Cemetery submerged in 1980s re-emerges as Bacurato Reservoir, one of Sinaloa's largest, dries up. (Mexico News Daily) now hold on just one minute . . .
this is moving the goalposts! turns out the world meteorological org “recalculates” temperature norms every 10 yrs, based on the prior 30. result? u.s. averages: for 20th c.: 52 f for 1991-2020: 53.3 this is, lit’rally, the “new normal” (wch is 1.7 f hotter than 1901-30); . . . meaning, global warming is now normal 1.3 or 1.7 don’t sound like much . . . but adjust the dial for the burner on the stove just a smidge & water starts to boil more than 90% of u.s. warmer now than 10 years ago not to mention wetter east, drier west: rainfall ↓ 10% in phoenix, 4.6% in l.a., ca.; but n.y., n.y. ↑ 6%; asheville, n.c. ↑ 9 all the numbers, numbers, numbers; eyes glaze over, crops burn up or drown, clouds start to swirl . . . next thing you know, the floods come like never before, killing 56 & disappearing 30 afghan people, destroying 1,000 homes; killing 10 iranian human beings; sudden flooding in drought-stricken somalia & w. cape, s. africa (“it was complete chaos” — why i favor “climate chaos” as a descriptor, b/c that’s what happens) manitoba parches while yukon floods or jordan slips into a massive drought; “look at how the land thirsts,” sez farmer ahmad daoud: “everything i planted is dead”; even as taiwan frantically digs wells, seeds clouds, tries desalination, as residents go 2 days/wk w/o water or wildfires close in on reykjavík’s water supply; or rare may sandstorm sweeps beijing, sending air quality (lit’rally) off the charts or 240k w/o power across s.e. u.s. midweek; rainfall records smashed across alabama; totals up to 8” tues.; massive lightning zaps artifacts & bodies emerge from the melting ice; entire cemeteries emerge from receding water; but the fact of the matter is, most of us (u.s.) won’t live long enough to see whether the worst case comes to pass; so, we can believe anything we want about the future, as we shift our mental goalposts
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happy cinco de mayo,
the official mexican holiday of the u.s.a.! (say the cervezerias, anyhow) but back in mexico, they’re thirsty: 60 major reservoirs below 25%: lo-flo means some folks go w/o running water, x-treme drought in 80% of country, “approaching one of its worst widespread droughts on record” meanwhile, 10k human beings of angolan origin flee to namibia to escape drought, hope for food (40% of crops lost); drought for northern syria; desertification in iran zombie fires flare back to life near oymyakon, siberia, billed as “the coldest permanently inhabited settlement on earth,” even as the rivers are still froze over; earliest wildfires ever, in those parts and in n. dakota, 76,474 acres charred this year so far: “unprecedented,” sez the state forester: 6x the average; “fire season” could be “fire year” after near-record dry march near-record wet april felt in n.s.w., (the deluge-and-drought whipsaw. or drought-and-deluge, depending); millions of bees killed (among other organisms); worse in w. afghanistan; 100s of acres of crops, orchards destroyed, 12 humans die from flash flooding elsewhere, world war 1 relics showing up as glaciers melt in the italian alps; glaciers in canada, iceland, elsewhere melt so fast they’re changing the course of rivers . . . 90k people in southern u.s. w/o power yesterday a.m. after massive tornadoes, hail, storming, drumming this poem is out of control this poem is out of control this poem is out of control ¡loco loco loco soy -- y cada dííííííía, mas loco! "Giant hail punched through roofs in Sabinal, Tex." (Twitter @vortexrfd via Washington Post) (what good does it do to recite
the rolls of the dead?) massive t’storm packs 100 mph winds, kills 11 human beings + thousands evac’d, near shanghai; flash floods in yemen kill 13; san antonio receives four-month’s worth of rain in four days (none of this proves anything) “thick bank of hazardous brush fire smoke” chokes sydney (again): stay indoors, they say, to all 5 m people; ferries can’t see to run corn futures ↑ 3% to $6.97/bushel (highest since march 2013); brazil harvest ↓ 8% (drought) (well, ok, that might land here -- but the american consumer is resilient!) record hailstone recorded in texas in the bashing they took last week -- 6.27-6.57” (the subject melted prior to exact measurements); record dry april in oregon; record sunny april in scotland (also one of coldest ever); worst agricultural disaster of the century in france, some say (e.g., ⅓ of wine harvest perdu); record hi spring min. temp for europe (85 f, crete, yesterday) (but if it’s happening some places, it’s not happening most places, look at it that way) lake tanganyika rises again: 2k human beings displaced; “these waters have destroyed everything we had in the house,” sez one of them, emelyne narugo; “children have to use boats to go to school. their notebooks have spoilt because they got wet from the first days of flooding” (all very regrettable, of course, but doesn’t that sort of thing happen there?) brazillian amazon now a net carbon emitter, not absorber; permafrost melt could emit much more carbon than expected; “epidemics of tree-destroying diseases on the rise” (and dead trees don’t absorb carbon, either; but they emit it when they burn, which they do do, in greater numbers & quicker than ever before; sea-level rise from melting antarctic ice sheet could be 30% > estimates (david wallace-wells sez c.e.o.s’ paying lip service to renewables is a positive development; and sure, greta blahblah & whatever, but still . . . (even as jenny price sez ask not what can i do ask what needs to be done -- |
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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. |