One becomes enlightened on the deepest levels by letting go of the Somethingness then going though the Nothingness to the Allness.
Universe Spirit Blogs
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Total Global Warming Fossil Fuel Carbon Pollution Damages will be Over 400 Trillion. And, if Arctic Methane Is Released, Add $60 Trillion
Remember Arctic methane? You know, the ecological time bomb lurking inside the polar region's thawing permafrost? Well, we now know how much the fallout will cost when and if this subterranean gas is ever released. $60,000,000,000,000. Yes, hat is 60 Trillion US dollars!
But that is only a fraction of the total amount that economists estimate climate change will cost the planet by 2040. That carbon pollution cost number is $400 trillion.
So, estimating for about 8.73 billion Earthlings come 2040, the average cost of carbon pollution climate mitigation and cleanup will come to roughly $45,819.00 per person. But, more than half of the world's population is far too poor to ever pay even close to this amount in new taxes so that means that the taxpayers of affluent countries just had another $90,000 (not the estimated 45k.) This is an additional national debt added to whatever their existing personal national debt portion already is. If your any average family in an affluent country with two kids. The fossil fuel industry has added $360,000 dollars in tax debt to your family just so they can dump their toxic carbon pollution on the public without charge or penalty.
Next time you see a fossil fuel company executive or your fossil fuel lobbyist-loving national politicians, be sure to thank them profusely for subsidizing the grossly profitable 26 trillion dollar a year fossil fuel industry and fossil fuel producing nations with lots of corporate and international welfare by specifically allowing them to off-load and shirk an estimated 400 trillion dollars in their direct carbon pollution damage costs on you and the other unaware taxpayers of the world. Thank them loudly and publicly for allowing the fossil fuel companies and the fossil fuel producing nations to freeload upon and steal from the planetary goodwill, commonwealth, ecosystems and taxpayers.
Particularly thank them for allowing the fossil fuel industry and the producer nations to continue to make obscene levels of profit (trillions of dollars every year,) at the growing expense and detriment of the average citizen, future generations and all of the planet's current population.
It is now time to dust off your piggy bank! You have a lot of saving and sacrificing to do to make up for the costs of toxic carbon pollution of the taxpayer subsidized fossil fuel industry. Each day you and your nation is going so much more in future tax debt because of these fossil fuel freeloaders and polluters.
Also, do not even think about taking these fossil fuel industry and producer nations to the local, national and International Courts to make them pay for their ongoing or past carbon pollution damages to society, non polluting nations and the planet's ecosystems!
To learn what global warming caused climate destabilization is, click here.
To learn why the term climate destabilization is replacing climate change and global warming, click here.
To learn what you can do to reverse global warming and climate destabilization, click here.
If you would like to know how climate destabilization aversely affects and fits in with humanity's other six greatest global challenges, click here.
For more about these methane issues see the article by Salvatore Cardoni go to Takepart.com and go to Nature
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The Four Basics of Being a Universe Evolutionary and the New Evolution Spirituality. Are You a Level One Evolutionary?
Could science and evolution itself be the core source of a new religion and a new open source personal spirituality? If so, what would it look like? What could this evolution in religion and personality spirituality mean to the world?
How could it solve the world's greatest challenges? What would new visitors to this new religion and spirituality have to do to authentically call themselves members Universe Evolutionaries?
You may be very surprised to see what it really takes...
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The 5,000 Year Reduce, Recycle and Reuse Sustainability Principle: Why We Need to Reduce, Recycle and Reuse Far More NOW!
There are three basic and powerful reasons for paying attention to the expanded and updated 5,000 Year Reduce, Recycle and Reuse Sustainability Principle.
First, there is the finiteness of Earth's resources factor. According to our scientists, everything that everyone will need who will ever live on Earth over the next 5,000 years will have to be found primarily and only on Earth itself.
This is because moving to live on the closest possible potentially inhabitable planet with the needed resources for human life would take a space fight of 5,000 years, but ONLY --- if we could increase the speed of current space fight by 100 times! Bringing all of the resources that we will need back to Earth from closer uninhabitable planets would be both technically and economically unfeasible in the massive quantities that we will need to replace key depleted resources.
This problem does not even consider the greater problem that the human body, which has evolved slowly over the last few million years is not adapted to even short periods in space without all kinds of health problems. Preserving human life as it exists today in space over a 5,000 year time span if not feasible for many reasons including humans have never made any mechanism that could last extended periods of time without extensive maintenance and replacement.
Secondly, there is the law of diminishing returns. This law states that in all productive processes, adding more of one factor of production, while holding all others constant, will at some point yield lower per-unit returns. Finding, extracting, manufacturing and distributing resources is an activity that is also strongly subject to this near immutable law. For a variety of reasons this means it will take more and more energy to maintain any current resource level in a population. In order counter needing ever more energy to maintain just that status quo we need become more efficient with the energy that we do use and/or we have to reduce the energy that we do use as in the reduce, recycle and reuse strategy. This problem also soes not take into account that population is not stagnant at some status quo it is constantly rising so our energy and resource needs are actually rising with population growth.
Thirdly, there is peak oil challenge (running out of oil sooner than we think.) The reaching of peak oil brings many transportation, agriculture, pharmaceutical and other major resource depletion changes and unhappy surprises in the near future. Peak oil is also a great example of the law of diminishing returns at work. Oil is just one of the many resource areas that will be effected by the law of diminishing returns. If you are not quite sure why the looming peak oil challenge is so scary, click here.
Lets face it, Earth with its current limited resources (and particularly oil,) is all we have to realistically live upon for the current and growing population for the next 5,000 years. There is also a major long term reason why we simply have to reduce, recycle and reuse on a global scale or perish as a species!
This means that we must begin to wisely use and preserve our planetary resources now!
To learn more about the new ideas of Sustainable Prosperity (aka sustainable consumerism,) which is where the 5,000 Year Sustainability Principle came from and how to preserve our resources, click here.
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Extinction Level Climate Destabilization (Extinction Level Global Warming,) Defined
Climate destabilization caused by human carbon pollution of the atmosphere can reach extinction event levels. Unfortunately, what extinction level climate destabilization exactly is has been poorly defined. This blog posting is an attempt to define this concept with more specificity.
Extinction level climate destabilization has been defined previously as half of all species on Earth going extinct. It has also been defined as most of the human race going extinct. (James Lovelock the climate scientist and inventor of the Gaia term once defined it as less than 200 million humans surviving close to the North Pole because of global warming.)
I would like to propose what may be a more realistic definition. Extinction level climate destabilization would be a loss of 50% or more of all species on the planet with a reduction in the human population of between 50 and 90%.
At first, that doesn't sound so bad as they're still be mating human survivors. What it isn't seen immediately is that the amount of chaos and turmoil on a planet that loses from 50 to 90% of its human population and 50% of all of its species in as little as 40 to 80 years is a place that would be defined in terms of a living hell and cemetery.
What is also not generally recognized is that if the human population was reduced by 50 to 90% it might not have enough remaining genetic diversity to battle all of the new bacteria and viruses coming out of the melted ice that haven't been seen for hundreds of thousands of years. It also might not be able to survive the many diseases and infestations that would be moving continually toward the warmer poles into populations that have no traditional immunities to them. Biological history is loaded with episodes of massive population reductions that survive the sudden reduction, but later succumb to some new illness that the remaining genetic diversity could not survive...
We have already entered into the zone of catastrophic climate destabilization. We appear to be approaching the tipping points of irreversible climate destabilization. From there it is a unthinkably short distance to extinction level climate destabilization caused by the human caused carbon pollution of our atmosphere --- global warming.
For information on what you can do to keep us from going over the next climate destabilization cliff, click here.
Click this Join/Subscribe link or the one at the top of the page and we will keep you informed of Universe Spirit events and important updates. Also subscribe to our Universe blog separately by clicking here.
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Should Whole Foods John Mackey Stop talking about Global Warming Until He Gets his Facts Right?
Does John Mackey the head of Whole Foods really not understand the consequences of global warming and climate destabilization? Should he stick to being just a grocer and not try to take public positions on global warming until he at least has done his research homework?
On January 22 nd at 10 am on KQED public radio in San Francisco John Mackey head of Whole Foods gave an interview in which he expressed the following opinions about global warming and its consequent climate destabilization.
We are being effected too much by the fear being generated by global warming alarmists. We will adapt to it! And, the poor will be hurt too much by efforts to clamp down too hard on carbon pollution.
Our organization invites John Mackey to study the fee and dividend carbon reduction program created by James Hansen the world most prestigious climate scientist that would not hurt the poor as we reduce carbon pollution.
We also invite John Mackey to read Six Degrees by Mark Lynas and then re-evaluate if fear is completely appropriate to the magnitude of the real threat that all of humanity faces concerning its future. We also invite John Mackey after reading this book to reconsider his position that "we will adapt" to global warming in light of what will happen to the planet and the 8 billion members of humanity as we reach temperature increases of 4-6 degrees Celsius. (If we reach 4-6 degree Celsius temperature increases, there will be a whole lot less Whole Foods customers on this planet and the ones that remain would be living lives little like their lives now.)
John Mackey's statements to KQED public radio today on global warming were an easily avoidable embarrassment to Whole Foods customers, to Whole Foods and to the other great work in other areas John Mackey has done. They were so bad and harmful to those individuals and organizations working to reverse global warming and climate destabilization that a public apology by John Mackey is absolutely required.
For more information on the climate destabilization and climate tipping point issues of this posting see the blog at UniverseSpirit.org
IMHO
Lawrence Wollersheim
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OMG, it is far worse that you think and it is coming faster than ever predicted!
Two leading Evolutionaries Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow just released a video update & summary of newest data on escalating global warming leading to the climate cliff of irreversible climate destabilization. The new video link (just below,) also contains hard facts from the recently published reports of very conservative organizations like the World bank and the Natural Resource Council. If they are saying it is really bad and they also do not yet have adequately predictive climate tipping point research --- how bad is it really? (The Natural Resource Council supplies its reports to the American intelligence agencies. )
Click here to view this powerful video called "Climate Change and Intergenerational Evil."Click here to see a written summary that covers tipping point and other climate destabilization information not covered in the video.
Click here to read more about the many "perfect storm" tipping points of global warming and climate destabilization.
Click this Join/Subscribe link or the one at the top of the page and we will keep you informed of events and important updates. Also subscribe to our blog separately by clicking here.
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Declaration of a Global State of Emergency Due to Climate Destabilization Caused by Fossil Fuel Use Escalating Global Warming
We the citizens of Earth are endowed with certain inalienable rights, powers and obligations. These rights, powers and obligations demand that we act both individually and in concert to protect and preserve the evolution of life on earth as well as the common well-being of current and future generations.
Based on our best current science, we the citizens of Earth recognize that our climate is warming rapidly and is destabilizing due to human-caused carbon pollution of our atmosphere due primarily to the burning of fossil fuels. If we do not stop this warming before irreversible climate tipping points are crossed, this destabilization of our climate will cause unimaginable suffering and devastation for current and future generations and possibly even cause the extinction or near extinction of human species.
We further recognize that this climate destabilization is ultimately the greatest single threat to the current national security of all nations. This is because as the climate further destabilizes (due to human caused carbon pollution of the atmosphere,) first millions, then ten and then hundreds of millions of people (possibly even billions,) will eventually have to migrate to new locations to survive and thrive as the climate destabilizes. We recognize that climate destabilization is a keystone security threat multiplier and amplifier that can also whip saw all of the following global threats into each other causing each individual threat to escalate and become more difficult to resolve. Those current global threats are:
growing economic inequity and instability,
over population,
food and resource depletion,
increasing droughts, floods and wildfires,
water pollution and water table loss,
desertification and deforestation,
ocean fish stock depletions,
war, pandemic,
poverty, and
political injustice and growing political instability.
In spite of 30 years of education and discussion about the potential of irreversible and extinction-level climate destabilization, we not only have failed to stop or slow the human-caused carbon pollution of the atmosphere --- it has now escalated to a new level and critical tipping point!
On the basis of the current climate destabilization tipping point crisis and our inalienable rights, powers and obligations as citizens of Earth, we do officially declare a planetary state of emergency regarding escalating climate destabilization. In and by this declaration, we pledge to act together as one humanity to address and solve this climate destabilization crisis because ---failure to do so is not an allowable option.
Therefore, in order to sustainably protect, preserve and forward the continued progressive evolution of humanity and life on Earth, we the citizens of Earth demand that the leaders of our nations immediately convene an emergency convention to execute the following actions:
1.) to enact enforceable international laws to stop the escalating human-caused carbon pollution of the atmosphere. (The goal of these laws would be to get human-caused carbon pollution at or below 350 carbon parts per million in the atmosphere.)
2.) to fund critical new climate tipping point research needed for the ongoing updates to creating effective and adaptive atmospheric carbon pollution reduction plans.
3.) to immediately expand industrial-scale, green energy generation to replace existing fossil fuels use and to create tens of millions of new jobs in a new third industrial revolution! (With escalating climate destabilization and the immense challenges of peak oil we cannot continue to use fossil fuels as we are now and reasonably hope to sustain and preserve life on the planet.)
4.) to fund the development of earth-scaled carbon pollution reduction technologies to scrub carbon and other destructive greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. (This is the last resort backup plan in case we cannot reduce the existing carbon in the atmosphere fast enough to keep from going off the climate cliff into irreversible climate destabilization.) And finally,
5.) to immediately begin setting aside 5% of each nation's gross domestic product (GDP,) to cover the increasing emergency recovery costs of climate destabilization related to carbon pollution of the atmosphere. (These emergency recovery costs world be for the super-storms, droughts, crop loss, soaring food costs, heat waves, wildfires, losses of infrastructure and the reoccurring coastal, river and lake flooding that will occur as climate destabilization continues to increase in frequency, scale and severity and, we continue to cross key tipping points of the climate's sub-systems.)
(For more information on steps 1-5 listed above and the steps to reverse climate destabilization go to UniverseSpirit.org and read the Job One for Humanity materials at http://universespirit.org/job-one-humanity-preventing-human-caused-irreversible-or-extinction-level-climate-destabilization )
In concert with all Planetary Citizens and those who call also themselves Evolutionaries or Universe Citizens this state of Planetary Emergency was public ally first declared on December 31, 2012 at the 4th annual Universe Day event in San Francisco, California in the USA.
(Please feel free to translate this declaration and pass this declaration on to anyone you feel who should be aware of it.)
For more information on the escalating climate destabilization challenge and what you can do to effectively help resolve it, see the Job One for Humanity program by clicking here.
For more information on the Annual event Universe Day each December 31st go to theuniverseday.org
(This Declaration was Updated Feb 10, 2014.)
Click this Join/Subscribe link or the one at the top of the page and we will keep you informed of Universe Spirit events and important updates. Also subscribe to our Universe blog separately by clicking here.
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Planetary State of Emergency on Escalating Climate Destabilization (Global Warming,) being declared on Universe Day Dec 31 to bring action on Climate Cliff
Universe Day is an annual international event occurring each December 31st at noon through January 1st at noon.
This year the annual message of Universe Day 2013 focuses on:
- increasing awareness of the looming climate cliff, which is crossing the global warming tipping points leading to irreversible or extinction-level climate destabilization. (The current escalating climate destabilization is the result of human-caused carbon pollution of our atmosphere by fossil fuels.)
- dramatically reducing human-caused atmospheric carbon emissions on an emergency basis! To support the emergency reduction of human-caused carbon emissions the 4th annual Universe Day event declares this December 31 st to be Day One of the first Planetary State of Emergency on Escalating Climate Destabilization. (This emergency reduction of human-caused carbon emissions is Job One for of all Humanity. For emergency and non emergency actions to be taken to mitigate escalating climate destabilization see the Job One for Humanity link farther down this page .)
- encouraging people to stop using the terms global warming and climate change in their conversations and switch to the more accurate and useful terms of climate destabilization, irreversible climate destabilization, extinction-level climate destabilization or the looming climate cliff.
We invite you to gather with friends this 4th annual Universe Day to help enact evolutionary solutions to the looming climate cliff and the escalating catastrophic climate destabilization as well as to celebrate the beauty and wonder of the universe we live in.
Similar to Earth Day events, individuals and organizations all over the planet are encouraged to self-organize their own Universe Day meet-ups to forward this year's climate cliff warning message. In true Millennial style, Universe Day is a no-ownership, no-egos, get-the-message-out-now local and international co-created event. Imitate it, adapt it, improve it. “Steal it, even, if it hastens the spread of its urgent and vital message.
Why does Universe Day land on noon December 31st to noon on January 1st? The New Year’s holiday is a time spent by many to reflect on the previous year, and examine how they want to live in the New Year about to begin. Celebration is also a way to energize intentions. Mark Twain said, “Never trust your mind when your imagination is out of focus.” Likewise, on Universe Day, how might one better shape their New Year’s resolutions when the single biggest possible challenge to humanity's collective future (the climate cliff or irreversible climate destabilization,) is also in focus?
What will you do as an important part of the universe on this 4th annual Universe Day 2013?
The universe and our planet are calling for you to act now…
Learn more about this year's Universe Day climate cliff and climate destabilization prevention solutions. Go to www.TheUniverseDay.org
What YOU can do right now to help forward the message of Universe Day 2013 from anywhere in the world:
- Join the thousands who have already “Liked” Universe Day International on Facebook! Go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/Universe-Day-International/172115229488820
- Create your own local event that engages the levels of self, community, planet, and universe. We want want to hear from you, and possibly feature you and your ideas for upcoming events, stories, and videos. Need some ideas, tips and pointers for Creating your own Local Universe Day event? Go to www.TheUniverseDay.org
- Get more information on the Job One for Humanity climate destabilization solution. Go to http://universespirit.org/job-one-humanity-preventing-human-caused-irreversible-or-extinction-level-climate-destabilization
The Forth Annual Universe Day is facilitated by Universe Spirit (http://universespirit.org/) a non-profit organization that teaches about Sustainable Prosperity, forwards Job One for Humanity (preventing the climate cliff and irreversible climate destabilization,) and how the new Universe Evolutionary Worldview can be used to create a just, prosperous and sustainable world for all.
We invite you and your organization to help spread the word about this year's important Universe Day Message and the First Planetary State of Emergency on Escalating Climate Destabilization being declared.
For questions about Universe Day 2013 or Job One for Humanity contact: manage@universespirit.org
Click this Join/Subscribe link or the one at the top of the page and we will keep you informed of Universe Spirit events and important updates. Also subscribe to this Universe blog separately by clicking here.
If you would like to see a realistic comprehensive and systemic approach to global warming and climate destabilization, click here.
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Ending Its Summer Melt, Arctic Sea Ice Sets A New Low That Leads To Warnings
New York Times Environment section (19 SEP 2012), by Justin Gillis
A view of the east coast of Greenland, where the ice sheet meets the sea.The drastic melting of Arctic sea ice has finally ended for the year, scientists announced Wednesday, but not before demolishing the previous record — and setting off new warnings about the rapid pace of change in the region.
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2012_seaiceminimum.html
The apparent low point for 2012 was reached Sunday, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which said that sea ice that day covered about 1.32 million square miles, or 24 percent, of the surface of the Arctic Ocean. The previous low, set in 2007, was 29 percent.
When satellite tracking began in the late 1970s, sea ice at its lowest point in the summer typically covered about half the Arctic Ocean, but it has been declining in fits and starts over the decades.
“The Arctic is the earth’s air-conditioner,” said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the snow and ice center, an agency sponsored by the government. “We’re losing that. It’s not just that polar bears might go extinct, or that native communities might have to adapt, which we’re already seeing — there are larger climate effects.”
http://nsidc.org/research/bios/meier.html
His agency waited a few days before announcing the low to be sure sea ice had started to refreeze, as it usually does at this time of year, when winter closes in rapidly in the high Arctic. A shell of ice will cover much of the Arctic Ocean in coming months, but it is likely to be thin and prone to melting when summer returns.
Scientists consider the rapid warming of the region to be a consequence of the human release of greenhouse gases, and they see the melting as an early warning of big changes to come in the rest of the world.
Some of them also think the collapse of Arctic sea ice has already started to alter atmospheric patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, contributing to greater extremes of weather in the United States and other countries, but that case is not considered proven.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/sc...pagewanted=all
The sea ice is declining much faster than had been predicted in the last big United Nations report on the state of the climate, published in 2007. The most sophisticated computer analyses for that report suggested that the ice would not disappear before the middle of this century, if then.
Now, some scientists think the Arctic Ocean could be largely free of summer ice as soon as 2020. But governments have not responded to the change with any greater urgency about limiting greenhouse emissions. To the contrary, their main response has been to plan for exploitation of newly accessible minerals in the Arctic, including drilling for more oil.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/sc...mpetition.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/bu...next-year.html
Scientists said Wednesday that the Arctic has become a prime example of the built-in conservatism of their climate forecasts. As dire as their warnings about the long-term consequences of heat-trapping emissions have been, many of them fear they may still be underestimating the speed and severity of the impending changes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/sc...peraturerising
In a panel discussion on Wednesday in New York sponsored by Greenpeace, the environmental group, James E. Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist, said the Arctic melting should serve as a warning to the public of the risks that society is running by failing to limit emissions.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/jhansen.html
“The scientific community realizes that we have a planetary emergency,” Dr. Hansen said. “It’s hard for the public to recognize this because they stick their head out the window and don’t see that much going on.”
A prime concern is the potential for a large rise in the level of the world’s oceans. The decline of Arctic sea ice does not contribute directly to that problem, since the ice is already floating and therefore displacing its weight in water.
But the disappearance of summer ice cover replaces a white, reflective surface with a much darker ocean surface, allowing the region to trap more of the sun’s heat, which in turn melts more ice. The extra heat in the ocean appears to be contributing to an accelerating melt of the nearby Greenland ice sheet, which does contribute to the rise in sea level.
At one point this summer, surface melt was occurring across 97 percent of the Greenland ice sheet, a development not seen before in the era of satellite measurements, although geological research suggests that it has happened in the past.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/sc...ice-sheet.html
The sea is now rising at a rate of about a foot per century, but scientists like Dr. Hansen expect this rate to increase as the planet warms, putting coastal settlements at risk.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/sc...al-states.html
A scientist at the snow and ice center, Julienne C. Stroeve, took a ride on a Greenpeace ship recently to inspect the Arctic Ocean for herself. Interviewed this week after pulling into port at the island of Spitsbergen, she said one of her goals had been to debark on ice floes and measure them, but that it had been difficult to find any large enough to support her weight.
http://nsidc.org/research/bios/stroeve.html
Ice floes were numerous in spots, she said, but “when we got further into the ice pack, there were just large expanses of open water.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/sc...ref=earth&_r=0
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Loading The Climate Dice
The New York Times Opinion Pages July 22, 2012
By Paul Krugman (Princeton University)
A couple of weeks ago the Northeast was in the grip of a severe heat wave. As I write this, however, it’s a fairly cool day in New Jersey, considering that it’s late July. Weather is like that; it fluctuates.
And this banal observation may be what dooms us to climate catastrophe, in two ways. On one side, the variability of temperatures from day to day and year to year makes it easy to miss, ignore or obscure the longer-term upward trend. On the other, even a fairly modest rise in average temperatures translates into a much higher frequency of extreme events — like the devastating drought now gripping America’s heartland — that do vast damage.
On the first point: Even with the best will in the world, it would be hard for most people to stay focused on the big picture in the face of short-run fluctuations. When the mercury is high and the crops are withering, everyone talks about it, and some make the connection to global warming. But let the days grow a bit cooler and the rains fall, and inevitably people’s attention turns to other matters.
Making things much worse, of course, is the role of players who don’t have the best will in the world. Climate change denial is a major industry, lavishly financed by Exxon, the Koch brothers and others with a financial stake in the continued burning of fossil fuels. And exploiting variability is one of the key tricks of that industry’s trade. Applications range from the Fox News perennial — “It’s cold outside! Al Gore was wrong!” — to the constant claims that we’re experiencing global cooling, not warming, because it’s not as hot right now as it was a few years back.
How should we think about the relationship between climate change and day-to-day experience? Almost a quarter of a century ago James Hansen, the NASA scientist who did more than anyone to put climate change on the agenda, suggested the analogy of loaded dice. Imagine, he and his associates suggested, representing the probabilities of a hot, average or cold summer by historical standards as a die with two faces painted red, two white and two blue. By the early 21st century, they predicted, it would be as if four of the faces were red, one white and one blue. Hot summers would become much more frequent, but there would still be cold summers now and then.
And so it has proved. As documented in a new paper by Dr. Hansen and others, cold summers by historical standards still happen, but rarely, while hot summers have in fact become roughly twice as prevalent. And 9 of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000.
But that’s not all: really extreme high temperatures, the kind of thing that used to happen very rarely in the past, have now become fairly common. Think of it as rolling two sixes, which happens less than 3 percent of the time with fair dice, but more often when the dice are loaded. And this rising incidence of extreme events, reflecting the same variability of weather that can obscure the reality of climate change, means that the costs of climate change aren’t a distant prospect, decades in the future. On the contrary, they’re already here, even though so far global temperatures are only about 1 degree Fahrenheit above their historical norms, a small fraction of their eventual rise if we don’t act.
The great Midwestern drought is a case in point. This drought has already sent corn prices to their highest level ever. If it continues, it could cause a global food crisis, because the U.S. heartland is still the world’s breadbasket. And yes, the drought is linked to climate change: such events have happened before, but they’re much more likely now than they used to be.
Now, maybe this drought will break in time to avoid the worst. But there will be more events like this. Joseph Romm, the influential climate blogger, has coined the term “Dust-Bowlification” for the prospect of extended periods of extreme drought in formerly productive agricultural areas. He has been arguing for some time that this phenomenon, with its disastrous effects on food security, is likely to be the leading edge of damage from climate change, taking place over the next few decades; the drowning of Florida by rising sea levels and all that will come later.
And here it comes.
Will the current drought finally lead to serious climate action? History isn’t encouraging. The deniers will surely keep on denying, especially because conceding at this point that the science they’ve trashed was right all along would be to admit their own culpability for the looming disaster. And the public is all too likely to lose interest again the next time the die comes up white or blue.
But let’s hope that this time is different. For large-scale damage from climate change is no longer a disaster waiting to happen. It’s happening now.