Shorter Days

It gets light a bit later in the morning, now. After many weeks of waking at 5:00 AM to loud birdsong, its closer to quarter of six before they chirp their greetings to each other. Birds are allowed to be social at dawn because the bugs they eat are cold blooded and can't move yet, too cold. Their calls can't scare bird-breakfast away.

I have woodpeckers and bluejays in the trees here, as well as toehees and robins and sometimes quail.

Quail. Definition of cute birds.

The bluejays, with their raised crests, are raucous and smart, being corvids, from the family of crows and ravens, and capable of around 50 different vocalizations rather than the usual two alarm calls people are used to. You can tame a bluejay, if you're very patient. They like biscuits. I spent a summer doing that, once. That I had that kind of time was one of the reasons I knew it was time to leave my home town. Not enough jobs there.

The woodpeckers are pretty dumb, very loud, and sometimes get hunted by a Sharps Hawk that lives in the neighborhood.

Coopers (Sharp Tipped) Hawk

We ALSO have a red tailed hawk AND a golden eagle nest.

Red Tailed Hawk

The eagles aren't always here, as they range around, but when they are, the call is distinctive. In the spring and fall, Canada Geese fly past at altitude, calling to each other on the way to the various reservoirs where there's a place to land and grass to eat. Geese eat grass, like cows and bunnies. Canada Geese is the species name, not the country of origin. If the state ever gets around to refilling the upper San Joaquin Valley lakes currently caliche desert, perhaps after the fracking work is done, that will return to being bird habitat as it was before they dammed the Kern River and stopped the crucial floods that kept the Kern Lake alive. Bird Watching is a tourist thing too.

Canada Geese

It's odd to me that despite the easy access to information, the fact that Global Warming happened almost 20,000 years ago, and that it rose sea levels 80 meters (300 feet) means that the eventual return of the ice will drop sea levels that much again AND that most of the fears of further sea level rise just isn't justified. If you melted all the ice left, most of that is already at sea level and ice expands, so turning it back into water means the sea level falls a bit. What's still up on Antarctica will raise sea levels about 3 inches, worldwide. Three whole inches. Of course, you can't actually melt all of Antarctica all at once, and its not likely to either. There are 30+ feedback loops which control climate, and many of them aren't terrestrial so much as solar and orbital mechanics, things that humans cannot effect.

Wags like to cite the sinking Pacific Islands! Typhoons have a storm surge of around 4-10 feet, sometimes more, which generates gravel bars on their sea shores, bars photographed by non-scientists and shown as proof that the islands are rising. This is nonsense, but people are stupid. More importantly, most of the Pacific Islands are sinking, but that is continental rather than sea level change responsible. The arc of islands flowing from the Hawaiian hot spot volcano go all the way to Kamchatka, and most are underwater sea mounts. Hawaii will sink too. Eventually.

A lot of the problems people face with science is their time scales are way off, citing their own lifespans as the beginning and end of the universe, and religion as "old" when dinosaurs are just fairy tales and make believe, to the common fool. It's hard to respect that level of ignorance.

Since the last ice age took a break, sea level rise from the ice sheets melting off the continents described coastal temples flooding, inundations from various ice-water lakes surging out of glacial valleys into the lowlands, and various curiosities like the North Sea suddenly forming out of the settled dunes they once were. Flashy stuff, the kinds of thing that spawns religions in the first place. The Missoula Floods happened many times. The native americans in the area tell stories of the floods, responsible for the scablands, pouring out of Montana and down into Washington and Idaho.

Most of the Native American cultures believed that bears, ravens, and coyotes were gods, watching us because they were moody and long lived and surprisingly smart. Coyotes can dodge bullets. Bears are moody, unpredictable. Ravens can live 50 years and vocalize 80 different sounds. Throw in the skeletons of hippos, mammoths, camels, giant ground sloths, giant armadillo shells, and the occasional fossil dinosaur and American Indians must have felt they were living in a very strange place. The coasts had abundant shellfish and giant sharks and whales and sea lions and jellyfish that could sting you to death. The mountains had bears, sneaky lions, racoons and opossums and rattlesnakes, vultures and eagles and tasty trout and salmon, yet there were deserts that range a thousand miles with mountains climbing into the sky, fast running antelope, giant elk bounding away, moose, and deer everywhere.

Stone Sheep

Sheep evolved here. There are 5 species in North America. They are mostly protected in the wild, but decades ago they were good hunting, if only because the places were so exotic as most of them are in the Southwest and Rockies, well up mountains. I'm told the 270 Winchester was the primary round for hunting wild sheep, and the primary round for sheep herders to defend their herds against wolves and coyotes. Sheepherders are often poor, can't afford much practice ammo, and are consequently excellent shots, at long range. Most of them are also Basque, here in the Western States.

Alpaca on a farm

Camels evolved in South America, with 11 species (alpaca, llama etc). The camellids make better wool here than in Asia. I have a friend, online, who raises alpaca for their wool and his wife spins, dyes, and sells it for money. Nervous women knit, and the better wool is easier to work with. Alpaca make better wool. Apparently. Not my thing. My ex did it for a while. She had a huge collection of wool for that.

When the ice age comes back, possibly within our lifetimes, the ice will build up on the peaks of the Himalaya, in the Andes, in the Northern Rockies and Sierras. The ice packs will visibly grow and not quite melt, just get a little bigger each year. Eventually enough will accumulate to compact into ice and start moving down slope. The reflection of the ice will reduce the local albedo, keeping it cooler and helping more snow and ice to accumulate. The glaciers will start refilling the high mountain valleys. Big ones move a meter a day. That's 365 meters a year. In three years that's over a kilometer. In ten years that's 3 and a half kilometers. When you add up the time, you add up the distance and it stops being a joke and starts being inevitable.

The really interesting bit is thanks to modern medical science, we might breach the immortality barrier and have to start thinking long term because we personally will be living that long. So it is in our own interest to enjoy the transition from Interglacial Period (now) to Glacial Epoch (return of the ice). With computers, cameras, and various technology, its not like the ice returning is going to be a disaster. We can watch the glaciers on web cams. Yes, sea levels will FALL, emptying bays and harbors we conveniently designed for the current sea level. Oh well. Adapt. Typhoons won't be quite so bad. Those Etruscan, Minoan, and Greek temples will come out of the water again. The Black Sea might get cut off once more, drying out a bit without the sea water tidal surges. It is unclear whether there will be general drying, though it is believed there will be more northern latitude precipitation due to melting of the ice caps, thus free sea water on the Arctic Ocean could Literally Trigger the next ice age. Because science is funny like that.

"Climate Scientists" would have you believe ridiculous things. They believe that climate change is caused by people and modern technology, but climate change happened thousands of years before modern technology. We're in the lingering aftereffects of an ongoing event from nearly 20,000 years ago. I am convinced some of these fund seeking fakes think that the change in the length of days, of seasons, is a Republican Conspiracy because they're just plain insane. And they must TAX everybody and make us all victims and live in mud huts and die before we're 30 because that's the natural order. And eat bugs. I've been hearing hippie nonsense since I was a toddler. Back then, they were warning us about Global Cooling and Nuclear Winter, not from Nuclear War itself, but because nuclear power plants were clean energy and without that soot we couldn't hold back the oncoming glaciers. Hippies are weird, and not good-weird either. Just weird. I think the traditional answer to them, ignore the ingrates, is right. A perfect example of how de-funding stupid people is the right answer.

If I manage to get the job I'm interviewing for next week, I will be able to practice Balance when dealing with idiots of all stripes. Its apathy that got us to where we are today. If more people voted, perhaps things wouldn't get so messed up. If I do get that job I want to volunteer on the weekends at the Nevada County Narrow-Gauge Train Museum. Nice folks there. See about getting some of the engines restored. There are folks who want to get it running again, for the tourists. Its a massive legal morass, but perhaps the State will start making allowances for Living History. After all, California is about Agriculture and Tourism.