Vacation Time & Climate Change News

 

I am sitting outdoors for the 2^rd evening in a row enjoying the warm air and the sights and sounds of a busy river front at Sault St. Marie, Michigan. We camped here just downstream from the Soo Locks alongside the St. Marys River watching the comings and goings of the large freighters plying the cool and clean water. We have camped many times at the Sault, but never has the weather been this warm.

One of the pleasures in sitting along the river is watching the sun turn from its brilliant yellow afternoon brightness to a muted red color as it moves toward the horizon. However, it is a bit sobering to understand that the red color stems not from some natural occurrence as the sun marks the passage of time, but rather results from the smoke and wildfires that are burning out of control in the western US. The fires are prompted by the unusually dry conditions in California and elsewhere in the west and have nothing to do with forest maintenance and everything to do with climate change.

The forest fires that cover thousands of acres now provokes the smoky air in several parts of the west. The ongoing air pollution has added to the woes of those who have recently contracted Covid 19. As we might have guessed, the pulmonary distress from Covid has been found to be more severe for those who are forced to breathe the polluted air near the firestorm areas. Disasters really do multiply when things go wrong.

The red sun reminds of the recent announcement from the United Nations Committee on Climate Change that things are getting worse, not better. The August 2021 sixth report compiled by an impressive coterie of scientists concluded that time to correct the ills of increasing air pollution is slipping away from us. The report projects that in the coming decades climate changes will increase in all regions.

The report is at its heart a scientific assessment of the earth’s response to the continuously increasing amount of carbon dioxide that humans release to our atmosphere. The data shows that even if we achieve net zero emissions of carbon dioxide soon, we will still have excessive heat and the consequent insults of fire, flooding, drought, storms and so forth in regions all around the world. The amount of air pollution we have already released will cause an increase in temperature of 1.5°C in the next decade.

Here are a number of conclusions from the report and press release.

“Each of the last four decades has been successively warmer than any decade that preceded it since 1850….and there will be increasing heat waves, longer warm seasons and shorter cold seasons.”

“Climate change is intensifying the water cycle. This brings more intense rainfall and associated flooding, as well as more intense drought in many regions. Climate change is also affecting rainfall patterns. In high latitudes, precipitation is likely to increase, while it is projected to decrease over large parts of the subtropics.”

 “Coastal areas will see continued sea level rise throughout the 21st century, contributing to more frequent and severe coastal flooding in low-lying areas and coastal erosion. Extreme sea level events that previously occurred only once every 100 years could happen every year by the end of this century.  Further warming will amplify permafrost thawing, and the loss of seasonal snow cover, melting of glaciers and ice sheets, and loss of summer Arctic sea ice.”

Recently, and for the first time in recorded history, it has rained on the Greenland ice shield instead of snowing.The report provides a terse summary. “This is a code red for humanity.”

Michigan has experienced our share of environmental disasters resulting from climate change and more is expected in the coming months and years. The flooding in Detroit, higher lake levels and decreasing shore lines at our Great Lakes and temperature increases like that in the western Upper Peninsula that has already warmed a whopping 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1951. All the Great Lakes have suffered insults due to climate change. Chief among these has been algal growth that has dire consequences for water quality thereby affecting wildlife and drinking water for humans. Activists have been urging Michigan’s Governor Whitmer to stiffen resistance to the fossil fuel industry by eliminating give-aways sought for pipe lines and to increase the amount of required renewable energy beyond the measly goal of 15% by 2050.

A small measure of optimism can be taken from a close reading of the report. First is the impressive array of human talent that has been brought together for the work. Two hundred thirty-four leading climate experts participated in the conducting the studies and prepared the resulting report. These men and women came from 195 nations and represent humanity’s best thinking on the subject.

 The press release about the report indicates that human actions still have the potential to determine the future course of climate. The evidence is clear that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main driver of climate change, even as other greenhouse gases and air pollutants also affect the climate. “Stabilizing the climate will require strong, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and reaching net zero CO2 emissions. Limiting other greenhouse gases and air pollutants, especially methane, could have benefits both for health and the climate.”

So, the future is in our hands. The question is whether we have the will to implement the changes needed to assure the future for our children. Those of us in Michigan should contact both our state and national representatives to let them know that now is the time we want action on climate change remedies.

 

 

 

What You Should Know About Composting (and other important stuff)

 

My Worm Ranch and Other Lies

 

I have been a composter for a long time after having read many ‘how to do it’ articles about composting. Most were glowing reports about the benefits of composting, and how you can help save the world by reducing the amount of your throw-away food stuff. Some of the reports included grandiose claims that aren’t quite true. My composting experience has taught a few things about what works and doesn’t work. Here is my story.

I got into the composting game as a consequence of a bad experience in fertilizing flowers with commercial products guaranteed to create bigger flower blossoms, more potatoes, redder tomatoes and so forth. My bad experience occurred when I was put in charge of managing flower gardens at our church. Early one spring after I had chosen and procured all the new flowers, I had the job of planting each of the tender plants that would provide a variety of colors and shapes in my newly created garden. Since there was talk of entering our church garden in the annual community garden walk, I wanted our garden to look its best. Since I had read too many ads about the benefits of ‘Super Booster Flower Food,’ I purchased a large bag of Super Booster determined to make sure that each of the tender seedlings had a generous helping of Super Boost right from the start of their new life. I reasoned that the best approach would be to put some of the fertilizer in each hole dug for the new plants.

It was a mistake. The plants soon kneeled over and died.

WARNING. DON’T EVER PUT FERTILIZER IN THE PLANTING HOLE DUG FOR NEW PLANTS. (Unless you enjoy watching your new plants slowly die from the effect of too much fertilizer that will ‘burn’ the plant’s roots.)

This grievous error provoked my interest in composting since most of the composting proponents claimed that with proper soil mixtures and generous helpings of composted material, no added fertilizer is needed. Why spend your hard-earned cash for fertilizer when you can make your own? For free, according to the gardening folks who know about such things.

I was hooked. I began my composting at home in a shaded, hidden part of the backyard that very fall. Within weeks I had a gargantuan pile of leaves, weeds and various food wastes that altogether formed a disgusting pile. “Just pile it up and forget it,” said one of the articles. I followed their advice, making regular trips to the backyard pile with left-overs and no thought of aesthetics or the critters that regularly visited the pile to consume those materials they believed were too tasty to ignore. My potato peels and dinner left-overs never went to waste as it always seemed there was someone in the world of wild critters who favored such a dish, leaving in its place a small pile of their wastes (already composted material, it seemed to me). I continued my treks to the compost pile in the winter. As fewer critters were about in the cold, snowy weather, the waste food began piling up, slowly changing colors and losing all semblance of form or color, becoming a pile of disgusting gunk. Fortunately, my pile was well-hidden and I was able to ignore the mess since it was mostly hidden from view and I consoled myself to its nasty appearance with visions of spring time, with a new source of fertile soil springing forth from the pile of wastes. Meanwhile, the pile continued to grow in size. I could hardly wait for spring to arrive.

As winter weather subsided and the month of May appeared, many of our spring birds had arrived before I decided to open up the compost pile and take some of the free, fertile soil for use on my garden beds. Upon examination, I was surprised to learn that the pile was frozen solid, unyielding to my piddling efforts with a shovel. I waited another two weeks as the wild flowers came into bloom and the weeds began to grow in my gardens. One inch below the surface, the hoped-for compost was still frozen solid, impossible to dig. In June, the compost yielded 2 inches of melted soil that I furiously hacked into while the garden weeks grew even higher. The ice was still several inches thick, impossible to dig. It took until early July before the compost pile had finally thawed, allowing me to dig into it, uncovering the still undigested left-overs, that no one would want to see on any garden bed. A new composting strategy was clearly needed. I decided to move my compost pile to an area exposed to the sun in hopes of an earlier melt. I also filled several plastic bags full of leaves to serve as insulation to keep my compost pile warm for next year’s compost. The experts said the leaves would become themselves composted even as they performed their insulating duty. I also decided to hedge my bets and begin a worm ranch in the basement where freezing would not be a problem.

Worm ranching, (or vermiculture, as we experts call it), involves creating a ranch for the worms and feeding them for a period of several months as they create fertilizer, otherwise known as a pile of worm poop. I spent a good share of my first vermiculture winter climbing up and down the stairs to the basement for feeding our left-over food scraps to the worms. In a few weeks I learned what the little red worms liked and didn’t like. Coffee grounds were favorites, while they disdained banana peels and most other left-over fruit peels. It turns out that red worms don’t need many left-over food scraps to be happy. My observation was that they favored eating their shredded paper bedding material since their bedding seemed to rapidly disappear while they ignored my food scraps save the coffee grounds and the odd morsel that was free of meat, diary, and citrus. Around Christmas, I finally gave up on much of the left-overs still adorning the ranch and removed the mushy, blackened peels and other detritus returning it to a rightful place in the trashcan. The worms didn’t seem to mind.

The following spring, I moved the worm ranch to the now-warm garage and opened the frozen outdoor compost pile early, using water to help the sun in thawing the pile. In the meantime, I found that the piles of leaves were just as I had placed them in the fall. The black plastic bags that were supposed to help make compost failed to do any such thing and the leaves were beginning to blow around the lawn due to the large tears in the bags from my rough handling as I tried to nudge them in place around the unforgiving pile of compost. I judged the leaf insulation to be a failure in my compost adventure, despite the garden magazine recommendation.

I kind of forgot about the worms in the ranch that was stationed in a corner of my garage while I watered, turned and fed the outdoor compost. The worms in the outdoor pile seemed much more forgiving than the ranch-raised red worms about their food. The outdoor worms seemed to delight in practically everything I fed them. I remember putting a melon peel in the pile and in several days the peel was coated with large worms, of the size of night crawlers. I assume they were happy with the melon peel while their cousins, the red worms, had earlier ignored all fruit peels. After the spring had turned into early summer and we returned from a camping vacation, I remembered the garage-based worm ranch. I opened the top (worms don’t like light) and was surprised that I hadn’t been greeted by several wrigglers. With no worries, I pushed my hand into the worm poop that now occupied most of the ranch. There was no sign of any worms. None. Apparently, the worms had all gone to worm heaven and they were now as one with the worm poop, leaving no sign of their adventures in the plastic bins that had been their homes. I was a little sad and I hoped they had a good life. Thus ended my six-month adventure into ranch-based vermiculture. I deposited the 12 by 16-inch tray of worm poop into my outdoor compost, certain that the worms there would happily make use of remnants of my ranch.

Now, here it is summertime with the gardens in full bloom and the worms still happily helping to turn lawn, garden, and food wastes into newly created soil. I should add that I have returned to the occasional use of purchased fertilizer, sprinkling it adjacent to growing plants but never in a hole dug for their roots. Sheesh! Who would do such a thing …

Your gardening friend, Bill Green Thumb