Sunday, January 10, 2016

The Winds of Climate Change are Howling!


All along the watchtower the winds of climate change are howling


Posted: Tuesday, January 5, 2016 7:12 am
Granted, the New Year has dawned in Berks County with a bit of a chill, but we’re talking big picture here.  Paraphrasing Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix just a bit: There are many here among us who feel that climate change is but a joke. But you and I we've been through that and this is not our fate. So let us not talk falsely now. The hour's getting late. Mention two dirty words -- global warming -- and the conversation, with Mach 5 acceleration, becomes a squirrel cage.
Cynics paw the ground in frustration and their brain cells start sulking because of fixed mindsets that the whole concept is a crock.
I'm not accusing man-induced emissions of being the primary culprit in global warming ... although personally I suspect they play a strong supporting role.
Whether it's solely historical cyclical change or such change also is spiked by emissions, there should be little doubt except for the deaf, dumb and blind around us that global warming is as real as the nose on your face -- a nose that likely was dripping perspiration on some balmy December days around here.
There is more carbon dioxide, a powerful greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere than at any time in human history. To be blunt, Mother Nature is gassed.
Each month of 2015 saw record-breaking average temperatures as a result of climate change, though not to the extreme degrees observed in December.
Consequently, Gatorade has become the drink of choice as hydration has become vital to folks whose sweat runs off them in small rivers even when they aren't doing ditch-digging work.
Of course, much like the next guy, I would much rather spend winter days wearing shorts and flip-flops instead of a parka and snow galoshes, not to mention having ice in my drinks and not on my driveway.
But global warming is like eating a bag of potato chips. Good for the here and now, but pregnant with baleful aftershocks.
Record warm ocean surface temperatures in tandem with El Niño in the Pacific Ocean drove recent severe weather that left a trail of destruction from the U.S. to Australia, Britain and Latin America. Global weather patterns were dancing an ugly Bulgarian polka, with thousands of throats gulping with despair as their homes and possessions were leveled by tornadoes and floods.
People await weather forecasts with hyperventilation, anticipation and trepidation because violent weather patterns definitely are a busy bit of tapestry often freighted with life-threatening peril.
El Niño “has allowed more moisture to enter the atmosphere through evaporation,” said Bob Henson, a meteorologist and climate blogger for Weather Underground. “We’ve had a series of very warm, moist air masses moving up from the tropics. That’s part of what’s fueled the storms and flooding in the South, record warmth in the East and some of the U.K.’s storms.”
But experts caution that El Niño alone doesn’t explain the flooding, tornadoes and other extreme weather around the world.
“We’ve had big El Niños before, but we’ve never seen late December heat like this, with temperatures soaring into the ‘70s in the northeastern U.S.,” said Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State.
For the doubting Thomas types -- some of whom may still believe that the world is flat -- global warming is a significant threat and it needs to be confronted.
It is not mumbo-jumbo, hocus-pocus, kickapoo-joy science stuff concocted by liberal zealots with an agenda.
Those who believe otherwise are devoid of any cognitive thought; their denial rooted in something instinctive and primal.
The message that global warming is dangerous was reiterated with a global voice recently when 195 countries agreed to a worldwide pact, known as the Paris Agreement, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as soon as possible in an attempt to keep temperatures from rising less than 2 degrees Celsius.
Easier said than done. The global economy still runs on fossil fuels, and there are plenty of political and technological barriers to replacing the status quo.
The United States has made impressive progress in slowing the growth of carbon emissions through improved energy and fuel efficiency, replacing coal with natural gas as a baseline energy source and the increasing affordability of renewable energy like solar and wind.
But much more needs to be done ... such as a national tax on carbon emissions; confronting the problem of methane leaks in the oil and gas industry; a focus on funding research related to energy efficiency, energy storage and decarbonization technology to help undo emissions after they've occurred; rewriting regulations that stand in the way of clean energy; preparing for the inevitable consequences of climate change by building storm-surge barriers and other infrastructure in low-lying coastal areas prone to flooding; and girding our nation's power grid to better withstand severe weather, which  is the leading cause of major outages.
And there have been recent reports that a virus spreading throughout Brazil causing brain damage and malformations in infants could be the result of global warming. Researchers have suggested the Zika virus, which has stoked widespread panic in pregnant women in Mexico and Brazil, is likely the result of an upsurge in the mosquito population brought on by global warming.
It is tempting to blame every deadly storm or warm winter day on global warming, but the reality is that the real consequences will be decades in the future. What we do or don't do today will have significant consequences for our children and grandchildren.
Our generation is squarely in the crosshairs and we cannot flinch an inch from that yoke of responsibility.
We don't want a mammoth chorus of our descendants echoing Mick Jagger: I was born in a cross-fire hurricane. And I howled at the morning driving rain. But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas!
end quote from:
http://www.bctv.org/opinion/all-along-the-watchtower-the-winds-of-climate-change-are/article_27f097d2-b2ed-11e5-9bbc-771eb06de1fa.html

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