Clyde Burnett, Peak to Peak. Our slight taste of extreme weather was the weekend windstorm with extensive loss of electric power. That warm air mass to the south and the winter air mass to north produced a strong jet stream generating and driving storm systems to the east. The lower reaches of the jet at my house at 9,000 ft were strong on Saturday morning.  At noon I lost power with no more baseboard electric or electric support for gas heat. My small wood-burning stove kept us comfortable as I maintained an hourly supply of dry pine firewood from Phil and Jane. The United Power linesmen had a weekend of work.

Following the system to the east, we find increasing heat trapping with the CO2 control of water vapor making a warmer Gulf. That produces more evaporation and precipitation with release of the latent heat of 539 calories /gram. This makes for more and stronger tornadoes. So, we had 85 nasty nighttime tornadoes triggered by the Finley cold front in the Gulf States, producing strong winds and four inches/hour rain in Florida. 

Early summer in Australia has its sample of climate change with triple digit temperatures. Extensive wildfires emit a large fraction of their annual CO2. Sydney suffers from smoke pollution. But the warm ocean produces floods in Central Africa. Those farmers have loss of livelihood, a repeat of our Nebraska flood.

And the Arctic report is not good. The Alaska Climate Research Center at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, reports the average annual temperature increase for the 1949 – 2018 period was four degrees Fahrenheit (2.2 C); the winter increase was 7 F. (Recall our global limit for disaster is 2 C.)  And Greenland ice is melting at seven times the former rate. Continued warming means an approach to permafrost thaw, which may release more CO2 than is already in the atmosphere and will generate and release methane. But not to worry. We have a methane detecting satellite. It is already identifying the gas and oil sources of large methane leakage in Ohio, Texas, California, and Asia.

We may hope that technology will solve the mitigation problem. The last issue of the publication Physics Today had a long discussion of the fusion power research at ITER, the international thermonuclear experimental reactor in the south of France.  Experiments are scheduled to begin in a few years and continue into 2030s. Unfortunately, our Earth surface temperature will likely exceed the 2 C critical point before we have fusion power.

The recent Madrid conference has failed to commit to a lower limit of CO2 production from fossil fuel heating, and support for vulnerable small nations. It is being called a “Crime Against Humanity”.  Obama made the US a leader in preserving a previous climate commitment. Now our present Republican Administration and Senate make the U.S. a leader in commitment failures. And this Senate leader gloats over stalling Obama’s climate change efforts. 

Isn’t it an immoral and criminal policy to force our next generations to live in dangerous heat and extreme weather from the warmed oceans, forcing scores of migrants trying to find food and escape rising seas? Does politics dominate the universal laws of our planet? But the economy is healthy, and some find increased wealth! 

Southwest Florida heat has triggered another red tide, driving a 30% adaptation cost increase for my 96th birthday dinner of grouper from Everglades City. 

(Originally published in the January 2, 2020, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)