A fairly warm March winds down today with lamb-like temperatures but lion-like winds and a potential for storminess this afternoon and evening and into April Fool's Day. The month that takes us from winter into spring has been fairly dry (after a wet winter) and mild - in the top 10 warmest since record keeping started 100+ years ago. The planet is warming whether humans choose to "believe" it or not.
Da Nile, the Egyptian river coursing through much of America, continues to flood ignorant rhetoric into the realm of science: I don't "believe" in evolution, fracking doesn't cause earthquakes, clean coal, water thirsty cities in deserts, just give me a pill to make me healthy/thin/smart; Da Nile, Da Nile, Da Nile. If I don't like it, I'll just deny it and shout down who ever tries to help me understand. "It's not my fault!" "Gotta be somebody I can blame…"
Sorry, the current political idiocy... just had to get a little tirade in, refute the denial multitudes. "Just because 50 million people say a stupid thing, it is still a stupid thing."
Back to Earth, the large chunk of rock flying through space that cares nothing about its inhabitants but does evolve based on both life and geologic processes, and will continue to evolve (means: change).
The Aleutian volcano Pavlof (perhaps a bell rang) fired up big time early this week, ash cloud to the stratosphere, lava flow and big booms. The aviation warning has been lowered back from red to orange but wise pilots are likely avoiding that area and the huge clouds of jet engine crippling quartz grains. The new volcano list of 26 fire and ash breathing mountains wraps around the entire Ring of Fire with 3 fired up in South America, 7 in Central America - 3 in Nicaragua alone, 6 on and near Russia's Kamchatka peninsula and 4 in Indonesia. Japan, Philippines and PNG complete the ring and list. Subduction and melting all around the ring are in evidence this week, heed the warnings!
The earthquake list mimics the volcano list (the fracking/equake deniers might actually agree that subduction results in quakes and volcanoes although a scary percentage likely assign blame to an angry diety - tweeting blame on a phone they deny the science of) with no large quakes but quite a few in the Richter 5 range - a 3.8 quake in Oklahoma is a pretty good jostle - "not the fracking".
And, off the planet, a lovely pre dawn lit by the near last quarter moon (mathematically in about an hour) was a lovely sight having slid by Mars and Saturn over the last couple of mornings and now leaving the bright planets hanging alone above spectacular Scorpio. Jupiter dominates the evening sky, in the east early while the bright constellations of winter sink lower in the west each night.
None of those sky treats will be visible tonight as clouds have moved in ahead of a front that while warming the east coast today and tomorrow will also drop some much needed moisture. The weekend will be seasonable with some frosty morning next week reminding us that while it is spring steady warmth is still a month or more away. It is Earth and there will be change and disorder, get out and enjoy your planet, today on Earth.
