The current heat wave is terrifying to me, and what scares me even more is that it is only going to get worse. It is going to get hotter for longer, the weather is going to get more violent, and honestly large portions of places where people live now are going to be basically incapable of sustaining human life.
Joelle likes to bike to and from work, and yesterday she waited at the office until 8pm her time in Tempe to ride home. I talked to her on facetime right after she got home, and she looked like she had just run a triathlon and had the 1000 yard stare that combat troops get after too much time on the front line. She had hair going everywhere, was flushed, and had a quart of Italian Ice cradled between her tits to cool down.
This climate change is horrifying.
BigJimSlade
Time for an electric bike, at least during summer.
Bobby Thomson
I was calling for divestment in Arizona back in the 80s. The church has millennia of a head start in body count but golf is catching up.
azlib
I am in Scottsdale and it has been over 110F for 20 days with no end in sight. There was a report by the power companies saying if we have a major power outage over 800,000 people will be adversely affected and a lot of people will die of the heat. They say the probablility of such an event is very low, but they are preparing for the eventuality.
azlib
Oh, and 110F days are not that uncommon, but to have a heat wave this long is quite unusual. We usually get what are called monsoon rains this time of year which cool things of a bit, but so far no storms at all.
gwangung
@azlib: That puts Arizona up over Texas.
Martin
This is the chart that I can’t distract myself from.
The antarctic ice extent doesn’t look any better, nor does the global sea temp, nor does the 2m air temp.
I think we’re starting the ‘find out’ phase of the post WW-II industrialization era.
Martin
@BigJimSlade: Do it. I love mine.
Yarrow
Yes. You’re not moving to Arizona, are you? That’s crazy. The Great Lakes region will be king in the coming water wars. Move there.
AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team
Yep.
So far this summer it’s ok here North of Denver, but not sure how many years that’ll be the case.
hrprogressive
Human civilization will become unrecognizable by 2050, and probably won’t really exist by 2100.
So, enjoy whatever you can, while you can.
While also dodging COVID and Fascists.
BR
The climate we’re experiencing in 2023 is the result of emissions from about two decades ago, because it takes a couple decades for emissions to work their way through the global ecosystem. 2003 was before the massive boom in coal emissions in China, India, and elsewhere, and the wealthy parts of the world haven’t decreased in that time either. It’s mind boggling to think what 2043 will look like, and whatever it looks like, it’s *baked in already*.
Martin
@Yarrow: Great Lakes region is going to be dealing with fires before you know it. The 100th meridian which divides the dry west from the east is now basically in Iowa. It’s going to take some years of sustained dryness for those forests to be ready to burn, but that’s coming. It’s not how much or little it rains as much as its how the relative humidity changes. That’s really what happened here in California – humidity dropped on an ongoing basis, and that’s what drives the big fires. How they start is based on prior rains and low vegetation growth.
Fun story: Oregon officials were going to study the issue but canceled that out of fear the insurers would use that information to leave the state, so they’re just gonna yolo it, I guess.
mrmoshpotato
I’ve only been in one great lake, but I can attest that Lake Go Blue! totally slapped as a kid, and still totally slaps.
BR
@Martin:
Yeah, like a decade ago everyone was thinking PNW and Canada were going to be fine because they get so much rain, but what it’s looking like is that the ecosystems there depend on all that rain and cool weather and humidity, and when it changes even a little then the equilibrium gets restored through fire, and some of that land becomes savanna (eventually).
Cameron
I grew up in Saudi Arabia, so summertime temps over 110 weren’t uncommon. Being a desert country, there wasn’t much humidity, so it was more comfortable wandering outside there in summer than it is here in Florida. Of course, if you did it for very long, you had a good chance of getting heat stroke or worse.
Jackie
Saw this suggestion yesterday:
“Turns out all we may need to stop climate change is 139 billion gallons of super-duper white paint”
https://www.businessinsider.com/
Ascap_scab
As the world heats up, the Equatorial Countries will be uninhabitable. If you think immigration is bad now, wait until vast swaths of Central America becomes a waste-zone where people MUST flee or die.
Jackie
@BR: The PNW doesn’t include east of the Cascades, where 100 degrees+ late June through Sept isn’t uncommon – it’s pretty much the norm.
Urza
@Jackie: Saw that paint idea the other day. Problem is 2% of the planet means 6% of the land since its 70% ocean. And the glaciated areas don’t count so its more like painting all of Australia white, or at least most island nations.
Plus how much of that will be some toxic crap from the lowest bidder who had a cost overrun to pad their profits.
eclare
Still without power here in Memphis. Luckily it only got up to 93 today instead of the predicted 97. Still no ETA on when it will be restored, but the outage line says there are only 52 customers in my outage, and I’m sure MLGW, the utility, is fixing the outages with more impact first.
Originally there were about 140k customers without power, down to around 45k now. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.
At least I’m not in Phoenix.
Mai Naem mobileI
July’s always bad in AZ but not as bad as this year. Also, I’m used to having several highs >110 in July and August but it’s the lows. It used to not get hot till after 12PM. Now it’s hot after 9AM. And it’s doesn’t drop below 100 degrees till midnight.
Nettoyeur
@gwangung: But AZ govt is not as crazy as TX.
Mart
Consulted at a corn flour mill. Had a bunch of gas fired furnaces on the roof. I was all what the hell? They used the furnaces to kill the insects and related vermin. Heated the building over 140°F and held it for a few hours to kill all the critters.
cain
I’m currently watching “The American President” – and of course even back in 1996, they were talking about global warming. It’s just fucking awful that we are in this situation – but it’s not just all these nations but as entitled people living in western countries we do not want to change our lifestyles.
The thing is – folks are just going to move to other parts so that they can keep living that lifestyle.
The depictions of the press is just as ridiculous as the reality. Same bullshit.
Jay
Here, we just passed the worst forest fire season in history,
and it’s just July.
A decade ago, forest fire season started in July and ended in October.
Now it starts in April and ends in December.
mrmoshpotato
@Mart: Where was this?
Mart
@mrmoshpotato: East-Central IL.
TaMara
@Jackie: There are actually a lot of practical and immediate solutions that are being developed, researched, and being implemented. But I suspect this is not the thread to discuss any of them. 😉
As it took a while to get us to this point, it will take time to reduce the temperature, as well.
Yarrow
@Martin: Sure but the Great Lakes still have the fresh water that people will need.
TaMara
bookworm1398
This is the chart that convinced me that carbon emissions aren’t going to drop and there is really no hope there. Look at the line for biomass
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/global-energy-substitution.svg
Jay
@bookworm1398:
there is always hope, that’s what hope is.
Carlo Graziani
@Martin: So far as the Great Lakes are concerned, there is no reason to believe this pattern will be duplicated. There is also no longer any reason to believe that the past is predictive of the future.
The catchwords for climate change are “instability” and “unpredictability” far more than warming. Two years ago, the Mississippi was at flood levels, only a couple of feet below the Louisiana levees, and tow pilots struggled to get shipping upstream because of the unprecedented strength of the currents. This occurred because Canada had an extremely wet year, and Canada is a catchbasin for the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. This year Canada is dry. Nobody has the foggiest idea of what will happen next year, because the water cycle has been completely destabilized. Note that California was flooding just a few months ago.
That’s what is so scary about climate change. The climatology changes so fast that the past is not predictive of the future, and nobody really can model where it’s going.
patrick II
When was the last time a climate change question was asked in either a presidential or primary debate?
BR
@Carlo Graziani:
Some have suggested that the Holocene Climatic Optimum from 8000 years ago is a good analogue for what we’re in now. At the time there were sand dunes through the great plains and if I remember right, relatives of Gila monsters roaming those sand dunes. Yikes.
Martin
@Yarrow: Well, in fairness so does California. The problem is that we export a LOT of that water in the form of food, and that’s really the source of our shortages. If we didn’t export food to other countries and states, we’d have more than enough, though it would also help if we changed some of our dietary habits. ⅓ of the Colorado river usage is just silage for our cattle and dairy industry, and CA is the largest dairy state in the US by a pretty wide margin.
One thing that would really help would be an agricultural rebalancing of the nation. States in the south and midwest giving up their cash row crops in favor of some of the vegetable crops we grow here, which are much more valuable as well – usually 10-20x more revenue per acre. The issue isn’t that we have better growing climate. I mean, it is better but not *that* much better. The problem is that CA crops are labor dominated, not climate dominated. We have half the nations farm workers, so most anything that is highly labor dependent winds up here. And that’s mostly a function that in the US class structure, farm work is still ‘slave’ work. It’s lower class work, it’s work for immigrants, and those states don’t want immigrants, and they certainly don’t want their white kids doing it – maybe if it’s a winery. So they pick and choose crops that can be done with combines and the like, rather than manual labor, and CA mostly picks up the manual labor crops.
We need to break this cycle, move agriculture in closer balance to the people who consume it, balance out water usage, and balance out labor as well. Thankfully we had a really good winter for rain, but we still have water problems off the Colorado, and if we return to this drought cycle the cost won’t be Californians not having drinking water, it’ll be non-Californians not having vegetables. That’s why Dr Oz was bitching about the price of his crudite – it wasn’t that Biden fucked up the economy, it’s that CA was out of water last summer and we paid nearly a million acres of vegetable farms to go fallow to save water. And for a lot of these crops, we’re 80% or more of the nations supply, and in some cases, 80% of the world supply.
NotMax
@BR
IIRC, Lawrence of Nebraska went straight to video.
:)
JaneE
I wait to open the windows until it is cooler outside than in. Last night I gave up and opened up at 11pm as I went to bed. At least it was supposed to be cooler in an hour. At 6:30 am this morning it was still 70 outside.
Thirty years ago nights cooled down to the 50’s even if the days were just as hot. Now we have clouds to hold in the heat and raise the humidity. Two ways to make it more uncomfortable now.
Carlo Graziani
@BR: What did not exist in the Holocene was the extreme anthropogenic GHG forcing that we’ve had since the Industrial Revolution.
XKCD captured the situation in Munro’s inimitable style in this cartoon, a few years ago. It shows how inappropriate any comparisons to previous geological epochs are.
Martin
@Carlo Graziani: That’s not quite right. We know that sea and atmospheric temperatures are going to climb. That part is predictable. And we know that’s happening faster at higher latitudes.
Yes, on a year by year basis we can’t predict, but the overall trend line is pretty clear in many regards. We know the warmer air will hold more moisture. We know that storms will become more intense and produce more flooding, and at the same time, the drying west and warming north will continue to expand east and south.
But this pattern is well known to climatologists and has been predicted for a few decades.
Martin
To be clear, I’m not a doomer. We can fix this, and we’re doing some good stuff, but we’re still doing way too little. We still think we can consume our way out of this. We still think we can do this without changing our lifestyle. I’m not talking about accepting a lower standard of living, just a different one. But that takes work and we’re just not doing it.
2liberal
I live in Tempe, and tonight at 8PM the temp is 108 degrees F. That’s dangerous if she’s riding over 20 minutes
This link may or may not work:;;
https://tinyurl.com/5n6p3ndb
BR
@Martin:
My thing is fruit trees. I want everyone here in California, at the very least, to be growing all their own fruit, if done right on greywater alone. It’s doable in everything except highrise apartment buildings.
Everyone needs to pick their thing and get to work.
Martin
@Carlo Graziani: That’s actually outdated. We’ve already busted the best case scenario by a decent bit.
Martin
@BR: I’ve got grapefruit, lemon, and apple. The apple tree died this year because there aren’t enough cold hours in winter any longer. The handful of other apple trees in my area also died. Trying to decide what to do with that space.
A suggestion: advocate for public fruit trees so anyone can access them. Cities always have a load of smallish decorative trees that could pretty much all be fruit trees.
Yarrow
@JaneE: @Mai Naem mobileI: I remember reading an article talking about how people talk a lot about the daytime highs, which are terrible and serious, but there’s much less discussion about how the lows are much warmer than they used to be and that’s actually a bigger problem for climate change issues.
BR
@Martin:
I already planted public orchards of hundreds of trees in NorCal (some with permission, some without — choosing appropriately so as to not create messes on sidewalks). I find cities are too slow on this, so it often requires going around them, though sometimes they cooperate.
SoCal is more challenging. The mental shift towards tropicals is happening too slowly — this isn’t a temperate climate now (if it ever was) so temperate fruits are going to be zone-shifted out. Subtropicals and tropicals are the way to go — I expect you’re in central OC, so you can do Mango, Guava, Papaya, Avocado, Passionfruit, Dragonfruit, Fig, Pomegranate, Pineapple, White Sapote, Banana, and Jackfruit. (I can give you starts for all of these, if you want.)
Joy in FL
@TaMara: Thank you, TaMara.
Yarrow
@Martin: That’s going to require a lot of legislative interventions. I guess once things get bad enough maybe people will decide something needs to happen or change.
Jay
@BR:
stay away from Durian.
https://www.tiktok.com/@tsukinoshideout/video/7189528220918697243
SmallAxe
Phoenix resident here. No one is riding bikes during this heat wave jfc that’s nuts regardless of hour. Not just the heat, the air quality is shitty af too. Gotta public transpo or Uber
NotMax
@BR
Everyone looking forward to Yukon peaches?
;)
Yarrow
@Martin: I’m a big advocate for native plants. Are your fruit trees native? Do they support native birds and insects? Do they require more water than similar sized natives? If the answer to the first two is no and the third is yes then in public spaces consider natives first.
Supporting the local ecosystem has benefits way beyond what most people can imagine until they see it. Less water usage, increased insect activity especially of pollinators, habitat for birds and animals. It’s amazing to see what even small “pocket” native areas can do.
BR
@Jay:
Can’t grow Durian in California, luckily. That or Coconuts or Mangosteen. We’re not quite *that* tropical yet. Give us 50 years more of climate change.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Is there any research on this with measurable or verifiable predictions?
AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team
@BR: I see what you did there 👏🏻
BR
@Yarrow:
I’m not a fan of native plants for anyone living in a city. I totally get the value in places that are semi wild / rural, but populated SoCal is one big non-native urban zone. Nothing native left outside of a few parks, and even there it’s non native species from the time of the missions (e.g. European grasses, not native Californian grasses).
Hemenway explained it well: https://tobyhemenway.com/116-native-plants-restoring-to-an-idea/
Martin
@BR: I’ll make note of your list. I’m not sure if I want to put a new tree in or a small conventional garden. Greywater will be part of our yard rework.
Glidwrith
@BR: I have two lemon trees and trying to bonsai a mulberry. A book a fellow jackal recommended, A Little Fruit Tree, describes how you can keep your fruit trees small and still get a usable crop.
Mallard Filmore
My airconditioner had its condensation pipe plugged for a few days. It dripped a lot of water into the house. Can this water be diverted to my orange tree? Well, yes of course but is the water safe? Will the tree absorb something to make the oranges unsafe to eat?
Yarrow
@BR: Well, we’ll have to disagree on this issue then. I have seen highly successful migrations in city landscapes from typical landscaping plants to native gardens that are attractive, use much less water, require less work, and significantly increase wildlife, insects, pollinators, and so forth. I take his point that we need crops to feed people but it’s possible to do both. It’s not an all or nothing issue.
Jay
@Mallard Filmore:
Nope. just condensation, good to go.
Martin
@Yarrow: I strongly doubt they are native. We’ve had them for ages. There’s still a big push here for citrus alternatives due to HLB.
But in the rework of the yard, the idea is to transition to native and drought/dire resistant trees/plants which the two citrus trees might be exceptions to because they are mature and produce a lot. We’re not quite sure what that will result in.
NotMax
@Glidwrith
Did someone say lemon tree?
;)
frosty
@Jay: You are one of the tipping points to runaway global warming: the burning of the boreal forests. Puts more CO2 into the atmosphere than we can take out.Another one: loss of arctic sea ice, loss of reflectivity, darker water to absorb the heat from the sun.I can’t remember the third*. These two are bad enough and I doubt we can convert to enough wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars to counteract them.*Oh yeah, melting of undersea methane hydrates.
ETA @TaMara: I really hope you’re right.
Glidwrith
@NotMax: Arrgh
Yarrow
@Martin:
There are low chill hour varieties of most fruit trees. Low chill hour apples are available if you really want an apple tree. Low chill hour fruit trees are being cultivated more because of climate change so more varieties will be available in the coming years.
BR
@Yarrow:
Given the climate dimension here, I’d like to see people feeding themselves from the land they live on because the lowest carbon food is in one’s yard, using greywater to do so. And fruit trees are way way lower effort than traditional gardens of annual veggies, which I think makes them more practical in the long run. (California native plants don’t need irrigation, which means that water is going to get wasted otherwise.) I do think native trees have a role, like in city plantings in places where it’d be impractical to have fruit drop, like road medians.
Glidwrith
@BR: I forgot that I have a Dragonfruit, but it’s a wimpy, struggling plant. I’m in San Diego, which starters would you recommend?
BR
@Martin: If you won’t have much water, Pomegranate and (Vernon) White Sapote are the way to go. (Figs and Guavas are “drought tolerant” but really it’s that they have greedy roots.) If you will have lots of greywater but only in one spot of the yard, I’d go with (Dwarf Brazilian) Bananas — they can soak up a crazy amount of greywater without having rot.
Yarrow
@Martin: In transitioning a landscape to more native plants it often doesn’t make sense to remove certain things. Your citrus trees sound like they’re in that category. They’re mature so they provide habitat and are attractive and they produce a lot of fruit. Keep them and enjoy them until they no longer work for you.
I often think of transitioning to a more native landscape as adding things rather than removing things. At some point things may need to be removed but a lot can be done by adding in better plants, trees, grasses, etc.
BR
@Glidwrith:
Oh in San Diego you can do everything I listed for Martin earlier, with one possible exception — if you’re close to the coast, Mango won’t yield good fruit. (They need heat — lots of days in the 80s.)
Martin
@Brachiator: Michigan state has been studying it. No later than 2050. But the markers I’ve been told to look for is large scale fires shifting eastward, and if you look at the current Canada fire map, they’re fucking everywhere including Ontario across the lake and Quebec, so they are already in the Great Lakes region.
One difference is fire policy. Canada isn’t equipped to fight these which is why its gotten so bad, but fires in the US upper midwest won’t be treated the same way – so their likelihood of getting large like that is a lot lower. So there is a difference between ‘fire risk’ and ‘uncontrollable fire risk’. I don’t think you need to worry about the latter for a while, but those states should probably start investing in wildfire mitigation now, and should start putting policies together because that doesn’t hit the ground for quite a while.
MobiusKlein
It’s odd hearing all about the Heat Wave, when in San Francisco where I live, the high today was about 67. I’m using the heat in the morning. More fog and wind than even normal for our summer.
Martin
@Yarrow: Yeah, I’ve looked at those, but I might let it go. We’ll see how the redesign goes.
RaflW
@Yarrow: We are moving to natives. One open question is, which natives? Because with the warmer temps, shifting precip, and shorter winters, the natives that have done well in WI for centuries may not do as well in the future.
Birch, balsam and the like are really struggling in the NE region of MN. Regionally, we’re losing our native boreal forest as an eastern hardwood mix moves in. Not ‘unnative’ to the region exactly, but they were minor secondary trees. So, huh.
Yarrow
@BR: I’m a big food gardener with lots of fruit so I’m generally in agreement with you. But I’ve also seen amazing things done with natives AND food gardening in the same landscape so I know it can be done. Some people aren’t great gardeners so their gardens can be useful if natives are used to provide habitat and reduce water usage, which are also important goals when considering environmental issues.
frosty
@frosty:
Sorry ’bout the formatting. I hate posting in text mode; I rarely get visual. Dunno why.
BR
@Yarrow:
Yeah, I guess in general I’m in agreement. I just have a somewhat singular focus which is that I want to see California energy and food independent within 5 years. And so my priority is fruit and nut trees. (I don’t see global resource flows staying stable long enough and I would like to see the state wean itself from many of the large-scale energy and food dependencies it has from the outside. While we export a ton of food, we import staples, and of course import a fair bit of oil.)
Yarrow
@RaflW: Yeah, it’s complicated with climate change. I think taking a few classes and seeing what the Native Plant Society in your area says can also be helpful. They’ll be tuned into the changes and can offer guidance. Natives are not just trees so maybe start with something smaller.
Martin
@Yarrow: Some of it is to reduce water usage. We’re doing okay, but the water district has been warning of changes to come – and I choose to do this stuff before I’m forced. I’ll do it on my terms, thanks.
And some of it is to reduce the chance of fire spread, so fire resistant. Moving some things away from the house, but I’d like to keep some shade going because I spend pretty much all day out there (like literally from morning coffee until half an hour ago).
Native+drought tolerant is easy, but throwing in fire resistant and some shade bearing is going to break the formula, other than planting a big fuck-off Engelmann Oak tree which I don’t have space for (but would love). We’ll see what compromises get made. I think the only way we lose the fruit trees is if we recontour the space enough that they have to go (our yard slopes up about 4′ in the back and they’re up in that higher area), but I’m guessing we’ll work pretty hard to keep them. We just had two other trees die, one we removed and the apple which I haven’t yet. A number of others that are almost certainly going to have to go due to fire risk, but we’ll see what the experts say.
The lawn also comes out, and we’ll redo the hardscape. My patio cover needs to be replaced. So a lot of things are lining up to force this.
Yarrow
@BR: It’s a complicated issue that’s for sure.
BR
@RaflW:
Check out Oikos Tree Crops, which has a bunch of native and nonnative crop species for your region: https://oikostreecrops.com/
Serviceberry is an interesting one to grow.
Anoniminous
Weather (tl;dr)
Weather occurs along the boundary of cool air masses and warm air masses. The temperature difference, i.e., heat, between the two is a shorthand for the amount of energy available to weather events. Under global warming the world is increasing latent heat through the injection of greenhouse gases: CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide*, etc., thus increasing the available energy thus increasing the severity of weather events.
* if CO2 is a 1, then methane is a 10, and nitrous oxide is 300
Yarrow
@Martin: Sounds like you have a good plan and approach. It’s sometimes hard to reconcile competing interests. You want shade but you want trees away from the house because of fire risk. Hard!
BR
@Martin:
Ok, then definitely bananas on greywater are worth considering — very fire resistant (since they are herbaceous) as long as you plant a succulent groundcover like Senecio spp.
Yarrow
@BR:Bananas are such a fking pain in the wrong place, though. Good to be aware. And the effort if you decide to remove them. Sheesh. That’s work.
Hidalgo de Arizona
As a Tempe resident myself, I can say that this has been the worst summer I’ve ever experienced in the thirty years I’ve lived here. My car currently has a dead clutch, so I’m also bicycling everywhere, and tonight’s half hour worth of errands left me absolutely exhausted – I chugged a gallon of water the minute I got home.
Oh, and the dead clutch on the car means I’ll be doing a driveway clutch replacement within the next two weeks so the wife can drive the kid to school, rather than spending two hours on public transit to get them there. No, the weather doesn’t look like it’s going to get better for that bit of auto work, and I’m not going to be out at midnight with the impact wrench waking up the neighbors, so I’ll just get to suffer. There’s hardly a day I don’t curse the fact that our terrible transit and unsafe bike lanes make it impossible to live without a car in this town.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Interesting. Thanks.
I also vaguely recall news stories that California firefighters, who have developed expertise in dealing with types of wild fires, were helping out in Canada.
And I imagine that officials may already be doing this, but don’t they have to look beyond thinking about Michigan, and instead consider the region, including relevant areas of Canada. Lines on a map don’t really matter.
ghost cat
I lived in Tucson in the late 80s to 90s and am very familiar with the climate in both Tucson & the greater Phoenix area. Most of that time, my bike was my primary mode of transportation. I also did a lot of backpacking and hiking. To stay safe, I paid attention to the effects of heat on my body and knew the signs/symptoms of heat stroke.
When Joelle was biking home yesterday, the official temp in Phoenix was 113 degrees. It was probably a few degrees cooler in Tempe. Physical exertion at those temps is usually very damaging to the human body and can quickly lead to heat stroke, because it’s not possible to sweat enough to keep your core temp in the normal zone. Her flushing and 1000-yard stare, an indicator of possible change in mental status, are 2 of the signs/symptoms of heat stroke. But even if she wasn’t in the heat stroke zone, I wouldn’t be surprised if she felt pretty crappy for a few days. It takes that long for your body to recover even from minor overheating.
You might want to recommend to Joelle that she limit her outdoor physical activities until this heat wave is over. I’d hate to hear that she ended up in the ER, covered with cold packs and an IV bag of cold fluids & electrolytes plugged into her arm. I loved my time in the hot desert, but if I lived in Phoenix metro right now, I wouldn’t even be relaxing out on the patio at night with a cold beverage much less biking in those temps! :)
Martin
@Yarrow: Yeah. And the shade may not come from trees. Right now it’s ivy on my patio cover.
We pulled the front lawn out a number of years ago and replaced with native plants and some ground cover and that’s worked out really well despite the stink-eye we got from the neighbors. They’ve gotten used to it by now. Cut our watering by about 90% and we’ll have some greywater out there when we do that part of the project so we can probably cut watering it entirely.
We’re not going to be as lucky with the back yard, but we’ll do as much as we can.
Banana will be a hard sell. Ms Martin would love having banana, but it’s aesthetically all wrong. My neighbor is a filipino transplant by way of Hawaii and is an avid tropical gardener. We have a huge, and very lovingly cared for plumeria between our yards, but Ms Martin has her fill of tropical from their yard. We’re only a few miles from the ocean so we’re in the transition from marine layer to hot inland, and so the local flora is more coastal/canyon oak, tecate cypress, various sages, lupines, etc. The citruses are a pragmatic compromise and the native plants are thematically compatible with the house and rest of the yard, so I think that’s what we’re going to be doing.
HumboldtBlue
@MobiusKlein:
I’m wearing a long sleeve T and a hoodie. It’s 57 degrees.
hotshoe
@Yarrow:
“Supporting the local ecosystem has benefits way beyond what most people can imagine until they see it. Less water usage, increased insect activity especially of pollinators, habitat for birds and animals. It’s amazing to see what even small “pocket” native areas can do.”
I live in the middle of a cowtown/bedroom community. I have a few thousand square feet of yard, 27 years ago tore it all out and planted native trees — now have towering Valley Oak, and native bay which is going to be a fat problem a century from now, and Catalina cherry which is already a problem, plus understory native flowering shrubs, plus spring wildflowers, plus …
What I do not have is a “pocket ecosystem”.
No lizards or snakes, and of course no frogs or toads — where are they going to arrive from? I see a couple of squirrels (pretty sure they’re the invasive Eastern gray species) and it’s a safe bet there are some mice, rats, possums around — but that isn’t what you intend by providing native “habitat for animals” — must say I’m actually thankful that no coyotes seem to think this neighborhood is home.
Thrilled that we have a pair of native jays which return year after year (or their progeny return) and all by themselves they are worth the aggravation of dealing with the hatred which some of the neighbors have toward this not-garden not-lawn landscaping.
But for anyone who has a little bit of garden in the city, planting a climate-suitable non-native fruit tree is a far better recommendation. Peach, pomegranate, sour cherry, sweet cherry, pluot, whatever. Ya might even make friends with the neighbors that way ;)
Uncle Cosmo
Well, bingo! Anyone who says “days aren’t any hotter than when I was a kid” is cordially invited to look at the overnight lows. When I was a kid, we survived summer nights in our interior-group row house in Baltimore with window fans drafting through; that was inadequate for maybe 10 days a year when the lows were in the upper 70s with high humidity. Now we’re getting 2-3 months of those nights.
(Fun fact: More energy in the environment => more evaporation => more water vapor in the air => higher % of cloud cover => more infrared radiation from the ground reflected back into the lower atmosphere => higher surface temperatures. Enjoy!)
Tony Jay
OT – You know what’s really annoying? Having those Previous Thread/Next Thread tabs situated on either side of the middle of the screen. Just in the right place so that, if you’re checking through a comment before hitting post and you see an error, when you drop your cursor in to highlight a word and JUST graze the Previous Post tab, it extends out JUST as you left-click on the word and POOF, bye-bye comment.
Seethe. It’s like WordPress wants to murder things. It’s a murderer. Why are you promoting murder, you murderer!
Better now.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: I understand that there will be 3 by-elections today in the Land of Hope and Glory. I am Hoping you can find time to make a Glorious report on them, and that this voracious WordPress does not eat it.
Bupalos
Man is it nice to see a thread with folks talking about what they personally are doing to adapt and impact climate change in a positive way. Someday after we’ve all digested the reality I hope this is what interaction around climate change looks like. Thanks especially to Martin and BR for kicking that off.
jlowe
Attended a conference in Phoenix late in May. When packing, I thought “ah, I don’t need a jacket, it’s Phoenix.” True enough outdoors. Was air-conditioned to within an inch of my life every moment I was indoors. Building managers don’t seem to think you’re comfortable unless you’re viscerally experiencing the cold steel breeze indoors. Would absolutely relish the first few moment of heat after stepping outside.
Paul in KY
@BR: Looks like in 100 years, we’ll be back in the Miocene, climatewise.
Yarrow
@hotshoe: If you read through the thread you’ll see I’m an avid food gardener. But I also use natives and aim to have small areas that are exclusively native. I’ve found that moving towards natives improves my food yield, maybe because of pollinator increase.
I recently toured a native plant garden that was amazing. We only visited the front yard and one of the things the homeowner told us is that she deliberately put in beds to make it visually attractive from the street. It’s extremely popular with her neighbors, so it can be done in a way that’s visually pleasing.
As for this:
What everyone I’ve worked with and talked to who has moved toward natives has said, including my own experience, is build it and they will come. Obviously I don’t know where you live and your own specific environment but somehow they find a way.
I toured a small native area in the middle of a huge area of high rise buildings and concrete parking lots. The person who gave us the tour told us about all the wildlife that had been seen in it since it had been installed and how it served as a sort of “waystation” between other pocket native areas and a near-ish body of water. Their organization does monitoring for insects, birds, reptiles, mammals and other wildlife so they had a lot of information on it.
lee
While it is certainly hot in Texas, it has yet to be really record breaking hot.
2011 was the hottest on record. Close 2nd was 1980. 2022 was pretty bad. This summer will probably pass 2022 but not 1980 or 2011.
The concern in Texas is if the grid can hold up. So far it has.
RaflW
@Paul in KY: Holy shit, 18º to 27ºf warmer in high-latitudes? Gaaaaahhh.
Dan
Sorry, brother, but if there is a certain population of people who would rather see their grandma choke to death alone in a hospital than wear a mask, you ain’t gonna get these assholes to do anything about global warming. They’d rather burst into flames to own the libs.
Death Panel Truck
@Jackie: The PNW doesn’t include east of the Cascades
I live in Pasco, Washington, and eastern Washington is definitely part of the PNW. I don’t recall anyone changing the borders in the 60 years I’ve been alive.
Death Panel Truck
@Death Panel Truck:
Can’t edit the previous comment. The first sentence is quoting Jackie’s comment.