Climate Change

A wall of water, perhaps 9 feet high that was spawned by Hurricane Dorian, swept across the northern end of Cape Lookout National Seashore on North Carolina's Outer Banks, swamping historic Portsmouth Village and, overall, slicing up the seashore's barrier islands into islets.

I remember when my very first Tempestry arrived in the mail. Pulling out the list of instructions, I held the bright, tightly wound balls of yarn in my palm, contemplating the data they would eventually reveal to me. A science and fiber project, each row of each Tempestry represents the high temperature of a single day.

Under Ryan Zinke the Interior Department has been conducting a "siege on science," according to the Union Of Concerned Scientists, which wants the next Congress to do a better job of monitoring what the department is doing and require it to take climate change seriously and plan for coping with its impacts.

Yellowstone National Park escaped the summer without any large conflagrations in its forests, but that could be an anomaly under the current pace of climate change. Pikas could vanish from parks such as Lassen Volcanic and Great Basin. Glaciers and Joshua trees could be seen only in photographs and paintings in their namesake parks, and Virgin Islands and Hawai'i Volcanoes national parks could see diminished rainfall.