Today has been a long day for me, taking my mother to a specialist doctor's appointment. In July, she had botox injections for muscle spasticity as a result of dementia. I am happy to report that the shots have made a difference to her pain level and quality of life. The problem today . . . the doctor's office is on the third floor and there is only one elevator. Sometime after we arrived, the elevator broke down so anyone in a wheelchair is stuck waiting. There we waited for 2 hours. That set my day back. The good part . . . at least we weren't stuck IN the elevator!
Fantasy Football — I hope that this works out.
| Points | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Team | W-L-T | Pct | Stk | Waiver | For | Against |
| 1 | 1-0-0 | 1.000 | W1 | 10 | 118.24 | 116.10 | |
| 2 | 1-0-0 | 1.000 | W1 | 9 | 102.86 | 70.20 | |
| 3 | 1-0-0 | 1.000 | W1 | 8 | 98.12 | 89.62 | |
| 4 | 1-0-0 | 1.000 | W1 | 7 | 89.04 | 79.56 | |
| 5 | 1-0-0 | 1.000 | W1 | 6 | 83.24 | 80.94 | |
| 6 | 0-1-0 | .000 | L1 | 5 | 116.10 | 118.24 | |
| 7 | 0-1-0 | .000 | L1 | 4 | 89.62 | 98.12 | |
| 8 | 0-1-0 | .000 | L1 | 3 | 80.94 | 83.24 | |
| 9 | 0-1-0 | .000 | L1 | 2 | 79.56 | 89.04 | |
| 10 | 0-1-0 | .000 | L1 | 1 | 70.20 | 102.86 |
|
It would appear that TC and I are at the bottom of the league. He has an excuse. What's mine?
Puzzle — Today’s took me 3:44 (average 4:51). To do it click here. How did you do?
Rolling Stone — This is the present, and the future, of climate change. Our overheated world is amplifying drought and making megafire commonplace. This is happening even in the soggy Pacific Northwest, which has been hard-hit by what's been dubbed a "wet drought." Despite near-normal precipitation, warm winter temperatures brought rain instead of snow to the region's mountains. What little snow did hit the ground then melted early, leaving the Northwest dry — and ready to burn in the heat of summer.
The national data is as clear as it is troubling: "Climate change has led to fire seasons that are now on average 78 days longer than in 1970," according to a Forest Service report published in August. In the past three decades, the annual area claimed by fire has doubled, and the agency's scientists predict that fires will likely "double again by midcentury."
The human imprint on the bone-dry conditions that lead to fire is real — and now measurable. According to a major new study by scientists at Columbia and NASA, man-made warming is increasing atmospheric evaporation — drawing water out of Western soil, shrubs and trees. In California alone, the epic drought is up to 25 percent more severe than it would have been, absent climate change. And this impact doesn't respect state borders. The study's lead author, Columbia scientist Park Williams, tells Rolling Stone, "There's the same effect in the Pacific Northwest."
Standing near fire lines in late August, Inslee vowed to extinguish the blazes in his state. But the governor also called on Americans to confront an enemy fiercer and more insidious than fire itself. He declared, "We've got to attack this at its source: carbon pollution."
The fiery future is upon us. Pervasive drought and record temperatures — July was the warmest month ever physically recorded on planet Earth — have turned forests from Fresno to Fairbanks into tinderboxes. In Alaska, more than 5 million acres burned — surpassing the 10-year average for the entire country. With months left in the fire season, the blazes of 2015 have already scorched more than 8 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center — a record pace, likely to top the 9.8 million acres that burned in 2006. "Some of these fires that are in these forested areas could burn until it snows," said NIFC spokeswoman Jessica Gardetto. …
For a glimpse of the future, look north, to Alaska and the Arctic — which President Obama, during a visit to Anchorage this summer, highlighted as "the leading edge of climate change." Soaring temperatures and an early-melting snowpack have brought raging wildfires to landscapes that have not been kissed by flame for millennia. "Climate change is no longer some far-off problem," Obama declared. "It is happening here. It is happening now."
The world is warming most toward the poles, and temperatures in Alaska have been increasing nearly twice as fast as the rest of the country in the past 60 years — up almost three degrees. And the state's average fire season has increased by more than a month — 35 days — since the 1950s. "We can detect the climate-change influence on fire," says Glenn Juday, a forest ecologist at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, who points to three indicators all on the upswing: "the area burned, the severity of the burning and then the frequency."
Earlier today, I was thinking about all the wildfires in western Canada and the western US. Australia has also found itself with severe drought and wildfires. It seemed to me that it is one big "chicken and the egg" situation. Drought makes for tinder dry conditions; human activity and severe lightning storms bring wildfires; wildfires generate carbon pollution in the air which generates climate change . . . and the cycle rolls on. This is a long article but worth the read. We must break the cycle which means making fossil fuel decisions, and of course that means keeping Republicans out of the White House and Conservatives out of Parliament. Everyday people like you and I need to have a bigger say in the sustainability of the planet, not greedy corpoations.
Daily Kos — This is a short piece. An "Awesome cartoon about Bernie Sanders @ Liberty Univ".
Now that is a genuine WWJD! I think that would really confuse Kim Davis and the Republicans.
Alternet — “Richard is sentenced to death because he’s poor,” Glossip’s new attorney Donald Knight told the Guardian. “Not very many people can afford a death penalty defense. That should scare everyone.”
With 60 more days, his attorneys say they could gather more evidence to present a petition allowing them to litigate in a court that could grant a new trial or a clemency review.
In my book, the death penalty is never OK. It is state sanctioned murder. I think we all know where TC stands on this.
My Universe — This is how I feel about TC's shoes!
Damn, they are soooooooooooooooooooooooo big!
