climate change in La Laguna

Everybody knows about it, nobody acts upon it. To be fair, many people are doing something to mitigate it, but they're not the bulk of humanity. Climate change is here and is here to stay. My prediction (why do I always have to predict something?) is that the weather is going to be so bad that we'll lose much of our infrastructure and only half of the population will survive by the middle of the century: 4.5 thousand million people out of the 9 thousand million that are projected for 2050 (yes, "thousand million" or 1x10^9, because I live in the UK and a billion traditionally is 1x10^12; this also conforms to the Spanish "billón" Ü ). Obviously, I don't want anybody to die, but it's as if we're begging for it. We've neglected the environment for too long, I don't need to expand on this because we can read it on the news any time. What I want to point out in this post is the fact that, because I have not lived in a city for more than 4 years in the last 12, I hadn't noticed any differences in the year-to-year weather, until now. I lived in my hometown my first 18 years, then I moved and continued moving. Now that I live in the UK I don't have the chance to go back home too often (every time I do it I largely contribute to global warming through transatlantic flights, though) and because of that I may be mistaken, but it seems that things are changing. During my childhood, I remember short winters with temperatures as low as 0 degC; at the beginning of February we would be wearing a jumper and a jacket in the mornings and they would be inside the backpack at midday. I recall long summers with weeks on end reaching 40 degC, the occasional rain, and dust storms three to five times a year. All this is from memories not from official records, I'd like to point out. On the 12th of December 1997, we had the first snow after about 30 years (that's what the people would say; it was definitely the first in a very long time). Then, before the year 2000, there was much rain, enough to fill up both reservoirs in the region which required the River Nazas to run through its natural course dividing once more the states of Coahuila and Durango. That hasn't happened again, but this year has been a bit uncommon in that respect. I read about a year ago that the average volume ("volume" in its loose sense) of precipitation in the region was 100 mm, this was just after the first rains in about 14 months of dryness (with a flash storm somewhere in the middle on July 9th, 2012). Well, all this is kind of normal in an arid place; what is not normal is that this July we had at least three flash storms easily surpassing those 100 mm of precipitation and, even, the 224 mm claimed in a more recent report which link is at the bottom of this post (said report also says that in 2008 the temperature reached 48 degC; I'm glad I wasn't there). Furthermore, yesterday the Vaqueros play-off game against Diablos in the Mexican baseball league had to be cancelled due to another storm (revealing our justified lack of experience for dealing with rains). There you go, now that the extreme weather is affecting our favourite pastimes, are we going to do something about it? http://www.semarnat.gob.mx/archivosanteriores/temas/gestionambiental/calidaddelaire/Documents/Calidad%20del%20aire/Proaires/ProAires_Vigentes/9_ProAire%20Comarca%20Lagunera%202010-2015.pdf

More predictions. European football

For the last six years, I have taken a strong interest in European football competitions. To be more precise, I have followed a few leagues, and I have documented the last six UEFA Champions League (UCL) and UEFA Europa League (UEL) competitions in a spreadsheet that contains some useless details of the participant teams. Yesterday, I was going through the files, filling up what developed in the past week (completion of the third preliminary round of both tournaments), and I realised that my favourite team this year (St Pölten, Austria) had been eliminated. This team was my favourite because it comes from a division that is not the highest in the country. For those who don't know the rule, a team in a lower division could still play in the UEFA Europa League by reaching the national Cup final; from next year onwards, such a team has to win the national Cup. Many other teams have participated being from lower divisions, sometimes a few every year. In case you're interested, FC Vaduz is the one that comes up most frequently because, being from Liechtenstein, they have to play in the Swiss League and most of the time they are in the second or third tier of the Swiss football pyramid. Incidentally, FC Vaduz was promoted to the Swiss Super League last summer and now they play in the highest tier of Swiss football; they're already out of international competition this year. Something, then, came to my attention whilst revising the files, and it is that there are teams that play 20 or so matches in Europe, reaching the finals of the UEL, usually. Let's make an account of the last six years looking at the runs of the teams in the finals of both European competitions in next table:

In the table, the teams in bold font are the winners of the competition and the numbers in brackets are the number of stages that given team had to play during the tournament. Generally, 5 stages means 13 matches, whereas 8 stages is 19 matches. In the past six years no team has played 20 matches. Generally, teams in the final of UCL are directly qualified to the proper event (Group stage) and only come from four countries. In UEL, most of the teams in the final had to play 17 games in competition; that did not happen in 2012-2013 (*That season, the team that played more matches in Europe was Fenerbahce with 18). Also, usually one team reaching the final began its participation in UCL and then was downgraded to UEL. Only three countries have been represented in the UEL finals. With all that information from the past 6 years, I suggest that this season, the finalists for UCL will be Roma (my team in Europe, this might be the year) and Manchester City (have more potential than other teams, I think), whilst Torino (bringing a 4th country into the mix, good signings) and Arsenal (from UCL, seems strong enough) will play in the UEL final. Obviously, we're just beginning the season and not only effort but luck (in the tourney's draws) will play a part in the lifting of the trophies at the beginning of next summer. Here my speculative post ends. What do you think?