So our meal had only a few food miles. It is simply crazy that our food system means we can get cheap food that is transported hundreds or thousands or miles. How is it that we can spend 87 calories to get one calorie and not pay more for that one calorie than we do? How is it that we are OK with the poor quality of those strawberries or winter tomatoes when we buy them, out of season? We ship food all over the place so we can eat whatever we want whenever we want it. So we get poor quality food and we burn up all kinds of oil to get it and we pump CO2 into the atmosphere like mad (literally) when we could could have better food at less real cost if we ate locally. So I try to do that.

Having a garden helps. Taking part in a community supported agriculture program helps. Living in Vermont helps, as local food is available much of the year because people care about it. And canning and freezing helps, too, as that means we can spread the harvest out over the cold months. I am new to canning but thanks to my parents giving me a tutorial, I have canned my second batch of jam. I have pesto and pumpkin and soup in the freezer and will freeze more. I could do better and, with some experience and over time, I will. Pulling pesto out of the freezer in January is just about the best thing ever.

Keeping my food miles down is important. I don’t want my food traveling more in a year than I do. It is one thing I, and collectively we, can do to make a difference to abate global warming. Eating locally can make a big difference in limiting carbon emissions, since we all need to eat. One day we will be forced to eat more locally, since oil will get expensive and raspberries from temperate climes won’t be cheap to ship in the winter. Plus, food usually tastes better if it hasn’t traveled half way around the world. And it has more in it, so it is healthier. Sure, if we eat locally we don’t get to have anything we want whenever we want it, but waiting for things makes them sweeter, sometimes literally. And I can wait for a little sweetness.

(This post is part of Blog Action Day).