Month: November 2016

Standing for Standing Rock: Veterans Protect Protectors

More than 2,000 veterans and police officers have pledged to protect the water protectors gathered on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline construction that will drill and transport crude oil at two confluences with the Missouri River, one of them near sacred land of the Sioux Nation.

Far from the latest news about the shenanigans in Washington, D.C., Americans are being punished for protecting their right to water–a commons that has been denied to American citizens in Flint, Michigan and other locations in the U.S.  PAY ATTENTION! Right now, the president elect is appointing people to high office who are going to further erode our basic rights to clean air, clean water, and clean food!

The events occurring in our democracy are similar to those in countries that Americans have opposed due to poor treatment of its citizens. ALERT: we are one of those countries!

If you have not written your representatives or called them, now is the time. We cannot let the military/industrial complex mistreat the people gathered at the Sacred Stone Camp, nor can we allow the completion of a pipeline that will threaten the water supply of millions of Americans. ACT NOW.

What about food supply?

“Changing climate equals changing water” is the phrase that many water and climate experts in the southwest are using today. As the temperature increases, and less rain falls, soils are depleted of moisture in a cycle that turns healthy soil into barren landscapes.

The seeds that we use, the means of careful water use to grow them, and the quality of the fruit and legumes produced are now in a precarious time when climate is less certain. Seeds that are specifically adapted to a region with long genetic history may become more important due to their unique resiliency to heat and drought.

Our commercial, industrialized food system is highly dependent on predictable conditions not only in the agricultural fields but also in the transportation systems that now intersect with a global market system. If too hot, planes may not be able to fly; if sea level rise or large storms destroy ports, cargo ships are not able to pick up or drop off cargo. When food is not shipped in a timely manner, it can rot as it sits in place as with fresh fruit and vegetables.

In Threshold, Ed Flanagan, food bank operations director and climate change denier, has to confront his beliefs as his normal food supply sources are in turmoil.

The dependable food supply we are accustomed to in developed countries is at a threshold with current and predicted climate change realities.  Protecting our food supply personally, nationally, and internationally should be part of the work we all can do to build resilience to changes in our climate.

 

What is GRACE?

In my new novel, Threshold, Dr. Carla Conner is a climate scientist who is part of the GRACE team.

GRACE consists of two identical spacecraft that fly about 220 kilometers (137 miles) apart in a polar orbit 500 kilometers (310 miles) above Earth. GRACE maps Earth’s gravity field by making accurate measurements of the distance between the two satellites, using GPS and a microwave ranging system. It is providing scientists from all over the world with an efficient and cost-effective way to map Earth’s gravity field with unprecedented accuracy. The results from this mission are yielding crucial information about the distribution and flow of mass within Earth and its surroundings.

The gravity variations studied by GRACE include: changes due to surface and deep currents in the ocean; runoff and ground water storage on land masses; exchanges between ice sheets or glaciers and the ocean; and variations of mass within Earth.

Dr. Connor is also a member of the Colorado River Research Group.

In these two capacities she is aware of the shrinking reservoirs for Colorado River water which supplies 40% of Tucson’s water supply. She is very concerned that the “powers that be” react sufficiently to avoid a water crisis.

Book Sales and Readings in Tucson

Tomorrow I will be a Bookman’s on Wilmot and Speedway from Noon to 2 pm for their Authors’ Fair. Hope you can drop by and chat and take a look at Threshold.

If you have a church group or book club that might wish to read a story about Tucson, with familiar settings and characters, give me a call at: 520-400-4117 or email me at susanleefeathers@gmail.com

Threshold makes an enormous contribution to contemporary literature by teaching readers—in engaging and utterly consumable terms—about the physics of “the planet’s human induced fever.” Susan Feathers stages the need to know as part of the narrative dynamic. Key characters —academics, school teachers, museum biologists—understand only too well the processes by which the earth is growing hotter, while others don’t. The latter are in some cases too young or inexperienced to know; in other cases they’re complacent or too far in denial to face them. Those who know teach those who don’t. Through lively dialogues concerning, for example, how sunlight gets converted to electricity; or how oceans absorb solar energy; or how neighborhoods can set up electrical generating systems, we learn along with the characters. We’re invited to go through the same processes of recognition and assimilation that the various students in the story experience. READ A REVIEW     ~ Mary Lawlor, Muhlenberg College

 

Stories of Climate Change

The Guardian brings readers stories of climate change around the world. The average increase in temperature globally is now 1.3 C. [ A 5 degree increase in Celsius temperature corresponds to a 9 degree increase in Fahrenheit.] When you think of the immensity of our planet, this is a huge heat input to raise the average high that much across its surface. The oceans absorb much of that heat. Fifty-percent of the Great Barrier Reef’s corals are now dead, in part from increased warming, and in part from the increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere which turns the ocean slightly more acid.

2016 is likely to be the hottest year on record adding to three previous years’ record heat. Most people are feeling it but some are all readying suffering extreme impacts.

In Threshold, people living in Tucson experience the heat in an event that shocks the city and the whole of the Southwest. Characters much find ways to adapt to the new normal. Read here.

Climate change deniers ignore the physics and chemistry of the earth – selectively. We accept these principles in everything we do from weather reporting, to heating our coffee, to warming or cooling our homes. But climate change caused by us is the contentious issue. What’s the evidence that the current rapid increase is human caused?

See NASA’s Vital Signs of the Planet to explore the evidence upon which the majority of scientists now agree.

Threshold Launch Today!

Threshold - a Novel about Climate Change in the Southwest
Novel about Climate Change in Tucson and the Southwest

Threshold is available today on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and e-book sellers.

This story is timely and written from a place of love and concern for country I love, people I cherish, and a planet that has enriched my life.

I hope you will enjoy this story and let me know how you like it, or what it might have caused you to think about climate change in your own “neck of the woods.”

Thanks to Fireship Press and to all of you who helped me over the years to make this book a reality.