Monsoon

Mean monsoon-season (June-September) precipitation (mm) for South Asia, 1901-2016. - Nir Krakauer

I never had a clear picture of the climate in India. Sometimes it's all jungle, tropical, warm & humid. Other places desert, dry as a bone. Well, India is a big place, so it makes sense that not all areas would have the same kind of climate. I mean the USA is like that we have the great southwestern desert, the near tropical swamp of the southwest, and the frozen Rocky Mountains. This is first map I have seen that gives me a meaningful picture of the climate here.

I am really surprised by band of blue along the southwest coast followed by the desert to the east, but I shouldn't be.

Miami Heat

Star Island Miami Florida

Daring daughter is talking about Star Island in Miami, so I have to go look it up on the map. Okay, another island full of rich people and big houses. Big whoopee. But what are all these ponds along the Western border of the city? It looks like it could be a massive aquaculture operation. Wikipedia doesn't say anything about them, but I did find this quick summary of recent geological history:

Beginning some 130,000 years ago the Sangamonian Stage raised sea levels to approximately 25 feet (7.6 m) above the current level. All of southern Florida was covered by a shallow sea. . . . By 15,000 years ago, the sea level had dropped to 300 to 350 feet (110 m) below the contemporary level. The sea level rose quickly after that, stabilizing at the current level about 4000 years ago, leaving the mainland of South Florida just above sea level.

Kind of a fluke that South Florida is just above sea level right now. Puts global warming in perspective.

Change

Detroit Steve checks in:

The fact check of the Meet the Press segment with Bill Nye and Blackburn brought out a key issue we are facing. The equilibrium state of our oceans is projected to be 60-80 rise [feet] at the current levels of CO2. So, if this is an accurate assessment, how quickly would this happen if levels of CO2 stayed the same (they will not) and more importantly at what cost and how fast could we pull out of our the atmosphere the CO2 we have put into it? Surely 60 foot rise is not an acceptable out come. These processes are magnitudes slower that the Titanic changing course.

Here is the original article and the out take.... 

Blackburn tries to downplay the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by talking about the amounts in very, very small decimals. Which they are: If I took $400 versus $320 out of your million dollars, you wouldn't be terribly upset. But that's intentionally misleading. The difference between the two is an increase of 25 percent over the past 50 years — after thousands and thousands of years of it being lower. Last year, The New York Times explained that the level of carbon dioxide now in our atmosphere is a "concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years." And at that point, "the world’s ice caps were smaller, and the sea level might have been as much as 60 or 80 feet higher."
Why hasn't that happened now? Because "it takes a long time to melt ice," as one scientist told the Times. But we're getting there.

OK, suppose global warming is happening. Or this rise in temperature triggers another ice-age through some as yet unexplained mechanism.

What can be done? Are we doing any of those things? Are they having a measurable impact? Will they ever?

Would getting rid of the Republicans and their obstructionist ways help? How about the Democrats and their politically correct Fascism?
I'm beginning to think that The Fifth Element  was a prophetic vision, not just a comic book fantasy.
I'm reading The Cobweb by Stephen Bury (aka Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George, aka George Jewsbury), which portrays our political process in horrifically realist manner.