progressive involvement

One-third of Greenland's Petermann Glacier has broken off, area twice the size of Manhattan

Drought map

Major portions of the country have been in drought conditions for some time already.  It's getting worse.  

This map shows drought conditions in over a third of the United States, the largest such area ever declared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

72% of the United States is affected by drought

Here.

The Oracle at Delphi would be throwing a hissy fit

Whatever happened to the omen?  They were common in the ancient world.  Many classical writers speak of people taking their omens to get them interpreted by the Oracle at Delphi.  She would ponder the omen and issue some response.  Usually the response was cryptic, but what could you expect in a message from the gods?  

Omens were portents.  Theoretically, some omens are positive, but, mostly, omens seemed to herald some change for the worse.  It's not for nothing that the word "ominous" developed from "omen."  

Some people still believe them.  They get heart-flutter if a black cat crosses their path.  At the level of personal superstitution, omens endure!

Alas, we no longer note omens on a larger scale.  Was it not an omen when a space craft broke up over Texas right before the start of the Iraq War?  The Oracle would have had smoke coming out of her ears on that one.

Is it not an omen that the Waldo Canyon fire swept through Colorado Springs on the hottest day in Colorado history?  Colorado Springs is the New Jerusalem of fundamentalism, a power center of religious industry, the city whose divines issue theological rationales for "dominion" over the earth and denial of climate change.

The ancient world was very well aware of hubris, the pride of considering one's self special, exempt from the constraints imposed on ordinary people.  The ancients knew that retribution was not far away.  Pride--hubris--goeth before the fall, after all.  

Is it not hubris that which leads people to ignore nature and science by building houses amongst the most flammable material on earth?  Is it not hubris which causes people to ignore land-use common sense and build suburban housing developments in the brush?

It's not like there wasn't any warning.  Manuel Navarro, former fire chief of Colorado Springs, told the Denver Post he "knew it would happen."  "I knew the terrain of Waldo Canyon and all the neighborhoods in the area."

In a 2004 article in the Colorado Springs Gazette, Navarro was among fire officials trying to get out the word that "a monster sleeps on the Front Range, ready to awaken, ready to kill and ready to destroy."

The word "waldo" comes from the Old English "waltheof," which means "power thief."  Show disregard for nature--try to steal nature's power--and nature will rise up and steal it back.  If the Oracle were with us today, she'd be apoplectic.

This is going to get tiresome

Nobody wants to hear it, it seems, but the Colorado wildfires are almost certainly global warming related.  

It was 105 degrees the day the Waldo Canyon fire hit, a new record for Colorado, and it hasn't rained in weeks.  Hot and dry conditions make for a mountain tinderbox.

High temperature records fell as the wave spread east, in many cases exceeding temperatures last seen during the "dust bowl" years of the 1930's.  Over 50 locations set all time highs, including 111 in Dodge City, Kansas and 115 in McCook, Nebraska.

What's worse, this is what you'd expect in the early stages of global warming.  In other words, it gets worse later on, and not all that much later on either.  What happens when the high temperature hits 125 in, say, Chicago?

Image:  "Hell in the rear view mirror," Colorado Springs Gazette, Jesse Kurtz, KKTV 11

Catastrophe is not that far away

Politicians like to bloviate about "our children and grandchildren."  It's a feel-good line, and people seem to like it when we observe such pieties.  If people were really interested in building a future for their "children and grandchildren," however, they'd be actually doing something to avoid the coming catastrophe.

Yes, catastrophe.  So far, the earth has warmed 1.4 degrees in the past 150 years.  With that seemingly small increase, we have rising sea levels, islands disappearing, drought and desertification, an increase in extinct species, and stronger and bigger storms than ever.  

If we do nothing about it, which is definitely the way to bet, we'll be seeing a 6 degree temperature rise by 2100.

Imagine what life will really be like for "our children and grandchildren."  It will be hotter, for one thing.  Daytime temperatures will hit 120 degrees in some unlikely places.  People will die from the heat, plants and animals will die from drought.

Many of the hundreds of millions of people who live in coastal areas will be moving inland, which will cause strife with the people already living there.  Violence will erupt in many places.  You think the world is a grim place now?  This is nirvana compared to what's just over the horizon.  By 2100, planet earth is going to be a very grim place.

1980--now THERE was a heat wave

Our beloved state of Colorado is wilting under record-setting 100-plus degree temperatures and, at last count, 13 wildfires in the mountains.  

That was as of this morning, which was a leap from 8 the previous night.  There may be more by now.  (Say a prayer for the firefighters.)

Both are global-warming related, in my view.  By every measure, it's getting hotter--and hotter earlier.  Tucson, Arizona set a record this year for "earliest day to hit 100" on May 13. 

In addition, huge areas of the Rocky Mountains are affected by pine beetle disease, generally believed to be global-warming related, making whole regions a tinder box of dead wood. 

As heat waves go, however, this one, so far, pales in comparison to the heat wave of 1980.  

In Hays, Kansas, we had 33 straight days over 100 degrees.  On the 34th day, the temp fell to 99, and--you know what?--it actually did feel a little cooler less hot.  After that brief (and not much of a) reprieve, we had another 16 days in a row over 100.

It was terrible--one of the greatest natural disasters in the history of the United States.  The big cities--Kansas City and St. Louis--saw dozens of heat-related deaths.  Day time temperature in downtown St. Louis was around 130 degrees.

The cause was a massive high pressure ridge that settled over the midwest and south, and stayed there for over two months.  The thing was so massive and obtrusive that it took a hurricane (Allen) to dislodge it.

I remember the first day.  I walked out of the house and not only was it suffocatingly hot, but something about the air felt foul.  It was moldy-smelling, and--you somehow knew--thick with unfriendly organisms.  One night, it was 100 degrees at midnight.  I still remember the sign on the First National Bank saying:  "12:00  100."

We were used to heat in Kansas.  "Hotter than Kansas in August" is not just a line in a musical.  This, however, was heat on a whole new level, a demonic level.  (Mostly, our air is clean, and our thoughts are pure.)  This was something of a different order entirely--the unnatural suddenly become natural.  In my own mind, I think of it as The Day Global Warming Began.   

Grim future for human beings

What we have to look forward to, according to 22 scientists writing in the scientific journal Nature:  "catastrophic and irreversible environmental changes," including "species extinctions, extreme climate fluctuations," and "other threats that together risk a level of upheaval not seen since the large-scale extinctions 65 million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs."