Here comes climate change

Lately, people who in the past seldom gave it a second thought are beginning to talk about the weather.

The main reason, of course, has been the catastrophic wildfires forming the worst natural disaster in California’s history, still continuing with no clear end in sight. California has become known all over the world for the frequency and ferocity of its wildfires but this one is the worst so far. Climate change is clearly the underlying reason.

The year 2023 was the Earth’s warmest on record —until 2024. Climatologists tell us that the next few years are going to be hotter still. And the incoming Trump administration’s plan to burn more fossil fuel than ever before will guarantee more new record high temperatures.

For those who are unaware, the Earth’s atmosphere has a growing proportion of heat-blanketing “greenhouse gases,” especially carbon dioxide and methane, largely the result of the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. These gases lock in the heat of the sun’s rays in the atmosphere thereby heating up the air, the water and the land.

Oil companies have been avidly promoting what they call “carbon capture and sequestration,” the removal of carbon dioxide from the air and its capture and storage deep underground. The fossil fuel businesses believe that CCS provides a justification for using oil and gas indefinitely. But this technology is extremely expensive, potentially very dangerous and unworkable at anywhere near the scale needed to make a meaningful difference.

Global warming or climate change does not cause bad weather conditions; rather it seriously exacerbates them making them more severe. Warmer air allows clouds to hold more moisture and thus drop more rain in a storm. This summer’s catastrophic floods in Spain were made much worse because the Mediterranean Sea, surrounded and cut off from the Atlantic, warmed up significantly and together with the mountainous land along the coast turned typical floods into enormous ones.

Usually, hurricanes follow fairly predictable paths, staying generally along the coastline. But last summer’s Hurricane Helene veered into far west North Carolina causing massive storm and flood damage. Primarily this happened because of the mountainous terrain of the Blue Ridge chain of western North Carolina, which formed a natural barrier, forcing the storm’s moisture to condense, causing extreme rainfall in the valley near Asheville especially when combined with the already saturated ground from earlier storms.

In the middle of the country tornados are occurring with increasing frequency, arriving with little warning and causing considerable damage.

Across the world crippling heat waves hospitalized and even killed people unprepared for the incredible temperatures. All around the U.S. summer heat waves have been growing. Phoenix had temperatures over 100 degrees for more than a month. In India, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia temperatures reached 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

Florida used to be the place much of America chose to get away to, either for a warm, sunny holiday or for retirement, escaping the harsh northern winters. But in addition to trying to cope with an enormous population explosion over the past 60 years, Florida has environmental problems that can’t be overlooked. As a peninsula flanked by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, Florida is battered by hurricanes more than any other state. A hurricane crashing onto the East Coast is likely to continue through the state’s narrow midsection and maintain its destructive path through to its west coast and beyond into other nearby states. As with other states that become resort areas, development has been overwhelmingly on or near the coasts where weather damage is greatest. Home insurance has become difficult to obtain. Rising seas, a worldwide phenomenon, is unusually acute and is coupled with sea water rising from below due to the porosity of the land underneath. As a result, Florida’s streets are often flooded when there has been no rain.

I used to think that forest fires were a problem mostly just for California and a few adjacent states. And to listen to Donald Trump and others one might think the problem would go away if only Democratic politicians would “maintain their forests.” But in the summer of 2023, the largest, most noticeable wildfires were happening in Quebec followed by others all across the U.S. and Canada. In the summer of 2024 there were even a batch of devastating wildfires in the Northeast that extended into New York City including Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, a harbinger of what’s to come.

The Northwest Corner offers one of the most benign climates in the United States and this becomes especially true as the country’s climate becomes increasingly troubled. Connecticut was once called “the land of steady habits,” a reference perhaps to what many considered dull, excessive moderation. But with the increase in severe and often violent weather a more boring climate seems a decided plus. Over the past 40 years, the Northwest Corner has experienced no weather calamities worthy of national attention, the last one of note being the 1955 flood centered in Winsted. There’ve been only two tornados over the past 40 years — midwestern states usually have at least two per year — only modest hurricane damage and minor droughts. In recent years, unpleasant and often dangerous heat waves across the country have kept residents huddled indoors around their air conditioners but Northwest Corner folks can still enjoy summer out of doors.

The climate here remains more agreeable than it is in much of the rest of the country; but it is changing and at an increasing rate.

Architect and landscape designer Mac Gordon lives in Lakeville.