The King's Speech

On Tuesday, March 4th President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress.  I do not begrudge our President the opportunity to take a victory lap; particularly on the heels of six busy weeks of cabinet hearings, executive orders, reductions in force, court hearings, spending freezes, tariffs followed by pauses, starts and follow-up pauses of the the latter.

The speech was exceedingly long however; meaning the volume of dubious claims or lies was target-rich.  Nothing new under the sun; nevertheless, worthy of truthful daylight.  Consequently, from time to time one of more of the King's gems will be featured here.

Enjoy. 

“I withdrew from the unfair Paris Climate accord, which was costing us trillions of dollars.”

This is false. Each country set its own commitments under the Paris accord, so Trump’s comment makes little sense. He could have unilaterally changed the commitments offered by Presidents Obama and Biden, which is technically allowed under the accord. Indeed, the agreement is nonbinding, so there was nothing in the agreement that stops the United States from building, say, coal plants, or gives permission to China or India to build coal plants. 

Government doesn't build or operate power generation stations.

Noah Was Prescient

Recently I touched on the matter of climate risk and the implications this has for our choice of where to live, the market impacts on the price of our homes, the costs associated with insuring against large losses and the cumulative impact on our communities.  

As the chart implies the incidence of flooding continues to rise over time.   

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is broke.  In debt to the US Treasury to the tune of $20 billion, it is required to pay interest on that debt.  And the program's interest burden amounts to $309 million every six months - money that otherwise would go to disaster response.

The NFIP is over-subscribed by severity and increasing frequency of flood events.  The programs flood maps are outdated and do not provide data about specific location risks. And remarkably, Americans are increasingly moving to coastal and other flood-prone locations.  Stunningly, fewer and fewer of them are purchasing flood insurance.  The federal government issued just two flooding disaster declarations in 2000.  So far for this year along it has issued sixty-six.

This is nuts. 

Several weeks ago the New York Times covered the crisis America's flooding problem and the three responses Americans are embracing to it.  

Fight the Water

Construct walls, dikes, barriers, pumps and drains to keep the water out.  Think: Holland, Venice and New Orleans.  The problem with this is the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to build-out the infrastructure necessary to protect Miami and Manhattan from storm surges. Miami abandoned their plans.  The people didn't want to spoil the view. 

Live With It

Get used to the idea of water and live with it.  Spend the vast sums of money necessary to locate homes on utility poles and elevate (or move inland) critical infrastructure like power generation plants and water utilities.  Expand wetland habitat to soak-up inundations like a giant sponge.

Pack Your Bags

And beat it out of Dodge.  Retreat and relocate to another community away from the likely risk of storm surge and flooding.  When the reality of repeated losses and inability to obtain insurance at any cost sinks-in; the shear weight of economics will drive the people to the high ground.  Maybe we should simply stop building in flood-prone locations.

For your late-night reading are a handful of links with more on this topic.

This year the federal government restricted building in flood plains.

Just last month, climate-induced flooding impacted people across four continents.

There is a real estate boom in flood zones.  Here's why.

Climate Risk

An article in the Washington Post last week outlined a detailed analysis of risks associated with the places we chose to live.  And consequently the implications associated with this choice.  There are implications related to risks.  The article may be pay walled, nevertheless this is the link if you want to take a look and avail yourself of the interactive risk calculator. 

I also want you to know that 10,000 years ago - where I live on the Door Peninsula - was covered by an ice sheet a mile thick!  Yup, that is a pile of glaciation.  So much so that the earth's crust continues to rebound from the weight of all of that ice.  The truth of the matter is that things have gotten warmer ever since.  

The climate has changed.  

And yes - beginning with the industrial revolution - I'm sure the hand of man has contributed to this change.  But I digress.

In this column the issue of climate risks assesses both the opportunities and threats that this poses for homeowners.  As a recovering financial guy I can appreciate the careful study of risks as they relate to the financial implications. 

Some families live in locations with too little water while others live with flood risk.  Some households chose to live within a spectacular view of the water; consequently there is the risk of sea level rise and dangerous storm surge.  If you've ever visited Asheville, NC you'd likely think:  This would be a terrific place to live.  Asheville, NC is no more because of a never-before flood event.  And while mountain views are also spectacular a wildfire can reduce your home to a smoking pile of ash.  More than once.

Many of these events come as a result of many years of climate change.  And they come with ramifications for the choice we make as to where to live, market impacts on the prices of our dwellings and the costs associated with insuring against losses.  All of which cumulatively impact communities on a larger scale.

The interactive calculator in the article offers AI-powered geospatial predictive analysis from AlphaGeo.   This utilizes granular analytics covering all climate risk hazards including heat stress, drought, hurricanes, flooding and wildfires for a volatile world including risk and resilience data to guide future-proofing your homestead.

As it turns out Door County, WI has very low climate risk.  Here's a breakdown of the individual risks:

Coastal Flooding and Hurricane - Very Low

Heat and Wildfire - Very Low

Inland flooding and Drought  - Low

It's rather safe to live here.  The risk of sea level rise is a non-issue although fluctuating lake levels periodically bedevil businesses and homeowners situated on the coastline.

And for the record - over the last number of decades we've been hanging around here I've taken notice of two anecdotal changes:

No snow for the November gun deer opener in about eighteen years.  The November gun season has become milder.  

You can use the link in the first paragraph to assess these same risks for any county in the United States.

Spring Tease

45F on our walk today.

In just two weeks we've gone from snow to taking a dip in the creek.

False spring?

Changing Of The Seasons - Part Three

In the United States those of us that follow or study the weather we observe prefer to use meteorological seasons because fixed dates  allow for easier recording and comparison of weather and climate data.  The rest of the world tends to mark the astronomical seasons.

Which one you may prefer to use depends mostly-upon where you live.  According the the American Meteorological Society the hemispheres and coastal versus inland locations all play a role.  Thusly, for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere and are land-locked meteorological seasons are for frequently observed.  If you live in the southern hemisphere the impact of oceans plays a larger role on temperatures and weather.  Therefore, astronomical seasons are preferred.

Complicating this somewhat is the that, at least where I live, the earth has been warming following the retreat of the glaciers.  Only 10,000 years ago (a blink of an eye in geologic time) my location was buried beneath an ice sheet a mile thick.  So thick that the earth's crust continues to rebound from the weight of all that ice.

For those of us residing in the northern hemisphere a study in Geophysical Research Letters found that between 1952 and 2011(two generations) the seasons have shifted in length.  Winter has gone from 76 to 73 days, spring from 124 to 115 days, fall 87 to 82 days and summer from 78 to 95 days.  Yikes!

The same study implies that if the trend continues at the current rate by the time we get to 2100 summers could last about a half of an entire year while winters would shrink to only a couple of months.  Our seasons would look more like locations closer to the equator regardless of being arid or tropical.

I certainly won't be around to witness it if it happens but it's certainly interesting to ponder.

Nature Walk

The Missus and I, along with some of our neighbors, indulged in a guided hike of a Door County Land Trust property situated at the southeast end of the Sturgeon Bay ship canal.

It's an interesting piece of property on a number of different levels.  The topography is a consequence of the retreat of the last glaciation when glacial lake Nipissing was formed.  As the ice cap receded fro the Great Lakes Basin  the water level was considerably higher by a measure of fifty feet.  

As the earth's crust rebounded from the weight of all of that ice the water levels on lakes Michigan, Superior and Huron dropped.  With the rebound, Lake Michigan is receding beneath the ground with the regular appearance of new beaches, and new parallel dune ridges created, one after the other over a period of thousands of years.  

Today we are witness to the remnants of ancient beaches in the form a several dozen parallel ridges and swales as evidence of the beach shoreline.

The resulting (cooler near the lake) micro-climate is also home to any number of post-glacial plant species - several of which are endangered.   

It was home to native people prior to European settlement and there is evidence of their ancestral portages to be found among the sandy ridges. 

Beach ecology is interesting stuff.  And today you can witness the processes that created the ridge and swale topography in action.  As new beach sand is exposed, wind blows the sand into the line of vegetation that parallels the lake.  It is here that the sand collects forming a parallel.

The dunes shelter many rare and endangered plant species and are a fascinating study on species succession starting with hardy beach grasses and plants that set the table for larger plants to succeed as you move further inland.

Dune Goldenrod

Beach Pea  

Fringed Gentian

A mature pine-dominated forest results as the apex ecosystem.  The abundance of hemlocks along with the cooling effects of Lake Michigan has created a forest ecosystem that is more similar of the boreal forests of Canada found hundreds of miles to the north.

Moving inland the species continue to change both in complexity and uniqueness. 

Ground Pine

Running Pine

 Wintergreen (edible and reminiscent of Life Savers)

Dwarf Lake Iris (Blooms in spring)

And from the forest's sinister garden there is Destroying Angel Amanita

You can learn more about Door County Land Trust and places to explore here.

 

Ringing-In The New Year

I know that about half of my friends are grumpy as we come to the end of the Current Guy's first year in office.  Speaking for myself I don't miss those days of a White House careening from crisis to crisis like a drunken carnival ride operator.  But the purpose of this post is not to dwell on that but share some history.  My attempt to build the case that things are not as dire as you think.  Indulge me the opportunity to lend historical perspective. 

Our current lot in life is not nearly as dreadful considering our forebears who had to live thru the year 536 — the year that may possibly be the absolute worst in human history.  

How bad was it?   

Sometime early in 536 a haze settled across Europe, the Middle East and Asia blotting-out the sun. 

The pall darkened the skies for a year and a half.        
  
The temperature dropped 35-36 degrees Fahrenheit, famine followed widespread crop failures and to top it off there was an outbreak of bubonic plague that decimated the population.  This was a terrible, horrible, no-good very bad year.    

Tree ring analysis provides evidence of a massive cooling event in either late 535 or early 536 – followed by another drop recorded in 542 - a double-whammy of cold temperatures.   

A study of ice core samples from a European glacier uncovered microscopic shards of volcanic glass which were traced to volcanic rocks in Iceland.  Researchers believe that this is evidence of a massive volcanic eruption that loosed a gigantic plume of ash into the atmosphere in 536.  The ash shrouded the Northern Hemisphere for more than a year.  A follow-up eruption in 539 or 540 - linked to North America - explains the double-whammy temperature drop recorded in the tree rings.      

Long story short, the volcanic events, plague outbreak and biggest drop in temperature in more than two thousand years resulted in three decades of global economic stagnation.  

Curiously, additional study of the ice samples revealed a spike in airborne lead particles in the year 575.  Lead ore was used the smelting of silver and its presence in the ice is evidence that the precious metal was once again in demand for making new coins as the European economy started to recover.     

You might think that you have a lot to complain-about at the start of the new year.  Sure, you may be unhappy with the Current Guy and his policies.  And there are COVID variants to grapple-with.  Yet we live in a golden age of modern medicine.  We have vaccines and new anti-viral therapeutics being introduced to market almost daily.  And we have evolved from incandescent, to compact fluorescent to LED lighting.  There is central heat and clean water.  Indoor plumbing too.  At least you're not fighting off the Black Death while shivering in the gloom and darkness of a cloud of volcanic ash. This was at the front end of the Dark Ages for a reason. 

There are a couple of lessons to be learned by this.  Be thankful you weren't around in 536 and beware of global cooling events.  They do happen.  And they can happen again.     

Learn more about this time in history here.

 

Thunder Month

The full moon we experienced last Tuesday sometimes called the Thunder Moon.  This is as a consequence of weather patterns in our hemisphere being the stormiest in the month of July.  None of this is a result of climate change – it’s just the way it’s always been. 

The full moon we'll experience next week is sometimes called the Thunder Moon.  This is as a consequence of weather patterns in our hemisphere being the stormiest in the month of July.  None of this is a result of climate change – it’s just the way it’s always been.

So far we haven’t experienced any particularly show -stopping storms but I did stumble across one from five years ago that is worthy of sharing.   

Ordinarily I would not recommend standing on a wet porch in your bare feet during a lightning storm.  But the view of that stormy sunset was spectacular.  

And as the ruckus breathed its last gasp Ma Nature hurled some extra lightning bolts at the setting sun....

Climate Change

I want to preface this post with the admonition that the column linked here is an Opinion Piece.  

I also want you to know that 10,000 years ago - where I live on the Door Peninsula - was covered by an ice sheet a mile thick!  Yup, that is a pile of glaciation.  So much so that the earth's crust continues to rebound from the weight of all of that ice.  The truth of the matter is that things have gotten warmer ever since.  

The climate has changed.  

And yes - beginning with the industrial revolution - I'm sure the hand of man has contributed to this change.  But I digress.

In this column the issue of climate threats uses data from Four Twenty Seven, a company that assesses climate risk for financial markets.  As a recovering financial guy I can appreciate the careful study of risks as they relate to financial markets. The index measures future risks based on climate models and historical data.  And the authors assigned the highest risk for each county to build a map and combined it with separate data from Four Twenty Seven on wildfire and other climate risks. 

As it turns out life here on the peninsula is actually low risk from the point of view of climate change.

Extreme rainfall risk - Medium

Water stress, Heat stress and Wildfire risk - Low

Hurricane and Sea level rise risk - None

It's rather safe to live here.  And while sea level rise is a non-issue, lake level rise is huge issue for business and people on the coastline.

And for the record - over the last number of decades we've been hanging around here I've taken notice of two anecdotal changes:

No snow for the November gun deer opener in fifteen years.  The November gun season has become milder.  And the last three years have been witness to above-average precipitation. 

You can use the link in the first paragraph to assess these same risks for any county in the United States.

A Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Year

At the close of the year it is not at all unusual for some of us to be grumpy about the current state of affairs.  Stock market volatility, the Fed’s attempts to restrain the return of inflation, Donald Trump’s ham-fisted trade tariffs contributing to a slowing of the global economic condition combined with all of the uncertainty of a Whitehouse careening from crisis to crisis like a drunken carnival ride operator.  

Friends, things are not as dire as you think.  Indulge me the opportunity to lend historical perspective.    

Our current lot in life is not nearly as dreadful considering our forebears who had to live thru the year 536 — the year that may possibly be the absolute worst in human history.  How bad was it?  Sometime early in 536 a haze settled across Europe, the Middle East and Asia blotting-out the sun. 

The pall darkened the skies for a year and a half.        

  
The temperature dropped 35-36 degrees Fahrenheit, famine followed widespread crop failures and to top it off there was an outbreak of bubonic plague that decimated the population.  This was a terrible, horrible, no-good very bad year.    

Tree ring analysis provides evidence of a massive cooling event in either late 535 or early 536 – followed by another drop recorded in 542 - a double-whammy of cold temperatures.  A study of ice core samples from a European glacier uncovered microscopic shards of volcanic glass which were traced to volcanic rocks in Iceland.  Researchers believe that this is evidence of a massive volcanic eruption that loosed a gigantic plume of ash into the atmosphere in 536.  The ash shrouded the Northern Hemisphere for more than a year.  A follow-up eruption in 539 or 540 - linked to North America - explains the double-whammy temperature drop recorded in the tree rings.      

Long story short - the volcanic events, plague outbreak and biggest drop in temperature in more than two thousand years resulted in three decades of global economic stagnation.  Curiously, additional study of the ice samples revealed a spike in airborne lead particles in the year 575.  Lead ore was used the smelting of silver and its presence in the ice is evidence that the precious metal was once again in demand for making new coins as the European economy started to recover.     

You might think that you have a lot to complain about in 2018, but at least you're not fighting off the plague while shivering under the gloom and darkness of a cloud of volcanic ash.  There are a couple of lessons to be learned by this.  Be thankful you weren't around in 536 and beware of global cooling events.  They do happen.     

Learn more about this time in history here.

The Garden Chronicles

It has been a curious year for sure for gardening.  Cold and rain.  Rain and cold.  Three additional inches of rain in the past week alone.  And cold.   

Some of my gardening efforts have taken it all in stride as the onions, potatoes, green beans and peas are thriving.  Alternatively, I think it has impacted the proper germination of other veggie seeds and stunted several of my tomato plants. Tomatoes don’t like cold but you’d think lettuce, spinach, beets and radishes would love the cool conditions.  It has to be the abundance of precipitation.  Seed rot perhaps?   

I’ve had to re-sow spinach, lettuce, beets and radishes three times and I’m hoping the third time is a charm.  Pumpkins were replanted yesterday.   

 click on image for a better view

Tomato plants – stunted in the foreground and a healthy couple in the background   

Peas and spuds are the dominant features     

Sweet peppers in the foreground  and Blue Lake green beans above    

Nothing better than a fresh-picked radish

A Flat Land To Cross

A 2013 survey asked Americans which state is flattest.  Roughly a third of the respondents suggested it was Kansas but the flattest state happens to be Florida - easily explained by its low coastal plains and the early sign of trouble with rising sea levels.   

Nevertheless, Illinois is flatter than Kansas.  Illinois owes its flatness to the gift of the glaciers.  The glaciers plowed it flat – obliterating every mountain, hill and piece of topography in their way.  And when the ice eventually melted in their retreat the melting ice sheet left a rich deposit of glacial till and silt loam that constitutes some of the best farmland in the world.   

I’ve taken a pile of road trips in my day and I always considered Nebraska, Kansas, Indiana and the Dakotas to be flat lands to cross.   

Nope – Illinois beats them all.  Raising a toast to road trips and global warming.

click on images to enlarge