TICK TOCK THE CLIMATE CLOCK PART SIX

Hey, did you miss your climate disaster fix last Sunday?  It’s a regular feature, but we were en route, so I didn’t post.  Don’t worry:  everything is just as we left it:  One step away from the abyss.

Plastic Fantastic.  Per The New Yorker, all the land-based plastic waste entering the oceans in 2016 was equivalent to five grocery-size bags filled with plastic going into the seas along every foot of coastline in the world.  By 2025, those 5 bags will be 10.

Much ado about Poo.  Increased population and wealth = increased demand for protein = increased animal waste.  Recent research estimates that by 2030, the planet will generate at least 5 billion tons of animal waste each year, with the vast majority deposited by livestock.  No one quite knows what to do about poo.

Nigerian Girl Carrying Dung to Sell at Market

The Eagle has Landfilled.  Bald eagles in Seattle are feasting off food waste and detritus at landfills and depositing uneaten morsels in suburban yards.  But there’s no such thing as a free lunch.  Some bald eagles have died from eating barbiturate-contaminated corpses of euthanized pets.  (Disgraceful!  What ever happened to pet cemeteries?)

Bald Eagle Eating a (Not) Free Lunch

That Has no Bering.  Per The Washington Post, March set a record for lack of ice on the Bering Sea, coming on the heels of 2018, which witnessed a massive decline in ice levels.  (See photo at top of page.)  2019 seems to show that the extraordinary readings of 2017 are not an Arctic anomaly.  “There is no more vivid a display of how quickly our climate is changing than what’s happening right now in the Arctic,” meteorologist Jeff Berardelli tweeted. “It’s a loud canary singing in a coal mine.” 

Colonial Power.   Trying to make lemonade out of the destruction of its lemon power grid, Puerto Rico's legislators voted to move away from fossil fuel-based power generation to 100% renewables by 2050.  Fearing the loss of a good customer (the island imports fossil fuels for 80% of its power generation), US lawmakers indebted to the fracking industry threatened to withhold releasing more disaster relief funding to the island.  Ole'!

Puerto Rico Solar

Going, Going, Gone.  The world’s glaciers are shrinking five times faster now than they were in the 1960s and 18 percent faster than an international panel of scientists calculated in 2013. Glaciers in central Europe, the Caucasus, western Canada, the U.S. Lower 48 states, New Zealand, and near the tropics are losing on average more than 1 percent of their mass each year.  “In these regions, at the current glacier loss rate, the glaciers will not survive the century,” said Michael Zemp, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service at the University of Zurich.

Baishui Glacier No. 1 in Yunnan, China

Hope You've Got AAA.  A record-breaking late season bomb cyclone dumped one to two feet of snow in the north-central United States this weekend.  Then it moved east to cause tornadoes that cost two young children their lives.   

What are the Odds?  The Arctic has been pushed into an entirely new climate, according to a new report in the journal Environmental Research Letters.   Alaska experienced its warmest March on record, warmest October through March, and warmest six years on record.  The likelihood that Barrow (last photo below) would reach this year's March average temperatures had just a 1-in-250,000 chance of occurring in a given year.

Good News, Sort Of.  Marin County north of San Francisco is having its second wettest year since records began in 1880.  All seven of the Marin Municipal Water District’s reservoirs are spilling, with the total water supply about 8 percent above normal.  And the rainy season doesn’t end until mid-May!  (Thanks to S for her lovely photo.)

Corte Madera Creek

Good News!  Keeping Fossil Fuels in the Ground.  At the end of March, Judge Sharon L. Gleason of the United States District Court for the District of Alaska ruled that an executive order by President Trump that lifted an Obama-era ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic coast was unlawful.

Barrow, Alaska, off Chukchi Sea

Keep it Real!

Marilyn