Guardian: The enormous, unprecedented pain and turmoil caused by the climate crisis is often discussed alongside what can seem like surprisingly small temperature increases – 1.5C or 2C hotter than it was in the era just before the car replaced the horse and cart.
These temperature thresholds will again be the focus of upcoming UN climate talks at the COP26 summit in Scotland as countries variously dawdle or scramble to avert climate catastrophe. But the single-digit numbers obscure huge ramifications at stake. “We have built a civilization based on a world that doesn’t exist anymore,” as Katherine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, puts it.
The world has already heated up by around 1.2C, on average, since the preindustrial era, pushing humanity beyond almost all historical boundaries. Cranking up the temperature of the entire globe this much within little more than a century is, in fact, extraordinary, with the oceans alone absorbing the heat equivalent of five Hiroshima atomic bombs dropping into the water every second.
Until now, human civilization has operated within a narrow, stable band of temperature. Through the burning of fossil fuels, we have now unmoored ourselves from our past, as if we have transplanted ourselves onto another planet. The last time it was hotter than now was at least 125,000 years ago, while the atmosphere has more heat-trapping carbon dioxide in it than any time in the past two million years, perhaps more. Read more..
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With all the so-called global warming going on, and all the glaciers and ice packs melting; can anyone go to any “stable” ocean shoreline anywhere in the world, (not one where erosion or silting might factor) and point out exactly how much the sea-level has risen in the past hundred years?
My state was 95% covered in hardwood forest, about 21,000,000 acres of total 23,000,000a. Today it has 17,000,000 fewer acres forest, much farmed for corn and soybeans. We reached a low of 15% in 1920 and with some reversion, are at 20%. But that’s 17,000,000 acres that is not capturing carbon, blocking wind, holding water back and making a valuable natural resource.
Take the entire Tongas National forest out and see if it doesn’t have a profound environmental impact……that is just my state too.
The only cure for global warming at this point: nuclear winter. US Christian Zionists are praying for this to happen soon. One of them, Pastor John Hagee, even said, “The US has nothing to fear from a nuclear exchange with Russia.” Nothing, except the end of human history, that is. The Rapture-me-outta-here folks think this is a grand idea.
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