Monday, July 20, 2009

Remote Post - Heat and Chicks

I'm frying down here in Tucson. Daytime temperatures have not dipped below 104 or so since I got here. Nightime temperatures hover in the high 80's. The water in dad's pool is warmer than blood. I hate it. I told dad he better not ever have any kind of crisis in the summertime; I won't come. It's christmas, thanksgiving, or nothing doing from now on.

I know I've crossed the line between reporting and just plain whining, but I can't help it. The van I'm driving down here has air conditioning, sort of, at least it blows air at the people in the front seat that is marginally less hot than the air outside. But I find that even if I park as close to the doors of the store/restaurant/mall as possible, the walk across the blacktop parking lot makes me feel like fainting. You never see anybody on the sidewalks. People live entirely indoors just as if it were January in Minnesota. I realize I'm rather a wimp when it comes to heat, but personally I can't figure out why anybody ever decided this part of the world was fit for human habitation.

I can't help but wonder if it used to be normal to have two solid months of above hundred degree heat every year without respite. I can't help but wonder what it will be like in ten or twenty years. It's scary to contemplate. We have a friend who lives in Mexicali, Mexico - not so very far from here - who told us that for a few days earlier in the summer, the temperature was in the mid 120's. Don't proteins start to denature at about that temperature? Don't people actually start to literally cook in their own skins?

Okay, okay. I'm done for now. In other news - Homero found more baby chicks. He told me on the phone last night that when he went out to the barn for the evening feeding, he saw three tiny newly hatched chicks on the floor. There was no mother hen in sight. Careful inspection of the hayloft revealed a black hen on a nest with several more eggs in it, one of them in mid-hatch. My silly husband put the baby chicks back up in the hayloft with their mom. No, no, I said, you have to bring the mother hen down, eggs and all, and make her a nest on the ground in the mama barn where they'll be safe. If you put the babies back up, they'll just fall off the edge again and freeze during the night. The mother hen won't leave her nest for a couple of days yet. He said he'd do that.

Homero seems to be taking care of everything just fine, at least according to his telephone reports. He says he's not bothering to separate the baby bucklings anymore because they've learned to nurse through the fence. We'll have to see what we can do about that. He's got far too much milk even so, and says he doesn't know what to do with it all now that I'm not making cheese with it. He's eating cereal with milk for breakfast lunch and dinner, along with fried eggs and frozen pizzas. Ah, freedom.

I'm ready to get home.

9 comments:

  1. I agree, its always good to go home!

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  2. You do know that the sum total of global warming is less than one degree farenheit in the last 100 years, and that the forest of predictions is for one to three degrees over the next 50-100, right. In ten or twenty years, evrythong will be the same.

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  3. I hate to be gone for to long! Everything gets out of whack!! I am worried about when I have surgery and how things will get done around here.... I just hope the goats dont dry up till I can milk again!!

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  4. Gene, I wonder what the heck you are reading. The conservative estimates are for two degrees F by 2100, and the other end of the spectrum (mainstream estimates here) is for 9 degrees F in the same time scale, which is totally incompatible with civilization. Read the revised IPCC, for chrissakes. And if you have the cojones, read "The vanishing face of Gaia." If you read that, I'll read whatever apologist right wing crap you want.

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  5. That's not right wing crap...that's from research articles readily available on Google Scholar.

    Regardless, even if we accept your 9 degree figure in 90 years, there are very few places which will go from what they are now to 'months of 100+ degree weather every year.' in ten or twenty years, as you claim.

    You're being as alarmist and irresponsible as anyone claiming Global Warming doesn't exist is being obtuse.

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  6. I don't claim to know what will happen to any particular area over what span of time; as far as I know the research on that is in its infancy. There was a long article that attempted to lay out some of the regional predictions in National Geographic a few months ago; it's the one with the cover article on Australia's drought. The 2-9 degree spread is a GLOBAL AVERAGE, which says very little about anyplace in particular. I guess you can make some assumptions like suitable crops for various areas will change, and you can predict new coastlines based on known ocean topography, but that's as far as I'd go. Probably safe to say deserts will expand.

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  7. oh ps, the "months of 100 degree plus weather" was referring to CURRENT conditions in this area, not to a future prediction. I can easily look up how many days failed to reach a daytime high of 100 or greater in Tucson since, oh, June first. Bet you it's not more than 10.

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  8. It seemed as though you meant that in ten or twenty years, everyplace would be like AZ is now. I should give you more credit for being precise.

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  9. No, I didn't mean to give that impression. I was wondering what Tucson would be like in 10 or 20 years, and I don't think there's any good info on that. But I know that if I think it's uninhabitable now, I'm probably not going to like it any better then.

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Due to huge amounts of spam which accrued over the year we were gone, I've decided to turn on comment moderation. Sorry for the bother!