This NASA video dramatically shows CO2 emissions from the heavily industrialized regions of the Global North.
Arctic Amplification is altering the Jet Stream a major driver of weather, probably making extreme weather the new normal, as mankind's industrial carbon emissions alter the Earth's climate for a period that will probably be measured in centuries, not decades.
We should remember that the corrupt Administration of George W. Bush delayed NASA's plans to launch the satellite to study CO2 emissions. Then when the first satellite was finally launched in 2009 it crashed on launch into the ocean.
Blind to the threat
By Emmarie Huetteman
The Bush Years
In 2005, the National Research Council released a grim report on its study of earth observation from space, saying the “system of environmental satellites is at risk of collapse.” The 18-person committee of academics and researchers noted an “alarming” weakening of U.S. support for such programs.
The World Bank had a blunt message for world leaders in this tweet:
The World Bank has just released part three of its 'Turn Down the Heat' reports titled: Confronting the New Climate Normal.
Confronting the New Climate Normal pdf
Dramatic climate changes and weather extremes are already affecting millions of people around the world, damaging crops and coastlines and putting water security at risk.
Across the three regions studied in this report, record-breaking temperatures are occurring more frequently, rainfall has increased in intensity in some places, while drought-prone regions like the Mediterranean are getting dryer. A significant increase in tropical North Atlantic cyclone activity is affecting the Caribbean and Central America.
There is growing evidence that warming close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is locked-in to the Earth’s atmospheric system due to past and predicted emissions of greenhouse gases, and climate change impacts such as extreme heat events may now be unavoidable.
As the planet warms, climatic conditions, heat and other weather extremes which occur once in hundreds of years, if ever, and considered highly unusual or unprecedented today would become the “new climate normal” as we approach 4°C—a frightening world of increased risks and global instability.
The consequences for development would be severe as crop yields decline, water resources change, diseases move into new ranges, and sea levels rise. Ending poverty, increasing global prosperity and reducing global inequality, already difficult, will be much harder with 2°C warming, but at 4°C there is serious doubt whether these goals can be achieved at all.
Unfortunately world leaders are not responding to these dire warnings with anything near the urgency required to alter our role in accelerating these drastic global changes. Almost certainly these will be long term changes that future generations will struggle to cope with for centuries to come.
Update: I am reposting this diary after making some substantial edits.