As I write this, my throat is a little raspy. The smoke from the nearby fires has come to the Coachella Valley and significantly worsened our air quality.
In early July, the planet endured its three hottest days on record. According to The New York Times: “The spike comes as forecasters warn that the Earth could be entering a multiyear period of exceptional warmth driven by two main factors: continued emissions of heat-trapping gases, mainly caused by humans burning oil, gas and coal; and the return of El Niño, a cyclical weather pattern. … The sharp jump in temperatures has unsettled even those scientists who have been tracking climate change.”
The New York Times quoted Brian McNoldy, a senior research scientist at the University of Miami. “It’s so far out of line of what’s been observed that it’s hard to wrap your head around,” he said. “It doesn’t seem real.”
It’s disheartening and even sickening to realize that all of those terrible things climate-change scientists have been warning us about for decades are now actually happening. According to LiveScience: “Antarctic sea ice levels reached record-breaking lows … and this ‘extraordinary behavior’ could mark the start of its long-term decline, scientists warn. As of June 27, the extent of sea ice in Antarctica was nearly 1 million square miles (2.6 million square kilometers) below average for this time of year, compared with the period between 1981 to 2010, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). … ‘In the midst of its winter growth phase, Antarctic sea ice has reached a record smashing-low extent for this time of year,’ NOAA staff wrote on Twitter. ‘Sea ice extent is approaching a half a million square miles below the previous lowest extent (for this day), observed in 2022.’”
Here in the Western U.S., we’re concerned not about ice/water, but as I alluded to above, we’re concerned one of the other elements—fire. The deadly, expensive and horrifying increase in wildfires has been oft-documented in the Independent, and it’s on my mind right now for a very personal reason.
The hubby and I are planning on spending a good chunk of August in Reno, Nev., for various reasons—including family commitments and, well, the fact that August here can be climatologically unpleasant. However, Reno is located in a big geologic bowl on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, and quite often, smoke from big Western wildfires gets stuck in that bowl, leading to unhealthy and downright dangerous air quality for days and even weeks at a time, including a good chunk of the summer of 2021. We’ve been having discussions about what we’ll do if the smoke gets bad while we’re there—which, due to climate change, is going to be an ongoing concern for Reno.
We’re all going to be asking ourselves climate-change-related questions like this as the years go on—and more often than not, those questions will not have any easy answers.
Note: This is a slightly edited version of the editor’s note that appeared in the August 2023 print edition. Portions of this column were originally published online in the July 6 Indy Digest.
