The stress test is coming for states like Arizona as water levels likely to dip below 1075 feet in June. The mega-drought in the American west means water restrictions are looming in the next few months. Climate change has arrived in the Colorado basin much as it has in most...
groundwater
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice...
Edward Abbey memorialized environmental resistance to mindless development in his tome The Monkey Wrench Gang. It essentially endorsed sabotage to thwart degrading of the natural world, for instance, putting sugar in the gas tanks of bulldozers that are about to plow under a nice area. However, advances in surveillance make...
But there are 40-odd cinder cones of once-active volcanos clustered near the bucolic town of Boring, just east of Portland Oregon. These, and the related lava flows, are part of the Boring formation. I live off this map to the left (west of Beaverton). I am intensely interested in this Boring...
For starters, this “No Trespassing” sign isn’t on private property. It’s on Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation Lands that are open to the public as the Rock Creek Greenway, west of Portland Oregon. Fortunately there are many anglers who are simply crazed about catching fish and who would wade through Hell fire for...
It’s especially hard to organize folks these days. You can’t call a meeting. It’s tough to talk and listen with masks on. Yet suburban folks west of Portland Oregon are organizing against a developer’s plans to build a Chevron gas station/mini-mart adjacent to wetlands, big trees, and a Park Greenway....
“Quit being so emotional, Elaine, it’s not about the people, it’s about the money.” Mick Mulvaney to Elaine Duke, acting director of Homeland security in 2017. Of course, he did. Some news outlets stated that he was joking, where have we heard that canard before? If we have learned anything...
“We have to be aware that climate change and biodiversity loss are stress factors for ecosystems, for humans, for animals, and for the microbiome. Our research shows that if the different axes of the disease pyramid are destabilized, new infectious diseases can be expected, including for humans.” Dirk Schmeller, Université de...
“The Arctic is heating up twice as much as the rest of the planet. With that comes permafrost thawing and the birth of aquifers, it is likely that groundwater transport in the Arctic will be more and more important in the future.” M. Bayani Cardenas, Jackson School of Geosciences Another previously...
If you’re asking when climate change is going to “happen,” you’re really asking when’s it going to happen to “me,” because it’s already happened to many other people. Eric Roston During WWII the United States took control over the Marshall Islands (Aolepān Aorōkin M̧ajeļ), a part of the larger island...
We know from the National Climate Assessment that climate disruptions to agriculture over the past 40 years has increased and, will only worsen as the climate crisis continues to unfold. Drought and flooding will increase, and heatwaves will come earlier, be more frequent and, last longer threatening the lives of...
Indonesia is one of the most vulnerable nations on earth to climate change. Indonesians will face more intense floods, droughts and sea level rise in the years to come. The low lying and densely populated nation has 18,000 miles of coastline and many islands at sea level. Winds and rainfall...
As if the misery of the Bahamian people was not horrifying enough, the apocalyptic winds of Hurricane Dorian have been found to have ripped the roofs off of five storage onshore oil tanks on Grand Bahama Island. The battered island was mauled for 40 hours by the windstorms eyewall. The...
You are out for a walk in an area that had volcanic or tectonic activity millions of years ago. Now, it’s really pretty. the soil’s rocky so the trees are small, except for skinny pines, and tiny wildflowers are still blooming over the rolling hills, although it’s almost June. It snowed...
This week of dire weather forecasts for the Pacific Northwest saw a year’s worth of snow fall on Seattle in a few remarkable days. Yet the lower elevations of Washington County, west of Portland, Oregon remained chilly, but stubbornly snow-free. Gaia took notice, and dumped hours of hard rain on NW...
The three Democrats running in Illinois' 13th Congressional district primary recently answered my questions about climate change and energy issues. It's one of the hottest Congressional races in the nation since freshman incumbent Republican Rodney Davis narrowly won with merely 46.5% of the vote in 2012. The central Illinois district...
The MoveOn.org Fracking Fighter petition to ban fracking in Illinois got off to a fast start! It's just shy of the first 500 signatures. The comments people add are fun to read so here are some of my favorites, with each signer's town instead of their name because internet trolls....
An Illinois ban on fracking is inevitable. The question is whether it will happen before or after a major fracking disaster. The public comment period on Illinois' draft regulations ended January 3 with groups in potentially impacted areas repeating their call for a ban on fracking. A group of southern...