Category Archives: Climate Change

What If Gore Had Won?

11 Thursday Dec 2025

Posted by in Al Gore, Climate Change, Politics

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        Perhaps the Supreme Court’s decision to not allow the chads votes in Florida to be counted is quite possibly the most decisive and far-reaching vote they ever made. Other decisions can be changed and re-changed but that moment in History will never come again.

            Vice President Al Gore was a leader in the fight to reduce the causes of Climate Change here and around the world. Bush II’s people were repeatedly warned about Bin Laden and the Al-Queda but ignored them when they might have prevented the 9-11 attacks. Clinton and Gore had worked with Speaker Gingrich to cut over 350,000 government jobs over eight years and paid off almost all of the bonds. Gore had worked with Gingrich and the House and Senate budget committees to fix the Social Security System for at least 75 years. Gingrich lost support of his caucus after the Lewinsky scandal hit the fan. Gore was highly respected around the world including China and Russia.

            Granted we have had four Presidents since Gore lost the Electoral College – not the popular vote – with each doing their own thing. The most far-reaching laws Bush II and Trump did was to cut taxes and ramp up the National Debt to a disastrous amount.

            We currently have a President and a group of people telling Americans Climate Change is not real. They say it is just a liberal scheme to spend money ignoring the events they can see. Had Gore been elected we would be in the fore-front of trying to keep the CO2 emissions down and reducing the effects we are now seeing and how much worse they will get.

            It is disturbing to think how life would be different here and around the world.

Time Is Running Out 

08 Saturday Mar 2025

Posted by in Climate Change

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Imagine being on a train speeding down the rails towards a tunnel through a mountain. Various devices have been installed to tell the engineer to slow down before reaching the tunnel. A rock slide has closed off the tunnel but crews and equipment are working to clean the tracks so our train can safely pass through. Now imagine those devices are being dismantled allowing the train to speed back up. In addition the work at the tunnel entrance has been slowed and maybe stopped. Time is running short and unless the engineer applies the brakes quickly the train will be wrecked with disastrous consequences to the passengers. The rails are climate change.      

This imaginative teaching scenario is an accurate description of what is happening here regarding efforts to deeply reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. If we don’t do it quickly the effects of climate change will become unbearable. We have known for almost 250 years that carbon dioxide kept the planet warm. We have known for almost a hundred that the level of the gas was increasing but at a slow rate so scientists studying the rise were not very concerned.

About 50 years ago they started getting concerned. About this time the scientists told their bosses at the major oil companies that they were causing a substantial increase which would lead to an uncontrollable warming of the planet. The companies managed to dissuade and con people into thinking it wasn’t true. Millions of Americans still believe their propaganda, and they just put in a President who either ignores the facts or just doesn’t care. He has said many times he wants to produce more fossil fuels and cut regulations on burning them. He wants to reduce government spending on combating the efforts to use wind and solar power.

Scientists said a 3.5 degree rise over the start of the industrial age was a tipping point and we are very near that point. We are about to hit those rocks at a high speed. How many people will survive…if any?

How Do Legislatures React?

31 Friday Jan 2025

Posted by in Climate Change, Heat

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        Global warning has become a matter of fact to the vast majority of Americans. It is how we are reacting to the change that is interesting.

            We know the Greenland glaciers are melting and raising the North Atlantic Sea levels and the warmer water raises the levels even more. The rising water temperature creates more powerful coastal storms and hurricanes on the east and the Gulf coasts. The realtors in North Carolina thought talking about it would depress prices or make properties unsellable so they persuaded the state legislature to make it illegal to discuss the effects of global warming. After some of the recent storms people actually said nobody had told them they were buying in a danger zone.

            The warming climate means summers start earlier and are more dangerous causing more people to die from the heat than any other weather-related cause. The heat is hard on people who have to work outside in ditches, fields, or other high exposure areas. Dallas and Houston passed laws on how to protect those workers. Protections like water breaks, shaded rest areas, and depending on how heat reduced hours of exposure were enacted. This is most needed early in the season before the body becomes more accustomed. Those laws were overridden by the Texas legislature. Florida passed a law preventing any worker heat protection laws. Both are primarily aimed at the people who pick crops in vegetable fields.

            These are just two states that are more concerned about where their personal and campaign money comes from than the people we need working for us at low wages. Is it just me or do we treat those people with brown skins like we treated those with black skin a couple of centuries ago?

Think Before Buying

30 Thursday Jan 2025

Posted by in Building a House, Climate Change, Moving, Real Estate Planning

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        I bought the lot I built my house on in 1977 when I was thirty years old. It was the last rural lot we could find in our county of about 32,000. At that time I knew the lot would require a well and a septic system. With houses all around me it didn’t occur to me to check on anything else.

            We are about thirty feet above the Illinois River thanks to the glaciers melting and dropping their load of sand and gravel. We are located on forty-seven feet of sand and gravel. The house across the street, to the southeast, and next door to the south (end of the block) is not on the sand and gravel and those wells are over 300 feet deep verses my forty-five. After a heavy rain the lot to the south holds water on their North side next to mine. It flows over to the front of my lot and in an hour has dropped into my sand and gravel.

            As I have gotten older and more aware of where not to locate I have put together a list of check points and with today’s climate change they are even more important.

  1. Check with the local insurance companies about the potential to flood with a six inch rain. How prone is the area and especially access roads?
  2. Elevation above sea level because the ocean’s are rising and pushing rivers higher. Even areas tens of miles inland could be affected. Charleston, South Carolina is going to build a New Orleans style levee. Lots of homes will be outside it. It’s illegal to say a listed house is subject to global warming in North Carolina.
  3. Check with local taxing departments for what tax you will pay plus any other charges you might incur. Developers sometimes put costs onto the buyer who doesn’t know until the tax bill arrives. It isn’t called a tax.
  4. Check with the local Police Department for crime statistics.
  5. Check distance to nearest medical facility and its level.
  6. Check for any specialist you might need now and in the future.
  7. Is the area known for high winds that damage a roof? Hurricanes damage roofs far from the coast. Lower angle roofs are more susceptible to damage.
  8. As you get older exterior and interior steps become a greater inconvenience and hazard. In tornado prone areas, a lower level or basement is a necessary inconvenience. Tornadoes are getting stronger and more common.
  9. Look at distance to shopping, grocery stores, and restaurants.
  10. Outside maintenance should be a major consideration as one gets older.
  11. How dependable are the utilities? If power is a problem very often or in an area with frequent storms a generator might be an additional cost. A generator costs several thousand dollars.
  12. House and car insurance may be much higher than you currently pay if available from a reputable company or from the state like in Florida.
  13. What are the local electric and water rates? Especially if the property is all electric. Is internet and phone service available?
  14. An area with low or no real estate taxes and or income taxes get their operating money from somewhere and is the amount dependable for the future? (My real estate tax jumped when the huge power plant closed. The tax increase pusher said the plant would pay the increase.)
  15. Check on what churches, clubs, and organizations are in the area to assist in making friends.

These are just the first questions you should ask and many more should be on your list.

Big Oil Knew

31 Thursday Oct 2024

Posted by in Carbon Fuels, Climate Change

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        I am a contributor to several green organizations who try to protect us, wildlife, and the planet. Billions of people are aware of global warming and we are the cause through our burning of the fossil fuels the planet buried millions and billions of years ago. Global warming and our exploding population are causing hundreds of species to go extinct each year. Every year we dig huge holes in planet big enough to be seen from space.

            Today the global warming I studied in 1970 is now called Climate change. We have known that carbon dioxide kept the planets re-radiation’s longer rays from escaping into space for 250 years. Some of the people demonstrating during the first Earth Day tried to make people aware of the danger.

            They tried to say each of us had some responsibility for it, which is true, Big Oil was told by nuclear scientist Edward Teller in 1959 at an American Petroleum Institute meeting so they have been aware but chose to put greed over the safety of their descendants. In 1979 Exxon’s research scientists told management of the dramatic changes in the World’s climate in the next seventy-five years. That’s on track for the projections for 2054.

            The oil giants and coal companies have put money over the future health of humanity and wildlife. As we try to limit the damage we are using more of the CO2 producing fuels and not making significant changes in reducing the damaging effects. How far can the damage go? Venus is the best example of runaway global warming. Its atmosphere is enough to melt lead!

See For Yourself

19 Friday Jul 2024

Posted by in Climate Change

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        For those fewer and fewer people, who don’t understand what is happening to our climate, read the following sentences. The Earth has had numerous ice ages over the last million or so years. They lasted about a hundred thousand years. They would lower the sea level two or three hundred feet which is why we find amber and human settlement remains in the Baltic and out to the North Sea. In between those periods of ice is about ten thousand years where trees and grasslands soaked up carbon dioxide which caused another ice age. During the last one our species expanded and populated the world.

            We know all of that from geological and archeological findings. Notice the inter-glacial period is ten thousand years and the last ice age was a little over that average, so why is the Earth warming up and melting the remaining glaciers and ice caps? It’s that contagion that came out of Africa about 50,000 years ago – us. We have cut down the forests that soaked up the carbon dioxide, dug up the remains of those primeval forests and burned them, and pulled the remains of early single cell life in a liquid and gas and burned it. All of that has reversed the natural cycle and filled the air with carbon dioxide and methane causing the re-radiation of the Earth’s heat to be trapped.

            We have known that these gases perform that function for over 250 years. We knew this on the first Earth Day. The alarms started sounding in the 1980s and the fossil fuel companies silenced the scientists in their companies so they could continue to make money at an expense to the future generations. They still fund groups whose only function is to deceive the millions of gullible people through the internet websites and social media. Can’t you see the climate is changing fast? Each summer is hotter with stronger storms and most winter days are jacket weather. Convince those gullible people with facts and save the future.

Dim Future

26 Monday Feb 2024

Posted by in Climate Change, Food Supply, Nuclear Power

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                Most of my life I was either neutral or optimistic but now I am very pessimistic of the future. Not just for Americans but for all creatures. My first bout of pessimism was the decision to have kids or not after studying the rate we are consuming the world’s food supply in the oceans and on land. At that time we had three billion people with scary projections for the future. We are still on that track with over eight billion people.

                Few of the mainstay fish species then are being caught in great quantities. Today we are eating species that were once fish bait. We have gene-edited many crops to increase production. That helps, but we have increased the use of fertilizers which have created dead zones in our rivers, lakes, and seas.

                After more than two centuries people are finally realizing what carbon dioxide and methane do to the climate. We have been too dependent on fossil fuels. To live in a modern society it is very difficult to wean ourselves off them. The greed of fossil fuel companies has created a type of brainwashing causing us to disbelieve what we are told and can see.

                A group of politicians here are still trying to deny climate change and the need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. The World’s climate is tolerable today because millions of years ago the plants and animals were buried taking enough carbon with them to lower the atmospheric carbon dioxide. Now we are putting that carbon back into the air.

                For most of my life only two countries had nuclear weapons. Now, several countries have them and some of those are very unstable. Iran, Pakistan, India, and North Korea top the list of countries with leaders who think they could survive after destroying their enemies. Each of these has enough to affect the world’s climate and kill billions like the past super volcanoes and the asteroid. We would freeze instead of roasting!

                The future isn’t very optimistic.

Shed A Tear

25 Saturday Nov 2023

Posted by in Climate Change

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A few decades ago an iconic advertisement showed an Indian on a hill overlooking a highway with polluting vehicles and trash blowing around. He had a single tear coming down his cheek showing his sorrow about how Americans have destroyed what was once a beautiful land.

Today he might shed more than one tear because we may have cleaned up some of he blowing trash by putting it into mountains he could stand on. Each of the vehicles are emitting far less lead free fumes but now there are many times more vehicles polluting the air with CO2. The Indian saw smoke pouring out of stacks and trash floating in the River. We have greatly reduced the stack pollution and the floating trash. Back then few Americans were concerned about global warming and how the pollution would change the ecosystem so rapidly. Droughts are destroying forests and insects that were restricted to warm winters are not able to live hundreds of miles farther North and at higher altitudes. The same with animals and birds moving farther North as the climate warms. Some move expanding their reach which others move to resist the warming climate. An excellent example is the Flamingo that was once restricted to mostly Southern Florida can now be found in summer as far North as Maine and Minnesota because the long summers and rising seawater is destroying their former nesting areas.

Perhaps the future is so disastrous that an old song may be more apropos than the tear. Maybe the Indian should have been singing “Cry Me A River”.

Where Does Climate Rank?

15 Wednesday Nov 2023

Posted by in Climate Change

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I was born into a family shortly after World War II ended that had gone through the Depression and World War I. We had all the money. England gave or leased America’s islands and bases around the world for loans. England and France were losing colonies by politics or revolt. China was going Communist while Nationalists went to Taiwan.

We were the only super power with Joseph Stalin clamping down on the Eastern Europe they had captured during World War I. The USSR was developing nuclear weapons making them a military competitor. To increase the fear and polarization children were taught in school to hide under their desks when USSR missiles exploded nearby. People on my block built bomb shelters in their back yards during the Cuban Crisis.

China was a minor player so every country and local war fell into either of the two camps with few being independent and playing one pole against the other.

In the 1980s the USSR came apart, China was being boosted by globalization of manufacturing, and the fervor of World War III was gone. The economies of most countries skyrocketed. The World Leaders started to see the danger of climate change in the early 2000s.

Now we have Russia invading former Soviet States, Iran’s religious Nationalism creating conflicts in the Middle East, China’s rise in military expansion in the South China Sea and threats to Taiwan, as well as the rise of Authoritarianism and Dictatorships. Ethnic and Religious distrust in many countries exacerbated by migration creates instability. Geopolitics has not been this unstable in at least sixty years.

Where does “working to cut emissions” rank in this environment?

How Dim Is Our Future       

04 Tuesday Jul 2023

Posted by in Climate Change

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        How does mankind prepare for the effects of climate change? The seas are already rising causing flooding during high tides and storms. This is occurring with a few inches rise. By 2100 a conservative expectation is over a foot with six feet being possible. In a couple of centuries the world’s glaciers may have melted causing the seas to rise more than two hundred feet. This rise would flood the world’s coastal cities and many of the interior ones like Washington D.C., London, New Orleans, Houston, Paris, Cairo, and many others. How does a city prepare? Do what New Orleans has tried to do and build not just 20 foot dikes but over 200 foot ones, encircling the cities? Miami has zoned for the streets to be raised over 10 feet so ground floors will become basements.    

            The past few years has seen mega-droughts and extreme temperatures along the Pacific and Southwest states. Even Alaska has had triple digit temperatures, melting permafrost.

            The changing climate is causing extremely heavy rains and flooding in great swaths of America. Atmospheric rivers are dumping a foot or two of rain and many feet of snow inland from the Pacific Coast and in Europe. One violent storm after another has been and will continue to hit Texas, the Southeast, and the Mid Atlantic States. Europe and Asia are also being hit by these events. The Gulf Coast was known for category one and two hurricanes but now the Atlantic and Gulf are much warmer making the three and four category storms common. Warm oceans mean heavier rain from storms using ocean air.

            As the world’s population continues to grow, more land will be used for housing and with the oceans rising causing cities to be abandoned land formerly used for agriculture will be used for housing. We have eight billion people with another five by 2100. Where will the food, land, and water come from for all those people?

            The world’s political leadership needs to be united in their efforts to reduce the increase in the warming gases and the effects of the damage to the existing environment. Today’s leaders are working on that vision but many people are trying to claim that it isn’t happening and climate change is another hoax just so they can become leaders of their countries. These people’s followers are anti science which means they vote for people who cater to those voters and disbelieving zealots. If those people take power in their countries they will try to stop reduction efforts.

            A concerted effort of all countries is necessary or mankind’s future is dim.