Global Warming and Solutions

If it is not too late and futile by now to try to counter the effects of global warming, we have another one of those simple, low tech science thoughts that everyone will ignore.

Our thoughts attempting to address the problem have focused on renewable rather than fossil fuel energy, as our releasing fossil fuel into the atmosphere, along with chopping down all the forests, may well have caused the warming of the earth and the melting of the glaciers, the rise of sea levels and the change of weather patterns world wide. Nice goin’, Western science and capitalist economy!

Photosynthesis is what removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So why do we not invent a form of production that imitates photosynthesis, not only using solar energy to produce something, but doing what plants do, turning the fossil fuel released back into oxygen and carbon or non-gasses (like oil and coal), and making sugars to boot, as plants do? Artificial food may not be all that tasty, but it would sure work in a pinch for the third of the world that does not get enough to eat. That would make giant carbon dioxide cleansers affordable. And, if we are smarter than the guys who worked the last, industrial revolution, we might even think ahead about what long term problems this solution will create, if there are drawbacks to having too much oxygen, like Eden, or too much sugar and cellulose or whatever other brilliant things we can make converting carbon dioxide into oxygen with sunlight. Maybe we can even improve on what is done by plants, and come up with some very efficient way of getting this dang carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. But we do not hear much about the Ozone hole any more, other problems having superseded that one, and we having stopped the release of refrigerants.

Yet it may well be too late. The ice melting decreases the pressure on the floating crust of the earth, and we think this just might blow the super-volcanoeunder Yellowstone, leading to Revelation 18. Not to worry! But we do want to make sure that liberty can be defended without us by the rest of the world, and that our great achievements, such as the writings of the Western world, Plato, Aristotle, Jefferson and others are preserved in places that might survive.

 

Salem Low Temperatures 2/26 and 27

Again we have especially low temperatures, as one will find officially recorded at the Salem and South Lyon weather stations, just West of the edge of Wayne County, along the Base line, or Eight Mile. We repeatedly receive a strange pocket of air much colder than the surrounding areas, as is visible on the website of Mark the Weatherman (no relation), and the Weather Underground, which lists all the stations. He has a map of Michigan for February 28, 2014, last year, and one can see the pocket colored -24 to 28, like the pocket of a left handed catcher’s glove. Yesterday it was 11 below at 11pm, 17 below at 1:30 AM, 20 at 5:30, 19 at 6:30 and 18 at sunrise. On the North side of the street, my friend got 17 below the other day, 2 days ago, and I had 17.5. Meanwhile, the official report was that it might be -7 in outlying areas, though I think I heard -16 reported for Ann Arbor. These are just records for this date. Our 30.2, recorded officially as 28.1 in South Lyon, may be the coldest ever recorded in these places.

We appreciate the story on NPR about frozen fog and “Diamond dust,” which precipitates or crystallizes out of the air, probably when the dew point is like 17 below. He also spoke about rainbow spots and sundogs. I still wonder if clouds are always, sometimes or never frozen. So on these mornings, our consolation is the glorious “ice like diamonds on the street” (Judy Collins song- does she not select poems that are like diamond ice precipitating through the poet’s air?) We hope you all take time to notice the prisms and sparkles in the ice, and the patterns like leaves in the frost on the window.

Strange Record Low Temperatures Again in Salem

At 4:15 A. M, we recorded 30.2 degrees below zero, and at 4:40, about 29.9. One station nearby, in South Lyon, has officially recorded 28.1. This may make this morning the coldest it has ever been in Salem township or anywhere in the Southern Lower Peninsula, surely below the Eight Mile Meridian, though it may be colder in Port Huron. The weather station, WWJ, just keeps reporting the wimpy lows of 10 below at Metro Airport, 12 below in Grand Rapids, and one suspects they do not have access to the weather underground. We can feel the burning difference between 10 below and 28.

No one talks about Global warming in these times, though it is clear that the weather now is different from when we were young.

Strange Low Temperatures in Salem Twp. for February 15-16

For some unknown reason, we often get strange low temperatures here at the edge of three counties and four cities, at Eight Mile and Napier. We have frosts and freezes a bit ahead of the forecast, so I was not too surprised when the mercury began to drop on February 15th. But at 9 PM, when other places were barely reporting zero, we had 18.3 degrees below zero. I called this in to WWJ, because it was so strange, but one could feel the air burning the skin, even just walking out to the shed. I prepared to stay up to watch the phenomenon.

At 10:25, I recorded 20 below. At 11:08,minus 22 was the lesser of two thermometers, the second reading past -30 Celsius, which is about 22 below. (One was on a board with a pile of snow, the other, lower, was on wire in the air a couple feet off the ground) It eased up to about 19.8 at midnight, which I checked because I wanted to see the record for February 16th. I got 22.5 below at 1:30 AM, and 23 at 1:54. When I went for a nap after 2, it was 22, and when I woke up again at 5:30 it was also -22.

Ann Arbor, which is a few miles southwest, recorded 12 below, their record for the date. The all time low ever recorded in Ann Arbor was 22 below. But I’ll bet that night, it was even colder in Salem, out behind the shed.

I think the polar vortex was passing right overhead, or something. We are in a bit of a valley between Northville and Chubb road, and the storms, on Doppler, seem to part as they come along eight mile heading north-west. But there is nothing that would make sense of these strange lows.