Summer is here!
by Oly Mike
It finally got warm again here in Western Washington yesterday. Much of the country has been suffering through a heat wave for a while already. Some parts of the country have been on fire. This is an aspect of global warming that will probably come to Western Washington. We have large stands of timber that will burn if weather patterns were to change and reduce the amount of rainfall in the region. People in the Hoh River Rainforest might appreciate a reduction in rainfall, but by and large, the Northwest needs a lot of rain and gets it.
My grandsons were out and about and could not be located to grab our kayak/play boats and head to the river or Sound, so I scooped up my 5 year old granddaughter and we took the smallest kayak I have and spent a couple of hours playing and keeping cool in the Newaukum River. (video is shot a few miles away from the stretch we were in). The river has pretty good flow this early in the year, so granddaughter was not sure she wanted to be in the river, but by the end of our time there she was jumping off the bank and letting me catch her and be swept along in the current. It's possible to get swept off your feet, but the river is only a couple of feet deep in the lower reaches, so it's perfect for playing, wading and kayaking.
I have noticed that the climate change deniers are getting desperate. They know that the US electorate is finding climate change to be real. It's too bad that it takes disastrous evidence and experience of global warming to persuade the folks who tune into traditional media in the US that the doubt about global warming is manufactured by the same folks who want to persuade folks that Obama is a dangerous socialist when he is simply another corporatist democrat, but this serves the goals of certain folks.
We get change in this country when the tea party folks wake up and realize that the occupy folks are their natural allies and have the story right where the media giants have the news all wrong.
Not warm yet in your neighborhood? Don't worry, the warm weather is coming. We need balance. We need a carbon tax immediately to change the energy paradigm. The explosion of research, development and manufacturing that would follow carbon tax implementation would solve our double dip recession problem and create jobs. The tax would lower the deficit, but it could not/should not be large enough to solve our deficit problem, just enough to fund R&D on sustainable energy systems. The deficit problem needs to be solved by reinstating the steep tax rate system that existed in this country when JFK stimulated the economy back in 1961. We have flattened the tax rate so much since that time that there is little or no stimulus effect left in that approach, only increasing income inequality and deficits that threaten our way of life. Things could get so bad in the US that we would have to cut the military budget. Just try to imagine that.
Record heat? You want to deny that? Here's a piece from Think Progress and elsewhere:
What Is Causing The Climate To Unravel?
By Climate Guest Blogger on Jul 7, 2012 at 12:28 pm
By Jeremy Symons, via the National Wildlife Federation
Answer: One trillion tons of carbon pollution.
40,000 heat records have already been broken this year across the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Here in Fredericksburg, Virginia, the signs of an unbalanced climate system have been felt in recent years not just in heatwaves, but increasingly in the form of unusually severe wind storms. This past weekend’s storm brought 80 mph wind gusts that snapped three trees in our backyard like pretzels, even though they were each a foot thick. Once again, my insurance company is teaching me new weather terminolgy to explain the latest climate disasters. A few years ago, the term was “micro-bursts” (not quite tornadoes, but similar impact). Now it is “derecho” (not quite hurricanes, but similar impact).
Read the whole piece at Think Progress? Stay cool.