When you find yourself gazing into an ochre sky and feeling grateful that the wildfire smoke is going to keep the predicted high temperatures down, you know we’ve turned a corner. You check your app for local fires the way some people check the stock market. How’s Juniper Creek coming along? Is the Lookout fire contained? At some point we’re just going to run out of trees, right? Oh good. It’s just Canada. Canada is on fire.
Somewhere in this world there’s a hurricane with a creamy center of plague locusts. Somewhere in Siberia a virus that took down a mastodon and had to take a nap for a few thousand years is waking up and feeling its microbial oats. Somewhere in the world a tectonic plate is shrugging free of that nagging glacier weight.
Trouble with that dang corner we turned is, we turned it a long time ago. Decades ago. A whole lot of people made a fuss about it, desperately tugging at the world’s sleeve as it turned the corner, but they didn’t have the juice to do anything about it. And now we’ve got hundred-year disasters racked up so deep they’re shouldering each other aside and lighting out for new territories. Tornadoes are dipping their pointy little toes into New England. Alaska has to import snow for the Iditarod. Here in moist, mild Portland, someone left the broiler on.
Rainfall and temperature records are smashed daily, and those were records set last year, when they smashed the previous records. The important thing to remember, when we’re feeling sorry for ourselves, sweltering, watching our trees crisp up and die, seeing our houses crumble and fall into the sea, is that we need to keep our perspective. This isn’t the worst it’s ever been. It’s the best it will ever be!
Right here in my neighborhood we can see half-dead trees on every block, victims of a three-day heat event two years ago. Western red cedars have flourished here for thousands of years but they’re on the way out, and fast. Land can go to desert in a hurry. People everywhere are going to be on the move for water and food and shelter and to escape the inevitable wars over vanishing resources. You can’t build a wall high enough to fend them off, not even if you stack up all the polar bears and dead coral.
All of this is no surprise, and easily explained. One thing that isn’t is the number of people who still insist here’s nothing happening here. Why, it was hotter in the summer of 1936 than it is today! Who’s the fool now?
According to the Washington Post poll, Democrats and Republicans are deeply divided over the causes of extreme weather. All Republican candidates and most Republican voters have concluded global warming is a hoax, based on the observation that scientists think they’re smarter than everyone else and someone needs to give them a swirly. Democrats and home-insurance providers sharply disagree.
“I’ve always rejected the politicization of the weather,” explained Florida’s Ron DeSantis. “Blub blub,” he elucidated later.
These people need to be introduced to the hockey stick. The famous metaphorical hockey stick refers to the graph of global temperatures for the last thousand years, which is essentially flat as a hockey stick handle, even taking into account various warming and cooling periods, and then abruptly shoots skyward like the blade of the stick right around a hundred years ago. And the trajectory of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere tracks that graph as tight as a dick in a condom. Only without any protective qualities.
At this point if our friends cannot draw any sane conclusions from the hockey stick graph, they should be introduced to an actual hockey stick upside the head. And this goes double for Republican politicians who attempted to solve the crisis years ago by making fun of Al Gore, and now hope we can be distracted by a puppet show of drag queens and pronoun nazis. There isn’t a hockey stick big enough to take them all out. We’ll have to do it vote by vote, and take the last few petroleum-based Democrats out with them, and we’d better do it soon.
Because the only thing the scientists got wrong is how fast it’s happening.
I think that we’ve reached and surpassed the tipping point now. You can’t get even the US citizens to agree to the measures it will take just to plateau, never mind turn it back. So, how can we get the rest of the world to go along with drastic measures? Especially poorer countries who “want theirs.”
Here in Delaware, there were a couple weeks that the smoke from the fires from Canada wafted in. Visibility was poor and I could smell wood smoke. We had to have our AC on, not just for heat and humidity, but because the AQI (air quality index) was “extremely unhealthy.” Now of course, everyone running their AC exacerbates climate change. OTOH, leaving the windows open and inhaling smoke causes catastrophic problems for individual humans and animals. So… rock, hard place.
It’s gotten to the point where I check the AQI more often than I do the temperature or the actual weather map.
I bought a Conway air purifier that works to clear indoor air very well. Not too $$ either.
Oh, yeah, we have an air purifier, also. It’s a Honeywell, and it has a gauge on it that shows the air quality in the house. It is so sensitive that when Paul cleans the bathroom, or I cook stuff in the kitchen, it tells us the air quality is fair or poor. We have it in the bird room, which is the central area in our house. Kitchen and bathroom are peripheral. I can only imagine what it would have said if we had the windows open and turned it on during that time.
Murr, would it be OK with you if I share this on FB, either your full page or a cut and paste? I think it’s brilliant.
Not Murr, but above the Comments on this post, there are numerous icons for various platforms where you can “Share This Story, Choose Your Platform”. Good luck!
Oof course, Barbara, and I hope you have better luck sharing to FB than I do. It will share, but I usually don’t get the picture to go with it. I have no idea why.
Gulp…a great piece Murr, even if it did smash my rose colored glasses. 🤕
You could always trash your rose colored glasses and slip on a pair of beer goggles instead! Everything will look honkey-dorey again!
Oh we’re screwed, Doug, but keep those glasses handy anyway!
I will Murr, and Mimi if you see this thanks for turning my frown upside down 🙂
A sobering commentary. I particular like the line “ as tight as dick in a condom”
We won’t ask why!
I have observed everything listed below except the last stage, which will come eventually — some of the stages in a now ex-friend of mine for whom it was his path to joining the camicie nere, and some in internet randos:
THE STAGES OF GLOBAL WARMING DENIAL. (The order may vary somewhat.)
1. There’s no global warming. It’s just a moneymaking hoax by Al Gore. No, I mean it’s a conspiracy between American libtard snowflakes and the Chinese government to hamstring the US economy in the interests of Chinese global dominance. Wait, wait, let me think up another.
2. OK, there’s global warming but DON’T YOU DARE call it that, we’ll destroy you professionally and politically if you don’t call it “climate change,” and that goes for you in the press and even you (ESPECIALLY YOU) climate scientists.
3. There’s climate change but there’s no global warming.
4 OK, there’s climate change but it’s not anthropogenic, it’s sunspots or the 100,000-year Milankovitch cycles in the earth’s orbit or the 26,000-year precession of the earth’s axis or the 41,000-year cycles in the earth’s axial tilt or the continuation of the natural progression of the climate continuing from the end of the last ice age or….
5. OK, there’s anthropogenic climate change but it’s only a small factor in the overall pattern.
6. OK, there’s anthropogenic climate change but I think we really need carbon dioxide, don’t knock it.
7. FAR MORE THAN 3% of climate scientists believe there’s NO dangerous anthropogenic climate change but they’re afraid to publish or speak their positions publicly because of Political Correctness and no you can’t call what we did in Stage 2 Political Correctness because that term is only applicable if it’s RightWingers who are being pressured and the reason I know that’s their position despite their not having published or spoken publicly is because THEY TOLD ME SO.
8. OK, there’s a LOT of anthropogenic climate change but it’s great for opening new shipping routes, it will improve our country’s geopolitical position, it will enable the fossil fuel extraction corporations to mine for more minerals, drill for more oil and build hotels in Greenland and what greater good could there be, and it won’t do any harm, really. And since in the history of life on earth more organisms have gone extinct than exist today, it follows logically that the current rate of extinctions must be trivial both ethically and in its effects on human life.
9. OK, we’re all totally fucked, but IT’S ALL THE FAULT OF YOU DEMOCRATS!
Lovely list, Jeremy. But you forgot about Hunter Biden’s laptop which seems to continue as the root of all evils.
My neighbors just bought new enormous pickups that sport trump 2024 signs. And our wells are down to trickles and it’s still August. I remain grateful to be in my mid 70s.
I thought George Soros was the root of all evils. Hmmm…
(BTW, Have you seen the bumper sticker that says “Jack Smith — Making America Great Again”?)
… In my early 70s, I am afraid I may live long enough to see what’s going to happen next. I do count myself lucky for not having neighbors who are sTRUMPets, or advertising sTRUMPets, anyway. My sympathies! Footnote: After the 2016 election, I was initially gratified to hear that my town, even my whole county, voted 2-to-1 for Hillary. Then I realized that that meant that one out of every three people in town want me and all my relatives dead and are willing to achieve that goal as long as they can do it with zero risk to themselves. That’s what he promised them, anyway. Whenever (which is often) anyone on TV expresses bewilderment at the undying loyalty of the sTRUMPets, I find myself repeating “It’s the PROMISE!”
I have nothing to add. That’s what y’all are for.
Well, up here in Ashland, in the country formerly known as Canada, we’re looking down the barrel of an election in the foreseeable future, well, if you could see, which you can’t for the smoke, but I digress… the political party which is *leading in the polls* denies that there is any effin’ thing wrong with the climate that exporting a lot more oil and gas from Alberta can’t cure and the whole thing is a left-wing commie librul hoax cooked up by the WEF to undermine our freedumbs. God I am so glad I’m old and sick. I remember being a kid in the 40s and I just want to cry, and I do sometimes.
I’m not glad you’re sick.
OK…I’ll also share, but to avoid the argument between the various billionnaires who own the various systems, I’ll just do the linky love!
Thank you.
Although a good billionaire squabble would be fun to watch.
Well, if Zuckerberg and Musk actually duke it out as they threaten to, we may see that. Or, at least, hear about the results, because I’m not interested enough in this sort of shit to actually PAY to watch it.
My 3-year old niece considers smoke just another type of weather, like rain, that just means play indoors today.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, we only had to deal with our parents’ and grandparents’ smoke — the best, unfiltered Camels. They mixed it liberally with gin martinis and mostly passed away prematurely from cancer and other lung diseases. Had fun, though!
I think we should have a GoFundMe to utilize Trump’s angry mug shot (it’s public property to use and abuse, right?) and make a bunch of Smoky Bear-type billboards saying things like, “I’m mad that fossil fuels are killing the planet” and “Sexual assault is a crime, I should know!” and “The opposite of violence is equality.”
That is a cool idea!
That really depresses me that she considers smoke just a different kind of weather. Yeah, I know she’s 3, but even though I have no progeny nor family, it depresses me to think about the world they will inherit. And how short this inheritance may be. I know y’all wish your young-uns to have a long and good life. But wishing and praying is useless. I’m glad that I’m old.
The hippies were right.
Yeah they were, but a whole lot of them discovered money in the ’80s and faded away.
Yup. They were all about being anti-establishment. Until they had the opportunity of BEING the establishment. Then it was, “Hey! I can make money! And buy things!” Even as a teen, it perplexed me as to why all the “non-conformists” all looked and acted alike. I was ACTUALLY a non-conformist, as I did not own a pair of jeans, wore dresses and makeup and styled my hair, and read Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. But I was ostrasized, as I was “different.” I thought that “different” was the idea. But apparently, one has to be “different” in the correct way for that time period. I would have fit right into the current generation, or my mom’s generation. But not the one I was born into.
Oh I on the other hand fit right in. That look matched my budget.
I was a hippie wannabee, but without the nerve to cut loose. Anyway, faded away? This is what John Lennon said about the 60s in his last interview, in December of 1980:
“Now, maybe in the sixties we were naïve and like children everybody went back to their room and said, ‘Well, we didn’t get a wonderful world of just flowers and peace and happy chocolate and, and, and it wasn’t just pretty and beautiful all the time’ and that’s what everybody did, ‘we didn’t get everything we wanted’ just like babies and everybody went back to their rooms and sulked. And we’re just gonna play rock and roll and not do anything else . We’re gonna stay in our rooms and the world is a nasty, horrible place ’cause it didn’t give us everything we cried for’, right? Cryin’ for it wasn’t enough. The thing the sixties did was show us the possibility and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility, and the seventies everybody gone ‘Nya, nya, nya, nya’. And possibly in the eighties everybody’ll say, ‘Well, ok, let’s project the positive side of life again’, you know? The world’s been goin’ on a long time, right? It’s probably gonna go on a long time… ”
Probably…with or without us.
I loved the irony of your line “|This isn’t the worst it’s ever been. It’s the best it will ever be!”
I saw a three panel cartoon of a couple watching news. In the first, they say “Climate Change will really hurt our grand-children.” In the next, “Climate Change will hurt our kids.”. In the last, “Climate Change is hurting US!!”
Not that many years ago I assumed I wouldn’t see it get real bad but the next generation would. Now…
Why can’t people like you run things? (Or even you, although you’d likely be horrified at the thought) Wish I could express myself like you, or even better, that you had a wider platform to shout from—because we need shouting!!!
Thanks! (No thanks!)