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Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumBill McKibben: The Mercury Doesn't Lie: We've Hit a Troubling Climate Change Milestone
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/35575-the-mercury-doesnt-lie-weve-hit-a-troubling-climate-change-milestonehursday, while the nation debated the relative size of Republican genitalia, something truly awful happened. Across the northern hemisphere, the temperature, if only for a few hours, apparently crossed a line: it was more than two degrees Celsius above normal for the first time in recorded history and likely for the first time in the course of human civilization.
Thats important because the governments of the world have set two degrees Celsius as the must-not-cross red line that, theoretically, were doing all we can to avoid. And its important because most of the hemisphere has not really had a winter. Theyve been trucking snow into Anchorage for the start of the Iditarod; Arctic sea ice is at record low levels for the date; in New England doctors are already talking about the start of allergy season.
This bizarre glimpse of the future is only temporary. It will be years, one hopes, before were past the two degrees mark on a regular basis. But the future is clearly coming much faster than science had expected. February, taken as a whole, crushed all the old monthly temperature records, which had been set in January. January crushed all the old monthly temperature records, which had been set in December.
In part this reflects the ongoing El Nino phenomenon these sporadic events always push up the planets temperature. But since that El Nino heat is layered on top of the ever-increasing global warming, the spikes keep getting higher. This time around the overturning waters of the Pacific are releasing huge quantities of heat stored there during the last couple of decades of global warming.
And as that heat pours out into the atmosphere, the consequences are overwhelming. In the South Pacific, for instance, the highest wind speeds ever measured came last month when Tropical Cyclone Winston crashed into Fiji. Entire villages were flattened. In financial terms, the storm wiped out ten percent of the nations gross domestic product, roughly equivalent to fifteen simultaneous Hurricane Katrinas.
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Bill McKibben: The Mercury Doesn't Lie: We've Hit a Troubling Climate Change Milestone (Original Post)
eridani
Mar 2016
OP
Take note, and remember only Bernie has given Climate Change the importance it deserves.
highprincipleswork
Mar 2016
#1
highprincipleswork
(3,111 posts)1. Take note, and remember only Bernie has given Climate Change the importance it deserves.
My Good Babushka
(2,710 posts)2. But for a generous donation to the foundation
Clinton will use the State Department to twist the arms of leaders around the world to open their fragile land to hydraulic fracturing, a process with well-known and well-documented environmental and health risks. Is she going to answer to this denial of scientific fact? I won't condone neglect and dismissal of science in a republican and I won't be coerced into voting for it in a democrat.
Downwinder
(12,869 posts)3. "Boiling a frog."
Response to eridani (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
N_E_1 for Tennis
(9,721 posts)5. Kicking...
#1 most important issue of our times.
saturnsring
(1,832 posts)6. just great
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)7. K&R nt
Relentless Liberal
(27 posts)8. Numbers Never Do
Math is the only truly honest science. Rec!
Nihil
(13,508 posts)9. ... unless used by statisticians, economists or politicians.