show your stripes
2021-Jun-20, Sunday 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mellowtiggerSummer solstice is very late tonight at 10:32pm Central, but I'm not feeling much for it today. I'm mostly stressed due to wondering if I could successfully leave this house on very short notice. I also still have larger concerns, though.
The ShowYourStripes.info website has gathered temperature data for various territories worldwide, and you can generate a striped heat chart for your area that shows the history of warm-vs-cold weather compared to the average. You'll notice a very strong heat shift in recent years, across every territory that I checked, at least. The icon for this blog post is the temperature record for Minnesota USA for the years 1895-2020. If you prefer details over art, then the changing atmosphere is already affecting Minnesota waters, from bacterial blooms to falling oxygen levels.
And what about the year 2021? We shifted from extreme cold to extreme heat in only 4 months. We have heat waves and drought in the USA (and across the northern hemisphere) even before the peak of summer. We learned that the arctic thawing is twice as rapid as previously thought, the currents of the Atlantic ocean are changing, and now there are questions about heat infertility across animal species everywhere.
I'm feeling rather privileged that the thought of "going back to college" is even a slight possibility. We can do better as a civilization. I'm certain of it, with no whisper of a doubt in my mind. Will it really require total collapse before we try something new? Why? Why would we choose that route?
Show your stripes. Find the heat chart for your area. If that chart worries you, then ask yourself what you can do to vote for change, act for change, reduce for change. We're out of time to dawdle.
The ShowYourStripes.info website has gathered temperature data for various territories worldwide, and you can generate a striped heat chart for your area that shows the history of warm-vs-cold weather compared to the average. You'll notice a very strong heat shift in recent years, across every territory that I checked, at least. The icon for this blog post is the temperature record for Minnesota USA for the years 1895-2020. If you prefer details over art, then the changing atmosphere is already affecting Minnesota waters, from bacterial blooms to falling oxygen levels.
And what about the year 2021? We shifted from extreme cold to extreme heat in only 4 months. We have heat waves and drought in the USA (and across the northern hemisphere) even before the peak of summer. We learned that the arctic thawing is twice as rapid as previously thought, the currents of the Atlantic ocean are changing, and now there are questions about heat infertility across animal species everywhere.It's hard to get the idea into people's heads that this isn't simply a rare exception in the weather. We can expect this excessively wild year to be one of the mildest of the remaining years of this century. Extinction Rebellion is right, and we (especially older generations like mine) are not changing our behavior and economy fast enough.
That's before we return to the economic problems of inequality that our governments refuse to actually change. People in the USA are living out of their cars at higher rates than ever before. Some cities are targeting this situation in their continuing efforts to criminalize poverty, while some cities are starting to make space for them.I'm feeling rather privileged that the thought of "going back to college" is even a slight possibility. We can do better as a civilization. I'm certain of it, with no whisper of a doubt in my mind. Will it really require total collapse before we try something new? Why? Why would we choose that route?
Show your stripes. Find the heat chart for your area. If that chart worries you, then ask yourself what you can do to vote for change, act for change, reduce for change. We're out of time to dawdle.
no subject
Date: 2021-Jun-21, Monday 12:48 am (UTC)