Whining About the Future
Have you seen the recently published maps of Europe with the heat profiles that we are suffering this summer highlighted? It was shocking when we saw those heat maps for the Eastern United States a few weeks ago, but now these European maps are astounding. We are witnessing before our very eyes the transformation of Sicily, Spain, Sardinia, Corsica, Malta, much of Greece, the Western shores of Italy, the Adriatic shores of Croatia and yes, southern France, all turning into the new Sahara Desert. The temperature levels are eye-popping, literally.
I was recently in Ireland for vacation and I came away worried about the future of the lovely emerald isles since migratory patterns have stripped Western Ireland of its population. I also took note of the wonderful and fresh summer climate we enjoyed that hovered with daytime temperatures between 20-22 degrees Celsius (68-70 degrees Fahrenheit). The chart I just saw has Iceland and Ireland as the only places in Europe that have summer high and low temperatures that I would consider tolerable. Even the UK, Scotland and the Nordic countries (especially Norway) are suffering. Iceland and Ireland are benefiting due to the changes in the Gulf Stream, which seem to be keeping them more moderate all year long. Of particular note are the nighttime temperatures or daily lows. They are exceedingly high which lends no relief and restarts the daily heat cycle earlier and more harshly. That becomes a real problem for lifestyle, electricity consumption (grids all over are getting more and more taxed by this pattern) and, perhaps most critically, fresh water consumption. In other words, maybe it’s time to go long Ireland and Iceland.
So if you are buying up shares in Ireland Inc. I guess that means you are shorting Spain Inc., Norway Inc., Italy Inc. and southern France Inc. If only that were an easy trade to make. But the reality isn’t that we are dealing with global warming as much as we are dealing with global climate change with a decidedly warming trend. The two are quite different and need to be recognized as such. I tend to think smart money will recognize these trends and sooner or later population demographics will follow suit. We may be at a demographic point in time when that is actually more possible than at most other times in history. Not only do we have more ability to work remotely thanks to the internet, but we have more people retiring and moving out of the mainstream of working life with a need to find a comfortable place to live. Sun City, whether in Florida, Arizona or Majorca, are looking less and less like that place.
My chosen retirement home is on the top of a lovely hill in northern San Diego. I watch the weather patterns there very closely. When people say to me that it’s so much nicer than New York City in the winter, I say it’s so much nicer than New York City in the summer too. The key is not the daytime temperature highs, which are quite similar, but the combination of the lower humidity and the 10 degree lower nighttime temperatures. Looking at the daily low patterns may be one of the best ways to quickly determine the livability of the local climate. Staying out of the heat of the noonday sun is one thing, but starting and ending the day with oppressive and stifling heat and humidity is an entirely different thing.
This morning I also awoke to the news that our Supreme Ruler, Kommandant Trump, has come to the aid of Moscow Mitch’s pals in Russia in their moment of overheated need. It seems that Russian forests are under extremely high threat of devastation from wildfire, given the explosive and dry powder keg being created by the current warming cycle in those parts of the globe. Our sympathetic and kindly President has decided that the right thing to do is to lend a hand to his comrades in need. I’m sure he would say that it is an entirely different situation than the inefficient and wasteful assistance being requested by the state of California for its ongoing battle with wildfire threat. California clearly doesn’t deserve help from the U.S. Federal Government the way Putin and Russia do. Let’s not even mention that bastion of inefficiency in Puerto Rico, which doesn’t deserve an ounce of federal help. We have to keep our powder dry for the country that refuses to dismantle its most recent ballistic missile and forces us to cancel a thirty year old nuclear proliferation treaty. Makes perfect sense.
And then there’s the European Union, those sniveling oenophiles who have lorded over the New World for hundreds of years, calling us Americans impudent upstarts, having decided now that their vines need to be modified to meet the higher, hotter temperatures of our new world reality. That’s right, those haughty wine-making aristocrats have decided that the Bottle Shock of having Bill Pullman and Chris Pine of Napa and other wine regions of the world overtake their vineyards was not enough to show the world that they were has-beens in this realm. They have now decided that their lush vineyards and vines are no longer suitable for a world without enough water. Can you imagine? It takes decades to establish strong and productive vines and A Walk in the Clouds showed us that even Keanu Reeves and Anthony Quinn could recognize that maintaining the historic root of the vine is all. So why are the Spaniards, French and Italians ready to throw in the towel on 500 years of viniculture? They have no choice. There is no water in their future with the climates changing as they are. Why doesn’t Trump offer them assistance with their plight? Once he realizes that helping European vintners might actually hurt California’s economy, he might see the light and do so, but until he makes that connection, they are just nasty NATO leaches to him.
The world is turning upside down. The arctic is warming, Europe is dying on the vine, Florida’s coastline is disappearing (hello Mar-a-Lago), the Siberian forests are ablaze and Donald Trump is playing politics to get re-elected at all costs. A wealthy stand-up guy like Jeffrey Epstein is in prison and getting his trial postponed since prosecutors have over a million pages of corroborating and potentially indictable evidence (about other co-slezoids whose names cannot be mentioned per the confines of the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel edict). Wow, I can’t handle this all. I think I have to retire to a contemplative hill in San Diego or a seaside cottage on the Ring of Kerry, get a nice glass of Icelandic wine, and find a way to stop whining about the future.
Of course it isn’t as humid on the west coast! You guys somehow got the prevailing winds to blow the moisture eastward where it builds up by the Rockies and then dumps it on us poor easterners. Then you build Los Angeles in a desert and complain about the lack of water! It’s a damn desert, which by definition means it’s arid and gets little rain !! Then there is the San Andreas Fault which might make California the next Atlantis. Lex Luther bought all the property that would become beach front when that happens.
In a serious vein, I have tried to find out with numerous web searches how much of the worlds surface is now paved with nice dark tar that retains heat very effectively. 90%. The dark roofs of homes and buildings do the same. Even concrete does so to a lesser extent. LA is actually on the forefront of ameliorating this by planting tens of thousands of trees and changing materials used for roads and such. Instead of having a grandiose lawn, plant trees!
If we could set off a few volcanoes, things would improve also. When Krakatoa erupted, so much particulate matter hung in the atmosphere that average temperatures around the world dropped, as much as 1.2 degrees in some areas, for five years. Of course the tsunamis that were created were not appreciated by coastal regions. Maybe instead we could funnel some man made effluents and blow it into the upper atmosphere and avoid the tsunamis.
Dumping mass quantities of freshwater into the ocean would help counteract global warming too by reducing the salinity of the ocean. It happened when the last ice age was receding. For some reason North America melted in such a way that a huge lake was created. Huge! When it finally breached somewhere in the north east area, so much fresh water was released that it brought back what is called a ‘mini’ ice age for another thousand years. Not entirely in jest, but so much water had to have raised the oceans levels and I wonder if it was a source for the ‘great flood’ legend that so many different stories refer to?
Well I think I have whined enough. Perhaps too much as I always do.
90% seems hard to believe……
I have searched again and this time only found one site that gave retention in a percentage, and that was their number. Sifting through other sites, they provided thermal imaging, charts and numbers that showed a tremendous increase of temperature in urban areas and less in rural, which you would expect. They also mentioned that temperature monitoring sites showed noticeably rising the closer they were to increasingly covered areas. The terms and ways they researched is confusing to me and a bit (lot) over my head. They also talked about varying times of day, so perhaps that percentage was at a peak time of day to grab my attention. Some sites were very involved in alternative materials as well. Even if my number is high, there is much research in this area. Then you have many sites mixed in which give all the pros of asphalt from Asphalt Magazine and advancedpavementgroup.com and such. No self-interest there, and they tend to murky the waters of searching. I am not apologizing, just explaining it is a subject I have researched numerous times in an effort to gage the effect of another element contributing to the crisis.
The other two I know to be true.
The point isn’t wrong, even if the exact number may be suspect.