Climate change: A matter of life and death
People have to understand AGW and its long term effects. This is life and death. It is already life and death NOW.
Unfortunately with things like destroyed eco systems, AGW and destroyed water supplies, by the time the average American sees the catastrophic effects at home, it is much too late. It is not just too late for the dead, but too late to fix and too late to prevent from getting much worse.
Here is a multi agency report on projected effects in the US:
Future US heat waves with links to both the previous government reports and work done at MIT:
What people really don’t get is that planet scale systems have unbelievable inertia. Once you push ecosystems far enough, it is like pushing a boulder down hill. All kinds of effects cascade and reinforce each other and the deterioration spirals out of control into a new equilibrium. One you push a boulder over a ledge, you are not stopping it from rolling further. We as a species, do not have two years to keep pushing - let alone push harder.
Here is a full freshman level course from UCSD on the science:
It is the first in a list of sites and important papers on the actual science from actual scientists, scientific organizations and peer reviewed research journals to be found here
We are already committed to the loss of nations like Bangladesh. There is nothing we can do to save them. Those millions will be flooded out and their agriculture, that was not claimed by the seas, will fail from heat waves and being drowned by intensified monsoons. More land will go under water at an increasing rate, and ever more severe monsoons in that region will continue to cause massive flooding that washes away homes and crops.
Where will those people go? Of course they are poor, brown and not Christian so no one really cares in the West. Don’t anyone dare tell me that we in the West do care. We already pulled the trigger on their plight. Where will those millions go? A large percentage of them will die. We have already murdered them.
The horrible summer we had this year was mitigated somewhat by particulates from the volcanic eruption. Even so, the monsoons put over six million Pakistanis out of their homes after suffering heat waves that reached to 128 degrees F, the Russian crops failed to an extent that they halted grain exports, and Chinese crops failed sufficiently to cause their food prices to jump.
Most people should understand that crops need water to grow. Most people should understand that even with plenty of water (from irrigation) that massive heat snaps will still kill crops and cause them to fail, like they did in Russia this year.
If only people would understand that you really can’t irrigate on a large scale when you depend on melt waters that are no longer there, and your water table has been used up or poisoned. Another place that we have pulled the trigger on already is Nevada.
As it is now, we are already seeing disease vectors migrate in major ways. As an example, Spain, France and Italy are seeing cases of Dengue fever which used to be something people in Africa worried about. Israel has seen disease migrations too.
The McMichael paper below, from the world health organization, and published in the Lancet, was cited 785 times.
Disease vectors effect crops also. From the journal of the Royal Society:
We are already committed to more and more of this.
If we stop pushing the boulder now, it will most likely stop rolling in a place where we can deal with the results. If we continue pushing long enough, that boulder (to abuse the analogy) ends up squashing our entire civilization by the time it comes to rest.
Releasing vast amounts of methane from sloppy extraction techniques like “fracking” on a national scale is a huge effect since we have some of the largest methane reserves. In terms of the immediate suffering of thousands (already! from being poisoned by water contamination from the noxious chemicals used in this process) or even the millions likely to suffer from poisoning, the long term effects, make that statistic pale in comparison.
We do not have the time for the situation to get so intolerable that even the average Fox viewing idiot is convinced. By the time that happens we will have committed to vastly worse and there will be no way to stop it.
In the links, particularly,
you will find that I am not making this up.
I am giving you the hard science from actual scientists. They are not lying to you. The catastrophic nature of AGW and the fact that we are causing it, is the position of NASA, APS, NAS, NOAA, AGU, the Royal Society, and the national academies of France, Germany Russia and Israel to name a few.
On the other side are paid shills and propagandists from Fox News. Who will you believe? NASA, who put a man on the moon, the Royal Society which was Isaac Newton’s outfit, and the world legitimate scientific community with all of the hard data that we beg you to look at - or Glen Beck who was recently seen explaining the economy with puppets?
