Thomas,
Thought I'd chip in. Icebergs larger than ocean liners were
sighted off the port of Dunedin, New Zealand, last week, well north of the
Roaring Forties, barely five weeks before mid-summer. The sight was so unusual
that tour operators offered chopper flights to over the ice field. One local
news channels landed a reporter on a berg to do a quick talkback from the
surface and pick up ice chips for an office martini. Wasn't that a scene from
"Titanic"?
Regards,
Bob.
were ----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas Kelly
To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 1:51 PM
Subject: Re: [Biofuel] Weird Weather
Robert,
I read your post and then the following from an e-mail:
"More and more polar bear cubs are dying off on Alaska's northern coast,
according to a government study released earlier this month .
In fact, of polar bears studied between 1990 and last spring, only 25
cubs per 100 females survived. That's less than half the survival rate of polar
bear cubs studied from 1967 to 1989!
Scientists point to rising temperatures and shrinking ice packs as a
main cause of the polar bear's dramatic decline."
Evidence of climate change is coming from many different directions.
I spent the afternoon trout fishing in the Catskill Mts of New York
(US). Temps in the low 60's (F). Unusual for late Nov. The other fisherman I
saw was wearing a Tee shirt. By now I should be using the new block heater I
put in the car. I've already gone to my winter blend (70% BD : 30% winterized
petro). Unusual .... maybe nothing more .... but ..... weird weather,
huh?
Tom
----- Original Message -----
From: robert and benita rabello
To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 4:07 PM
Subject: [Biofuel] Weird Weather
Hello everyone!
I talked my sweetheart into renting "An Inconvenient Truth" over the
weekend. She finds it hard to sit through all of the science, but my boys were
pretty interested throughout the film. We've had a very strange year,
weather-wise, in this area. Back in January, we had the wettest month on
record. It came in the middle of a long, rainy but mild winter that blended
into an early spring, bringing warm temperatures. Our garden got a real
kick-start from the mild temperatures in March and April.
This summer ended up being the driest on record. We went for WEEKS
without rain. (When I first came to BC to visit my sweetheart back in 1989, it
rained at least once, every day during the summer.) Local creeks were so
shallow I saw dead adult salmon stranded on the shore. Autumn came with a
vengeance though, bringing high winds and heavy rain that saturated the ground.
A couple of weeks ago, the remnants of a typhoon slammed into the west coast,
bringing 800 mm of rainfall within a 24 hour period, just over the ridgeline
from where we live. We've had serious flooding, property damage and drowning
deaths in our area.
Over the past couple of days, however, a mass of outflowing arctic air
has dropped the temperatures precipitously. The wet ground crusted into ice.
A frontal system from the Gulf of Alaska brought about 15 cm of very wet snow
that fell on the ice and made driving so treacherous, the municipality actually
closed the two roads that lead uphill to our neighborhood. (These have since
been re-opened.) We've not seen the snowplow because the crews are so busy
trying to keep the major routes clear. In the meantime, people are struggling
to get their machines uphill, and several have simply parked on the sides of
the roads and walked home. (What a unique concept!)
Our Toyota has traction control, which I've learned makes the car
utterly useless once the wheels start spinning. It's not bad on compact snow,
but anything deeper than the bottom of its rims renders the vehicle immobile
pretty quickly. In order to get my sweetheart to work this morning, I had to
chip ice away from the front wheels and pour warm water around them to melt the
ice underneath.
What this kind of weather pattern illustrates is that the balance of
temperatures and precipitation is changing. We've set several records for
rain, heat, drought and snowfall in a single year. The overheated atmosphere
is releasing its energy with increasing ferocity, and unless we take SERIOUS
action soon, I think we're going to be in for a very wild ride in the near
future.
robert luis rabello
"The Edge of Justice"
Adventure for Your Mind
http://www.newadventure.ca
Ranger Supercharger Project Page
http://www.members.shaw.ca/rabello/
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