In case you were wondering why Climate Change is getting the attention of Democratic candidates, and why “Climate Crisis” is finally getting some traction, the BBC’s Matt McGrath had a report from their Met Office with a grim prediction back in February that more than justifies it:
The Met Office is forecasting that temperatures for each of the next five years are likely to be 1C or more above pre-industrial levels.
In the next five years there's also a chance we'll see a year in which the average global temperature rise could be greater than 1.5C.
That's seen as a critical threshold for climate change.
If the data matches the forecast, then the decade from 2014-2023 will be the warmest in more than 150 years of record keeping.
Here’s a graphic from NASA that shows where the heat is on.
As of right now, Europe is experiencing a heat wave; record temperatures may be set in France and Germany.
Several videos at the link show what’s happening, explain the weather pattern heating up the continent, and show people coping with the heat which is expected to persist for serveral days. (If you are wondering, 40°C is 104°F) Here’s some of the precautions the French are taking — and why. From the link:
...Temporary fountains have been put in place and public pools will stay open later as part of an extreme heat plan.
...Water will also be distributed and a care plan will be put in effect for vulnerable people including the elderly, as high humidity will make 40C feel like 47C in the capital. [116F]
...Comparisons are being drawn to the heat wave France experienced in August 2003 - in which almost 15,000 people died. In the space of a single month, the top three temperatures ever recorded were all set, topping out at 44.1C on 12 August.
...The city of Paris has activated its "level three" extreme heat plan - level four, the maximum, has never been used.
Part of that plan involves designating some 900 "cool places" that have lower temperatures than the surrounding city streets - such as parks, air-conditioned public halls, and areas where temporary fountains and mist machines have been set up. The city is also keeping an extra 13 parks open at night for people to cool down in.
On Friday, France recorded the highest temperature ever experienced at any location in that country. The 44.3° C reading (about 111° F) at the town of Carpentras is an all-time record, but it’s just part of a massive heat wave that has been baking much of Europe. The heat wave has closed schools and businesses unequipped to deal with such temperatures. It’s sparked record wildfires in Spain and led to water-rationing across several nations.
Europe is not the only region experiencing heat extremes. From the New York Times as of June 13, 2019:
NEW DELHI — One of India’s longest and most intense heat waves in decades, with temperatures reaching 123 degrees, has claimed at least 36 lives since it began in May, and the government has warned that the suffering might continue as the arrival of monsoon rains has been delayed.
India’s heat waves have grown particularly intense in the past decade, as climate change has intensified around the world, killing thousands of people and affecting an increasing number of states. This year, the extreme temperatures have struck large parts of northern and central India, with Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra among the worst-hit states.
The death toll is undoubtedly higher by now, and an additional problem is water supplies that are drying up. Dramatic images from space show the changes.
Satellite footage released earlier this month shows the city’s four reservoirs, including nearby Lake Puzhal, have severely shrunk since last June. The reservoirs have a capacity of 318.8 billion litres, but they are down to a collective 651 million litres, according to government data reported by the Hindustan Times. The reservoirs have been reduced to 0.2 per cent of their capacity, according to state government data.
The start of monsoon season is expected to bring some relief — but an additional consequence of global warming is more intense storms. From the NY Times:
In the western state of Gujarat, officials were bracing for extreme weather of a different sort: A major cyclone was approaching with winds over 100 miles an hour. Flights and train journeys were canceled, and about 300,000 people were evacuated. But early Thursday it appeared that the cyclone might skirt Gujarat.
It was the second major storm facing India this year. In March, Cyclone Fani struck Odisha, in eastern India. The early warning system worked remarkably well there, with the government evacuating about a million people and avoiding the widespread deaths caused by past storms.
The US is still struggling with massive flooding in the center of the country as Scientific American reports:
High waters continue to swamp towns and agricultural fields throughout the Mississippi basin
The 2019 Mississippi River flood fight is going to slog deep into the summer — and maybe much longer.
While communities north of St. Louis are beginning the expensive path to recovery after record-breaking winter and spring precipitation and runoff, people below the Missouri River are shoveling mud from their houses and praying for a dry spell.
The Lower Mississippi Valley remains in a flood crisis as high water continues to swamp streets, homes, businesses, sewage and water treatment plants, and farm fields, including across some of the poorest counties in the United States.
Although Democrats are acknowledging the Climate Crisis, as the exchanges on the first two debates demonstrated, Charles P. Pierce looks at the Trump administration and says:
CNN Presents..."Ladies and gentlemen, your Secretary of Agriculture!"
Perdue told CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich in the interview released Tuesday that "we don't know" the cause of climate change, adding, "and obviously scientists -- many scientists believe that it's human caused, other scientists believe it's not," Perdue [said].
"So if it's not human caused, then what is it?" Yurkevich asked.
"You know, I think it's weather patterns, frankly. And you know, and they change, as I said. It rained yesterday, it's a nice pretty day today. So the climate does change in short increments and in long increments," Perdue responded.
Pierce had an earlier piece that lays out just how invidious Perdue’s Department of Agriculture has become on climate issues:
On Monday, Politico brought us a report about how this mischief is crippling our response to the great existential crisis of our time, namely, by burying any mention of the effects of the climate crisis on American agriculture—or, to use its brand name, food.
The studies range from a groundbreaking discovery that rice loses vitamins in a carbon-rich environment — a potentially serious health concern for the 600 million people world-wide whose diet consists mostly of rice — to a finding that climate change could exacerbate allergy seasons to a warning to farmers about the reduction in quality of grasses important for raising cattle.
And in Oregon, Republican Senators have apparently blocked action on Climate bills by A) going into hiding to prevent a quorum for voting, and B) through threats of violence. Rolling Stone notes the Koch brothers and other corporate interests have their fingers in the pie. Some excerpts:
...SALEM, ORE. — Massive logging trucks circled the streets around the capitol, flying American flags in their truck beds and blasting horns, as hundreds of right-wing protesters rallied in support of Oregon’s fugitive GOP senators, whose week-long walkout appears to have killed the state’s ambitious cap-and-trade climate legislation.
The rally was a show of force for rural Oregonians. Hundreds of demonstrators, mostly white men, some in hard hats, some wearing camo and hunting orange, many sporting unruly beards, spilled out over the steps in front of the statehouse. The plastic tanks of an irrigation truck parked out front were spray-painted with the words “NO ON HB 2020” — referring to the climate bill. A cluster of III% militiamen gathered in black sweatshirts reading “When Tyranny Becomes Law * Rebellion Becomes Duty.”
...Before leaving Salem, one GOP state senator, Brian Boquist, responded with incendiary rhetoric. On the floor of the chamber, he first threatened the state senate president, Peter Courtney, saying: “If you send the State Police to get me, Hell’s coming to visit you personally.” He later menaced state troopers themselves: “Send bachelors and come heavily armed,” he said on camera. “I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon.”
...The GOP legislators who staged the walkout are well funded by carbon polluters, including Koch Industries, which owns a Georgia Pacific timber mill that would be regulated under the bill. According to an analysis by the Oregonian, the walkout senators are primarily funded by corporate interests:
The Climate Crisis is something that should generate a unified global response; unfortunately it is colliding with a political crisis fueled by oligarchs, authoritarians, and ideologues intent on consolidating their grip on power and wealth. It is threatening a break down of the civil order and the rule of law on top of the stresses already coming from climate disruption.
Give Inslee credit for insisting that Climate had to be on the debate agenda; there seemed to be no disagreement that it’s important — just a difference on how the candidates would prioritize it. Of all the candidates on the stage over the two nights, IMHO Warren is the one who seems to have connected all the dots; the Climate Crisis is the result of one thing at the core: the corruption from greed backed by wealth out of control.
Who is this economy really working for? It’s doing great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top. It’s doing great for giant drug companies. It’s just not doing great for people who are trying to get a prescription filled. It’s doing great for people who want to invest in private prisons, just not for the African Americans and Latinx whose families are torn apart, whose lives are destroyed and whose communities are ruined. It’s doing great for giant oil companies that want to drill everywhere, just not for the rest of us who are watching climate change bear down upon us.
When you’ve got a government, when you’ve got an economy that does great for those with money and isn’t doing great for everyone else, that is corruption, pure and simple. We need to call it out. We need to attack it head on. And we need to make structural change in our government, in our economy and in our country.
emphasis added
The only debate we should be having going forward on Climate is:
- What do we do about it?
- How fast should we do it?
- How the Hell we get the Republican saboteurs out of the way?
Here are my answers:
- Everything
- ASAP
- By any means necessary
Time is not on our side.