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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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. |