Wednesday, August 22, 2018

It's Time To Light A Fire

We just smashed the record for days above ninety in Portland, and we're not even through August. The historical average is eleven 90+ days each year, unless you're counting just since 2000, which would make it an average of 15,  or since 2014, which pops it up to 22 days, including the previous 2015 record of 29. Can you plot that trajectory, boys and girls? We are not happy. But there's good news. It might not get quite as hot as predicted today because the wildfire smoke is blocking some of the sunlight. Awesome!

Today the sky looks like sun-bleached construction paper, the shade no kid wants to use. Our smoke is mostly coming from Canada and Washington at the moment but it could turn and drift up from southern Oregon and California, where we're keeping our spare fires. California is basically cooked. But there's good news. A lot of the fuel that had built up over the years has been torched so the odds are good that a massive fire won't hit those particular spots again for a while. Awesome!

Wildfires, of course, are another anticipated result of the global warming that has been going on for, primarily, the last fifty years, caused by all the carbon we've porked into the atmosphere, and fire itself puts even more carbon in the air, as does the decaying vegetation left in fire's aftermath; not to mention that the loss of the forests themselves takes away a perfectly good carbon sink that might have helped mitigate the whole clustercaca, so that's a nasty greenhouse feedback loop for us right there. But there's good news. Fire isn't nearly as much of a carbon emissions source as our fossil fuel use. Awesome!

Yes, it's mostly our fossil fuel dependence that has transferred enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to slick the rails to apocalypse. Methane is an even worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but good news! We can totally blame that on termites. Termites and landfills and intensive livestock farming (like when you pack hamburger-on-the-hoof so tight as to rub it bald), and the production and transportation of other fossil fuels, but don't forget the termites, which are not only gassy but 100% natural. Also, a planetary bolus of methane is predicted to belch out of the Arctic any year now, because it's in the permafrost and the permafrost is getting less perma all the time, because of the global warming we created, but good news! We won't have personally put that methane in the air, or gotten any personal use out of it. That's just a collateral-damage kind of thing, like dead civilians in an otherwise profitable war.

Awesome.

Yes, it's true, people have kind of messed everything up, and even though many smart people have been aware of it for a long time and even know what to do about it, we haven't done a single thing, because that would threaten perfectly good money, but good news! The human population is due for a nice culling any time now, what with all the buried legacy viruses that are expected to resurface because of global warming, not to mention the widespread droughts and famine, and loss of water, and war over dwindling resources.

In the face of the clear imperative to move away from fossil fuels as fast as possible, the acting president proposed the exact opposite policy, in statements spiked with random gratuitous insults and racist dog-whistling, delivered in the style of the stupidest kid in second grade--all in all, the most impacted shitwad of sheer brainlessness the world has ever seen, but good news! This probably isn't the apex of imbecility after all!

Because there's always tomorrow.

24 comments:

  1. Remember when we all thought that California would cease to exist by The Great Earthquake dropping it off into the ocean? Good thing I didn't place a hefty bet on that one!

    Here on the east coast, our summers haven't been so much hotter as wetter. It used to be that by this time of year, we'd be getting our annual drought and the usual warnings from the governor not to wash our cars or water our lawns. Boy, the good old days, right? Now we're getting flash flood warnings instead from all the rain we've been having. We're on our way to naming mildew as our state flower. Awesome!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I just have to piggyback on these comments that were made by a fellow U.S. East-coaster. The summer wetness crept up on us over a couple of years, but it is definitely a new normal. Instead of worrying about plants & shrubs being stressed by an August drought, I have to worry about root-rot in our River Birches. And how to get rid of the slimy green moss that coats two levels of decking and threatens to create a lawsuit from slipping tenants. Honestly, there have been some weeks this summer when I have commented to James that we don't have to move to Seattle or Portland, because the weather has come to us.

      Delete
    2. Hey. Guys. We want it BACK. Give it here.

      Delete
    3. What we've got, you don't want. This is northwestern weather on drugs taking us all on a really bad trip.

      Delete
    4. Aww, man. And I'm pretty worried about our nighttime temperatures creeping up. That's what's saved me so far--I can exhaust out the heat in the house at night. This all seems so much more imminent than it did.

      Delete
  2. “Impacted shitwad of sheer brainlessness”! You are on a roll girlfriend! Nobody can craft sentences quite like you. Keep it up please....cuz we all need reasons to smile.

    ReplyDelete
  3. And from smoke choked Seattle, cough, cough, a top of the morning to you too, Murr!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh man, it's worse up there, innit? If the winds shift and we get the California stuff we'll have switched places.

      Delete
  4. I have less sunlight today than you did when you wrote your blog. Part of the staff are wearing coats, here in SW Montana. I wonder if some people will wait until these conditions are expected.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is truly frightening to see all this play out in real time. You'd think it would take longer to warm this bathtub, but no.

      Delete
  5. Your picture of the sun is pretty scary. It reminded me of pics of Pittsburgh in the 1940s-50s, when the steel mill pollution would make the street lights come on in the middle of the day. And yes, you're going to get awards for "impacted shitwad of sheer brainlessness". Love it, love you!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You know, I had something altogether different for that phrase, and it just wasn't punchy enough, and I diddled with it and diddled with it, and finally just settled.

      Delete
  6. It is very scary to see this happening so quickly. Extremely so.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes. Even a few years ago we noted broad changes but thought the impacts we could personally feel were still always a few hypothetical decades away.

      Delete
  7. I remember decades ago working for USDA and sending scientists info on studies on "greenhouse gases" and the "greenhouse effect". Back then (30 years ago) they said the tipping point would be in 20 years unless we changed our lifestyle.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Right! And this was even predicted in the early 1900s. This has not been a big secret. It's a difficult one to address politically, but who knows where we might have been had the Koch brothers not funded the campaign to cast doubt on the science?

      Delete
  8. I heard hints on the TV news that Trumpet had said some stupid things, but I don't know what because I wasn't really paying attention. If I had been I may have been frothing at the mouth angry, but instead I'm my usual calm self, which is either good or bad depending on differing points of view. my own POV? I'd like to remain ignorant as long as possible please.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm carefully navigating a middle ground between awareness and serenity.

      Delete
  9. From the NY Times this week: "WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has hailed its overhaul of federal pollution restrictions on coal-burning power plants as creating new jobs, eliminating burdensome government regulations and ending what President Trump has long described as a “war on coal.”

    The administration’s own analysis, however, revealed on Tuesday that the new rules could also lead to as many as 1,400 premature deaths annually by 2030 from an increase in the extremely fine particulate matter that is linked to heart and lung disease, up to 15,000 new cases of upper respiratory problems, a rise in bronchitis, and tens of thousands of missed school days."

    Our government -- and I use that word loosely -- at work for our benefit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In light of the above statistics, and the fact that the government wants to cancel our health insurance, and reduce Medicare benefits, you have to realize just how much it cares about its citizens. Maybe it just wants to get rid of all the elderly and poor so only the 1 percent will be left.

      Delete
    2. Maybe? MAYBE? The greed of these people knows no end.

      Delete
    3. It will know an end soon. We all will.

      Delete