Chat

[Morgan]

Thank you, Stuart.

[Randi]

Glad to see you have power and internet, Morgan!

---

Re various disasters and people's responses:
Life cannot be classified in terms of a simple neurological ladder, with human beings at the top; it is more accurate to talk of different forms of intelligence, each with its strengths and weaknesses. This point was well demonstrated in the minutes before last December's tsunami, when tourists grabbed their digital cameras and ran after the ebbing surf, and all the 'dumb' animals made for the hills. -B.R. Myers, author (b. 21 Aug 1963)

[Michael]

[Randi]

WOW!

[pommystuart]

It's sad to think the some of the precursors to these Earth changing effects have been produced by our generation.
Sorry Kids.

This year the 2nd August was Earth Overshoot Day, the day of each year when humanity uses more resources than the planet can regenerate in a year.
Calculated by the Global Footprint Network, the day represents people exceeding Earth’s “biocapacity”: the ability of an ecosystem to generate resources in a sustainable way.
For further info see the second part from this site.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/sustai ... -day-2023/

[Morgan]

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And should suffice.
Robert Frost 1920 (He was speaking metaphorically of desire and hate) What would he say today?
One of my favorite poets. When we had to memorize poetry in grade school, I always chose one of his- they seemed easy enough to both understand and memorize.

[Randi]

Traffic jam at Panama Canal as water level plummets

[pommystuart]

Oh shucks, did I forget to put the plug back in?

[jil]

[Michael]

The news about the effects of climate change just keep getting better and better!!!

[Maikel]

Did the Tonga eruption cause this year's extreme heat?

The 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano eruption may have contributed to this year's heat, but it's not causing climate change.

Link: https://www.livescience.com/planet-eart ... treme-heat


Aerial view of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano eruption in 2022. (Image credit: Maxar/Contributor via Getty Images)

[Michael]

Incredibly rare fire tornado captured on video by B.C. wildfire crews

Another incredible photo taken from a friend who is an Air Canada pilot and was flying over one of our countless #BCwildfire



Dirty thunderstorms aren’t a new phenomenon, Struzik said: massive wildfires at the beginning of the 20th century also created pyrocumulonimbus storms, captured in historic photographs of the Great Porcupine fire in northern Ontario in 1911.

[Morgan]

My meteorology education is a little on the short side. I have always wondered: volcanic eruptions cause clouds that can "shade" causing a volcanic winter. Also one of the explanations of the extinction of the dinosaurs was a huge dust and sulfur cloud resulting from a meteor. Yet the greenhouse effect is trapping heat- sometimes with water aerosols What is the tipping pint between too much cloud and ..... too much cloud?

What keeps me coming back to OW is the curiosity I haven't had time for - since my childhood. You all feed my curiosity (a finely curated collection of website links) and I spend way too much time running down rabbit holes; reading up on Krakatoa, the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal. Myths and curiosity from my youth include a picture of an earthquake, no doubt from a cartoon, wherein the earth opens up and everything falls in followed by the fissure closing back up. I went to engineering school and learn a little about earthquakes- which dispelled all these myths. Then, in 1994, I was doing some field investigations after Los Angeles' Northridge Earthquake. Sure enough, we came to a driveway with pavers- a resultant landslide showed a crack along jagged lines of pavers- just like the earthquake of my youth. The hole went to the center of the earth for all I knew because I knew enough not to go close enough to look down to the bottom.
Another myth, somewhere along the line I understood that the sea level is not the same all over- who would have thought? The picture of the opening the Panama canal came from my own mind- a flood of water washed through the canal - leveling the oceans. I love the ship tracking simulation that shows the exact time ships quit going around South America and started to use the canal! Thanks OW Friends! I love rabbit holes.

[Michael]

I'm not too sure where the tipping point is. Certainly all these fires are screening parts of the earth from the full effects of the sun. That ash, though, won't stay in the atmosphere for very long.

The rabbit holes are fun, though, aren't they!

[Randi]

[pommystuart]

Having not read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland this is the first time I have heard about Rabbit holes.
That's my learning for the day. Back to bed. opps I mean back to OW data.

[Michael]

For Chris, aka Hanibal94,



My Little Ponies waiting for a grand-daughter to take them to her ranch.

[Randi]

[Michael]

I got gobbled up by a whale.

[Randi]

Tiny Forests With Big Benefits
Native plants crowded onto postage-stamp-size plots have been delivering environmental benefits around the world