"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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may-eve: a dove emits
little plaintive whoops blue, blank sky the leaves appear calm, for once it is manifest that there is no death there is no “climate” in our little quasi-urban arcadia we can do anything we like. & the little girl told the vice prez “i want to be everything” we all want that but everything pushes back at us: pushes back at europe, w/its hottest april nite ever (crete; 87.3 f); pushes down on tajikistan, w/its hottest april day ever (100.2 f & odisha state in india in low 100s, too); pushes hard in s. madagascar, where the dead hand of drought falls heavily: 27% “acutely malnourished”; everything also takes aim at aukland: water restrictions until aug. (their winter); it pummels texas & oklahoma, where the wind comes rushin down the plain at ~60 mph, carrying hail the size of grapefruit, flying sidewise shattering windows, battering siding, roughing-up roofs, totalling cars & obliterating windshields everything has something to say about fisheries in quatar, heat in chennai, flooding in china, glaciers shrinking (& w/them, asia’s drinking water); amazon flooding, frequency of droughts in sunny california; & methane plumes bubbling up in the arctic seas plus, everything is going to get more expensive: bloomberg sez corn prices doubled, soybeans ↑ 80%, wheat ↑ 30, this past year: china needs more; u.s., brazil have less rain, so that “generally people see this inflation continuing,” sez the commodity analyst; “the relentless rise in prices acts as a misery multiplier, driving millions deeper into hunger & desperation,” sez world food prog. dude; “we will take pricing action,” nestle chief exec. officer creepily sez while “cities around the world hire ‘chief heat officers’” — b/c what sez “we’re taking action!” better than hiring another administrator? personally, i want to be above everything, living on air, bodiless, like god meant us to be, rejecting physical realities we do not like or cannot cope with but everything here is fine, goes on as normal; i’ve got a wonderful feeling everything’s going our way because americans are optimists & anyway, who can afford to think otherwise on days like today? Map showing ring of forest fires closing in on Russia's third-largest city. (Russian fire map service, fires.ru) i want to think that climate change
will not affect us here (& maybe it won’t). but maybe it is: i read in the paper today where the school district’s in the red, from a half-million-dollar monthly bill from the gas company -- from that “cold snap,” dontcha know -- that’s 10x the usual . . . plus there’s an unexplained $100k ↑ for insurance (tho i could guess what that’s about, given the gas bill) i think this pandemic year will prove to be a good inoculation against what comes next — wch will be at least as disruptive & sudden e.g., r u ready to house climate (im)migrants? here, we have little affordable housing & increasing houselessness . . . meanwhile, russia’s 3rd-largest city, novosibirsk, w/1.7 m souls, chokes on clouds of smoke: siberian wildfire season underway, expected worse than last; throat and head ache after minutes outside; city “surrounded by dozens of blazes as close as 10 km away”; even as 100+ f temps grip the ‘stans of central asia (where it’s burning, too) meanwhile “driest and frostiest april on record” in u.k.; while 7k acres of ireland’s killarney natl. forest scorched: “rising temps means there’s less precipitation, so there’s not as much rainfall, the ground is becoming more dry and more barren and thus more susceptible to fires being started and spreading unfortunately” sez the enviro activist forest fires getting worse in india: is it possible one in uttarakhand burned continuously since last year? surely that can’t be true . . . but it takes rain to douse the yearly fires & there’s been no yearly rain . . . & reservoirs in brazil at record lows; while calif. stops nestle from exporting freshwater in little plastic bottles, or tries to anyhow; & new study in science tested 39 m water wells in 40 countries: 6-20% facing “immanent failure,” from “w. u.s. to india,” sez the report; “this could raise a number of equity and adaptation concerns over the long term,” sez a researcher, “really highlighting the haves & have-nots of water” — meaning if you got money, you can drill deeper; if not, not no wonder the arctic is turning to slush, & the meltwater’s so heavy, it’s shifting the planet’s polarity (they say — what do i know? they say we’re re-entering the “pliocene,” whatever the hell that is (alls i can say for sure is we better budget more for utilities -- & insurance — but all of this is happecollapsening too fast to take in, so i . . . Wildfire in Mourne Mts. of County Down, N. Ireland, as seen from Newcastle this weekend. (Sky News) nobody’s gluing themselves
to the gates of the power plant nobody’s invading the endowment office, demanding divestment nobody’s monkey-wrenching nobody’s packing the county commission meetings, demanding a halt to urban sprawl nobody’s packing the city commission meetings, demanding a comprehensive climate adaptation plan (but it endorsed the green new deal -- it right there in black and white, on paper) we grade papers, pursue hobbies, shuttle kids or volunteer at food pantries or shelters -- who was it said we like the past better than the present? none of us — none of us -- can afford to believe any of this is happening, except in the future. & one day, we’ll forget the time when it wasn’t “it is what it is” -- 10 humans killed by glacier collapse & avalanche in himalayas, even as water’s running out & crops fail; drought & crop failures in kurdistan record hi april temp in hong kong record hi april temp in n. marianas is. taiwan frantically drilling wells to offset drought brazil cuts enviro budget again; reservoirs drying up in mexico wildfires in arizona, sichuan, all over britain; in co. down, n. ireland (mourne mts. look like “volcanoes exploding,” sez the m.p.) nobody’s reporting on all this, not in kansas, u.s.a., anyhow (why would they?) nobody can figure out what to do nobody can handle it nobody will fix it nobody always has No, it's not Siberia, and it's not caused by methane explosions. Read on. (AFP PHOTO via Daily Sabah) it’s post-earth
day: many happy returns i read in the paper today where grasshopper numbers have shrunk 2%/yr for decades — this, even tho the grass is growing bigger, due to all that co2 we’re putting out. why? well, the grasses hold the same amount of nutrients -- “grasshopper junk food,” ha ha. like that cereal commercial, where you have to eat 8 bowls to get the same nutrition from only one bowl of whatever cereal it’s advertising, and every- body knows nobody will eat 8 bowls of any cereal fewer grasshoppers = fewer pests, right? well, fewer grasshoppers now = new, more prolific species evolving; plus which, fewer grasshoppers = fewer predatory birds = more rodents; & less nutritious grass means forget about yr grass-fed range-free beef . . . meanwhile 7 yrs of drought in n. & e. cape, south africa lasted longer than any other in 100 years, until rains came in 2020; that’s when the locusts started to swarm -- see, their eggs can last for yrs, even in drought, underground; when moisture comes, they all hatch at the same time, scarf up the grazing grasses, corn, & everything else with a touch of green, 8 km-worth/day but even now, in nelson mandela bay municipality (née port elizabeth), s. africa, reservoirs have dropped to 13% (& lake mead at 39) as 38k+ somali people this year packed up what’s left of their lives to look for someplace with water (while other parts of country suffer inundation), while in central turkey, groundwater irrigation opens 600 massive sink- holes (not enough water underneath to hold up the soil above); "until last year, we had never seen a drought like this," sez farmer kamil işıklı; now they can’t pay bills, irrigation’s so costly & that torrential daylong storm that hammered the capital of angola (luanda) monday? it killed 24 human beings, swamped 2300+ homes collapsed 60 homes + submerged 14 schools, 4 heath centers, 4 bridges i lisp in numbers for the numbers come & keep coming, this post-earth day earth-day eve — after
eat-day eat-day eat-day in america (every day) snow on the flowers yesterday blasted by frost today (“somewhat unusual,” the paper sez) birds desperately looking for space to nest under the eaves i’m not a doomer i want solutions, at least an opening gambit i believe in what’s on offer? therapy (fairbanks’ temps swing 92 f over course of 8 days) write your congressperson (91 fires so far in washington state) wave a sign (u.n. sez 2020 record year for x-treme weather events; 2021 on track for 2nd biggest year for carbon emissions) market-based solutions ( : (2020 driest year ever in morocco -- ≥ 50% rainfall deficit) carbon sequestration (torrential rains, floods kill 14 human beings in luanda, 8k displaced; bridges, roads collapse, cars washed away by rapids down the boulevards) geoengineering (damascus hits 101 f, april record; 99 f in cyprus, w/sahara duststorms; 104 in bangladesh; more hail in saudi) change people’s attitudes first -- the rest will follow . . . (⅓ of afghans go hungry amidst worsening drought) get ready for more migration, immigration — housing, services, interpreters, money money (super typhoon surigae hits 300+km/hr — increasing by 165 in a day and a half -- smashing all previous records) harden infrastructure (wettest week ever in n.s.w., last mo.; n. queensland drenched w/19” in 2 days) pray (“we are on the verge of the abyss,” sez u.n. sec-genl.) prep (himalayas still burning, choking nepal) do magic (lake mead headed for lowest level ever) view it as the next phase of evolution (texas v. new mexico tennessee v. mississippi over water rights — more water rights than water, sez the policy prof) go birdwatching (not so many as last year or the year before) trust the nations’ promises to cut emissions by X% by 20XX, whatever the numbers du jour; expect big things out of cop(out)-27 (& this, only stuff that happened lately, not the trends, not lingering aftermaths) say que será, será say i’m only one person say i’ll be dead by then say i’ll kill myself if say you’ll go down fighting say you’ll keep the patient comfortable, be kind, lend aid, say you’ll do what you can Univ. of Cape Town library burns -- and with it, much of South African history. (via Daily Mail) our avg. date for last freeze: april 15.
winter storm advisory tonight; freeze watch tomorrow — proving that in kansas, norms mean nothing: only records count. we’re the place, maybe, that won’t notice climate chaos b/c it’s normal! . . . unless, of course, it’s more chaotic c’mon, joe, why don’t you write about the flowers, for crissakes? it’s f*ing springtime! accentuate the positive, eliminate -- meaning, appreciate what’s left & hope the rich & powerful figure it out, in a way that helps everyone else, too . . . meaning, meanwhile, s. africa set april heat records last week, so this week, there’s wildfires — one of which burned up the univ. of cape town library, including its manuscript collection, w/a wealth of documents important to the nation’s history (which, as a docu-something my- self and a researcher, i find dis- stressing), even as locusts overrun communal farms in n. cape. meanwhile, hail in saudi arabia, and cyclone surigae becomes strongest ever recorded so early in the year in n. hemisphere (but doesn’t pack enough rain to help taiwan out of its drought) . . . or maybe the free market is our last hope — after all, in the u.s., we’ve less coal, more renewables; the corporations may take the lead (the politicians who work for them definitely aren’t). but no matter what happens, for the non-rich (in the words of a former u.s. president), “it’s gonna be wild!” for the really really poor, it already is. this is what is happening:
12 lost at sea off louisiana coast: talk of “microbursts,” “gravity waves,” “northern bookend vortex” . . . the net-net? it was a 129-ft. boat vs. 114-m.p.h. winds; . . . mean- while it won’t stop raining in nola: "it's at least the second wettest first 15 days of april for new orleans,” sez the weatherman; while his counterpart in sacramento: "we're seeing more extremes in terms of year-to-year — big pendulum swings from wet to dry. it's very unusual . . . record levels of dryness for this time of year. it's more like what we would see later in june than mid-april,” and “there's no new growth. the plants aren't responding because of the lack of moisture. . . . it could be a big year when it comes to fire acres. climate change has impacted our fire season." -- y’think? while in the upper midwest & plains, “things are dry & dusty,” sez modern farmer magazine: “in north dakota, which leads the u.s. in spring wheat production, it was the driest in 126 years” “but seriously, is there something they’re not telling us?” (copenhagen post) “sleet, snow, hail, rain, brief moments of glorious sunshine followed by ferocious winds and blizzards … we’ve seen it all in this past week or so.” they’re definitely not telling you about the devastation in east timor or the drought hitting farmers in s. brazil, or “severe flooding” on the amazon or drought searing 84% of mexico today, & the “bosque de la primavera” still afire or a “new report” that sez that china must shut down 600 coal-fired power plants in 10 yrs. to hit net-zero by 2060 c.e. -- even as they’re bringing more online . . . further deponent sayeth not. morning sun lights up
spring-green leaves, fills tulips, ignites redbuds; brown thrasher belts out song; temperate, almost normal, air -- why do i do this to myself? why recite the woes of far-off lands? anything is better than grading papers plus which, maybe i don’t know what else to do. i mean, do people not know what’s going on? why isn’t everybody freaking out? why isn't everybody in the streets? if they haven’t & aren't, they probably won’t the b.b.c. guy sez the people living in the slums of dhaka live there b/c their farmland dis- appeared — eroded, salted, or drowned (an arable area the size of manhattan lost every year). do they know about “climate change”? no. they just know nature changed, is not the way it used to be now they must find a way to survive. but the emergency hasn't fully descended upon me, not yet — & when it does, i — we? — will find a way to survive, or not. simple as that. i don’t want to die. i just often don’t want to live & be awake at the same time. we? what? so i try to weave scroll into gold, translate the hints about the omens, take fragments of everything we don’t want to know & cobble them into verse: a desire for order so trans- parent it always teeters of the edge of dissolve as econo-politico “winners” keep us “losers” busier & busier w/ what’s in front of our faces: more papers to grade, customers served, reports to fill out triplicately, kids to feed, cars to fix, poetry books to publish, crops to plant (hopefully), bosses who need appeasing yesterday, all living that condition of universal competition, living what’s left of life in our own bubble or hovel w/no idea how to make this poem end (highest maximum minimum april temp ever in the s. hemisphere, yesterday) p.s.: if you’ve figured it out & you find this note in a bottle that's not in a bottle, say something back "Moon Lake, thinner than a mile . . ." In Taiwan, this week. (Instagram, molly888666 photo) so i guess we’ll all just keep living
the way we are living and doing the things we are doing & working at our jobs day & night until we no longer can do any of that stuff which may be sooner than we think kansas has always had climate chaos — mid-continent x-tremes — so as the world goes wonky, will we even notice here? or will the x-tremes get more x-treme in kansas, too? there are lots of predictions out there but we don’t play that: we wanna know what it’s doing to people, now as for the midwest, well, burning season (when you burn off the dead tallgrass in yr pastures to stimulate new growth) is not going so well some places: like wisconsin, w/340 out-o’-control wildfires so far this year, complete w/evacuations — snow melted early, things dried out, got windy; minnesota had 500 fires in 5 wks, burned 20k acres; & mt. rushmore closed by s. dakota last week; but climatologists chalk it up to normal climate variability: nothin to see here but i can’t help but notice that sioux falls, s.d. had its earliest 90 f temp ever (April 5 — old one, in 1954, was April 14). hmm. meanwhile “x-treme temps around the world” (on twitter) sez sites in togo, ghana, burkina faso hit 108-109 f; & s. china morning post sez hong kong had its hottest march, w/5% of normal rain; while “moon lake” in taiwan looks more like “moon scape,” sez taiwan news, @ its lowest level ever (a “little lower layer,” sez ahab, & here it is, w/o the water, tho) meanwhile, polar blast hits europe & alaska: switzerland, slovenia receive new record april lows, + plenty of local records across europe; & fairbanks is -30 f — some places up yonder are looking at -50 (the scientists get to say when a pattern is a pattern, but my body has a mind of its own when it tells me when to be alarmed) & o yeah methane levels in atmosphere highest ever recorded, whatevs but we don’t traffic in predictions, not about what’s going to happen to ⅓ of land species, ½ in the sea, to public lands in brazil, or possibility of dengue outbreaks there, or the 2021 atlantic storm season or the california wildfire one, or ⅓ of antarctic ice shelves, or all the horrible stuff the u.s. natl. intelligence council sez might happen -- cuz might ≠ right; "might" = in the future = maybe so / maybe not = keep calm = carry on |
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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. |