Tens of thousands of Californians fled their homes as wildfires burned a hundred thousand acres driven by hurricane-force winds as Christmas approached.
Around the world, from Europe
to Asia, climate change, denied by President Donald Trump, wreaked havoc.
The National Weather Service
reported 92 degrees in Los Angeles, the hottest temperature since
record-keeping began in 1877.
“The return of powerful winds
Thursday pushed the destructive Ventura County fire closer to several communities,
prompting new evacuations.
“Communities both on the
coast and inland were under threat. At 4 a.m., officials closed the 101 Freeway
between Routes 126 and 150. According to the California Highway Patrol,
that left no open routes between Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. The
freeway was reopened around 7 a.m., the Los Angeles Times reported.
In Colorado, with the
nation’s highest mean elevation of 6,800 feet (2070 meters), kale, spinach and
daffodil were sprouting.
No measureable snow fell in
Mile High Denver in November.
Fire crews from Colorado and New Mexico went to the aid of California.
Fire crews from Colorado and New Mexico went to the aid of California.
“Researchers from Princeton
University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
report in the journal Nature Climate Change that extreme cyclones
that formed in the Arabian Sea for the first time in 2014 are the result of
global warming and will likely increase in frequency. Their model showed that
the burning of fossil fuels since 1860 would lead to an increase in the
destructive storms in the Arabian Sea by 2015, marking one of the first times
that modeled projections have synchronized with real observations of storm
activity, the researchers said.”
Long-time Associated Press
Correspondent Mort Rosenblum reports: “Olive trees can’t actually talk (and I’m
not yet unhinged), but I learn more from them about what matters in the long
term than from that fancy Samsung TV blaring away inside my old stone house.
“They tell it straight
without sponsors and ratings to worry about, or clueless editors guessing at a
distance what their message should be. Having been around since before the
Bible was a rough draft, their forte is historical continuum.
“The trees’ immediate grief
is the climate chaos that an American president denies. It hasn’t rained in
seven months. Olives survived, but not most of the genets – broom – that
perfume the hills in summer with delicate golden flowers.”
