The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and your usual assortment of organizations keep warning that one of the dangers of climate change is the increase in wildfires.  In the U.S. there was a doubling of forest fire burned area over the 1985 to 2015 period.  And it will get worse into the future.   When Donald Trump re-assumes office on January 20, you can be certain that there will be a major shift in concern.  Maybe they will use data from  Our World in Data,  for if you click on that, you will see that from 2012 to 2024, the area burnt by wildfires has remained relative constant, if not reduced over the past dozen years. Some of this makes sense, for drier conditions mean less growth, leading to smaller wild fires.  However. as we will see about Los Angeles County, the exact opposite situation prevailed.  It rained so much a year ago, that there was so much dried up biomass, with seasonally natural wind conditions followed by ...

The end and beginning of the year are a transition celebrated worldwide.    The first nation to celebrate New Year 2025  was Kiribati, at 5AM ET.  This is because the International Date Line where the day begins is in the Pacific Ocean. At 6AM ET came New Zealand. Then at 8AM ET, Sydney, Australia.  More than million watched, live. 10AM, Tokyo, Japan. 10AM ET, Seoul, South Korea. 11AM ET, Hong Kong. 11AM ET, Beijing, China. 11AM New York, Taipei, Taiwan, their tallest building, Taiwan 101. Midnight New York, Bangkok, Thailand. 3AM New York, Dubai, UAE, Burj Khalifa, tallest building in the world. What are the final places to see the new year? Baker Island and Howland Island.  However, no one lives there. 6AM ET, American Samoa hits midnight. 5AM ET, Hawaii. 4AM ET, French Polynesia and Alaska. 3AM ET, the Pacific Coast of U.S. and Canada. Maybe the most seen new year celebration occurs at Times Square in New York City.   The following list is from...

Having just experienced various  Christmas Markets  in our European River Cruise, I can identify with the scene today when a driver crashed his car into one in Magdeburg, Germany, killing at least two, leaving more than 50 injured, some critically.  There are supposedly up to 3,000 of these markets just in Germany. This is December 20, 2024, the shortest day of the year for Honolulu, when the winter solstice will occur at 11:20PM.  Interestingly enough, the winter solstice for New York City will occur tomorrow, Saturday, December 21, at 4:20AM.  All this happens because the axis of our Earth is tilted 23.5 degrees. Before the topic of the day, I continue the crisis of what began yesterday.  U.S. House Republicans finally voted on and passed Plan C to avoid a government shutdown.  The Trump clause (Plan B) to abolish the debt ceiling  (he wants to spend money recklessly )  was beaten back by ....REPUBLICANS,  38 of them .  Speaker Mi...