Don’t Rain on My Parade
by Giulianna LamannaJason and I are heading up to Poughkeepsie this weekend to visit my mom. We almost didn’t go, due to… well… a state of emergency being declared in virtually all of eastern Pennsylvania and the city of Wilkes-Barre being evacuated. Apparently, it’s all good now, though I don’t know for how long. For those of you at home, yes, this is also global warming. And that means that floods like these are not flukes, but signs of things to come.
For most of America, the trend appears to be more and more rain.
[R]ain has increased in the United States by 7 percent in three decades; heavy rain events of more than 2 inches a day are up 14 percent and storms dumping more than 4 inches a day rose 20 percent.
The floods that forced up to 200,000 evacuees from a historic Pennsylvania coal town on Wednesday followed a year of erratic weather in other parts of the region, including record rainfall in May and June in Massachusetts, a spring-like January in Maine and Vermont’s worst autumn foliage in memory.
On the other hand, west of the Rockies, the trend is more severe droughts:
Getting stream flow data back to 1925 wasn’t a problem, but there is no network of soil moisture measuring stations that go back that far, Lettenmaier said. For that he and Andreadis created a soil moisture database using a computer model and what is known about the relationship between soil moisture and stream flows in various parts of the country.
The result is a map which shows areas where the ground is getting generally wetter or drier….
“The US has become wetter as a whole but mainly east of the Rockies,” said Trenberth, who has worked on similar studies. “Drought has become prominent in the Southwest. This (pattern) is pretty unique around the world; the only other place like it is Argentina.”
What will the United States look like as these trends continue?
At current projections, Epstein said, a typical day in Boston could feel like present-day Richmond, Virginia, in 100 years under one model of the atmosphere and oceans produced by the federally funded New England Regional Assessment of 2001.
Epstein, who contributed to that study, said another model that sees Boston resembling Atlanta, Georgia with a 10-degree Fahrenheit (5.6-degree C) rise in temperature over a century could be conservative.
“What we are seeing is really the pace and magnitude of these changes are much greater than we had imagined, so in fact the models each year become underestimates,” he said.
Global warming is a scary and depressing topic for so many reasons: the danger it poses for all species, the danger it poses for our species, the danger it poses for us, personally… but sometimes it’s the simple things that really get you down. For instance: remember that migrant worker from Pakistan in Syriana who was obsessed with the snow-covered mountains in his home country? “Oh, how it sparkles! Oh, the crunch of it under your feet!” Yeah, that’s pretty much me. In recent years, I’ve grown to really love winter. It upsets me very much to think that my great-grandnieces and nephews won’t know what snow looks like - that maybe, as I grow older and the planet grows hotter, even I’ll forget.
Poughkeepsie, my hometown, gets a lot of tourism in the autumn because of its foliage. Lately, its leaves have been turning later in the year, and the colors have been much less bold. I can foresee New England’s autumn soon looking the way autumn looks everywhere else: leaves simply turning brown, crumpling, and unpretentiously falling off the trees. It’s gotten to the point where I’m considering collecting every vivid description I can find of winter and autumn in literature and trying to memorize them all, just so I can have the proper vocabulary to describe to the next generation what these two long-forgotten seasons were like.
It only makes sense to be terrified of something that begins with massive flooding, heat waves, and once-thought-impossible category 6 hurricanes; and may end with alligators living at the poles in sub-tropical heat while the equator sees temperatures the earth thought she left behind back in the Jurassic. I’m sure the earth will survive. I’m sure that humanity will survive. I’m sure that civilization won’t survive. But the mere promise of survival is cold comfort when each year, more and more human beings are threatened by this severe weather that our civilization has caused, and when each year, I find myself wondering if this will be the last time I ever see a snowflake.
it is scary to us, but we’ll adapt. that’s what we do. us, coyotes, and cockroaches.
possibly humans that are only three or five generations after ours, won’t even *believe* the stories their elders tell them of soft, frozen white rain that sparkled across fields under moonlight during the Long Nights Season–they’ll probably be frightened by the mere thought of such impossibly freezing cold conditions., “Didn’t it freeze their bare feet?! How did they ride their bikes?”
Comment by Librarian — 30 June 2006 @ 3:38 PM
I hear you about the NE autumn. My wife and I went up to Maine for our honeymoon last year in September and the scenery was stupid-awesome.
And furthermore I was in Newark International Airport on Tuesday when the SHTF and every plane in the airport was delayed 11+ hours. Let me tell you, if you want to see the cracks appearing in the system go to Newark International when FAA decides to suspend all flights until ‘the weather clears.’ I wrote about it in a comment on my blog when we were talking about the meaning of hope (DJ style), let me paste it –
”
I’m back you SOBs!
Wow, so, turns out its raining on the frickin’ east coast and everything goes Apocalyptica while I’m in god-forsaken Newark. Home only 22 hours after my scheduled arrival in Champaign, thank you Newark International Airport.
And let me tell you, hopeful dopefuls, I saw as many hopes shattered as a human can possibly stand in one lifetime and still remain sane. Fortunately, I followed my own rules of despair and remained non-hopeful, that is, just went with the flow and assumed I’d be delayed overnight and listened to NIN (With Teeth) on my ipod for nine hours, and focused my chi. And look at that, I wasn’t dissapointed!
Another thing is, let me tell you, I saw the cracks in the edges of civilization these last two days. Take a huge international airport located in the armpit of New Jersey, now add local flooding and a complete grounding of all flights for nine hours. What do you get? A fun sample of the apocalypse! I mean, people fought over outlets to charge laptops and protected them like gold mines as if Peak Oil was here and gone, coffee ran out at the one “Seattle’s Best” keyosk in ‘Terminal A’ around 10pm and people went ape shit, and forget about the TSA workers, they were complete assholes to everybody. I consider it my personal little patience test for the endtimes.
Then when I finally arrived in Chicago all the flights for Champaign were booked for the next day (today) and all the one-way car rentals were rented out in O’Hare, stranding me there for another day.
Thankfully I knew my buddy Paul lived ~40 minutes from O’Hare and wouldn’t hesitate to pick me up late at night, and sure enough he did. Did I hope Paul would get me? No, I knew he would (he has before!), so I didn’t worry. I stayed at his house and then eight hours later boarded the “Lex Express” van for Champaign.
Then when I got home Mary had a big plate of steak, eggs, hashbrowns and grilled veggies for me to devour along with a steaming cup of coffee with just a touch of vanilla syrup. Ah, ’tis the life.
You don’t need hope when you have a tribe to count on.
The only thing hope would’ve done for me is given me a 20 hour stomach-ache.”
Comment by valhallan — 30 June 2006 @ 3:58 PM
Hey –
Don’t write off the white stuff just yet.
Just today, I ran across an article about the ongoing research on the Greenland Ice Sheet and they have discovered that it is melting at massively accelerating rates, causing a lubricant-like effect on the glacier as it moves across the land mass.
Key point is that if it continues to accelerate this way, the whole damn ice sheet could ’suddenly’ break up and out into the atlantic…. which is exactly the kind of event that could shut down the Mid-Atlantic Conveyor and tip us into a new Glacial Period.
So the question is… are you covered if climate goes the other way?
Janene
Comment by Janene — 30 June 2006 @ 4:12 PM
I was thinking of that, actually! But with the melting of Siberia’s permafrost, it’s more likely that Europe will go into a brief ice age, the globe will continue warming, the ice age will end, and it’ll just keep warming some more.
Either way, that’ll only effect Europe, won’t it? It seems like North America will just keep getting hotter and wetter until Pittsburgh becomes a jungle.
Amusingly enough, I’d be better-prepared for heat than cold. Probably our African ancestry and all… we’re more used to it. But that’s what makes temperate zones so unspeakably wonderful: you get a little taste of everything, and nothing’s too extreme. (Usually.)
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 30 June 2006 @ 4:32 PM
Whichever way it goes, the answer remains the same: humans are very good at walkng.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 30 June 2006 @ 4:32 PM
You’ll Never Walk Alone
“When you walk through a storm hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark.
At the end of a storm is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart
And you’ll Never Walk Alone,
You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
Comment by JCamasto — 30 June 2006 @ 5:34 PM
Don’t be scared, what is at risk is civilization, and you’ll know what to do should the Earth decide to end it.
On this hard rain, it reminds me of a break in my garage’s gutter system, where the soil has been pounded to sand. This may be the fate of all these farm fields. Ironic to think of hard rain causing desert conditions.
Comment by Rick Larson — 1 July 2006 @ 9:17 PM
I know what you mean about missing snow. I moved from Maryland to Florida in 1998. I never thought I would miss snow, but I do. Another thing I miss is fireflies. When I was a kid, we would catch them and put them in jars with holes in the lids. My kids have never seen snow. They’ve never seen a field at dusk lit up with hundreds of tiny lights. Mosquitos just don’t have the same charm.
Comment by Vicky — 1 July 2006 @ 9:45 PM
I live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and we are having a serious rash of forest fires in the north, all across the west. We are getting milder than normal winters, wetter springs, and drier summers. People are getting evacuated from their homes, having their houses destroyed by floods, and farmers are losing their shirts as much of our land in the NE is too soggy to plant in. But people still don’t want to speak about global warming and climate change. Instead, they want to start exploiting our oil sands, just like Alberta to the west because we don’t believe that our province is developed to its full economic potential.
Maybe in the end, we just get what we deserve?
Comment by Dodos — 6 July 2006 @ 2:18 AM
I live in the southwest, and am frankly extremely nervous about it. It’s already a furnace out here - Global Warming can only make things worse. We’re in at least a 10-year drought with no end in sight. We’re sucking up all the water like crazy, killing the mighty Colorado River, and still this place is booming like you wouldn’t believe - people are moving here in droves. When it “all comes down,” I can’t imagine how this place will be livable. I want out, but we’ll never leave as long as my husband has a sweet-paying job here. *sigh* I hope the apocalypse waits until my kid is in college.
Comment by karasu — 25 July 2006 @ 12:28 PM
Make the connections
12 Oct. 2007
Williams Bay, Wisconsin
Author - K. West
Dave Warwak received a strong warning today from his hometown police.
The warning came in response to complaints from parents and teachers who were in attendance at the town’s annual homecoming parade.
Accompanied by his dog, Warwak allegedly entered the parade and passed out small cards to children.
Police stopped Warwak, escorted him home and instructed him to “stay away from the town’s children”.
At particular issue with police was Warwak telling children, Santa Claus is not real.
The card’s front reads:
Remember the Santa Claus lie?
One lie is so bad, some people prefer to keep it hidden.
So hidden, some never find out!
Do you want to live a lie?
The back reads:
Go to your favorite search engine.
Look-up “Factory Farming” Look-up “Vegan”
“Naming a rock, a banana, does not make it food”
A teacher of ten years in Illinois, Warwak was recently fired for his vegan views. Warwak filed an appeal in response to his termination. No date has been set.
Comment by warwak — 22 October 2007 @ 2:55 AM