Tag: climate change

Sprung

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
The lilacs have been doing the business for the better part of quite some time.

“First day of spring” me bollocks.

The toppling temperature records and soaring pollen counts tell me otherwise.

The Duck! City croaked another mark yesterday with a high of 88°. And our earliest day of 90° or better — May 3, 1947 — looks like an endangered species as well.

This is a small platter of fried spuds to anyone living in Tucson (101°), Phoenix (105°), or Palm Springs (107°). All records, set yesterday. Helluva note when St. Me Day comes with a chaser of heat stroke. If MarkWayne BillyBob JimmyJoe Knucklegobbler and his ICEholes come looking for you in any of those ZIP codes all you need is a parabolic reflector and hey presto! Instant Death Ray.

Speaking of cookery, the hot soups and stews and anything involving the oven have long since been 86ed from the menu here at Chez Dog. Last night we dined on Martha Rose Shulman’s shrimp and mango tacos with a side of rice and green salad. As “spring” scampers into summer, this ol’ dog needs his wok.

Smoking pot

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

Hot water at the touch of a button. Welcome to … the Future!

We bought an electric kettle to save all y’all from our gas cooktop.

You’re welcome.

Now instead of firing up the KitchenAid Death Machine to heat water for the morning pour-over, we punch a button on this OXO Brew and hey presto! Hot water. It’s magic.

Of course, we get our power from a secret plant outside Grants that generates electricity by slow-roasting the homeless. It sells the meat to Mickey D’s. We like to think of it as a win-win.

Dune Meshuga

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

“Fetch me my one-iron.”
“Are you shitting me? Not even
Paul Muad’dib can hit a one-iron.”

Friend of the Blog Pat O’B has been enduring a deluge down in Sierra Vista. But as he notes, this is weather, not climate.

The climate is headed in another direction entirely.

And as Arizona meteorologist Eric Holthaus notes in Grist via Mother Jones, no matter how much water is falling from the sky right this minute in the American Southwest, there is no longer enough to go around.

Writes Holthaus:

To be clear: There is no remaining scenario that does not include mandatory cutbacks in water usage along the Colorado River within the next few years. The long-awaited judgment day for the Southwest is finally here.

Think this means we’ll see bigger sand traps and smaller greens on the Phoenix golf courses? Yeah, me neither. I sure hope Assos is working on a cool stillsuit, one that gives a guy that six-pack look. A six-pack of water, not beer.

Fiddling while Rome burns

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments

Nero didn’t get it either and cashed out the hard way.

OK, let’s see if I’ve got this right:

“A major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies on Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequences of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significant steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end.”

In response, the courtiers attending His Most Pissant Majesty, King Donald the Short-fingered, Terror of Twitter, are focused like the proverbial laser beam on whether trans folk may serve in the Empire’s armed forces.

Got it. Makes perfect sense. See, if they’re not camping in camo’ down by The Wall*, or using the wrong latrines in Afghanistan, they’ll be available to fight fire and flood elsewhere, p’raps in more fashionable neighborhoods, in order that the gentry may be both protected and entertained.

* Wall not pictured. Or even built.

Yeah, but it’s a dry Hell

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

And you thought it was hot where you are. On June 28, the temperature in Quriyat, Oman, hit 109 — and that was the low, “the hottest low temperature ever recorded on Earth,” according to The Washington Post.

As a buddy noted, you gotta give the Chinese credit for going the extra mile to make their climate-change hoax look like the real deal. Why, they went so far as to make it rain here in ’Burque. I thought that was a little over the top, but what isn’t these days?

The hardboiled eggheads of climate science, as usual, predict the worst — roads melting, airplanes unable to take off, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.

The good news is, there’s water on Mars, which is really close to Earth this weekend. Cowabunga! Come on and safari with me!