LibertyBell

Never thought I'd see the same storm drop 30 inches of snow at Allentown and JFK lol- shades of Feb 1983 on steroids.....

Interesting discussion here

Yes and the ones most impacted are those who are the most vulnerable.

Yes America is actually redistributing wealth- from the lower and middle classes to the rich.

I think Summit Camp in Greenland is colder than Klinck, but they've only been keeping records for a few years there. It's at the top of the Greenland Ice Cap. I still like Siberia better for temperature anomalies, because it's the only place on earth that can go from -90 to +90 (and even 100 now.)

That brings up another point. I think you'll see a far quicker adoption of EV cars out west and in the northeast than you will in the deep south or the middle of the country. Especially with new CA and NY emissions laws.

what percentage of cars driven here are actually made here though? European and Asian policies should affect us significantly.

Yep and that would be a sad commentary on the US if China leaves them behind....it means we'd probably be wearing masks for air pollution reasons within a few decades. Have you found any numbers on when the US is going to stop making fossil fuel powered cars? I mean, if Europe and Asia do it, the US would probably not have a choice in the matter, the manufacturers will stop making them regardless of our laws, I think fossil fuel powered vehicles are already losing ground to EVs here?

Yes, I think they need to realize that "standing still" is the same as going backwards. Time is always moving forward, so if you're not moving forward too, you're going backwards. Shortsightedness like we're seeing today, had it been implemented in the past, wouldn't have gotten us this far. And if the US doesn't take the lead here, we'll be left far behind China and other nations that are moving forward. China has quite the booming EV market already.

This is some good news- most of Europe will stop making fossil fuel powered vehicles by 2030. I couldn't find any nation which didn't have plans to stop making them between 2030 and 2040 outside of Australia, not surprising considering what kind of govt they have and who funds them. They will likely be left behind.

Yes New Zealand has one of my favorite leaders, quickly acted on gun reform and the pandemic too. My question for you Don is that if we dont even agree on what needs to be done until 2050, wouldn't that mean that the much needed action we need right now wouldn't happen until 2100? Meanwhile I see that sea level rise is actually occurring at the pace on the most bullish of models and at this rate, sea level rise will be around 8 feet by 2100?! To put this into more immediate numbers, right now we average around 4 days of flooding per year, by 2050 this could be more like 50 days of flooding per year?

and air pollution is an argument to make against fossil fuels, not for haha

I would like to see that! One area where I've noticed improvements is in AI algorithms used to create "smart" digital zooming.....I remember how awful predictive algorithms for it were back in the early 2000s, that is no longer the case. 2x "smart" digital zooming is indistinguishable from 2x optical zoom in many respects.

Indeed, Chris! I have found the same is true of cameras and telescopes.....the best equipment is the one that is used most often (and portability is important to me and I'm sure many others.)

Since this is about sustainability too, I should mention I read a bunch of articles on Bloomberg today that talk about how it's great that people are switching from dairy to plant-based milk. It's great for the dairy industry too, as milk costs a lot for them to produce and then has a limited storage life, so they've been switching to making more plant-based milk too. Switching from animal farming to more of a plant-based diet is a win/win both for the environment and for our health.

that was from 11/08/2000

that sounds like a caption I made to a picture many many years ago: How photography inspires me..... I love how the camera can preserve the beauty of a scene forever, sometimes I go back to old photos and see things in there Id never seen before. I think we take our surroundings for granted far too much and then we wonder about the meaning of life and why we are here… and well, the answer is all around us, to experience and understand even a tiny bit of the wonders of our world and what may lie beyond, as well as the wonders of the human mind and the human heart that it can witness and appreciate these things of beauty, even though our lives are but a millisecond compared to the timelessness of nature and our surroundings. This is why I dont drink or take any drugs– why do we need to escape from reality, all we need to do is find a part of reality that makes us truly happy, appreciate it and hold onto it with all our might, no matter how far away it is and feel special knowing that we are here to experience it. I think pictures prove that Nature is the greatest artist of them all, she has had billions of years to perfect her Art so that we can all be here to appreciate it.

ahhh I said a little prayer when we were approaching 30 inches, I said something like "Dear Lord, just let me see 30 inches one time in my life, I dont care if it never snows after this, just give me let me experience a BECS once in my life!"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/04/16/southwest-megadrought-climate-change/ A vast region of the western United States, extending from California, Arizona and New Mexico north to Oregon and Idaho, is in the grips of the first climate change-induced megadrought observed in the past 1,200 years, a study shows. The finding means the phenomenon is no longer a threat for millions to worry about in the future, but is already here. .... The study, published in the journal Science on Thursday, compares modern soil moisture data with historical records gleaned from tree rings, and finds that when compared with all droughts seen since the year 800 across western North America, the 19-year drought that began in 2000 and continued through 2018 (this drought is still ongoing, though the study’s data is analyzed through 2018) was worse than almost all other megadroughts in this region. The researchers, who painstakingly reconstructed soil moisture records from 1,586 tree-ring chronologies to determine drought severity, found only one megadrought that occurred in the late 1500s was more intense. .... “The megadrought era seems to be reemerging, but for a different reason than the [past] megadroughts,” said Park Williams, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. Although many areas in the West had a productive wet season in 2019 and some this year, “you can’t go anywhere in the West without having suffered drought on a millennial scale,” Williams said, noting that megadroughts contain relatively wet periods interspersed between parched years. “I think the important lesson that comes out of this is that climate change is not a future problem,” said Benjamin I. Cook, a NASA climate scientist and co-author of the study. “Climate change is a problem today. The more we look, the more we find this event was worse because of climate change.” from Journal Science: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6488/314 A trend of warming and drying Global warming has pushed what would have been a moderate drought in southwestern North America into megadrought territory. Williams et al. used a combination of hydrological modeling and tree-ring reconstructions of summer soil moisture to show that the period from 2000 to 2018 was the driest 19-year span since the late 1500s and the second driest since 800 CE (see the Perspective by Stahle). This appears to be just the beginning of a more extreme trend toward megadrought as global warming continues. Science, this issue p. 314; see also p. 238 Abstract Severe and persistent 21st-century drought in southwestern North America (SWNA) motivates comparisons to medieval megadroughts and questions about the role of anthropogenic climate change. We use hydrological modeling and new 1200-year tree-ring reconstructions of summer soil moisture to demonstrate that the 2000–2018 SWNA drought was the second driest 19-year period since 800 CE, exceeded only by a late-1500s megadrought. The megadrought-like trajectory of 2000–2018 soil moisture was driven by natural variability superimposed on drying due to anthropogenic warming. Anthropogenic trends in temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation estimated from 31 climate models account for 47% (model interquartiles of 35 to 105%) of the 2000–2018 drought severity, pushing an otherwise moderate drought onto a trajectory comparable to the worst SWNA megadroughts since 800 CE. also see this: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6488/261 Abstract Trees are the living foundations on which most terrestrial biodiversity is built. Central to the success of trees are their woody bodies, which connect their elevated photosynthetic canopies with the essential belowground activities of water and nutrient acquisition. The slow construction of these carbon-dense, woody skeletons leads to a slow generation time, leaving trees and forests highly susceptible to rapid changes in climate. Other long-lived, sessile organisms such as corals appear to be poorly equipped to survive rapid changes, which raises questions about the vulnerability of contemporary forests to future climate change. The emerging view that, similar to corals, tree species have rather inflexible damage thresholds, particularly in terms of water stress, is especially concerning. This Review examines recent progress in our understanding of how the future looks for forests growing in a hotter and drier atmosphere.

My favorite snowstorm of ALL TIME! and it lasted extra long too, when most end early!

mine is give me historic torches or give me historic snowstorms or give me death lol.

Now that the pollution from those wildfires is dissipating I got to see Orion and the Pleaides for the first time since last winter! And last evening's 2 day old crescent moon looked quite pretty.

Thought it was killed by a cat that roamed into its enclosure? Crazy article about geneticists talking about bringing the bird back into existence by the 2030s. https://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2014/why-passenger-pigeon-went-extinct The story about how they were killed is horrendous. I consider this a form of genocide and the people who did this should be punished just as harshly. Too bad none are alive today. Back then conservatives were actually conservationists too. Contemporary environmentalism arrived too late to prevent the passenger pigeon’s demise. But the two phenomena share a historical connection. “The extinction was part of the motivation for the birth of modern 20th century conservation,” says Temple. In 1900, even before Martha’s death in the Cincinnati Zoo, Republican Congressman John F. Lacey of Iowa introduced the nation’s first wildlife-protection law, which banned the interstate shipping of unlawfully killed game. “The wild pigeon, formerly in flocks of millions, has entirely disappeared from the face of the earth,” Lacey said on the House floor. “We have given an awful exhibition of slaughter and destruction, which may serve as a warning to all mankind. Let us now give an example of wise conservation of what remains of the gifts of nature.” That year Congress passed the Lacey Act, followed by the tougher Weeks-McLean Act in 1913 and, five years later, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which protected not just birds but also their eggs, nests, and feathers.

I was watering the very edge of my very dry property about an hour ago and I spied a blackish moving shape out of the corner of my eye. It was a black bear roaming around just beyond my fence line, maybe about 10 feet to my right! You can bet I rapidly finished watering and high tailed it back into my house (making sure no trash was outside first of course.) This is in my other home in NE PA and we're expecting to have frost and maybe even a freeze tonight. When do these creatures go into hibernation? This is the closest I've ever been to a bear encounter.....

cats, dogs and rats have driven several species to extinction....and of course humankind and its evil ways. Wasn't the very last Passenger Pigeon eaten by a cat? And of course the billions before it who were thoughtlessly hunted down by humans.