8/10/21 Climate Change Becomes Undeniable, and the UN Sends a Horrible Warning

A global choir has sprung up in the last year, and they're not singing Hallelujah.

The recent floods, wildfires, heat waves, sinkholes, and glacier melts have broken onto the political stage with such force that nobody with wits can argue that climate change isn't real. The biggest consortium of diplomats and hagglers in the known world -- the United Nations -- has issued a report by its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): Climate change is "unequivocally" caused by humans.

Worse, they think that global temperatures will reach a significant warming milestone in the next 20 years. The milestone is 1.5 degrees Centigrade. That's how much hotter the earth's average temperature will be unless the countries of the world slam the brakes on pollution, NOW.

“We’re already reeling, clearly, from so many of these impacts that the report highlights, especially in the category of extremes that are gripping these headlines and causing so much damage, but of course the 1.5 degree C world is notably and discernibly worse,” said one of the report's authors.

For comparison, 1.5 degrees Centigrade equals 34.7 degrees Fahrenheit. But no, an early fall day will not go from 60 degrees this year to 95 degrees in 2041. The difference between 20 degrees Celsius and 21.5 degrees Celsius is 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

It means, however, that a lot of natural systems that keep the seasons running on time are going to take a major hit. You've heard about the Gulf Stream faltering? Like that.

Rising temperatures are average temperatures, with huge effects in unexpected places. Here's a quote from a 2019 article on ClimateRealityProject.org. "Think of 1.5 degrees not as an absolute line in the sand, but as a general indicator of where many climate impacts – on balance – go from destructive to catastrophic. It’s the sign on the door that leads to somewhere very dark indeed, somewhere no one wants to go."

We're well on the way, with crazy swings in temperatures and the force of storms. With people freezing to death in Texas, for heaven's sake! And counting on the Cajun Navy to keep people from drowning when there just aren't enough brains in the bureaucracy and boots on the ground to step up to the task. Imagine the suffering in other parts of the world.

And here we are talking about Biden's bold goal of making all our vehicles electric by 2030. Seems damned trivial, doesn't it?

Gear up, folks. We're going to be taking a long, hot journey into the future -- and trying ever harder to take it all back.

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What would it take to prepare for such catastrophic natural events as the deadly tornadoes we see in the midwest every year?

What would a climate that hot do to your neighborhood and your family?

Is it possible to turn the situation around?

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/566801-climate-report-warns-temps-to-rise-15-degrees-celsius-over-preindustrial-levels?rl=1 

https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/why-15-degrees-danger-line-global-warming

Photo: "Heavy Rain, Flash Flooding Possible Across Parts of Lower Mississippi Valley, Southeast" by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0