Everyday Disasters

Category: Abrupt Climate Change

  • Home Farm Experiment

    I’ve long thought that using modern-day victory gardensto counter food shortages from abrupt climate change events or other crises, would run full-tilt into a wall of ignorance that just didn’t exist in the early 20th century. A courageous idiot from Brooklyn decided to prove my point. As he reported in New York Magazine, Manny Howard decided in March to…

  • Ethanol in Gas

    My environmental posts come from a lot of research into scientific papers. This doesn’t. (I’ll research it later, but if anyone has a clue, I’d love to know about it.)  I’ve been driving in NYC lately. This doesn’t usually give me blinding headaches.  NYC has had ethanol in it’s gas for a long time but now…

  • Reunion Smalltalk – How Will You Survive Global Warmng

    Time flies at this time of year . . . finals, graduations, weddings, reunions. I had the pleasure of attending my college reunion. One of the real pleasures of attending a reunion of geeks and geekettes is the lack of pre-reunion angst. As I happily stressed over my daughter’s graduation outfit we continually tripped over…

  • The Downside of Teaching Your Children to Garden

    When I first moved to town I had a fabulous ‘landscaper’ (that’s what you call the person who mows your lawn on the East Coast).  He wasn’t like the other landscapers in town who would come in fair weather or foul and mow the lawn (no one really minds huge ruts in their lawn as…

  • Stop Your Gardens – We’re Saved

    Well, maybe don’t stop teaching your kids to garden but there is a lot of interest in saving the planet’s food production by moving it indoors. The world food supply is vulnerable to climate shifts, the globalization of pestilence and blight, and improvements in crop resistances that can lead to pollinator failures (bees getting mites)…

  • Poisonous Plant Picture Gallery

    Spring is in the air (sort-of – it’s still very cold here) and I’m looking for new disasters to discuss. In my travels I found this lovely Rutgers site  showing the poisonous/harmful plants in New Jersey. Thank goodness it is Mother’s Day and and not Sister’s Day coming up or I could see every cub scout…

  • AP gets Silence of the Frogs Wrong?

    In 2006 it was reported that extinctions occurred after periods of weather conducive to the spread of the fungus. The bouts of warm, humid weather were tied to global warming. This does not logically imply that global warming was the primary cause of the extinction.

  • Don’t Save the World With Bamboo

    Time magazine helpfully laid out things people can do to cut done on carbon emmisions. As part of their recommendations to cut emmisions they suggested planting bamboo.  Don’t do it! Bamboo will crowd out native species (that might not survive a significant warming trend, but why push them out?) and make attempts to later farm…

  • Help Juneau . . . Not That They Asked

    Juneau Alaska has an interesting community planning / environmental disaster problem.  They have a section of town that they know is vulnerable to avalanches. This section is built-up and has had some damage before. (17 houses in 1962). The city isn’t willing to buy everyone out, a cheaper alternative than building snow barriers that may…

  • Gardening is the Answer . . .

    What is the single most effective thing you can do to help your kids learn to respond to a global crisis? Teach them to grow a vegetable garden. Name that Crisis