At What Point Do We Do Something About Global Warming?

Let's have a very brief recap of just a few of the events of the last nearly 2 years, shall we?

--Nearly all of the entire continent of Australia was in drought, record high temperatures and then it burned

'Unprecedented' globally: more than 20% of Australia's forests burnt in bushfires

2019 Was The Year The World Burned 

--The Arctic and Siberia and elsewhere hit high temperatures of OVER 100 DEGREES for the first time in recorded history

Temperature hits 100 degrees in Arctic Russian town

Temperature Hits 100 Degrees Above Arctic Circle

--California has had a record 4 million acres of it burn this year with, again, drought and record high temperatures and now 

California exceeds 4 million acres burned by wildfires in 2020

--Colorado is in the midst of its largest ever area burning in wildfires

Record-setting Cameron Peak wildfire consumes more than 200,000 acres in Colorado

So with all this alone, shall we do something, some things on and about climate change and global warming?

Finally?  At long last?

At what point do we do something? At what point do we learn?

Soon?

What's it going to take? What more proof do we need beyond even just this short list of already-occurred, occurring events?

America, a Reality Check

So understand where we are.

• California is burning.
• They also experienced their highest, worst summer temperatures in recorded history this year, a few weeks ago.
• Colorado is now burning.
• A derecho went through Iowa a week ago, destroying many buildings and millions of dollars of crops, making it far worse for farmers yet.
• A hurricane just smashed into the Gulf yesterday morning.
• More than 180,000 Americans have now died from this pandemic, more than any other nation.

But Donald Trump wants you to fear someone else's Presidency.

Oh, and also hate that other political party.

Right.
Got it.

86 45

BYEDON

Still more:

U.S. economy plunged an annualized 31.7% in second quarter

More People Need to Know What's Happening Presently, Weather-wise, Across the Planet

I don't think most people are aware just now of what, exactly, is going on, worldwide, with weather and the catastrophes that are taking place just now.

Here's one, the first here today--
“Greenland is home to the world's second-largest ice sheet. And when it melts significantly -- as it is expected to do this year -- there are knock-on effects for sea levels and weather across the globe.

Greenland's ice sheet usually melts during the summer. This year, it started melting earlier, in May, and this week's heatwave is expected to accelerate the melt.

… 2019 could come close to the record-setting year of 2012, said Jason Box, professor and ice climatologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. During that ‘…year’…, Greenland's ice sheet lost 450 million metric tons -- the equivalent of more than 14,000 tons of ice lost per second.”

“…it's already poised to rival the proportions of 2012 -- and we haven't even reached the end of summer. In July alone, Greenland's ice sheet lost 160 billion tons of ice, according to Clare Nullis, spokeswoman for the UN World Meteorological Organization.

‘Normally when you get a temperature record broken, it's by a fraction of a degree,’ said Nullis. ‘What we saw yesterday was records being broken by two, three, four degrees -- it was absolutely incredible.’"

Greenland is in the Grips of a Heatwave; 

Here's What It Means for All of Us 

That alone is huge but then, this is taking place in Siberia, Russia.

Vast Wildfires in Siberia a Potential "Disaster" for Arctic, and the World's Climate

This, too, is happening now in Japan.

11 dead, 5,600 sent to hospitals last week due to heatwave

There is also this from Japan:

Olympics: Dangerous heat, wild weather a major challenge for Tokyo Games

Japan gripped by heat wave, mercury tops 39 C in Hokkaido town

Longer, wetter than usual rainy season ends in Tokyo area

Again, now, this week.

United Kingdom sets all-time high temperature record

Finally, there is this:

A Major River in Europe Hit by Drought Could Create Economic Havoc

“A heatwave in Europe is causing low water levels on the…Rhine…”

At what point do climate deniers give it up? At what point do the get on board, so to speak, and accept our current reality, let alone what is projected to happen across the world, if we don't cut carbon dioxide emissions and pollution?

How Much Do We Have to Lose Across the Planet Until We Accept Climate Change?

Did you see this?

Did you see how many head of cattle, alone, were lost recently in Australia, with their flooding?

Queensland floods: 500,000 Cattle Survived Years-Long Drought Only to Die in the Rain

500,000 head of cattle--or more, if you read the article--died last week in the flooding in Australia.

And this doesn't include all the other animal life that died in their scorching heat waves in the last month. I posted on this earlier.

Australia's Heat Wave Has Been Devastating For Animals

Australia's Heat Wave Is Taking A Toll On People, Animals

'Boiled' Bats Fall from Sky in Australian Heat Wave

Stifling Heat Wave Descends on Australia, Killing Dozens of Horses

And that's just Australia, of late. Check out what it's done in California last year.

California: Wildfires losses at $3.3 billion

Then there is around the world.

2018 Global Disasters Cost $160 Billion

At what point do the climate change deniers actually look, recognize the losses and damage and agree with us we need to do things to change?

What more does it have to take?

Science in Our Upcoming Elections, State by State

Another fascinating article out this week, this one on the national elections, state by state.

The Most Important Science Policy Issue in Every State

Lots of these issues have to do with flooding, wildfires, chemical runoff and corporate farming.

Missouri’s contribution to this is fascinating and at the forefront of an issue and change.

Missouri: The fake-meat debate

Missouri has become the epicenter of a fracas between meat producers and the burgeoning “fake meat” industry, a market that has jumped 24 percent since 2015. This past May, the legislature passed a bill that bars makers of flesh substitutes from using the word “meat” on their labels. Backed by the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association and pork producers, the bill could stifle growth of a new industry, according to meat substitute producers. Columbia-based Beyond Meat, for instance, could likely have to change its name, and warns that the measure could result in job loss. The company, together with University of Missouri researchers, has developed plant-based burgers, chicken strips, and sausages that closely resemble real meat. Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown says the bill would do little to convince consumers to opt for the real thing.

This part is especially interesting.

In late August, vegan food maker Tofurky, along with the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, filed suit against the state, arguing that the new law stifles free speech and hampers competition.

From Kansas, it’s one more example, and a great one, of why we need newspapers and their reporters. In this, the Wichita Eagle-Beacon came to the rescue.

Kansas: Dry-cleaning chemicals in residents’ water

This past summer, an investigation in the Wichita Eagle newspaper found that hundreds of residents drank and bathed in water fouled with the dry-cleaning chemical perchloroethylene (PCE) for more than six years—and that state officials failed to inform the communities. At one site, PCE levels in the groundwater were 8.1 parts per billion; EPA limit is 5 ppb. As many as 22 other contaminated sites may have gone unaddressed, according to the investigation. A 1995 state law lobbied for by the dry-cleaning industry appears to be largely to blame. The Kansas Drycleaner Environmental Response Act included a provision that directed state regulators to refrain from looking for contamination from dry cleaners and “make every reasonable effort” to keep sites off the EPA’s Superfund list. Residents are calling for the state to scrub up the areas and for lawmakers to strike the part of the legislation that bars checking for PCE leaks in groundwater.

All these, from state to state, point out why we so desperately and completely need government—state and federal both. If we don’t have these governments, there are no ways to keep our air, water and soil clean and clear. Corporations would be able to do whatever they wish, people and animal life be damned.

You might also check out Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Virginia and their issues, especially.

The Nation's--and World's--Crazy Weather

Across the planet presently...

I. Heat in Western US

Heat to sizzle western US this week

II. Wildfires in California and the Western US

Millions face extreme heat in Western U.S. 

as wildfires continue to blaze

III. Flooding in the Eastern US

East Coast rain forecast: 

Dangerous, life-threatening floods possible

Return of downpours threatens to renew, 

expand flood risk in eastern US

IV. Wildfires across Greece, followed by floods

Greece fires LATEST: Now FLOODS 

destroy businesses and home 

- Thousands flee disaster zone

I'll just leave this here:

Extreme global weather is 

'the face of climate change' says leading scientist

Floods, Fires and Scorching Heat the World Over Presently

• Record Heat in Southern California, and an Ominous Start to Wildfire Season

• More temperature records set 

• as heat wave grips Southern California




• Southern California sets all-time 

• heat records amid broiling conditions




• Homes destroyed by fires and temperature 

• records shattered as heat wave slams Southern California




• Western wildfires: 1 dead in blaze 

• near California-Oregon border

Wildfires roar across parched, hot West

Wildfires 2018 Map: More Than 60 Fires, 

Including the Spring Creek 

Torrential rains kill at least 81 

in western Japan

Heatwave warning extended up to two 

weeks in Ireland as water shortage critical

What Burning So Much Carbon Is Getting Us

This is, one more time, what burning all the carbon we do and putting all the carbon dioxide we also do, into the atmosphere, gets us.

Wildfires burn homes in California, forcing residents to evacuate

And let's be clear, these are not "one off" events. It's part of a far larger trend and not just nationally or even on this continent but world wide.

How climate change is increasing 

forest fires around the world

Science suggests that over the past few decades, the number of wildfires has indeed increased, especially in the western United States. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS),every state in the western US has experienced an increase in the average annual number of large wildfires over past decades.

Extensive studies have found that large forest fires in the western US have been occurring nearly five times more often since the 1970s and 80s. Such fires are burning more than six times the land area as before, and lasting almost five times longer.

Meanwhile, foolishly, our nation's leader is taking us backward and in the completely wrong direction.

EPA chief says White House to roll back 

Obama-era clean power plan

#Resist

Link:

Wildfires Rage In California Wine Country, Forcing Evacuations

What the Last Week Wrought on the World

Naimey, by the way, is in Niger.

And this doesn't include Nepal or Sierra Leone or Bangladesh or California's blistering heat wave and the wildfires there and across the Western US.

Could This Be the Year We All Finally Admit Global Warming?

After the flooding and mudslides, killing approximately 1,000 people in Sierra Leone last week and the widespread, devastating flooding in Bangladesh, along with Hurricane Harvey decimating so much of Houston and Southeast Texas and West Louisiana, then the record-breaking high temperatures in the Western US, there is this.

San Francisco smashes all-time record high temperature, hits 106 degrees

Anyone who knows anything of San Francisco knows that's insane.

And it doesn't stop there. With all of California's record-breaking high temperatures, wildfires have, again this year, been breaking out.

Scorched Bay Area now choking on smoke from raging wildfires in Northern California

All the way South to Los Angeles.

Wildfires spur evacuations 

around Burbank

This is not alarmist, either. These are facts. These are real, actual events, not concerns about what may happen in the future.

Then there's Irma, building this moment.

Hurricane Irma remains potential threat 

to the East Coast, 

possibly matching Harvey’s wind strength

And finally, this.

Two new tropical threats are taking shape in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean

Could we all get on this same bus now?

Please?

Links:

A third of Bangladesh under water as flood devastation widens

Floods kill over 1,200 in India, Nepal and Bangladesh

At What Point Do We Agree On Man-Made Global Warming and Climate Change?

With all that's going on this year meteorologically, at what point do people give in and admit that there is global warming, first and that, second, it is, in fact at least heavily human-influenced if not out-and-out humankind created and that we have to do things about it? And soon as possible.

There have been many, many weather events this year, certainly, like all the hundreds of fires across Canada, Alaska, Washington state, Oregon, Idaho and California, at minimum.

Jul 27, 2015 Scorched earth: U.S. wildfires 

near record level 

What Washington state's wildfires tell us about climate change

Wildfires have now burned a massive 

8 million acres

Then, more recently, like yesterday, there was the unprecedented, unseasonable and deadly sandstorm in the Middle East.

Huge dust storm roars through 

Middle East

For the second week in a row, an expansive dust storm slashed visibility and put hundreds in the hospital with respiratory ailments across the Middle East. The countries most affected include Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan.

This storm comes soon after another dust storm, which was shaped like a pinwheeling cyclone that absorbed light, drastically lowered visibility across Iraq on Sept. 1.

'Unprecedented' sandstorm blasts across 

Middle East

'Unprecedented' sandstorm envelops Lebanon and Syria

Massive sandstorm blankets Middle East for a second day

Not only was there this 2 day sandstorm across several nations in the Middle East but there have actually been many duststorms, internationally, across the globe of late:

Mystery of the dust storms 

sweeping the world

Today we get word of another unprecedented rain and flooding in Japan and not just heavy but, again, unprecedented.

Terrified residents wait for evacuation by helicopter as the overflowing Kinugawa River rages through Joso, Ibaraki prefecture; 90,000 people were forced to flee their homes

Japan floods: City of Joso hit by 

'unprecedented' rain

Record rainfall in Japan has burst riverbanks, ripped houses from their foundations and forced over 100,000 people to flee their homes. The aftermath of Typhoon Etau has also washed tons of radioactive water from the ruined Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific.

In dramatic scenes reminiscent of the tsunami disaster that struck the country’s coast in 2011, residents of Joso City, 34 miles north-east of Tokyo, were rescued from rooftops by Self-Defence Force helicopters. Houses were swamped by a muddy deluge from the Kinugawa River as people were winched to safety, some clutching family pets.

Check out this facts of this rain and flood (emphasis added here):

Weeks of near-daily rain had already left much of Ibaraki and Tochigi prefectures, north/north-east of Tokyo, deluged before the typhoon struck, dumping over 500mm (about 20 inches) of precipitation in just 24 hours in some places – twice the average for the entire month of September.  At one point early today over 900,000 people were advised to evacuate. So far, more than 90,000 had been forced to flee the “wall of water”.

It seems the recurring adjective in all this is that each of these events, vastly different as they are and from far flung corners of the planet, is "unprecedented." It's either unprecedented or historic or record-breaking, all true and applicable here.

Other "unprecedented" factors this year? Here's one:

2015 May Just Be Hottest Year on Record

Here's another:

World's Glaciers Melting Faster Than 

Ever Before Recorded

And this last one:

Sea level rise accelerating faster 

than thought

Mind you, these aren't projections, either. This isn't warnings now of what could or might happen in the future. These things are already occurring and they are occurring now, not 20 or 50 or 100 years in the future. And all these events are killing thousands upon thousands of people and displacing and making homeless millions.

Put those few things together---warmer temperatures, more glacier and ice cap melt and rising oceans and to what simple but obvious conclusion do you surely have to come?

Familiar with San Diego?

Anyone who's been to California, to Southern California and Los Angeles and especially San Diego--I have, several times, at least--knows it's virtually never, ever 106 degrees there, in the city. It's not usually that hot there even at the hottest time of year, August.

Get this.

Wednesday, it was 106 degrees.  It was that hot.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, along with a many-years-long drought is what that begat, also, Wednesday:



One of the terrific things, rather famously, about San Diego in specific, is that it's nearly always about 65 to 75 wonderful degrees.  Heck, at the worst of Winter, with clouds and rain, it would be cold at about 55 degrees for a high.

That was it.

San Diego, rather famously, had some of the most pleasant, wonderful, mild, moderate temperatures even on the planet, let alone in the United States.

No more.

You know how, in so much of the US, we let our schools out for ice and snow and severe cold weather in the Winters?

In San Diego this week, there were so many fires in the county and the temperatures were so high, they let out schools.

So let's put it all together, just a few things here.

The ice caps are melting, glaciers are melting, average temperatures are rising, as are ocean levels, so much so that coast lines are shrinking and islands are disappearing back into the oceans and now this.

Should we still do nothing to stop pouring carbon dioxide into our atmosphere?

Does that still seem prudent?

To anyone?

Yesterday's headlines on climate

Read 'em and weep:

Texas Panhandle Wildfire Destroys 156 Structures

Wildfire Forces 20000 Evacuations Near San Diego

Smokin' hot heat wave in Bay Area to continue 

Arizona Town Near Grand Canyon Runs Low on Water

And it's May.

Only May, not Summer or June or July or August.

It doesn't look good.