That Climate Change is upon us should not be something treated as a mere political issue, one that falls along party lines. Quite simply, if the weather is changing as the climate shifts, if established weather patterns are disrupted or are morphing into something new, that has real world consequences. And as far as "IF" goes, it no longer applies. It's happening.
Where we live, how we live, the crops we grow, the infrastructure we build, all that is based on a certain set of assumptions about the climate: how much rain will fall and when; how hot/cold it will get and when; whether there will be floods, blizzards, hail... When those assumptions are no longer valid, when those with the responsibility for making decisions based on them fail to see what's happening, when the people who depend on those decisions do not pay attention... chaos is in the works.
In the U.S. we are increasingly aware of the California drought and the lack of snow cover. The people of Massachusetts got a hard lesson last winter of what happens when the jet stream shifts and snow doesn't stop falling. Texas has had a huge chunk taken out of the drought there - at the cost of massive flooding. The Midwest and the East are experiencing severe storms with ridiculous amounts of lightning, rainfall, and tornadoes. Violent, extreme weather at unpredictable intervals is becoming the new normal - and it's global.
At the New York Times, there is a frightening video of what is happening in Iran. The country has been having an extended drought, but neither the government nor the people seem to be able to grasp it. The Empty River of Life is a harbinger of serious trouble ahead.
Signs of the drought in Iran — which, according to experts, has lasted for more than two decades — are not very visible in the capital. There are many parks and trees because of the active city government.
But make no mistake: The city is dry. Its underground water supplies are depleted, and officials have long warned that, one day, the trees will dry up and water might need to be rationed.
Outside Tehran the situation is much worse, and some experts predict that the south will become uninhabitable if the drought persists.
Still, to the dismay of those aware of Iran’s water problems, many in Tehran keep washing their cars with water from wells that they somehow believe will fill up miraculously — even though average rainfall has dropped and the city’s population has tripled in the past 30 years.
emphasis added
Watch the video, read the article - and then ask yourself: do we seem as oblivious here?
We have a number of extremely wealthy people who stand to be financially inconvenienced if we stop burning carbon. Out of pure greed and stubborness, they and their bought and paid for political agents are actively blocking efforts to do something, anything about human impact on climate; they refuse to even allow talking about what is happening.
If there's any among the horde of Republican presidential wanna-be's who dares admit Climate Change is real and that humans are causing it, they are keeping an extremely low profile. We're talking about a party that holds Congress, dominates the Supreme Court, and has control of far too many states. They are doing everything they can to block action at the Federal level. Despite the disasters building for the years ahead, they can't deal with them because they've made it an article of faith that it's not happening, or it is but there's nothing to be done. The lemmings will not turn away from the cliff's edge, or even admit that there is a cliff - and they have a lot of money behind them.
They're going to provide a lot of material for some future Jared Diamond.