Climate Change Poem 4

Yellow-banded Wasp Moth, August 2007

Two global events are occurring on September 24, 2011:

1. Moving Planet, a worldwide rally to demand solutions to the climate crisis.


2. 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a demonstration/celebration of poetry to promote serious social, environmental, and political change.


I thought: Why not do both?

Barring an emergency, I am posting from midnight to midnight, one poem per hour (at any time during that hour). That's starting from 00:00-01:00 and ending at 23:00-24:00 Eastern Time today.

All the poems are sonnets. Each takes its cue from an article dealing with climate change. The articles had been posted beginning on September 15 -- the date of the 24-hour Climate Reality Project that inspired me to do this -- to September 19, the day I drafted the twenty-fourth poem.


The poem for Hour 4 takes its cue from "Modeling the Local Impact of Global Climate Change" (National Science Foundation, Sept. 15, 2011).

Local Atmosphere

The grid official climate models use
Are not designed to peek at hill and dale.
Their picture's big for people to peruse.
But what if you could make a smaller scale

For zooming in, to study local storms
And microclimates otherwise ignored?
Masao Kanamitsu tweaks the norms.
The factors over which his mind has pored --

Topography, and plants, and river flow --
Give him a resolution more precise.
A sixty-two-mile grid point shrinks, to show
A six-mile definition. Very nice!

From broad-brush tools of global climate change,
His work in Texas narrows down the range.

Audio (1:16):

Part of the Solution website (chosen at random)
Matter of Trust -- an ecological public charity that concentrates on manmade surplus, natural abundance, and eco-education.
Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks.

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