"Wacky Weather" is Deadly Global Heating

[marmar]

from Truthout:


"Wacky Weather" Is Deadly Global Heating
By Glen Barry
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

Thursday 11 January 2007

As of 2007, the Earth System has already undergone profound global change, of which global heating is the most immediately evident profound impact. It is getting hot, and it is happening fast. Many leading scientists tell us we have 10 years at most given current trends before climate change becomes irreversible and dangerous, beyond the generally accepted rise of 2 degrees Celsius considered adaptable (we are about 1/3 the way there).

Yet the chortling television weather people tell us the unprecedented wave of global mild weather - really a lack of winter in many parts - is not climate change. We are encouraged to take advantage of our good fortune and get out there and play golf. At what point will abrupt climate change and deterioration of the Earth System's life giving biosphere be recognized as a global ecological emergency, and responded to as such? And will it then be too late to limit damages, or even to survive?

Global warming is not a slow, gentle, pleasant rise in temperatures to be savored. It is an abrupt fundamental breakdown in the Earth System's climate sub-system that threatens the Earth's, humanity's and your family's ability to live. It is not enough to blame the weather on El Ninío, which itself can be and is exacerbated by climate change. As climate change continues, unabated by systematic policy responses, and "wacky weather" becomes more prevalent, we can expect immediately budding trees to die from later frosts, agriculture to struggle to define growing seasons, pest insects to multiply, and ecosystems to deteriorate and die.

The ability of individuals, communities and nations to deny the obvious is amazing. People do not like hearing that their consumptive, wasteful lifestyle is destroying God's creation. For most, our addiction to lethargic comfort is so great, our ignorance of ecology and our total dependence upon a healthy biosphere so complete - and our psychological inability to grasp that humanity has overrun the biosphere, becoming the dominant force in nature so absolute - that we do nothing, as the greatest avertable disaster to ever face civilizations looms, increasingly recognized but not nearly sufficiently addressed.

Humanity is deeply within the Anthropocene Era, whereby our presence is the greatest force shaping the biosphere. We are witnessing the jarring collapse of the Earth's most recent climate equilibrium, and depending upon how much climate forcing occurs from continued emissions, there are no guarantees what the next climate will look like or if it will even be regularized within a decent time period. And the longer-term results will be calamitous - extreme weather including super storms, floods and droughts, massive crop failures, vegetation die-back over whole regions, a proliferation of tropical diseases, rising seas destroying cities, a massive refugee crisis, and a general breakdown of anything resembling dependable climatic patterns. .....(more)

The rest of the story is at: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011107H.shtml

[BeFree]

1. Wow, our own era

The Anthropocene Era. And we are all a big part of making it happen, right here and now. Whodathunkit?