About David Brooks' column, "Relax, We'll be Fine"

David Brooks’ optimism is well founded, but he leaves out one very important element, the real world or what most people call nature.

Sounds great until you throw in the fact that the "sunbelt" could be along the US Canadian border within 50 years.

Most of Florida could disappear under water and the American West could be hot dry and combustible. If New York, NY is around, it could have dikes surrounding it. Maybe the name will be changed back to New Amsterdam. The Gulf Coast and Mid-west could be too hot and stormy to be habitable.

David Brooks’ column concerns social and economic conditions and leaves the real world aside.

I call nature the real world. Being the narcissistic human centered animals that we are, we call the made for humans construction we devised the real world. The construct we made is comfortable and enjoyable but we live and survive here by the Grace of God or of the real natural world.

Maybe we can overcome an earth heated to temperatures not seen in at least 15,000 years. But it most certainly won't be pretty.

2010 is shaping up to be the warmest year on record. I don’t think it will be too long before even the Teabaggers are forced to admit to global warming.

If the ocean dies from too high temperatures and stops producing the oxygen we need to breathe, the earth will still be here and life will be on it but humans will be extinct. Hopefully, we will act before it’s too late to be reversed.


New York Times

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Relax, We’ll Be Fine

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: April 5, 2010

Ain't no fish there

Any flyfisherman and especially the men I know who catch and release wild trout in the 3000 per year and up have experienced rising temperatures and aquatic insect emersion periods come earlier in the year. Mayflies could be renamed Marchflies. It happened between 1980 and the present time. Since the early 1900 you could set your watch to the first emersion of a particular mayfly. People booked reservations to hotels near streams years in advance. It all began to change about 1980. I think that anyone who spends a lot of time outdoors and appreciates wildlife would bet their house that global warming is and has been happening since 1980.

I think the people that believe the climate change denier propaganda from the coal industry don’t get out much in the real world. I would bet that they can’t see one fish in a stream full with 2 trout per square yard where a flyfisherman sees 50 or more trout. The climate change deniers would say there’s no fish here. I would bet they can’t see 10 deer in a woods edge that a seasoned deer hunter does see. The climate change deniers would say there’s no deer here.


Scientists' use of computer models to predict climate change is under attack

By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 6, 2010

EPA Releases SUSTAIN

What happens upstream determines the effects downstream. Water physically binds communities together whether their separate governments link together or not.

We are making an effort here in the Coatesville area to link our communities together. This is a possible tool to aid in developing stormwater management for our area.

EPA Releases SUSTAIN, A Complex Modeling Tool to Answer Critical Stormwater Management Questions

http://www.stormwaterpa.org/blog/stormwater-bmps/epa-sustain/

House Members, Groups Oppose Expanding Natural Gas Leasing In State Forests video plus Sen. Dinniman severance tax on gas wells podcast

Senator Andy Dinniman's Podcast about his proposal to tax Marcellus Shale wells
dinniman_Feb_24_10.mp3 (7 MB)
http://www.senatordinniman.com/podcasts/dinniman_Feb_24_10.mp3


Dinniman proposes tax on Marcellus Shale gas reserves

Published: Friday, March 5, 2010
http://www.pottsmerc.com/articles/2010/03/05/news/srv0000007739365.txt

PA Environmental Digest:

http://paenvirodigestvideo.blogspot.com/2010/03/house-members-groups-opposed-to-natural.html

What harms our air and water and makes our enemies wealthy?

Porsche Electric or the death of oil made visible

Oil is dead folks. All the wars in the Middle East will soon be over water only. And Osama bin Laden will have to find a new way to finance his “death to America” campaign.

How you know the V-8 Detroit engine is dead and electric power will dominate vehicles:



This is all happening as we come out of the “warmest winter on record”, no really:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/freakout-nomics/

Warm winters mean more snow

Anyone with 60 year memory can recollect that the heaviest snowstorms came in relatively warm weather. Looking back through records you can see that many of the most severe storms were in near freezing conditions.

What made the 1996 storm devastating was the way it ended. Warm weather brought rain, floods and huge chunks of ice coming down rivers and streams. I witnessed the ice that came from the ice dams upstream of Collegeville take out the Perkiomen Inn in 1996.

Global warming is upon us, but don’t put away the snow blowers. My advice is; if you use a snow blower or plow keep it running or updated, you will most likely get more use out of it in warmer winters.

The Pennsylvania weather book
By Ben Gelber

http://books.google.com/books?id=34RKv9fMFo4C&pg=PT75&lpg=PT75&dq=Pennsylvania+1956+snowstorm&source=bl&ots=CoQl-QQfQe&sig=ohLb0TSL3hf7LscAyMziwS-ha9Q&hl=en&ei=S9h5S9nFFMyg8QaN5Yj2Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CCgQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=Pennsylvania%201956%20snowstorm&f=false

An amazing, though clearly little-known, scientific fact: We get more snow storms in warm years!
February 15, 2010

http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/15/an-amazing-though-clearly-little-known-scientific-fact-we-get-more-snow-storms-in-warm-years/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+climateprogress/lCrX+%28Climate+Progress%29