Tag: global climate change

Hot weather

After a summer that’s been cool and rainy, it’s going to be hot all week here in Massachusetts. Records are going to get broken. Some local school districts are worried, because of course schools aren’t air conditioned in Massachusetts. We never used to need air conditioning in September.

In other news, clean up continues in Vermont and western Massachusetts after the devastating floods in July and August.

The phrase “global warming” now feels outdated. So does “climate change.” So does “climate weirdness.” In fact, the phrase “climate emergency” is beginning to feel a little dated….

What really amazes me is that there are still people in the U.S. who think climate change isn’t real.

Endangered

Earlier this week, Carol and I walked on a beach in Maine where we saw two endangered bird species, Piping Plovers (Charadrius melodus) and Least Terns (Sternula antillarum).

Small sand-colored bird, standing in the sand, covering a chick with its wing.
Piping Plover with a nestling
Small gray and white bird nestled in the sand, perhaps sitting on a nest.
Least Tern — this bird remained stationary while we watched it, and may have been on a nest

Both these species nest on the beach above the high water mark. Nesting in the sand was a useful evolutionary adaptation for most of these birds’ existence. However, in the last hundred years as humans have used beaches more and more heavily. Many former nesting sites have either been eradicated. Other nesting sites see such heavy human use that nesting success has dropped precipitously.

Take the Piping Plover. The main strategy they use to evade predators is their cryptic coloration — when threatened, they squat down in the sand and are almost invisible. But this adaptation is counterproductive when the birds encounter over-sand vehicles (the birds and their nests get smushed), or off-leash dogs (the birds are found by smell, not sight) or oblivious humans playing on the beach (again, the birds get smushed). Then when some humans try to enact regulations to protect the birds — like restricting dog-walkers’ access to nesting areas, or prohibiting over-sand vehicles near nesting areas — many humans don’t comply with the regulations. So at another location in Maine this week, I saw a human with an unleashed dog standing right next to a marked nesting area where a few hours I had earlier seen a Piping Plover.

This is an example of how land use change and human overpopulation have caused rapid species decline over the past several decades. Now we can add another threat to these two species. Global climate change is already causing rising sea levels. If sea level rise continues, the preferred nesting locations for these birds is going to disappear.

It’s easy to sink into despair and imagine that these two species will be extinct in the next couple of decades. But while I’m not optimistic, there is still hope. Because even though humans are pushing these species to extinction, it’s also possible that they can be saved from extinction by careful human management. For that reason, I’ve decided that “management” is my new synonym for “hope.”

Killer

Beech leaf disease (BLD) has arrived in Cohasset. I’m seeing leaves on American Beeches withering and dropping off both in Wheelwright Park and in the Whitney Thayer Woods. In some places, stands of beeches have lost so many leaves that it no longer feels like you’re walking in the forest.

Withered leaves on an American Beech sapling.
American Beech sapling in Whitney Thayer woods with BLD

A scientific article from two and a half years ago — Sharon E. Reed, et al., “The distribution of beech leaf disease…,” Forest Ecology and Management, vol. 503, January, 2022 — found that BLD is a worse threat to American Beech stands than two previous invasive pathologies, beech scale (Cryptococcus fagisuga), and beech bark disease (C. fagisuga and Neonectria spp. complex).

Withered leaves on an American Beech sapling
American Beech sapling in Whitney Thayer Woods with BLD

An invasive nematode from east Asia, Litylenchus crenatae, is always present when BLD is present. But a scientific article from Sept., 2021 — Carrie J. Ewing et al., The Foliar Microbiome Suggests that Fungal and Bacterial Agents May be Involved in the Beech Leaf Disease Pathosystem, Phytobiomes Journal, pub. online 29 Sep 2021 — also found that organisms from four bacterial genera — Wolbachia, Erwinia, Paenibacillus, and Pseudomonas — and one fungal genus, Paraphaeosphaeria — are always present with the nematode when BLD is present.

A few withred leaves among healthy leaves in an American Beech sapling
American Beech sapling in Whitney Thayer Woods with BLD

From what I can gather, our understanding of BLD is still incomplete. However, a few things are quite clear. The University of Rhode Island suggests a couple of strategies to try to save trees from BLD: heavy applications of phosphite fetilizer twice a year, and/or application of pesticide to kill the nematodes. If trees with BLD are left untreated, they will die within 6 to 10 years. Since we cannot treat most trees in our forests, we can expect most infected American Beeches to die within a decade.

Yet another reason for eco-grief.

And this is another reminder that as dire as the situation might be with climate change, invasive species are also devastating our New England forest ecosystems. A hundred years ago, we lost our American Chestnuts to invasive Chestnut Blight. Fifty years ago, we lost most of our American Elms to invasive Dutch Elm Disease. We’re in the process of losing all our Eastern Hemlocks to an invasive insect, the Woolly Adelgid, and all our ash trees to another invasive insect, the Emerald Ash Borer. Now we’re losing all our American Beech trees to yet another invasive organism.

Yes we need to stop climate change, but that’s only a part of the threat to Earth’s life-supporting systems. There’s a lot of work for us to do….

Mapping sea level rise

Back in 1970s, while still in high school, I was really into topographic maps. I tried making topo maps of parts of Concord, Massachusetts, where I then lived. This was back in the days of drawing with pen and ink on paper, so making maps was challenging and fun.

I remember reading somewhere about what was then called the “greenhouse effect,” which would prompt the melting of the polar ice caps. I forget the amount of sea level rise predicted. But when I looked at a topo map of Concord, most of the town would be underwater, with just a few of the tallest hills was islands.

Yep, we knew back then about what is now called global climate change. Then, as Michael Mann has documented in his book The New Climate War, the oil companies conducted a massive disinformation campaign. The oil companies basically hijacked our elected officials while we weren’t paying attention. And here we are today, even more worried about sea level rise.

With all that in mind, I was glad to find the Conspiracy of Cartographers website. They make maps showing what things will look like if the sea level rises 66 meters — the current best estimate assuming all the polar ice melts. Here’s a link to their map of the Boston area. I love their place names: Concord Bay, Lexington Archipelago, Flint Island — this last represents what is now high ground to the east of Walden Pond. Here’s a screen grab of part of their Boston map:

Screen grab of part of a fictional map showing sea level rise west of Boston.
Screen grab of a small part of the Conspiracy of Cartographers map of Boston

Beautiful maps. And depressing. And a very good corrective to the decades of lies and misinformation emanating from the oil companies.

Reading list: The New Climate War

Michael E. Mann, The New Climate War (New York: Public Affairs, 2021), 2022 paperback edition with a new Epilogue.

Michael Mann is a real live actual climate scientist, a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State. He’s also a pretty good writer. That’s a great combination, if you want to read about climate change.

His book The New Climate War doesn’t bother rehearsing the arguments for the validity of global climate change. As he says in the book, the science is clear now. There is now doubt that climate change is real, and that we are already witnessing some of the predicted changes (and disasters) that result from climate change.

Instead, Mann takes on Big Oil. He points out that Big Oil is no longer engaging in climate change denial. They have changed tactics. They want to slime out of taking any responsibility for causing climate change. Even though they knew that climate change was real back in the 1970s and 1980s, even though they made accurate predictions of the effects of climate change that far back, they desperately want to pretend they have no responsibility for climate change.

So instead of taking responsibility for climate change themselves, Big Oil wants us to believe that if we would just change our personal behavior — if we would just drive electric cars, stop flying on jets, and turn the thermostat down — climate change will end. They want us to believe it’s our fault. And Big Oil has figured out that if we believe that our personal behavior is what’s most important, we are far less likely to demand that Big Oil be held politically accountable.

That’s not the only sleazy, manipulative practice that Big Oil is engaging in. Mann details several other tactics, such as doomsaying — it’s all so bad, we can’t change anything, so let’s just give up. Once again, doomsaying lets Big Oil off the hook. Another tactic is promoting wild-eyed technological fixes — because if there’s some wild technological fix that’s going to come along in a couple of years (we can spew particles in the sky to block the sun! we can wait for cold fusion!), then yet again, Big Oil will not be held accountable. Yet again, Big Oil will be able to keep on raking in record profits.

But Mann says that we know what we have to do. We don’t need what he calls “false solutions.” We have to do things like follow the 2015 climate accords (which Big Oil would love to have us ignore, because it will cut into their profits). We have to push proven technologies like renewable energy (which Big Oil wants us to stop doing, because renewables cut into their profits). And we, the citizens, have to hold our political leaders’ feet to the fire (and stop electing leaders who are beholden to Big Oil). We cannot let Big Oil distract us from what actually needs to be done.

A quick read, and well-written, a necessary call to arms. Highly recommended.

(I only wish someone would write equally good books about the other ecological disasters facing us, like the spread of invasive species, and toxication, and land use change.)

Arctic vortex

An “arctic vortex” has hit the Boston area. It’s windy and cold. I was talking to someone much younger, who found out I just moved to Massachusetts from California. They said, “It got down to 11 degrees last night. Must be a big change for you, huh?”

“This isn’t cold,” I said. “I grew up in Massachusetts. Back in 1980, my first full-time job was working in a lumberyard. On Christmas Day, it didn’t get above zero. Now that’s cold.”

“Wow,” said the young person out loud. Inside, they were probably thinking: Old people and their stories, always got make it worse back then than it is now.

“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “Now that I’m an old guy, I get to say things like, ‘You young whippersnappers don’t know how good you got it.'” Inside, I was thinking: Summers are now much much hotter than they ever used to be, you young people have got it worse than we did. But I didn’t say it out loud.

The younger person just laughed at what I said. We parted on good terms.

Unexpected optimism

I remember sitting in an upper level undergraduate philosophy class back in 1982, when we were discussing nihilism. This was a time when the Cold War was frighteningly real to my twenty year old self. In this class discussion, I pointed out that there was a very good chance of a nuclear war wiping out human civilization within a decade. The point I was trying to make, in my inarticulate way, was that nihilism and realism were hard to tell apart at that moment in history.

I suspect quite a few people in my age cohort had similar feelings. Science fiction Charles Stross, who’s four years younger than I, appears to be one of those people. In a recent comment on his own blog, he writes:

“[In the 1980s,] I didn’t expect to live to see 1990, much less 2000.

“[Today] we’re nearly a year into an angry totalitarian Russian invasion of a western(ish) nation and the invasion stalled out badly before it got more than 200km in, and they still haven’t gone nuclear.

“Yes, that is an improvement. I mean, I’ll take dangerously accelerating climate change, rule by mad billionaire oligarchs, and neo-Nazis trying to make a come-back everywhere, over dying in a 50,000-warhead superpower nuke-fest — or worse, being one of the scorched and irradiated and starving survivors — any day of the week.”

I agree with Stross. I’m still somewhat amazed that it’s 2023, and I’m not yet reduced to radioactive ash. We’re still here.

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) was a German philosopher who lived through the First World War, the Nazi regime, the Cold War, and the beginning of the “war on terror.” Not long after the attack on the World Trade Center, someone asked him if he had optimism. Yes, he said — holding his finger and thumb a tiny distance apart — about this much hope.

So like Stross and Gadamer, I find myself optimistic. Yes, we face incredible problems. But we’re still here, which is pretty amazing. We’re still here, there’s still hope.

Eagles

We went out for a walk along the river that runs through Oshkosh, Wisconsin, today. A Bald Eagle soared overhead, landed in a tree, and soared off again when we got too close. Then a couple of minutes later, there was another Bald Eagle ahead of us, sitting in a tree.

It was breathtaking to see Bald Eagles that close. But we shouldn’t be seeing any eagles over the river in Oshkosh in January. Instead, the river and the lakes should be fully frozen over, driving the eagles to Lake Michigan to find open water for hunting. It has been such a warm winter, the river is almost completely ice-free. So while I love seeing the eagles, we’re seeing them because of global climate change, which is not a cheerful thought.

Elon’s jet

You’ve probably heard about the website Elon’s Jet, which tracks one of Elon Musk’s private jets (he apparently has several; this just happens to be the one he uses most often).

Well, the person running that website just calculated the total carbon emissions of Elon’s jet in the year 2022 — 1,895 tons of CO² emissions. This has been posted on Mastodon, and as you’d expect people are having fun doing some additional math.

One Mastodonian pointed out that Musk’s CO² emissions from jet flight alone in 2022 are about 122 times the total carbon footprint of the average US resident; or about 370 times the total carbon footprint of the average person in the world. Yet another Mastodonian calculated that Musk’s jet produces more carbon emissions in a single day than the average US car produces in a year. And a particularly cynical Mastodonian noted: “I’m sure we can offset most of that CO² if we all collectively drink with cardboard straws.”

I will note in conclusion that Musk banned Elon’s Jet from Twitter, claiming that releasing this information could endanger his children, who sometimes fly on the jet. I would suggest that Musk is doing far more to endanger his children by flying his damn jet, and accelerating climate change.

Gloom

The U.N. just issued a report saying that it’s unlikely that world leaders will meet emissions targets, meaning that it’s unlikely that we will be able to keep global temperature rise at 1.5 degrees Celcius.

In other words, we’re fucked. Because with Putin on a rampage, and United States political leadership tearing at each other like mad dogs, and China going down a rabbit hole of total control and authoritarianism, we’re seeing a total lack of leadership from three countries that actually could do something about climate change.

Putin’s strategy for ending the climate crisis appears to be starting a nuclear holocaust. America’s climate strategy appears to be declaring this a Christian nation (um, I guess God is going to bail us out?). China’s strategy appears to be ignoring it and hoping it goes away.

Actually, those leaders are all incredibly rich. They’re probably all assuming that they are rich enough to be able to insulate themselves from the worst effects of climate change.

For an adequate description of our world leaders, we need the words of a great poet. Like these words from the immortal Benny Hill (which I changed just a little tiny bit):

“Now if you’re feeling miserable, if you’re feeling blue,
Here’s a little ditty that’ll help to pull you through,
Climate change will disappear, the grey skies turn to blue:
Just stick your finger in your ear and go ting-a-ling-a-loo.

“Greta Thunberg said ‘Get your fingers out,’ and that cut us to the quick,
We took our fingers out, but it didn’t do the trick.
Now we follow our world leaders with all our might and main:
Be like Putin, Trump, and good ol’ Xi — and stick ’em back again!

“Yes, stick your finger in your ear and go ting-a-ling-a-loo,
Climate change ain’t real, just go ting-a-ling-a-loo,
Remember what George W. said in 2002:
Stick your finger in your ear and go ting…a…ling…a…loo!”