Saturday Morning Stuff

Something to get very serious about!

I'm not a climate change skeptic. Over the past 10,000 years the average temperature on the earth has increased .8 degrees centigrade. Not a big deal, right? Who would notice? We are on track this century to move to an increase of 2 degrees centigrade. What the hell, that's not a big deal either. Except the increase of .8 happened not over the 10,000 year period, its happened since the industrial revolution. When, not if,  we hit the 2 degree increase there will be 100 million refugees in the world and 40 percent of the arable land will no longer support crops. Ever been to Miami? It will be under water at a 2 degree increase. That increase will happen this century and to put it in perspective, I'll have great grand children wandering around wondering why the hell we didn't do something about it. If we hit six degrees in another couple of centuries, the average temperature will be 170 degrees Fahrenheit. More perspective, that's less time than my mom's side of the family has lived in North America. Scientists call this a closed feedback loop, an example: the perma-frost in Siberia melts, releases methane gas into the atmosphere, which in turn creates more melting of perma frost.

                                                             Enviro Sidebars.

SoCal is loaded with wonderful old cars. Last Saturday Cakes and I were sitting at a light, with our windows were down since it was about 74 degrees and sunny. We had stopped behind an absolutely perfect 68 Pontiac GTO. Both of us noticed a smell in the air and it was coming from the tailpipes of the pre-emission controls GTO. Cakes said what's the matter with that car? I told her nothing, that's the way all cars used to smell as they pumped emissions into the air. I told one of my student's Dad about it, he said when he grew up in the San Fernando Valley you couldn't see the sun most of the time, the sky was a brownish yellow from all the emissions. Its better now and so are our cars. I can remember the screams of the Luddites about emission controls, dumb bastards!

And another thing...or two.

In 2010 we had a two week series of rainstorms in SoCal. The storm sewer systems funneled the rainwater into the ocean. In fact so much rainwater was sent out to sea, if it had been retained it would have supplied SoCal with 80% of our water needs for 12 months. The cluster of buildings in the lower left corner of the photo is downtown LA.

I had a thermometer in my garage when we lived in Phoenix, one afternoon about 5 o'clock with the unrelenting Arizona sun beating down on our house from the western sky. I opened the door from the laundry room to garage and looked at the thermometer. It was 107 outside, 82 in the house and 131 degrees in the garage. I swear to god the tires were melting on our cars and the garbage was slow cooking in the plastic trash barrel. Phoenix would be a wide spot in the road with out A/C and with out the big power generating dams built by "socialists" there'd be no A/C.

Okay then, I've got a class!