The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😜
Main Topic: A 65th Birthday Note
Dear Diary. Today I am officially at traditional retirement age, although I won’t retire from writing about and fighting for a sustainable climate until the day I drop dead. I have been fortunate enough to have traveled around the sun 65 times and exceptionally lucky enough with lots of help from good friends to still be around, despite falling near 40 feet from a suicide attempt at age 54. In late 2015 I woke in a hospital a changed man with survival instincts kicking in. Had I died that year my kids World of Thermo books would not have been written and published, and this web site would not have come online in 2017.
Truth be known, I do contribute to those fighting the climate crisis, but I am a minor player. What I endeavor to do is support major players like Doctors Katherine Hayhoe, Michael Mann, and Jeff Masters by reporting on what they say and any new research they may undertake. I do have my own record temperature research, which is ongoing, taking many hours a week to do.
If I were to expire tomorrow, I will have lived a good, fulfilled life, but I will be disappointed that my fellow man has not stymied carbon pollution with the climate crisis getting worse year by year. If only people had listened to me and others during the 1990s taking the climate problem very seriously, humanity wouldn’t be in such a pickle.
Obviously, I do fear for the future of this planet given what we see from climate models. Yet I am encouraged that worst case scenarios are not as likely to occur because the renewable energy transition is happening much more rapidly than many had thought would occur a decade ago. Also, fingers crossed, but it would appear that politically in the United States the era of Trump is coming to a close relatively soon. Democrats should take back the House of Representatives this year, which will pretty much hem Trump in, making him a lame duck until his term ends in early 2029. I can’t wait for hearings to start in 2027 about his administration’s corruption.
The best birthday gift you can give me is to persevere on climate and don’t despair with a ‘doomer’ attitude no matter how hot it gets or how much damage storms and wildfires do. This is not ‘hopeium.’ After all, the future is not set in stone and we can still avert the worst effects of a warming climate according to our best science by preventing much more carbon from going into the atmosphere. And thank you so much for your support.
Here are more “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Sunday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)