Posts Tagged ‘global warming’
Recent Images
It was a quiet but beautiful Sunday yesterday at Wintervale. Between watching Olympic Curling and Hockey, I got outside for a midday walk with Asher and, back indoors, tweaked some leaf photo files in my library from the previous week.
That last one was notable for the surprising amount of shredded leaf matter beneath a large oak that had no leaves in its branches to shred. It was baffling. The mess appeared one morning and continued to intensify over several days, just beneath this particular tree. Did a squirrel that was nesting in the tree decide it no longer needed as much insulation?
Ya got me.
By early afternoon, the meltwater was flowing down the drainage swale that passes across our fields. It’s an unsettling reality in February. I haven’t seen any news reporting the crazy weather occurring in the UK lately, but our friend, Ian Rowcliffe, in Portugal, informed me of their ongoing doses of heavy rain causing flooding.
The region is receiving strong storms because of the warmer atmosphere holding more moisture, and the jet stream positioning is holding the high and low pressure systems in place for the moment. The weather is swinging between drought and flooding from one year to the next.
It has me not wanting to think about what’s in store for us next in the Midwest of the US. Hopefully, the summer of ’26 won’t bring down as many large trees as we were forced to deal with last year.
I’m afraid we are just going to have to hang on and find ways to cope with whatever outcome is delivered. It’s hard because weather is one of the few things that sending love doesn’t seem to influence.
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Lotta Love
It is classically crispy and spring-like this morning, even though we are still weeks away from the vernal equinox that marks the arrival of the next season. The planet continues to melt and cook as predicted by climate scientists. Imagine that.
A couple of days ago, there was still enough snow in some spots that Asher could almost disappear in his hunt for rodents.
This morning, the high ground of the hay field is fully exposed.
Paw and boot prints in the soft, slushy snow from last night are perfectly preserved by the temperature drop below freezing, so we can see where Asher and the dog sitter walked while we were away last night. We were in the Cities for a Valentine’s dinner at the home of our friends, Pam and John, before the four of us attended “Saturday Night Love” at the O’Shaughnessy Auditorium at St. Catherine University in St. Paul.
One of our favorite humorous storytellers, Kevin Kling, and six music and theater friends offer an annual show on themes of love. This year, love was greatly needed, in light of the abuse Minnesota has suffered at the hands of brutal ICE agents’ unconstitutional provocations and murderous attacks on citizens. The collective attempt to process the trauma of the endless days of stress was palpable in the robust shared audience participation and heartfelt responses to the entertainment provided on the stage.
The hilarious familiarity of situations and word-images that Kevin Kling paints with his strong Minnesota accent is always a special treat. He harkened back to the days we drank well water directly from the hose and played with Jarts lawn darts. In classic Minnesota form, he shared a quote that if you mess with one tater tot, you mess with the entire hotdish.
The packed auditorium seemed to respond so universally to each of the occasional references to the attacks by the oppressive regime that I found myself wondering if any MAGA supporters might be in the audience. They could just as equally appreciate reminiscent storytelling, popular music, poetry, and show tunes. If so, what must they sense from the emphatic response of so many people around them?
What do they think when so much love for all of humanity is expressed with such robust enthusiasm by hundreds of others?
It’s not something I can comprehend. What I do know is that the love vibrations being shared last night were wonderfully energizing. It was refreshing to receive more than we gave for a change.
It has left us vibrating, still.
All we need is love, dat dadatta da!
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Dizzying Dissonance
The firehose of ridiculousness and the horrific is flowing at a dizzying rate from one main point in the country of the USA. The buffoon acting as the figurehead is busy spouting his aggressive desires to take over other countries and much of our own, by force if necessary, while simultaneously claiming himself to be the most peaceful person to ever deserve a peace prize.
It is so comical while being equally evil that the rest of the sane world seems to just stare, dumbstruck, wondering what the heck could possibly happen next to stop the madness.
Those who made this mess have no interest in stopping anything. As with so many realities of this world, it will likely get worse before things end up better.
Cyndie and I romp on our beautiful rural acres with our dog and horses, enjoying what diminishing features of winter remain. Rain in January has become the new normal for our position on the planet at this point in the warming climate. Asher behaves as if he doesn’t have a clue about the evil in motion in the world. His pure joy of chasing his rope-pierced Jolly Ball is a healing balm for our fractured sensibilities.
The horses, on the other hand, give off a different vibe. From everything we have come to know about the far-reaching sentience of these amazing equine beings, it doesn’t surprise me that they recognize the nastiness that humans are spewing into the world (again).
It means a lot to Cyndie and me to be able to give them our love and attention each day, letting them know we understand when they are uneasy. Having been rescued from some truly dire situations, our four horses are well familiar with what humans are capable of when acting at their worst. Every good thing we can do for them helps to heal whatever previous suffering they have endured in their lives.
The best thing we can do for ourselves amid the dizzying dissonance of the transition to an authoritarian state is to avoid the blasts from automated bots working for the propaganda machine and increase our loving attention to each other, our children, our friends, our neighbors, and all the animals in our care.
The little things we do matter in ways that too often get overlooked. As individuals, we can’t solve the threat of ICE agents murdering citizens, but we can help each other to cope with the storm of hatred rumbling over the country (and world).
Give a little extra love to people you encounter every day. Share a smile with someone you’ve never met. Give rise to a feeling of love for yourself and everyone you know.
The human race is so much better than the way the worst of people can make us all seem. Two different things can be true at the same time. It’s dizzying, I know.
I’m thinking about going outside to hug some of our trees. Then I’ll go retrieve the empty feed buckets from the horses on this picturesque Saturday morning.
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Summer Remnants
The end is near. The scenery is reflecting the change of seasons in a variety of places around our property. The trumpet vine sprouted one last blossom that stands out like an emphatic exclamation.
There is evidence of fruit on one of our grape vines. I fear we may have waited too long to harvest.
The spell of abnormal heat is predicted to break tomorrow, with a hint of possibility we could get a little precipitation this afternoon to help usher in the change. Any moisture will be welcome because the earth around here is much drier than our trees deserve.
Could a cold and wet October await? That would be a wonderful surprise at this point. It is time for the remnants of summer to disappear once and for all this year. That was then. This is now.
We Northlanders get a little flummoxed when the weather here stays “San Diego nice” for too long without interruption.
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Summer Heat
September is a great month for planting grass seed. Yesterday, with the high temperature reaching 86°F, the baby grass blades sprouting in the area where Cyndie had scattered seeds needed a big drink of water.
I pulled out the ATV and hooked up the trailer with our water tank and sprayer. I don’t think we’ve used this watering system in a year. The battery that drives the pump was still good, but the spray mechanism sure wasn’t.
There must have been water in it over the winter that froze and cracked the plastic. Cyndie operated it like a hand-held sprinkler. It got the job done. A replacement is on order.
Even though we got two coats of sealant on the asphalt driveway earlier this summer, there continue to be some small cracks emerging that I fear might be related to tree roots pushing up from below. I picked up some crack filler and took advantage of the high heat to apply several patches.
An 80-degree day in the fall feels a lot hotter than it would during the summer. At least we get the benefit of a quick cool-down as soon as the sun drops below the horizon.
If there weren’t so many ongoing crazy issues related to the destruction of our democracy, I might notice that the planet is still getting overcooked by the unabated burning of fossil fuels.
You’d think the fresh bit of sunburn on my nose yesterday would maybe have gotten my attention.
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Data Tapestries
It is not unusual for me to comment about how much the weather of my surroundings has changed in my lifetime. Beyond my first-person experience, I am greatly influenced by news of ever more intensified hurricanes, increased high-temperature extremes around the world, wildfires, droughts, and flash flooding downpours. I understand that the climate around the globe is changing, and I respect the data that has been recorded for enough years to reveal what is actually happening.
I recently read about tapestries made by crafters using data of the high temperature for each day of a year. That brought me to something called the National Parks Tempestry Project, where I discovered a wonderful representation of many U.S. National Parks and the “tempestries” created by volunteer crafters.
I don’t think the data revealed by the tapestries always looks as shocking in contrast as I’d expect, but it is interesting to compare the color trends from the wide variety of parks in this country.
They have created a beautiful web page for scrolling the large number of images that tell a story in a very different way from basic bar graphs on a page. If you haven’t seen this before, I recommend you click the image above to see for yourself. It’s impressive!
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Imaginary Problem
When something’s not right, does your mind wander toward the worst-case scenario? Mine did last night. Yesterday, we were “gifted” with a rain shower that would have been perfectly normal in the month of May. Unfortunately for me, it was the 27th day of December in a location that used to get snow instead of rain during the winter. Harumph.
I pulled up the images from our surveillance cameras and found nothing but a black screen from the barn view. It was late and rainy, and I didn’t want to trudge down to investigate, so I imagined what the problem might be. One possibility I came up with was that water had infiltrated my protective cover over the wiring to the camera and shorted out either the power or signal lines.
The other much worse possibility was that the remaining power line to the barn had failed, and the whole barn had lost electricity. That meant no lights and, more importantly, no heat on the water fountain for the horses. I would need to run a temporary cable from the shop and somehow hang it over the driveway high enough so delivery trucks wouldn’t snag it.
The moment this morning when I flipped the light switches up, my heart skipped a beat, but the lights came on, to our great relief. Also, a green indicator light on the camera showed it still had power. Hooray!
I unplugged the power to the camera for a minute or two to reset it and solved the problem with minimal effort. So much for my fatalistic imagination.
We continue to be blanketed by a thick fog that has the poor horses on edge because they can’t see the horizon to scan for threats.
Yesterday, there was still some ice in Paddock Lake, but it was all water this morning and topped to the brim.
I sure wish the warming climate was an imaginary problem. Maybe if we unplug insatiable greed and constantly increasing demands for land and air travel in fossil fuel-powered vehicles, we can reset things. Hahahaha!
I made myself laugh.
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Record Year
It’s a dubious honor, indeed, as our planet continues to simmer to increasingly frightening degrees (pun intended).
It’s pretty extreme to see the data so far above any previous record for such a consistent duration. You’d think the weather might start to reflect the conditions by growing more dramatic in intensity, bringing stronger hurricanes/typhoons, more intense hail in thunderstorms, and soaking rains that trigger flooding.
Oh, wait. That’s already happening all over the world. Yikes.
At least we got the rotting truss replaced on the log house up at the lake place.
All that remains is getting the new logs stained and sealed to match the rest of the structure. The roof is once again safely supported in case any wild climate-intensified weather makes its way to Hayward (WI).
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Collective Action
What can I do about the ills of the world? My fallback attempt to make things better tends to rely on the age-old art of wishing. I wish wars would cease. I wish that criminals would never get away with it. I wish people wouldn’t fall for the rantings of lying politicians. I wish the world could figure out a way to adjust societies to function consistently year-round without moving clocks twice a year.
One belief I hold that is well within my abilities to practice and encourage others to take up is to practice LOVE with as much or more gusto as they do all the world religions. Drop all the centuries of concocted dogma and simply produce and share LOVE.
There is one dilemma where my solution of sending love as a fix may only be as effective as merely wishing for improvement: the over-cooking of our planet Earth.
My news feed recently led me to an opinion piece by climate scientist Bill McGuire offering, “If you knew what I know, you’d be terrified too.” It is posted on CNN.com and listed as a 4-minute read. I hope you will take the time.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/opinions/climate-scientist-scare-doom-anxiety-mcguire/index.html
The terrifying realities of the ongoing climate change underway are enough to scare people into doing nothing since it appears all is lost. Scientists who rant about the issue can get labeled as “doomers.”
I approve of Bill McGuire’s point that people can handle being scared and still rally to take action.
The bottom line is that many things in life are scary or worrying, from going to the dentist to noticing a potential sign of cancer, but ignoring them almost invariably results in something far worse happening down the line.
The key is finding a way to have hope. One of the ways to cultivate hope is by collective action.
There is a wikiHow that explains ways to become an Activist.
It will take more than simply wishing to solve all the ills of this world. Let’s all seek out a way to contribute positive energy toward groups of like-minded people, driving change that will lead to better outcomes for ourselves and those around us.
We all do better when we all do better. Paul Wellstone.
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Mamma’s Back
Asher is very excited to find that Cyndie is back in his life again. When the garage door rumbled to life last night, Asher sprung to his feet from a dead sleep. We were up in the loft watching Minnesota’s State High School Hockey Tournament. Well, I was watching. Asher was napping.
We got along well enough in Cyndie’s absence but Asher knows who the real momma is. Now he can get back to playing us against each other to get his way when he wants something.
I’m looking forward to having a break from being the full-time dog trainer that I’d rather not be. That’s not because Asher isn’t making good progress with the things we are trying to teach. I’d just rather not be constantly thinking about the process and whether I am saying and doing all the right things at the right times.
My brain is in entertainment mode with the glorious spectacle of the High School Hockey Tournament games showing on TV. I’m really impressed with the level of play from these young athletes. More than their physical prowess in skating and stick handling, it’s the good decisions they make that stand out. Plus, there isn’t an obvious difference between the best lines and the “not-as-best.”
Also, the goalkeeping is incredibly sharp.
The only thing missing is a tournament snowstorm. That used to be a thing. Not so much anymore. Certainly, not this year. I saw that the planet just experienced a record for the world’s warmest February which was also the 9th month in a row with record temperatures. Seems like a trend.
If that keeps happening, it’ll hardly be worth the trip to Florida in the winter. I really like having occasional opportunities to get a taste of living alone when Cyndie is gone but speaking on Asher’s behalf, he would definitely prefer having Momma not travel.
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Relative Something 