Trego's Mountain Ear

Tag: Climate Change

• Community

  Weather Changes – And Climate Does Too

  I’m looking at the ten day forecast – basically rain and above freezing. The precipitation side matches the NOAA long-term outlook, while the temperatures do not. Still, the national outlook suggests that the lines on NOAA’s map just wound up a few miles off. Weather forecasting is a science where errors are not uncommon – and climate is not constant. If it were, there would be glaciers north of Eureka covering the drumlins.

  One of the consistencies is the adiabatic lapse rate – the decrease in temperature as a chunk of moist air rises. It’s not a perfect way of modifying a weather prediction for Eureka – but if I guesstimate that, because of the 3,100 feet elevation at Trego (opposed to 2,700 feet at Eureka) the temperatures will be 2 degrees (Fahrenheit) cooler than Eureka, it winds up fairly close. Right now, with lows around the freezing mark, I figure most of the snow will be gone before it gets cold again – and the pond will be full before it freezes a second time. The predictions call for daytime thaws until the solstice – and after the solstice, the days begin to get longer.

  Ten thousand years ago the area went into an interglacial – a time when the glaciers went away. Technically, so long as we have polar (and Greenland) ice sheets, we’re in an ice age. Still, at the least, more melting can lead to a longer interglacial. This interglacial was the time when most (an argument could be made for all) of our food crops were developed. Warming may give us a longer growing season – but if our local precipitation stays the same, water, not growing degrees becomes the limiting factor.

  But the management choices are the same – my hay needs to include water tolerant, drought tolerant, and salt tolerant species. As I can get out with the chainsaw, the timber needs to be thinned for better growth, for a return to grazing and for fire control. Climate, like weather, changes.

  December 9, 2025
• Community

  October, And No Frost

  When I moved to Trinidad, Colorado to begin teaching, I was surprised that the annual precipitation was about the same as it was in Trego. Trinidad was 6,000 feet elevation – downtown Trego is a little over 3,000. Trego is definitely timber – predominately Doug Fir, and in Trinidad you still have to go up the mountain to get to the timber.

  We moved to Trinidad along with the final episode of MASH – it took years for me to see that epic program – and we moved into a very arid climate. The record frosts (from Climate and Man) recorded for Fortine were May 29 and September 8. Annual precipitation was 17.43 inches. At Trinidad, the record frosts were May 2 and October 16. Annual precipitation was 16.2 inches. Trinidad showed 167 days of growing season, while Fortine showed only102 days of growing season.

  Back in the late seventies, one of the foresters I listened to spoke of ‘climax species’ – essentially the trees that will remain in a location until fire wipes them out, and a succession begins. So I knew that in Trego, with 17 inches of rain and 100 days between f8rosts, Doug Fur would remain. Now, fifty-odd years later, and with the experience of Trinidad’s arid, near desert environment, I’m looking at a longer growing season. I kind of prefer the term global warming to climate change. Can’t say for sure – when Climate and Man was published, they had less than 40 years record for Fortine and Trinidad. But one thing is sure – if you spread the same amount of precipitation over more growing days, it’s a good idea to look for plants that are more drought tolerant.

  I need to do more thinning – Dad like the forest unmanaged, and that was OK for his lifetime – but a longer growing season demands more space between trees, and probably a change in species – so when I can, I’m leaving Western Larch and Ponderosa Pine. They seem to be a bit more drought tolerant and fire resistant.

  The hayfield, despite being partially sub-irrigated, becomes drier with a longer growing season. On the other hand, when I was a kid, raising sweet corn was a challenge. No longer.

  The longer growing season may indicate a change in climate, or it may just be an anomaly. I don’t know – but I’m placing my bet on plants that are a bit more drought tolerant.

  October 4, 2025
• Community

  Climate Change and Screwworms

  The United States eradicated the New World Screwworm back when I was in high school. I’m reading about a guy in Maryland diagnosed with screwworm infection – but he had been in Honduras before the diagnosis. According to Scientific American https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flesh-eating-screwworm-parasites-are-headed-to-the-u-s/ “The pest is marching northward at an alarming rate and has now moved some 1,400 miles from southern Panama to southern Mexico in about two years. Screwworms are disastrous for ranchers, whose cattle can become infected when the flies lay eggs in cuts or wounds, after which their resulting larvae burrow, or screw, into that flesh. The northernmost sighting is currently about 700 miles south of the U.S. border. ” For years, the NW Screwworm has been controlled by releasing batches of sterile male flies into the Darien Gap region – but that technique and location is no longer adequate. “That invisible wall holding the screwworm back has crumbled, however. “I don’t know how it got away so quickly,” says Maxwell Scott, an entomologist at North Carolina State University, who studies genetic methods to control populations of the fly. “There had to be some movement of infested livestock, particularly through the middle [of Central America]…. It just moved too fast,” Scott says about the swift speed of the screwworm spread. “

  I’m not particularly concerned about screwworms, since I live just below the 49th Parallel – but this old map does a fairly nice job of showing where the damned things could overwinter in 1952 – and the line correlates with a combination of altitude and latitude. In other words, our dates of first and last frosts may also show where the screwworm can overwinter.

  

  Pesky Little Critters https://peskylittlecritters.com/how-climate-change-influences-the-distribution-of-screwworm-flies/ concludes their article with “Climate change is reshaping ecosystems worldwide—including those influencing pest species like screwworm flies. Through rising temperatures, shifting humidity patterns, altered host distributions, and more frequent extreme weather events, the range and population dynamics of screwworms are changing.”

  It’s not a huge drama – but it is interesting that the actual effects of global warming may first be measurable in insect ranges.

  August 31, 2025
• A Science for Everyone Community

  

  Personal Carbon Disposal

  I noticed this meme and it brought me to the topic of personal organic carbon – how much impact does each of us have on atmospheric CO2 enrichment as we leave our bodies behind.

  

  Fortunately, I can figure out roughly how much carbon I am – the atomic mass of carbon is a little over 12, oxygen a little under 16, nitrogen a little over 14 and calcium a touch over 40.  Since that’s the lion’s share of amino acids, a little research can give me the percentage carbon in my body.  Another alternative is to google it and learn that about 18% of my body is carbon. 

  That means that at 220 pounds, the planet will regain about 40 pounds of carbon from my lifeless carcass one day.  I can handle that – but it isn’t my decision.  My thoughts go with a shallow burial in a shroud, to become carbon that is sequestered in the soil three or four feet down.  Depending on the energy required to dig the small ditch and fill it back in, this may be the most environmentally friendly way of dealing with the carbon that is no longer mine.

  An August 31, 2021 Huffington Post article explains that “cremating a single corpse usually takes between two and three hours and releases almost 600 pounds of carbon dioxide.”  Making the assumption that, at 220 pounds I’m at the top end of normal, let’s use that 600 pound number.  Carbon is 12, oxygen 16, so carbon dioxide is 44.  12/44 is .2727, so multiplying that with 600 puts about 164 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere.

  It does make one wonder about the level of environmental responsibility in the Service poem “The cremation of Sam McGee.”  There’s something that just seems wrong about adding 160 pounds of carbon – 600 pounds of greenhouse gas – to the atmosphere when we could add 40 pounds of carbon to the soil.

  Laura van der Pol explains “Agriculture covers more than half of Earth’s terrestrial surface and contributes roughly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Paying farmers to restore carbon-depleted soils offers a tantalizing opportunity for a natural climate solution that could help nations to meet their commitments under the international Paris climate agreement to stabilize global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.

  An international initiative called “4 per 1000,” launched at the 2015 Paris climate conference, showed that increasing soil carbon worldwide by just 0.4% yearly could offset that year’s new growth in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel emissions.”

  Gasoline is about 5 ½  pounds of carbon per gallon – so each gallon produces about 20 pounds of CO2 – so, while my cremated corpse would be equivalent to 30 gallons of gas in the atmosphere, sequestering that carbon in the soil would be roughly 4 gallons of unburned gasoline.

  June 7, 2022
• A Science for Everyone

  Climate Change: Technology and the Little Ice Age

  I like the term “Anthropic Global Warming” better than the generic “Climate Change.”  Living in an area that was covered by glaciers 15,000 years ago, I have ample evidence to convince me that climate changes – my challenge is quantifying how much is human caused and how much has natural causes.  And I like a term that defines the direction of change.

  English history – from the Roman occupation forward – provides records of a warm climate cooling off and entering what is termed “The Little Ice Age.”  There is a historical record of climate change, and, equally important to a Non-Malthusian demographer, the technological changes people developed to deal with the climate change is written down.

  Connections, by James Burke, offers this: “Among the earliest references to the change comes from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, kept by monks for the year 1046: ‘And in the same year after the 2nd of February came the severe winter with frost and snow, and with all kinds of bad weather, so that there was not a man alive who could remember so severe a winter as that, both through mortality of man and disease of cattle; both birds and fishes perished through the great cold and hunger.” (p157)

  Connections explores the connections between events and technical development.  It continues further down the page: “The chief stimulus to change was the need to stay alive through winters that became increasingly severe, as the monks had noted.  The first innovation that came to the aid of the shivering communities was the chimney.  Up until this time, there had been but one central hearth, in the hall during winter, and outside during summer.  The smoke from the central fire simply went up and out through a hole in the roof.  After the weather changed, this was evidently too inefficient a way of heating a room full of people who until then would have slept the night together.”

  

  

  Page 159 continues:  “The building to which the new chimney was added had already begun to change in reaction to the bad weather.  The open patio-style structure had been replaced by a closed off building, built to withstand violent meteorological changes.  The new chimney, whose earliest English example is at Conisborough Keep in Yorkshire (1185) also produced structural changes in the house.  The use of a flue to conduct away sparks meant that the center of the room was no longer the only safe space for a fire.  To begin with, buildings were by now less fully timbered so the risk of fire was less, and the flue permitted the setting of the fire in a corner or against a wall. . . The hood on the fireplace prevented sparks from reaching the ceiling, and as a smaller room could more readily be heated than a larger one, the ceilings could now be lower.”

  “Two major innovations occurred by the fourteenth century, at the latest: knitting, and the button.  The earliest buttons are to be seen on the Adamspforte in Bamberg cathedral, and on a relief at Bassenheim, both in Germany, near Hapsburg around 1232.   The first example of knitting is depicted in the altarpiece at Buxtchude, where the Virgin Mary is shown knitting clothes for the infant Jesus.  Both buttons and knitting contributed to closer-fitting clothes that were better at retaining heat.”

  

  Burke’s books – Connections and The Pinball Effect are loaded with examples of how events are connected with technical development.

  March 8, 2022