What Do The Polar Vortex, the Immigration Crisis and the California Wildfires All Have in Common?
July 14, 2014

 
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The connection isn’t immediately clear: This week, a mass of frigid Arctic air is moving down from the North, dropping high temperatures some 20 degrees below normal across much of the Midwest with some Northern states expected to see highs only in the mid-60’s in July. Also in the news, an estimated “tens of thousands” of refugees… mostly children… from Central America have easily crossed a dry Rio Grande riverbed into the United States to create an immigration “crisis”. And from Southern California to Washington State, wildfires rage out of control for “the third year in a row”. What do they all have in common? Global Warming.

Now the connection to #1 on our list, “The Return of the Polar Vortex”, is not readily clear. What does “Global Warming” have to do with unusually Cold temperatures in July? Well, the reason for the sudden dip in temperatures is due to the literal dip in the Jet Stream out of the Arctic and down into the Great Lakes region, a “river” of rapidly moving air that circles the globe counter to the rotation of the Earth. And that sudden change-of-course in the jet stream was caused last week by Typhoon Neoguri, a massive Category 3 hurricane in the Pacific that struck Japan last week. Superman might have been “powerful enough to change the course of mighty rivers”, but it takes something as massive as a hurricane to redirect a river of air encircling the planet. And warm water fuels a hurricane like hatred fuels Rush Limbaugh. It makes them bigger and nastier.

Last Winter, the “Polar Vortex” produced one of the longest and coldest Winters in recent memory. Conservative blowhard Climate Change deniers like George Will think the entire world spans only from California to Maine with “the Middle East” orbiting “Planet USA” like a Muslim Death Star, so naturally, if it gets really cold in Atlanta in the middle of Winter, that must mean “Global Warming” is a hoax (because if Fox “news” doesn’t report the record heat wave in Australia taking place at the same time, it never happened.) That too was due to record warm temperatures forcing the “jet stream”… which normally runs relatively around the United States… to channel a river of frigid Arctic air right down into the heart of the Midwest.

Record drought along the Southern border of the U.S. is so bad there are actually places where you can walk across the Rio Grande on foot without ever getting your feet wet. I pondered last week if this might finally be a way to get Republicans to act on Climate Change? Harness their hated for immigrants (of the Latin persuasion) to make sure “God’s Moat” doesn’t dry up like the Tea Party’s support for the GOP. The average depth along the entire expanse of waterway… a mere 3.64 feet… is roughly 43% of normal.

Listening to Republicans this past week, by the way they’ve blamed “Obama!” for this current immigration crisis, they would have us all believe: “You see! THIS is why we opposed The Dream Act!” They are out there suggesting that this sudden surge in Central American refugees is exactly what they knew would happen if we tried to enact Immigration Reform. They are prescient, you see. They saw this coming a mile away. And President Obama “suddenly” talking about not deporting the children of undocumented immigrants that grew up in the U.S. and in many cases have never even been to Mexico and don’t even speak the language, is responsible for the “sudden” flood of children across the Mexican border.

A few points: 1) These are not “Mexican” children, most are from lower Central America in the vicinity of Guatemala who are fleeing an outbreak of extreme violence that started in 2011. While I have no doubt ruthless “coyotes” are spreading misinformation about our immigration polices to drum up more paying customers (roughly $8,000 a head… a fortune in these impoverished countries), consider the fact that the same misinformation has not resulted in a flood of MEXICAN children into the U.S.. Why is it that Obama’s “reckless talk” about giving “amnesty” to “illegal alien children” hasn’t resulted in a flood of kids from Mexico into the U.S.? Hmm? Maybe these kids REALLY ARE fleeing extraordinary violence in their home countries?

And so, you’ve probably already figured out #3 by now: The cause of those wildfires in the West? Beetles, of course! You thought I was going to say “drought from Global Warming”, didn’t you? True, the prolonged drought on the West Coast has turned our forests into kindling so that we now see a “100 year forest fire” EVERY year. But every bit as bad as the lack of rain has been for our forests, the “Mountain Pine Beetle” has made monumentally worse. Warmer weather has caused the ravenous buggers to multiply as fast as the wildfires they produce, killing trees and turning entire forests into tinder boxes. Fresh, healthy trees slow them up a bit as they can get all the moisture and nutrition they need from fewer trees. But as the trees grow dry and lifeless, the beetles go on an eating binge, destroying entire forests looking to get enough food to eat.

It’s time for America to get serious about Climate Change. It is REAL, it is DEVASTATING. It threatens to destroy our entire planet, and we can’t afford to wait until Glenn Beck comes out and finally admits once again, “Liberals, you were right”.
 

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July 14, 2014 · Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Environment, Global Warming

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