Climate Change: Action in Service to Our Planet and its Ecosystem

I don’t remember a summer like this.  It has been in the 90’s (30’s Celsius) every day for the past month.  That, and the Ohio humidity, make working in the garden enjoyable only in the early morning and evening this July.  The heat has been oppressive.  But today I am hoping that we will be blessed with an afternoon thunderstorm that will extinguish the heat and provide a good show of nature’s pyrotechnics: thunder and lightning.  My favorite.  Nowhere else do I perceive the dance of nature as readily as in a good storm.  And the accompanying microvita (Microvita:  infinitesimally small bits of energy or life force) is so invigorating.

I can see the storms moving across the valley, but now they are moving south, and will miss the land that I work on.  Well, I accept it.  Disappointment recedes.  At least the breeze is cooler.  Weather continues to teach. 

            A month ago, in the town of Verkhoyansk Siberia it reached 38°C.  They say it was the highest ever recorded north of the Arctic circle.  I wonder what it did to their kale.  If I water mine it seems happy.  But I cannot leave for a vacation with a clear conscience. 

According to the World Weather Attribution project, climate researchers used mathematical probability models to prove that it was essentially impossible for an event like Siberia to happen without human induced climate change.  Coincident with this are record low levels of sea ice, wildfires, and loss of permafrost.  The loss of sea ice will lead to less reflected sunlight and more warming of the arctic ocean.  The Wildfires will release more CO2.  And the warming of permafrost will release methane, another greenhouse gas.  All this providing more cause for the warming of the Arctic at double the rate of other areas of the world.  The mathematics does not lie.  Only the most intransient can hang on to the idea that the change in the weather is just a normal variation.

“I can see the storms moving across the valley, but now they are moving south, and will miss the land that I work on.  Well, I accept it.  Disappointment recedes.  At least the breeze is cooler.  Weather continues to teach.”

We have made our bed and we may have to sleep in it.  But this I am not going to accept. And to that end I hope this blog bring will some science and some hope to be pulling us all together as we deal with the biggest threat that we may experience as a species.