I’m dreading this summer/fall

Ahh, it’s that time of the year again where I worry about the hurricanes spinning in the Atlantic. I hate it. I wonder if constantly worrying about the climate change and the pandemic is why we have increasing tension and increasing violence? Obviously, a lot of us are not handling these stresses very well.

So, earlier in the summer, the Pacific Northwest suffered through a heat dome that pushed some temperatures into the triple digits. Triple digits up in the north? I believe Portland had an eye-popping 116 degrees temperature during that initial heat dome in late June. I don’t think Oregon homes have air conditioners. Living through that heat wave without air conditioners is unthinkable. News have reported that approximately 600 deaths could be attributed to that heat wave.

With that heat dome baking over the northwest, fires flashed into life and now California is enduring the second largest fire in history. I thought the fires didn’t start until late summer or early fall? Anyway, these fires seem to be starting sooner in the season and lasting longer in the season. I believe the worst is to come in the fall, so this is a dreadfully long fire season.

The midwest and the northeast also suffered from heat waves and bands of storm activity. Now the Atlantic is heating up for the hurricane season. The weather folks are forecasting a busier season than normal and the season began before the June 1st start date, so we’re off to a great start. I can’t tell how this season will compare to last year; I don’t think anybody knows.

I’m not looking forward to this. We have so much terrifying things going on.

Oh, let’s not forget that Germany and parts of the Belgium suffered tremendous flooding in a region that does not have such flooding. It is said that Germany is in such a good spot that the country does not suffer from the ravages of the weather, except earlier this summer it did. Germany was totally unprepared for this event so many people died as the waters washed through towns and villages.

And now Greece is battling wild fires.

And it goes on and on….

Earlier this week, a UN report came out that says we are basically in the midst of climate change: it is happening faster and sooner than expected. Nobody expected the Pacific Northwest to undergo searing triple digit heat this early in the climate change. The report says we are in a dire situation where limiting the temperature rise to 1.5 degree C will be nearly impossible.

“U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the report a “code red for humanity.” Guterres said, “the alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk,” CBS News’ Pamela Falk reports.”

“Major U.N. climate report warns of “extreme” and “unprecedented” impacts”, CBSNews, JEFF BERARDELLI, August 10, 2021.

A great article to read that works through the UN report can be found here. The article walks through the report’s conclusions (dire) and says that we will definitely hit 1.5 degrees C rise by 1930s and the impact will stick around for at least a century if not a millennia, even if we manage to cut back our carbon output. The change is baked into our weather system now and the worsening changes will be coming in the next decade or so. What we can do is to try to prevent going above 1.5 degrees but we need to do it drastically and pretty much immediately.

I’m not sure how that’s going to work.

Interestingly, I haven’t heard much from the climate deniers. Is it because of all of the recent heat waves (with eye-popping temperatures in the Pacific Northwest), the earlier and stronger fire season in the West, the continuing drought, and the surprising flooding in Germany? Have they started to internally to process the notion that something is indeed happening with the climate and that we need to do something about it? I hope they are coming to the conclusion that the weather is going haywire far too often.

Let’s try to get through this upcoming hurricane along with the delta pandemic. I’m just not looking forward to the next few months.