Woman builds wall to keep floodwaters out of tent in IDP camp in NW Syria. (UNICEF/Khaled Akacha) happy kansas day!
160 yrs ago today, u.s. admitted ks. as a new state -- they needed all the states they could get, since they were losing some, at the time . . . but: present day: let’s go to press: 25,000 acres scorched in patagonia, 18k humans evac’d; same number displaced in mozambique after cyclone eloise; 250,000 affected; city of beira re-destroyed (3rd cyclone in 2 yrs) & remember the siberian wildfires from last summer? guess what. they’re still burning. zombie fires: the peat keeps smoldering, smoke rising through the snow in jan., in -58 f temps but some good news for russia: gas tanker ships can now sail the arctic ocean in january! not much sea ice any more (arctic ocean “a whole new ocean,” not just a big ice sheet anymore) & no ice in gulf of st. lawrence -- the titanic would’ve had smooth sailing today; highest sea-surface temps ever (we’re like the guys who were on the stern, as it hove up in the air towards perpendicular: we’re not dead yet!) while here in the wheat belt, “soil moisture shortage above average” — always swell when ks. is above average in anything — “signs of damage to the 2021/22 crop”; as we say in kansas, ad astra per aspera, and we gotta lotta aspera meanwhile in syria, refugee camps flooded again, roads cut off, 67,600 desperate humans affected; landslides in indonesia; while back in the states, it rains & rains on c. california coast, leaves 400k w/o power, washes out burn-scarred gullies, causes debris flows; what are they? "a debris flow is kind of a flood on steroids,” sez the debris-flow expert so, not surprisingly, “roughly 35 million homes, or nearly a third of the nation’s housing stock, are at ‘high risk’ of a natural disaster, per a new study by corelogic.” (“not mine,” i hear myself think) “properties at highest risk: california, e. and gulf coasts, texas, oklahoma, nebraska, & kansas” -- wait — what? where? . . .
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Abu Dhabi, enhancing T.F. out of rain. (Gulf News) running on fumes? how bout you?
(boy, there’s a carbon-based metaphor for ya!) meanwhile i see some archaeologists found some prehistoric scraps of food that prove n. australia is the driest it’s been in 65,000 yrs -- not b/c there’s less rain now but more heat, so more evaporation pretty dry on arabian gulf, too: they’re in their longest meteorological drought ever: 21 yrs & counting “warming over the seas, a rise in maximum temperatures, precipitation drying. also an increase in number of cat 4 & 5 cyclones”; u.a.e. invests in “rain enhancement technologies” (e.g., “cloud seeding” — careful, tho: plenty of places in the middle east got deluged this year, too . . . speaking of wch, remember phoenix’ record summer heat? mon. aft. tied for coldest ever. it even snowed . . . snowed, too, in lincoln, nebraska: 13” in 1 day, a jan. record; "gives you kind of a man versus nature feel,” sez the announcer meanwhile, 70% of madrid trees broken under snow; & an ef 3 tornado in alabama; & sydney’s hottest australia day in 60 yrs & . . . & none of this adds up to anything; take it for what it’s worth & monitor your own responses -- the powers that be are clear: the non-rich are on their own it’s playing hell with the lions & the lions are on their own it’s playing hell with the bees & the bees are on their own it’s playing hell with gray whales & the whales are on their own it’s playing hell with the forests & the forests are on their own it’s playing hell with england’s flood defenses — 3400 deemed “almost useless” (and britain voted to be on its own) it’s playing hell w/the ice sheets: i.p.c.c. worst-case already, sez the scientific report & our local electric co. sells us wind energy (kansas the “saudi arabia of wind,” blah blah), even as it makes no move to phase out coal hard to see how this battleship can turn around in this bathtub, esp. w/the water level dropping so why do people act like there’s no emergency? “we’ll cross that bridge when . . . “there are more immediate . . . “it’s not happening here . . . “i can’t think about that . . . “just live in the present . . . “part of god’s plan . . . “cost prohibitive . . . what is to be done i ask my friend the eco-poet & they say, “just try to be kind to each other” — wch is in our control but amounts maybe to the same thing Another shitty day in Paradise (Calif.) after 2018 fires. (Noah Berger/AP via npr.org) someone once said if you want
to hide something, put it in a poem. maybe that will eliminate it, too -- a kind of un-sympathetic magic . . . if i can just pour all the climate chaos into a verse, i’ll kill it worth a try . . . 1990: 81% of world’s energy came from fossil fuels; 2020: 80% of world’s energy came from fossil fuels (drop b/c of pandemic); renewables offset by increasing demand in india, china, et al. amitav ghosh was right: asia will decide the fate of the world (prob. not in a poem) -- hopefully rather soon let’s sequester all our carbon in the poem; bury all your apocalyptic thinking, too; “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,” sez a.o.c., well, now it’s in the poem, safely encased, like chicken little’s tomb (thought: what if the people bypassed the politicians & directly went after the corporations that hired them? . . . desperate times . . .) i guess i shd talk abt cyclone eloise, what it’s doing to mozambique: “at least” nine humans dead, 7,000 displaced, 1,000 homes destroyed, 4,800 totalled, 300k acres of crops ruined i shd talk about cotton growing farther north in kansas (!), armadillos marching farther up in missouri, all those percentages i shd mention how "there isn't a community in coastal america where we are not seeing some transition away from the coast and moving to higher ground,” as the architecture researcher sez; “risk from flood shaping property values,” etc. that is if you can afford to move -- or if you can’t afford not to, like the 2019 “caravan” of humans, marching from dried out farms south of the border to here ok — it’s a start, right? our goal? full poetic containment of the climate crisis by 2035. mmm, come to think of it, make that 2050. or maybe 2075? well, some time before it’s too late, anyhow Evacuation of "care home," Cheshire. In Wales, they're trying to save vaccines from the floods. (Sky News) here’s how it works:
less rain falls from the sky, so more water pumped from the ground, so aquifer levels drop, so land on top of them sinks, so land gets flooded when it does rain, which isn’t often, so it all runs off, so repeat “subsidence,” it’s called (it’s more complicated than that, but that’s the net-net): it’s happening: jakarta, méxico, lagos, w. kansas meanwhile remember what happened last year in mozambique? no, of course not. sorry. it got hit by two hurricanes in a row (like c. america, gulf coast, s. pacific), & one (idai) killed 1,000 human be- ings. well, now another one’s hit (cat 2), same city (beira); 3k evac’d; 1 m in path even as s. borneo and n. sulawesi in indonesia still getting washed away: “torrential floods sink houses — watch now”; govt. sez deforestation by mines & palm oil farms have nothing to do with it, ok? heat waves in taiwan, victoria, patagonia, canadian far north; plus less ice on n. america’s great lakes than ever (only 3.9% coverage) they’re growing oranges, bananas, figs & grapes in s. england now “daffodils start flowering before xmas”; meanwhile, more stormwater for manchester, liverpool, northern wales (the water makes the roots rot btw); river derwent “like an ocean”; 2,000 “properties” evac’d (this is all happening fast, isn’t it?) while here in n.e. kansas, u.s.a., we have warmer winters but not warmer summers (sez science) -- which means it might be a pretty good place to be — esp. if yr home on the coast gets flooded or yr crops burn up; we should prepare for lots of company . . . and a Green New Deal short. But stay tuned for a new stave of Poem of Our Climate tomorrow, Sat. 1/23, with all the latest X-treme weather news in verse!
The icy Sahara, 1/13/21. Karim Bouchetata/Bav Media (via NY Post) inauguration day in the u.s.a. --
every four years like clockwork, like leap year tho usually not inside a fortified green zone w/25k troops on hand -- the new president has a plan (kinda sorta) to deal w/climate chaos, & he has two good years to do it before the other side is voted in. meanwhile in s. borneo, worst floods in 50 yrs; 63k humans displaced, 21 dead, 45k acres of food wiped out; 32 dead on java — landslides (on top of an earthquake); dozens missing; rescuers using smell to find the victims. paper quotes the president, not the survivors. houses submerged in filipino villages; another 100-yr storm in queensland; a bolivian village w/water to the eaves; “floods wash away cars in gweru, zimbabwe” (and elsewhere); more floods in n. of england (yorkshire) & remember all the locusts in africa? they’re back in botswana & namibia: “heavy rains create conducive conditions” & remember the abnormal heat & fires in siberia? now they’re having abnormal cold: -73 f in one town; “snow also blanketed parts of saudi arabia, which saw the mercury hit 28 f”; below freezing in sahara, too & the santa ana winds knock over semis in so cal; 270k w/o power; multiple fires (favorite name: the “freedom fire”) & the 7 hottest years on earth have been the last 7 years & the oceans absorbed 20 sextillion joules of heat in 2020, “equal to the energy from 10 hiroshima atomic bombs being released every second of the year” (man, that’s hot!) sez u.s. ctr for atmospheric research dude any wonder people prefer a shadowy, far-reaching conspiracy by other people to all this mayhem? o, your powerful presidency; o, your pathetic poems. good luck, joe. Perth, Australia, Sat. morning (Sean Blocksidge/Perth Dept. of Fire and Emergency Services, via A.B.C.) sing, o goddess, of roaring fires,
dense and devouring, of gulping floods that dragged down mortals or covered them under thundering, sliding earth. which lands suffered the punishing blows? s. california, for one, where gusts from the dry east came sweeping down the plains to the sea, & though it be winter, it feels like summer there, lush green turned to sere paleness, where any foolish spark now turns towns & forests into ash throughout all seasons of the year while on the plains, look — tall grass sifting in nebraska winds now crackles in the fires, driving men before it, their water blown away before it reached the blaze and flames licked at the walls of perth, homes burned, roads closed, power ceased; so, too, the skies of valparaiso flashed a lurid orange, washed with smoke, as thousands fled deluge, too, rolled forth, pouring foul filth into balkan waters; singaporians watched as rains rolled on, two feet in two weeks; unceasing rains in philipines caused a host of families to go in search of higher, drier ground the sinister hand of famine shadowed the fertile land of ukraine: summer & autumn brought drought, breaking open earth and blighting grain in first frosts. now boreas blows a mighty draft of arctic air, sweeping across the flatlands, heading to kill the wheat and say, o muse, what records were smashed . . . hottest year on record (by far) was russia’s 2020; hottest jan. day in turkey in georgia in russia; wettest jan. ever in tamil nadu, india; most days over 15 f in frigid buffalo, n.y. and tell us, o goddess, which of the immortals visited these scourges upon the human race? goddess? . . . o muse? . . . hellooo . . . ?? Ávila, Spain, Tuesday (that sign says 10 degrees, in American). Raúl Sanchidrián/EFE via El País. beware the ides of
january . . . maybe . . . do people turn violent & irrational b/c deep down they know the earth is going haywire? & they don’t want to admit it? take the “forever drought” (pls): great swaths of the w. u.s. burned; even bigger swaths cracking & crinkling in “exceptional drought” after 20 yrs of little precip; a “non-soon” 2020 + la niña 2021 = bad-news spring & summer . . . battles over water might get literal; & if you want to deny it’s even happening, you might blame it on something else, blame it on someone else in any case, “temperatures are not going back to what they used to be,” sez the climate scientist; the water “scarcity problem is not going away” & folks in turkey are nodding, saying, “mm-hm, i know that’s right”: 86 f at night (hotter than a mid- summer’s night); istambul w/45 days of water left -- even as it’s flooding farther south (this is all happening pretty quickly, as it turns out) ↓ water = ↓ food = ↑ food prices = ↑ poverty = ↑ migration to cities = ↑ demand for water (& it works the same for too much water) in s. madagascar, 1.3 m humans need food assistance; rainy season didn’t rain (only 1 day in dec.); when it did, t’storms blasted crops; + no jobs due to covid; 75% of kids foraging: “cactus mixed with mud, roots, what- ever they can find, leaves, seeds, whatever is available.” meanwhile, in snowbound madrid, covid patients get rides to hospital in 4-wheel-drives of volunteers; in cañada real, “europe’s largest shanty town” (pop 8.5k), 7 mi. from downtown madrid, no water (pipes frozen), no electricity (power co. shut off, citing theft); “we’re seeing children with chilblains b/c their hands have been destroyed by the cold, and respiratory infections,” sez the doctor; the authorities “can sleep in my house and suffer & live what we’re living,” sez the resident; “maybe then they’d do something.” u.a.e. has its coldest jan. ever; record-breaking cold in hong kong; malta has warmest jan. day ever; record rain in n. australia (in the 100s on the e. & w. coasts); record rain in 2020 for lancashire; & here’s an abstruse stat: highest december lows in athens since 1860 — meaning, it isn’t cooling down at night; it’s the hi-lo’s that get you & the oceans: 2020 marked the hottest temps ever (hence the cyclones); & the arctic: not many temp gauges up there -- if there were, 2020 might well have won the prize surely the second coming is at hand -- or at least some equally simple answer: like a minority to blame that’s not the untouchable 1%, who really are to blame; or an angrier sun, chinese hoaxes, satan-worshipping pedophiles (they’d be easy to blame). suffice to say there are plenty of highs & lows left to come in the overheated human brain Bridge out in Albania, one of many places all over earth that were recently deluged. bne IntelliNews. you don’t hear
the word “ghastly” much anymore, but it’s how the future is described by 17 climate experts in a new report that speaks of “de- clining health & climate- disruption upheavals” producing “steady erosion of the fabric of human civilisation.” whatevs. tell me another one, chicken little . . . well, you needn’t look to the future: even now, 16k families / 81k humans evac’d: rising waters & “non-stop rain” on visayas philipines last weekend; 62k evac’d in s. thailand, same cause; 11 dead in w. java landslides record rainfall in chennai & tamil nadu, which was 42% short on rain for jan. until mon./tues. — now at + 2000%; “icy flash flood destroys vehicles in santa rosa, la pampa, argentina - watch now!”; while t’storms, hi winds, flash floods in mecca (yeah, that mecca — in the desert) seattle got 75% of avg. jan. rain in 1st 10 days; multiple landslides, 600k w/o power in oregon & wash. in wake of massive rains seems like it’s rainin' all over the world . . . madrid still in record cold; -13 f in c. spain; 7 humans dead + 4k living in shantytown w/o electricity given emerg shelter meanwhile . . . istambul on the brink of depleting its water reserves: reservoirs at 19%, rain 50% < oct-jan avg; now they’re talking cloud seeding (remember cloud seeding?); while athens bakes in hottest jan. in 160 yrs. pollution is down in w. u.s. (yay!) but wildfire smoke is up (boo), & people will die of lung cancer more slowly than they die of fire, just as “most people do not see sea-level rise. most people do not ever see hurricanes. but many, many people will see wildfire smoke from climate change,” sez the earth system scientist they say all this and say all this and repeat it and re- peat & nobody is aghast — even as we’re being a-ghosted even as we speak well, we didn’t win the prize . . .
we thot 2020 was the worst ever, but it’s only tied for worst (worst hottest, that is) w/2016. but . . . there’s always next year! & europe gets the award for hands-down continent w/hottest-ever weather . . . but it got me to thinking: we used to get ~ 20” snow/yr, & now it’s like 13. well, madrid got 20” friday night; 1500 humans stranded in vehicles; transport halted over “large swath” of spain; 4 dead; natural gas prices soar god gave moses the rainbow sign, “no more water, the fire next time . . . aaaaand maybe some water, too”: as madrid got snowed on, costa del sol got rained on (⅕ of yearly rain in just 1 nite), water on the floor & darkness all around: “it just wouldn’t stop. it was frightening.” malaysia monsoon death toll rose to 10; 45k human evac’d last wk.; now only 32k still w/o homes; “unprecedented” rainfall washes over karnataka; 11 dead in w. java, as land- slide ripped village a- part after heavy rains; balkans swamped: tons of garbages washed into lake in serbia; homes, fields underwater; land & sea transport checked; isolated villages sans water in albania; & in fushe, kosovo, 60-yr-old muj zabeli sez: “no one is interested. you may suffer a loss here & no one wd care”; hospital parking lot in naples swallowed by sinkhole; landslide buried tracks in umbria, wch didn’t stop train from running into it; “mad floods” in casablanca, playing the usual hell w/everything; biggest floods since 1990s for namibia; 3rd largest reservoir at 118% capacity, water releases released on cornfields downstream; 4 human beings washed away for- ever while crossing flooded river or trying to; meanwhile: ½ of u.s. dried out — from “exceptional” to “moderate” drought, incl. location of your present chronicler, wch is 8.4” < normal, i.e., 40% since august) there are too many numbers. this is our problem, we’ve had too many numbers, when we need more pictures, we need stories, we need more voices, we need more time |
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |