We Are Screwed

 I thought I would check Mauna Loa CO2 monitoring the other day.  Our CO2 ppm is up 2.5 ppm since the same time last year.  

This is after the world came to a screeching halt during the pandemic, airplanes grounded, people working from home, kids not taking buses to school.

Scientists have known there is a lag betwen the time CO2 gets into the atmosphere and when it gets removed. We tend to produce more than the planet can absorb, so it keeps rising overall.

 

Why then, did it continue to rise so rapidly when technically production should be less?  The only logical explanation is that our ability to absorb it has been reduced even more.

 

I was ranting about Brazil and the recent push to level rainforest for development.  Then the WIllow pointed out quite astutely that last year was a huge one for fires-the Western US a well as huge parts of Australia. 

Last night, seperate from this issue, I decided to street view the house where I grew up. My mother sold it about twenty years ago.  Here's a pic of her on the front walk, most likely going out to dinner for Easter or Mother's Day:

The house in in complete shade from the huge white oaks -two in the front and several in the back, plus a white pine to the left of the azaleas she planted when I was very small.  You can just make out the lamp post ot the right between the white and pink azaleas.

This is what it looks like now:

Yes, quite a nice looking neighborhood I suppose, but absolutely whacked.  The neighbor to the left had a privet hedge that surrounded their property-gone.  They had Tulip trees in their yard-the same size as our oaks-gone.  The azaleas-gone.  People used to stop and photograph them.  

The oaks, our white and the neighbor's red, gone.  Now for all I know severe storms may have come through and done a number on the trees.  My  mother was always worried one would fall.  But the azaleas?  I had been told they were an insurance risk because robbers could hide in them.  Good luck I couldn't hide in them when I was tiny.

My mother's lawn even looked better.  But this is an example of where this country has been going-whack a tree, whack a bush, take out hedges.  Just the amount of wildlife that lost cover in this ONE yard is devastating to me.

I was glad to see the corner lot (behind the viewer) had kept their hedge and their trees and you can't even see the house.  The rest of the block looked pretty much like this.

gives me nightmares I tell you.  Folks, you can't re grow hundred year old trees overnight.  What's going to reduce the CO2 and stop the extremes from becoming even more extreme?

Things are really out of whack here this season.  The maple sap is late, and the trees aren't giving it up.  My water table is down at least a foot.  We had little snow and no rain.  

The last time the Earth had these kinds of CO2 levels it was a grassland.  Trees don't like hot and dry, or violent storms either. It doesn't help to reduce CO2 production if you are not increasing absorbtion.  The planet cannot sustain this rapid change .

 

There is a little doom and gloom for you on this Spring Equinox.  This is not an ""I told you so" I will be proud of.   

On the other hand, keep your eyes peeled for Auroras tonight.  Solar wind incoming coupled with the Equinox ups the odds for viewing them.