esrosedotblog

The desert is the first line of serious damage to nature from climate change.

This wonderful article, full of photos, is from our local paper. Miraculously produced by a small town, usually second rate bunch of newsies, it is a complete and thorough enough summary of the status of desert warming that we are likely to find.

Struggle for Survival by Ian James.

I have to hand it to them. It is a superbly written and illustrated story of a slow motion train wreck.

I have spent enough time in the desert, walking and looking around, to have seen many of these animals or their traces. When we were first here I traipsed through all the parks and preserves. Not so much now.

It was amazing to realize how much life was in the desert. Little flowers, small plants. Scurrying sounds, animals fleeing my invasion. I have seen the horned toads and the little desert rat/mouse. No turtles except in preserves where they were being taken care of.

This turtle has a little green on his mouth. Grass stains. He is a vegetarian, eats plant food. He is living pretty well then. They don't look for much. But it is being denied them.

There are several preserves here that cater to the lost and damaged animals that are found. They have exhibits. The Desert Museum here had an outstanding collection but they moved it and put in all art. The stress of an artificial life was too much. It was an act of kindness to move the animals to a more natural place.

There has been over a one degree change in the average temperature here. A lot, actually. And a long protracted drought in all of California.

It is getting harder and harder to scoff at the statistics and the narratives of people who stalk and walk the deserts on a regular basis. They count, they observe, they despair at the losses they find. Empty turtle shells seem the saddest. These are prehistoric creatures after all and have made it this far.

Many animals and birds will be able to move north or to change their habitat. Not so the turtle. He moves very slowly and needs his food close by.

It is encouraging that there is clear desert all the way north for a very long distance before the mountains begin. But then, it is all uphill.

We have built highways and roads in so many places this puts a considerable burden on any ability any animal has to migrate.

Take a look at the interactive map. It is upsetting but shows what is going on more graphically. What we have is not so much moving habitat but more concentrated islands of survival. This can only mean a tighter and narrowing retrenchment until there is nothing left at all.

Labels: desert, global warming

Palm Springs is getting warmer by the year. It pretty much demonstrates what The Sixth Extinction, see below, is talking about.

The average temperature has risen. The area had had average temperatures 3.4 degrees hotter and average nighttime lows 6 degrees warmer in the last 20 years.

Joshua Trees Losing Ground to Global Warming

It seems weird that a desert plant would not like more desert like conditions, but the joshua tree, an almost totally local plant species, is not happy.

We have been here for 16 of those 20 years and I can't say I have noticed this.

Hot is hot and relatively hotter temperatures would have to be hotly hotter to be on my radar.

Right now, I welcome the heat. We knew what we were getting into when we moved here. We had come out to stay here for several weeks at a time in the torrid summer.

One nice thing about the heat is that, oddly, a lot of people here don't like it. This is particularly true, of course, with the snowbirds who flee at the first hit on the 90 degree scale.

But it is also true of many "locals" who are here more or less for the full year.

Many people get a small place up on the mountain at Idyllwild to sit out the heat. That is a considerable hardship in my view. There are limited amenities there and so they all have to trek down the windy roads to get here. 35 miles per hour max.

There is also Big Bear, across the 10 and up the mountain. We are going there for a visit at the end of the month to check it out. There is a lake, Big Bear. The only nearby water.

Then I will be going back east in July and return to San Diego in August. So I shouldn't be too dismissive of those who make a more explicit escape.

The heat, when it is on, cooks. It gets inside me. It is visceral, literally. A nice feeling in many ways but one that I can only take for an hour or two. Then into the air.

It beats hurricane season in Florida or humidity in the same place. Our humid days are laughably mild compared to locations in other parts of the country. Mostly because it is so hot, the comfort index is pretty hard to smash in the desert. But you have to take it hot to realize it.

Labels: desert, global warming, Palm Springs

It looks like we are headed straight for the shitter.

I just finished reading The Sixth Extinction (2013)

That's us folks. All about the five times the world made a huge paradigm shift. Millions of years. Many causes. All interesting.

Now we are in the sixth shift. Man caused.

Not much to do about it. Humans started fucking with the "balance" from the beginning.

Colbert is good about one thing. She more or less shows man's depredations as just another evolutionary change and, to a great extent, inevitable.

In a way, I kind of felt this inevitability to be comforting. It is all happening, it has been happening for a long time and it will continue to happen. If looked at in the right way it is just a natural consequence of nature and how it works. There have been other life extinctions and this will be another one.

By "extinction" of course, we mean that almost every living thing gets snuffed. An asteroid hit and nearly wiped us clean. Volcanos erupted and covered a lot of places in ash. Now we have smokestacks in Illinois. And every place else. Automobiles. Our houses, our agriculture, our very presence.

So, barring our all committing suicide and letting our bodies rot into the ground, there is no stopping it.

One thing is sure. I won't be here.

Climate change which is now undeniable except to a few rock heads is the most obvious outcome, the measurable visible one.

There is no doubt that it is happening. Whether it is a blip on the curve or if we are headed to a big hot spell where it all steams away is up in the air, so to speak.

It is also up for conjecture about how long it will take. This warming to extinction.

I won't be around which does allow a little detachment. Not much.

I have never been much of a worrier about posterity. Is that right? Posterity is what comes after me, right? I am too self centered.

If the times before now were bad and the times ahead worse, then I have lived in a pretty good time and it is all I know. My issues, such as they are, are local. My age. How much longer I will be robust and engaged. Whether I have time to get another dog. Things like that. None of which, except maybe the dog in a few months, I can do anything about.

I have always been one that believed "they" would figure out how to deal with the climate changing and the water rising. To tell you the truth, I don't worry much about the fact that some buildings along the coastline will get wiped out. They shouldn't have been built there in the first place.

In fact, the place I am staying on my July trip won't be there either, Scituate Harbor. But it is there now. And I am going to go there and smell the sea air and not worry about which generation is going to have to put on boots and wade out of the area to higher ground. To say nothing of wearing loincloths and sleeping in caves.

Wait. Didn't we already do that? Yes. It is in the book I am writing about here.

Labels: extinction, global warming

SHAKING THE TRUE DISBELIEVERS

I put the film Chasing Ice in my queue some time ago. This is one reaction to it by a true righty. A Bill Reilly fan.

Labels: global warming

STORM CENTER

Jeez. Now it's the "superstorm".

If Quakes Weren’t Enough, Enter the ‘Superstorm’

I know we have the drainage for the 100 year storm. The sluices and waterways are huge.

They say that there was a hundred year storm in the 60's. It took out the Bogert bridge, parts of Indian Canyon Drive and a piece of 111.

Here is more than you need to know about the Flood Control District and flooding in Riverside County. Some of it is about our part of it here in the eastern section. The "rivers and creeks" referred to here are largely dry and small except when it rains and are natural flood courses off the mountains.

A big problem here are the boulders that are rolled down the sides of the mountains and into the courses in any storm. They break dams and bridges and, occasionally, some people.

So, if it already happened in the 60's, doesn't that mean we are safe for fifty more?

I guess not.

Somehow the yahoos do not get that the effects of global warming are not simple temperature effects. They will be storm effects. Weather patterns will shift and become more fierce.

Our condo has a pretty high ceiling. If we can rig up something we will stay above the ten feet.

But I don't know about the boulders. We are in the middle of our four unit section. Lee and Francis will get it first. Then us.

Labels: condo, desert, global warming, weather

GREEN POWER

Usually algae are a pain in the ass.

They are out there now, in my fountain, creating a scum that I will have to knock back with bleach which will, in turn, turn off the humming birds who like to drink there.

Algae is ubiquitous and thrives on less than perfect conditions.

It loves certain pollutants and will grow when other stuff falters.

So now, something positive for algae to do.

Exploring Algae as Fuel

I sort of majored in microbiology when I went to school. Well, food processing with the microbes thrown in.

So I am interested in this.

The obvious problem is that algae is so un-dense that it would take a lot before you would have enough to get a good burn. For one thing, it takes a lot of water to get it going. And then it has to be suspended. It isn't like the corn thing which is inefficient enough.

It is interesting though. At this point, I think that anything that offers even a dim possiblity should get a shot at solving the CO2 problem. Algae eats CO2 incidentally.

Actually, it will probably be here long after we are.

Labels: ecology, global warming

DENIAL

Labels: global warming

INDEPENDENT

I am proud to say that my very own Representative Mary Bono Mack voted for the President's clean air and energy act in the House yesterday.

This makes several issues in which Ms. Mack has bucked the leadership of her own party.

One might be cynical and note that her district is more liberal than she has been and voted for Obama in the general election but this has never bothered her or her late husband, Sonny, before.

When Sonny died, she became a hostage of the Republican House leadership and, I am convinced, was intimidated into voting against her constituency and her own personal point of view.

She is emerging from this and becoming her own person. Good for Mary. I might even vote for her over the Democrat in the next election. He is kind of beige. Gay beige, but beige.

Labels: global warming, Republicans

GASSED UP

I paid 4.57 a gallon for gas this morning.

I don't like it, personally, but I am all for it publicly.

We have been getting a free ride folks.

My friends in France and the UK pay twice what we do and look at our situation with great glee.

After all, we are finally joining the great world market.

And market forces are doing this.

Supply and demand.

We use more and more each year. The Hummer society.

Now we are paying for it.

In the end, it is my opinion that only 7-8 dollar gas will have us face reality and cut down on wasteful use of petroleum. We will ride buses and trains. This is already happening in LA.

It is the only thing that will work.

Nothing in any politician's energy policy will save us, and the world, from asphyxiation. Only the market itself.

Of course there are some alternatives but not for cars.

The plug in vehicle plugs in to an oil based generation system. Maybe wind will do it. Or nukes. But probably not.

This is the first symptom of global warming that is eco-regulating.

The world is taking action where we will not.

Yeh, I know that's a stretch. But if we won't quit burning fuel, the world will just stop us from taking the fuel out of the ground.

I really do not mind paying the right amount for gas. I am not entitled to a fixed price.

Neither are you.

Labels: ecology, environment, global warming

AN HOUR? GOTTA BE KIDDING.

Another useless gesture.

Earth Hour US - 2008

The kind of thing that some people will do and then feel as though they have taken a big step.

Then, they will flip the lights back on, get into their SUV's and go to the mall for some more mercantile therapy.

I read a great article in the LA Times the other day.

Global Warming: Just Deal With It, Some Scientists Say

This is pretty much my thought.

It is going to get warm. The polar caps are going to get warmer. The water is going to rise.

So stop building next to the water.

Bring the building back inland where it can be protected to some extent.

The animals? Do what you can to preserve them just as we are doing with seeds.

Easy for me to say. I won't be here.

But it seems to me that no one, no one, is really going to pull back their life style until they have to. Until the style required is a little more basic.

The damage is done.

The deal is dealt.

As I sit here typing, Google servers are heating up the universe to make it all happen on the page.

The list of depredations by the human animal is endless.

But human ingenuity is also boundless.

The handwringing, the carbon footprint folly and the rest of the 'gestures' are empty, empty, empty.

The time is coming when reality will set in.

In the meantime, prepare with steps that have some sense to them.

Labels: global warming, nature

WHAT I HAVE BEEN SAYING

It is obvious by inspection that the biofuel thing is a boondoggle.

Now, some facts demonstrate the truth of what intuition has indicated.

Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat

We can already see collateral damage to the economy from the ethanol thing. Food costs are up. Land is being plowed under. Speculation is rampant.

Now we see that the green takes more green than the ungreen.

OK.

Back to the drawing board. What was that about nuclear energy again?

Out here we have the wind and solar going pretty good.

And do we really need to drive the car that far to go shopping?

Labels: environment, global warming

GORED

This will drive the bushies nuts. As it should, the bastards.

Gore and U.N. Panel Win Peace Prize

It is not only Gore that gets it in the face of the bush' obstructions (it is not denial, it is willful).

It is the UN too.

A stick in the eye.

I am happy for him.

On the other hand, some people have said that if he won the Nobel he should run for President.

How they make this leap of logic from a Scandinavian blessing to a US coronation I do not know.

I don't want him on the inside.

He has proven himself a good agitator.

Labels: global warming, politics

TIPPED

I decided last night and now this article today by David Ignatius in the WaPo

The Climate-Change Precipice

I believe that we have already tipped.

We are sliding down the precipice.

It is pretty clear that all the amelioration that man can figure out will only slow the inevitable rise in world temperatures and the concomitant ecological consequences.

I think the die was cast a long time ago when population data was ignored.

I grew up at a time when there was considerable concern about world hunger, the environment, and all the issues we now are seeing live in living color today.

There was a huge movement to restrain population growth. The malthusian principles were spelled out. The band played on. Between the RC church and the interests of consumerism, we just kept on making more babies. And don't get me started on medical 'advances'.

Today, we have over populated, overused, and overspent our natural legacy.

Will this mean that the end of the world is nigh?

Well, yes. For polar bears. How about bees? How about us?

Not entirely.

I think that there will be catastrophic consequences in future years and that all of these will add up to the decimation of human population.

Nature will do for us what we could or would not do for ourselves.

And then we may get to start over.

The earth will cool, the waters will freeze, some natural order will be restored.

Since I am about to go off the planet, at least in this form, I am not personally threatened by this so it is easy to say.

I don't imagine that anyone will hear it.

It has come to the point where virtually anything I do threatens the world situation. This typing, the next phone call, lunch, dinner, the books I am reading. DVDs? Sure.

We are in the soup along with the polar bears.

I find that I have a great deal more compassion in my heart for the the bears and bees than I do for my own species.

How is that for a little cheer before the weekend?

Try this ray of hope. When things cool off there will be ways to help the polar bears and bees regenerate.

Us? I hope not.

Labels: environment, global warming, malthus, polar bears