Understood and I agree! For years we have been listening to people be flippant about climate change....the whole, oh we'll deal with it when it happens attitude.
I really hope and pray it doesn't get dire to the point where things like the aerosol spraying have to be considered. Like you say, unknown consequences.
Kind of off-topic, but is it expensive to live in Michigan? We have read that it's a very high-tax state, which I guess pales in comparison to climate change lol
I think I just panicked because right after I asked you about technology predictions regarding climate change, I switched topics and read what you had written. Perfect timing! ? ?
Kind of off-topic, but is it expensive to live in Michigan? We have read that it's a very high-tax state, which I guess pales in comparison to climate change lol
As with most places the answer is “it depends” - our state sales tax is 6% but that’s all most of us have ever known. The republicans did ram through an at the pump gas tax (after their ballot initiative was spectacularly defeated) that makes gas way more than surrounding states.
if you want a lake house or a big house in or near a major city - absolutely.
our personal income tax rates are pretty low and if you live in the burbs or go farther out you spend less on housing.
I wouldn’t leave here but - all my stuff is here already. Despite gerrymandering making the state legislature unevenly tipped red for most of my adult life Michigan is still very much a blue working class state. (2016 was a fluke!)
@polarberry And you just listed three places I would say “yes, that’s an expensive place to live” in Michigan :-). (GR is changing but is still the Devos capital of Michigan so I find GR tougher to label what you’ve described above). I grew up in the Lansing area so bigger cities and that goes along with that are built into me. I’m fast approaching a threshold where more of my life has been spent in rural areas. The good part of Michigan is that there are a ton of well settled and established towns were life is pretty simple and inexpensive. And the climate maps I’ve seen, the whole state is going to be a good place to be if things climate wise come to pass. I’m in no hurry to sell my patch of it and move, even if my house is too old and falling apart!
@polarberry High car insurance rates, high property tax rates, there is an income tax but only a 6% sales tax. No toll roads. Construction in the summer, too much snow in the winter to finish it. Water is generally cheap. I grew up in the Detroit area, Macomb county is blue collar. Oakland the wealthiest county in the state. Detroit is in Wayne county the city is not as great as it used to be it was on the upturn before covid, and there seems to be development in the downtown and midtown areas. West side of Wayne county in Canton per se there are million dollar homes being built. Royal Oak is the hip place for kids. Birmingham is the hip place for richer kids. My parents live in a co-op they had to put 10,000 down and after that they just pay a monthly fee which is reasonable, much better than apartments. My brother works for Ford and he's saving money for a house, his students are finally paid off and everything. Michigan is pretty and it's cool in the winter for the most part maybe a week of 90 something degree weather. It's getting hotter every year but compared to Texas in the summer, it's cold. Michigan gets droughts too, some years ago there was a drought and a lot of water evaporated off the lakes. There's always some politician from western states trying to build some pipeline of water from the lakes to the west. People keep on trying to fight that garbage.
The more I read about desalination, solar desalination in particular, the more I become convinced it is the answer to the world's water crisis. Solar desal is environmentally-friendly and cost-effective. Many solar desal plants are opening in Africa, giving freshwater to communities in dire need. And mobile solar desal plants the size of buses are in the works, the brainchild of a U of O professor who hopes to have them up and running next year.
Isn't there an agreement between the GL states and Canada that prohibits that pipeline idea?
There was a shooting in Minneapolis this morning, in a neighborhood called Dinkytown?
Forgot to ask-is Detroit as bad as you read about?
@polarberry Detroit downtown and midtown is awesome, the neighborhoods are hit and miss, east side is not very good because of the massive poverty people are desperate and do things in desperation. Northwest side is beautiful the area near University of Detroit Mercy. Hamtramck is inside the city and it's nice. It's getting better though.
Hubs had a layover there and didn't get to see much of it. I'd imagine the class divide is much like it is in many major cities.
@polarberry a lot of issues concerning white flight after the sixties riots. Not enough factory jobs in the city anymore. Now there are issues of gentrification in the midtown area. The city has issues, better than before, but still some issues. If you read the comments on Detroit news articles you can see open blatant racism against black people. There is a divide between majority black Detroit and majority white suburbs. The airport is pretty far away from the city. My school alma mater is in Detroit and it’s massively different from when I went there. The museums are world class.
My brother works for Ford and he's saving money for a house, his student loans are finally paid off and everything. Michigan is pretty and cool in the summer for the most part, maybe a week of 90 something degree weather.
There, that made more sense I thought I proof read it.
@jsr78 Your description of Detroit tells me it's in flux and the tension between the inner city and the burbs is going to change. It's going to get better.
Ever wonder about all the water fountains and pools in Las Vegas during a drought?
This is an interesting article about how the city uses water.
So, just how much of a drought is the Western U.S. facing?
Well, I have lived in the west for almost all of my live and even I was surprised.
The intense dry spell that has parched the western U.S. the past 22 years is the region's worst "megadrought" since at least the year 800, a new study says.
Megadroughts, which are defined as intense droughts that last for decades or longer, once plagued western North America. Now, thanks in part to global warming, an especially fierce one is back.
The study, published Monday in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Climate Change, said that more than 40% of the drought can be blamed on human-caused climate change.
“Climate change is changing the baseline conditions toward a drier, gradually drier state in the West, and that means the worst-case scenario keeps getting worse,” said study lead author Park Williams, a climate hydrologist at UCLA. “This is right in line with what people were thinking of in the 1900s as a worst-case scenario. But today I think we need to be even preparing for conditions in the future that are far worse than this.”
Thanks to the region’s high temperatures and low rain and snow levels from summer 2020 through summer 2021, the drought has exceeded the severity of a late-1500s megadrought that had been identified as the worst such drought in the 1,200 years the scientists studied.
“In a decade, we predict that many of our beloved and important glaciers will be gone. This will have far-reaching impacts, such as altering our beautiful landscape, affecting the livelihoods of people who rely on these natural wonders for tourism, and flow on effects from decreased meltwater during periods of drought,” he said.
This is in New Zealand and I know from travelling there over the past 40 odd years the changes, you used to be able to view on the West Coast Franz Joseph and Fox glaciers from the road and walk up to them. Not possible now they have retreated too far back to access by walking, only helicopter now. The lake that has formed at the base of Tasman glacier accessed from Mt Cook national park on the other side of the Alps is growing bigger. I rode a zodiac past icebergs up to the face of the glacier, that was over ten years ago I think.
Regards to all
Hi everyone,
You may not know that they have found another continent which is mainly underwater with New Zealand and New Caladonia being parts of it called Zealandia.
There is now a hypothesis than the Zealandia switch is what caused the melting of the glaciers etc around the world 18,000 years ago has been switched on again by guess who. It’s worth a read, at least we will have a better idea why our feet are wet.
Regards to all
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealandia
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379120307332
All in keeping with the current science I have read although I was unaware of the Zealandia Switch. Yes, a rapid change seems to be in our future, sadly. At this point, our emissions trajectory is for zero ice on the planet (~230 ft sea level rise-- without calculating thermal expansion) but I hope we avert that outcome. That amount of sea level rise would not happen quickly but we could have enough sea level rise to create global trouble in the not-too-distant future.
@raincloud I hope it doesn’t happen, but sometimes I think the human race is not particularly bright.
A small bit of positive news for cleaning and removing nanoplastics from water. Link from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology.
Both in laboratory tests and in a larger test facility located directly on the premises of the Zurich Water Works, the biologically active slow sand filter was the most effective at retaining nanoparticles – achieving an efficacy level in the region of 99.9%.