Wintertime "blasts"

Well, as it turns out, I won’t be finished with my next piece until tomorrow. In the meantime, here are two sobering news nuggets pulled from my recent readings of the New York Times online:

“Folks around here say this is unlike any drought Texas has ever seen. In a way that’s right; it’s the worst single drought year on record. But, as scientists now tell us, historically droughts here can last decades. Worse, when the rain does fall, it evaporates faster and faster as the American Southwest become drier, threatening to turn Texas into desert. As bad as this year’s drought is, the long view tells us that things could get much worse.

“According to a paper published in Science in 2007, ‘Droughts will become the new climatology of the American Southwest within a time frame of years to decades.’ Rain will become more rare and it will evaporate more quickly, making the megadroughts of old look like periodic dry spells. And it will be in part thanks to increased carbon emissions, a fact that Texas will have a hard time confronting.”

*****

“Nearly three-quarters of the planet’s reefs are now at risk of serious degradation, according to a report by the World Resources Institute in February. Another analysis, by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, found that as much as one-fifth of the world’s reefs have been degraded beyond recognition or lost entirely.

“By midcentury, virtually all reefs will be at risk, scientists fear, not just from local threats or global warming, but from an increasingly acidified ocean. Much of the carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere ends up in the oceans, where it forms a weak acid, lowering the pH level of the seas. Scientists have long speculated that the rising acidity of ocean waters would inhibit the growth of corals . . .

“Coral reefs, which cover barely 0.2 percent of the ocean floor but contain roughly 25 percent of the ocean’s biodiversity, provide a crucial source of protein for an estimated 500 million people, protect shorelines from tsunamis and tropical storms and attract tourists that sustain coastal economies with tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue.”