Tag Archives: Climate change

environmental news

Weather cools, climate still scorches

Well, gang … summer is about to give way to autumn in less than three weeks, bringing with it some relief from the summer heat that has many of gasping for air, swilling tons of water and the weather guys telling us what we already know — that it’s hot, damn hot, out there!

Except that the summer of 2025 has bordered on pleasant this summer. Don’t get me wrong. I am not going to say I want the weather to stay like this year-round. Weather forecasters tell us we had fewer 100-plus-degree days this summer than in the recent past. We’ve had a good bit of rain on occasion … with more expected this weekend. The playas look pretty full. So do the reservoirs, such as Lake Lavon near my home in Princeton.

I want to caution everyone against accepting the view from climate-change deniers who are bound to view this improved weather as a sure sign that the climate change crisis is a “hoax,” that it’s part of the deep state fake news machine.

Climate change is real. Earth’s climate is producing stronger than normal wind, heavier than normal ocean storms, ice caps melting at a faster rate, diminution of mountain glaciers that provide water for many communities (such as my hometown of Portland, Ore., which relies on Cascade Range snowpack runoff to fill reservoirs).

We measure weather changes that occur day to day, or week to week. Climate change is measured in much larger and longer time increments. A blip in the weather has little tangible impact on a region’s climate, according to scientists who know a lot more about this than your chump blogger.

I welcome the relief we seem to be getting from Mother Nature during the summer of 2025. The heat hasn’t been unbearable. However, all of us must remain vigilant and do what we can to prevent further damage done to our good planet Earth by our changing climate.

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Not used to humidity … just expecting it

My introduction to Texas’s fascinating climate came in the spring of 1984, when I moved to Beaumont to take a job at the Beaumont Enterprise newspaper.

It took no time at all for the seasonal humidity to settle in. I informed my wife of that in a phone call to her in Oregon, where she stayed behind for a time to sell our house. To be candid, once we went through a summer or two of Gulf Coast heat/humidity, we all — our sons included — learned to expect the stifling temperature and the energy-sapping humidity. None of us ever got used to it.

Then we moved to Amarillo in 1995. The weather in the Panhandle was as unpredicatable in the spring as the Gulf Coast. It also was more temperate. Cooler in the morning and evening. The elevation of Amarillo, at 3,676 feet above sea level, had something to do with it. Much more pleasant. During the summer days? Still damn hot! But, hey … it was a dry heat, y’know?

Then we moved to Princeton in 2019. More humid again. Not like the coast, but stickier than the Panhandle.

My mantra now is as it was when I first got here 41 years ago. I have learned only to expect the humidity. I don’t like it, but as my dear old Dad would tell me when I bitched as a boy about the rain in Portland: Go talk to God!

environmental news

Weather cools; climate still hot

If I was able to hear every conversation taking place this weekend in North Texas, I am certain I would hear something like this: Boy, this cooler weather is sure putting the kibosh on the nonsense being conveyed about climate change and how the planet is getting hotter.

Well, you know where I am going with this. Weather and climate are different critters. Weather is what’s happening in the here and now; climate requires the wider angle. Earth’s climate has changed. It has nothing to do with the weather of the moment. The only argument worth discussing, and that argument is fading away, is the effect human activity has had in changing the planet’s climate. Those who argue that human beings have had an impact on the climate have all but won that argument.

Arguably the most insipid public display of ignorance on the climate change discussion occurred in the U.S. Senate some years ago. D.C. was in the midst of a serious cold snap one winter, so in walked Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., a climate change denier who was carrying a snow ball he brought in from outdoors. He displayed his laughable ignorance by suggesting that the existence of snow meant that the climate wasn’t changing, that it was actually getting cooler. He was wrong.

We’re likely getting a taste of that ignorance in the past week as North Texas has basked in weather that doesn’t match up to the customary sweat-box character so familiar at this stage of the summer season.

The high temperature today was supposed to hit 85. Tomorrow will be about the same. Then it will heat up to more seasonable temps in the low to mid-90s. Hey, I never have quite welcomed the heat and humidity of North Texas. I just have learned to expect it.

However, the break from the heat has been a welcome respite.

environmental news

Grappling with layers of grief

I have been grappling with my emotions over the past couple of days as the world watches the Guadalupe River in Central Texas unleash its savagery on the land … and the people who occupy it.

My grief is more profound than your run-of-the-mill natural catastrophes, not that any of them ever should be treated as run-of-the-mill.

The loss of life is staggering. Ninety confirmed deaths the last I heard. The number is likely to grow.

There’s an element to the human loss that is even more staggering. So many of the lives claimed by the normally docile river belonged to young girls, many of whom were attending Camp Mystic, a Christian retreat for girls in Kerrville. They’re recovering the remains of the girls declared missing, bringing untold heartache to loved ones and friends.

My sons have attended a similar camp in Kerrville, so in a strange visceral sense, the loss of those girls hits me at level that is a bit more personal than it otherwise might be.

It could be the location that has stung so many Texans deeply. The Hill Country is a magical place. It is full of recreational sites, including those that feature river water. The Guadalupe River, known for its rafting and other recreational pursuits, is now feared by many as a monster capable of delivering unfathomable carnage.

There’s the political element at play. This event occurred just as Donald Trump signed legislation that among other things guts the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s role in disaster relief. To his credit, Trump did say FEMA is going to work full-time — and then some — while it remains on the books to deliver aid to those stricken by the raging water.

Texas and the nation are grieving the loss of life. The state has been visited many times by nature’s vengeance. This one seems to hurt even more deeply than what we perceive as “normal” … as if we ever should become accustomed to this kind of environmental mayhem.

I fear that more of it will come with increasing frequency.

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Worrying about friends in the flood

Leave it to a crackpot climate-change denier to cheapen the worry and the grief of those of us who are sickened by the loss of life in the Central Texas floods.

One such moron has called the floods a hoax, a product of cloud-seeding. She said the climate change argument doesn’t hold up, calling the events of the past few days all part of some government plot to lay blame at the feet of industries that everyone with half a brain understands knows are responsible for the dramatic change in Earth’s climate.

We’re seeing it play out in real time in places like Kerrville, Comfort and New Braunfels, Texas.

Just so you know, I have friends and former colleagues who live in the flood zone. I cannot account for all of them. Last I heard, the death count has surpassed 70 people, including at least 21 children.

I checked in on my brother-in-law, who lives on the outskirts of the flood zone and was glad to hear he is safe from the ravaging floodwater.

None of this is about me and my particular worries. It is about the Texans struggling to stay alive in the wake of Mother Nature’s relentless wrath. This level of flooding doesn’t occur usually in this part of the world. However, here it is in the present time.

Money and other forms of relief are pouring into the region. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has kicked in a half-million bucks to provide aid to the stricken residents. Others are chipping in, too.

Everyone else — at least those of us with a heart — are left to worry and pray for the safety of those affected by the deluge that has befallen them.

May these good folks find the strength to carry on once the water recedes.

environmental news

Heroes emerge to battle fire

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Where does someone far from the action weigh in on a catastrophe unfolding in one of our 50 states?

Fires have consumed tens of thousands of acres of land in southern California. At least six people have died in the inferno. The federal government has declared the area to be a major disaster requiring the government’s full effort.

And yet we hear rumblings that the new presidential administration might be getting set to scale back dramatically the work of the Federal Emergency Management Administration, which was established in the Carter administration to facilitate federal response to disaster.

This cannot happen. And yet the new administration is being led by an individual who believes climate change is a “hoax,” that doesn’t really exist. He is tragically wrong.

I want to concentrate this brief blog post on the heroes who have rushed to the aid of California’s beleaguered firefighters. They have descended on California from throughout the western United States; some have traveled even farther to lend their aid.

The wind has raged across the mountainous region, sending embers many miles to ignite more fire. Entire communities are destroyed, reminding many observers of what occurred in 2024 in Maui. Indeed, I once lived in a region — the Texas Panhandle — that in recent years suffered through the largest wildfire in Texas history, killing thousands of livestock and at least a couple of residents of the region.

The California fires are hard to watch even from some distance.

Is climate change a factor? I believe it is. Thus, we must double-down on our efforts to arrest the conditions that continue to contribute to the changing climate.

Meanwhile, I am going to do what a pastor friend of mine described as “the most we can do” … which is to pray for the well-being of those affected by the unfolding tragedy.,

environmental news

‘Hint of fall?’ Hah!

Leave it to my friend and former colleague Jon Mark Beilue to dig up a clever quip to discuss the, um, weather.

“You know it’s hot,” Jon Mark said recently, on a social media post, “when it’s 91 degrees outside and you think the air has the ‘hint of fall.'”

Indeed, it’s been broiling in Amarillo, where Jon Mark lives. I saw recently where it hit 108 degrees up yonder. and that’s not counting the dreaded “heat index” or “feels like” temperature!

I’m happy to report that North Texas might soon be feeling that “hint of fall in the air” as well. I saw recently that the temperatures will top out later this week at “only” 90, with the projected high temp slated to each 82ish over the weekend.

We’ve been hot as hell here, too, with several consecutive days at more than 100 degrees. The TV weathermen and women seem to have run out of creative ways to tell us the obvious: stay hydrated and look for shade whenever possible. 

But … hey, we know what Texas summers are like. They are hot, man!

I will just have to look forward to the eventual cooling of the temperatures around here and then keep my trap shut when they linger at or below freezing in the middle of winter.

environmental news

Summer solstice on tap!

Hey, gang … got some good news to share: The summer solstice, the longest 24-hour period with daylight, is just around the corner.

It occurs on Thursday. It’s the first day of summer. Officially. On the record.

After that, the daylight period shrinks daily by about a second. In December, we get the winter solstice.

Is this a huge deal? Sure it is! We bitch about being too cold in the winter. We long for warmer temps. Then it gets too damn hot! There’s just no pleasing fickle human beings.

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Drive home: not for the timid

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I want to offer a serious shout-out to my fellow North Texans who today demonstrated that smart people do exist and they do occupy motor vehicles wisely through some seriously inclement weather.

My day began inauspiciously enough with a drive from McKinney to Fort Worth, where a friend of mine and I went to see a movie. We enjoyed the new release, “Ezra.” We had lunch and then I headed back to my house in Princeton. My GPS said it would take a little more than hour to make the trip. Bwahahaha!

I was heading for the Sam Rayburn Tollway when I saw it get very dark, very quickly. It was about 4 p.m. Then the rain came. With a vengeance!

Lightning flashes lit up the sky. The rain came down in seemingly Biblical amounts. The wind started to howl.

I turned on my four-way flashers and slowed my Ranger pickup way to down to around 35 or 40 mph.

This is where I want to offer a bouquet to the hundreds of other motorists I noticed. They did the same thing. Flashers and a major slow-down.

I noticed one serious wreck on the tollway median; a young couple had crashed through a utility pole and their car was parked rear-end first on the embankment, suffering heavy damage. The couple appeared to be OK. I said a quiet prayer that they would get emergency personnel attention soon.

I don’t normally take time on this blog to bitch about bad drivers. I do want to offer a good word about those I saw driving with an abundance of caution in some highly inclement conditions.

Oh, I am sure there were some wannabe-Mario Andrettis out there who thought they could power through the rough stuff no matter what. I am just grateful beyond measure they did so out of my field of vision.

We have been getting a lot of this kind meteorological violence in recent weeks. It could be that we are wising up to Mother Nature’s unspeakable power.

Whatever. May we never lose sight of the value of those lessons.

environmental news

Yes, climate is changing

You hear it almost unfailingly whenever we get hit with a cold snap, such as what has gripped North Texas — and much of the rest of the country of late.

It comes from climate change deniers who scoff at the notion that our climate is changing, and the globe is getting warmer. I heard it the other morning while having breakfast with some gentlemen with whom I am acquainted. They dissed the notion of global warming.

I didn’t say a word, as I don’t know them well enough to challenge such nonsense.

One of our local TV meteorologists put it well recently in a public service announcement. The weather, he said, defines what is happening in the moment, while “climate” defines longer-term trends.

That was his way of telling us to disregard current weather conditions when discussing whether the climate is changing.

I believe he is correct.

I remember the time during an earlier D.C. cold snap when climate change denier U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma took a snowball to the floor of the Senate to make some kind of idiotic argument that climate change is a hoax, a product of liberals seeking to damage to the fossil fuel industry which, I should add, was a big contributor to Inhofe during his years in public life.

The term “global warming” has for all intent been replaced by “climate change,” which I believe is a more inclusive description of what is happening to our good Earth. We indeed are suffering through more climate extremes from year to year.

The data we receive from worldwide meteorological organizations is beyond dispute. It is that despite these cold snaps, Earth’s mean temperature is rising year over year, the global ice caps are melting, mountain glaciers are receding and that thousands of species of wildlife are endangered by the changing climate.

When I hear the climate change deniers dismiss the evidence because they’re bundling up to protect against frigid air temps, I am left only to shake my head in dismay at their ignorance.