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To the editor:
We planned our mountain bike trip to Colorado. Given that today's rain storms pack a punch, we planned to leave early Saturday getting ahead of the rain. Unfortunately, vehicle problems delayed us until early Sunday.
Five minutes into our delayed Sunday departure from Ironwood, we made our first adjustment. The road west of Hurley was closed. We diverted north to US Highway 2. Rivers along US 2 were high and angry. We were apprehensive but pressed on.
At Ashland, we were confident we had seen the worst. Just west of Ashland the highway was not only topped but cut. We diverted again taking county roads. Holding our breath at each culvert and bridge, we made it to Duluth.
What is happening? Many years ago, the head of the Goddard Institute of NASA, James Hansen, made headlines when he informed congress that global warming was real, will cause climate change, and if we want to slow and eventually stop it, we need to change our energy sources to wind, solar, and nuclear.
Two years ago, the University of Wisconsin created an educational four-part series called, "Changing Great Lakes Weather." In it, they warned us that our summers will include more intense precipitation events.
To understand why this is happening I did a lot of research searching out the work of scientists Hansen, Hayhoe, Mann, Trenberth, and Prien.
I read the publications of our National Academies of Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Society, and our National Climate and Atmospheric Research Center.
With the help of these and many other resources, the causes of our massive summer rains became evident.
I prepared a presentation and sent it to two science professors at MTU for review, which it passed.
My debut presentation, simply called "Deluges", was at NMU. I was so confident that I invited a senior atmospheric scientist from NOAA to critique the presentation.
After close to an hour presentation I was anxious to hear his response.
His was a short critique. "Mr. Morrow, I want to stress only one thing.", he said, "You did not scratch the surface of just how extreme the weather will be."
Is it important that we all know the physics and chemistry of rain storms and why climate change is such a growing threat?
Did you see the pictures of Houghton and Hancock?
For a climate presentation e-mail me at climatelynx@earthlink.net or call 906-285-3702.