Climate Change!

I keep saying that I'm going to write up my report, and I'm actually happy to have a deadline because that means I'm soon going to have to do what I’ve been promising to do.  Then I plan to start a blog on what I call "Mom's Memoir" or "A Mother and Another."

But before I get in my Life Style report, I have to devote a blog to just one week as described by Steve Newman in his Earthweek:  A Diary of the Planet.  This was for the week ending last Friday, November 30, 2012.

Permafrost, found under the tundra and keeping carbon from emitting to the atmosphere, is melting not across parts of Siberia, Canada, and Alaska because of climate change.  This melt immediately threatens homes, railways, and oil pipelines according to the U.N. report that Steve Newman is citing.  "The amount of greenhouse gases ready to seep out of the melting permafrost by 2100 could equal nearly 40 percent of emissions from human sources."

Lava from Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has begun spewing into the ocean.  This is something I'd like to ask Jim Kauahikaua, who I think will be in SF this week with Jeri Gertz, the little girl I babysat for about 56 years ago!  Jim is a geologist, and he lives on The Big Island.  He gave a presentation in Hawaii last summer.  

http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/jim-kauahikaua-geophysicist

Turkeys in Massachusetts are getting their revenge for having been chosen the national centerpiece for Thanksgiving, and they being aggressive, causing traffic jams by gathering in the middle of intersections.  They were hunted into extinction more than 150 years go, but now there are about 20,000 of these heritage birds in Massachusetts.     A friend who studied at MIT told me that in Boston drivers hit pedestrians if they don't make eye contact.  I hope those turkeys are making eye contact.

Yesterday in Fremont we saw turkeys, but they were congregating off the road, not in traffic. 

Because of the increased acidity of oceans, the snail's shell is being dissolved in the ocean waters.  Snails aren't just for French restaurants.  They're a food source for fish and birds in the water surrounding Antarctica.  “The water's pH is now dropping faster than at any other time in the past 300 million years."

All of the above are due to climate change, to which we contribute too much. 

Monkeys are also marauding on farms in Kenya, where farmers are threatening to poison thousands of them for destroying their crops.  "Monkeys have raided banana, corn and cassava crops near two national parks."