Nature

Nature isn't cruel, it is simply indifferent.

Consider any prey animal, say a gazelle.  It lives its life just fine until one particular unremarkable day when it is caught and eaten.  Perhaps it has even been chased before and escaped but its immaterial to nature.  One day while trying to flee it gets brought down, killed and eaten.

Similarly nature treats most of its creations the same way.  You eventually will become fodder for other life.  Even if you don't die violently, you most likely decompose and be consumed.

Unless of course you get buried under volcanic ash or get mummified.

People have taken greater control of this process than any other creature on the planet, finding way to fend off certain diseases and survive certain disasters.  We can even predict when some are coming.

Unfortunately we are also by all the evidence the cause, or at least the contributor, to some.

We have carelessly introduced or removed things into nature on an unprecedented scale.

It isn't a new phenomena we have been doing it since we started slash and burn agriculture.

Still it is only in the industrial age that we started to dig up carbon and re-release it into the atmosphere.

It took millennia for that carbon to become coal, oil, natural gas and remove it from the environment.  We are reversing the process at breakneck speed.

Nature will adjust, it always has.  We weren't always around and we may be returning to a state that doesn't support our survival.

Nature doesn't care.

Under Attack!

If we were under attack by a world of aliens who were polluting our planet with a noxious gas that would start to make it uninhabitable, I imagine our response would be to stop them at all costs.

Of course the aliens in this scenario turns out to be us as we continue to poison the world we live in.

Most are aware of the danger, including most world leaders, but a few including our dontard refuse to accept the scientific evidence and is willing to risk our future so his pals won't have to lose some profits.

Its a losing battle since every day more and more evidence is convincing more and more people that climate change is real and its impact will be wide ranging and catastrophic.

Some might have thought it would be restricted to some coastal areas, but the increased energy of a warmer earth is going to make changes and increase storms everywhere.

Most of us have taken steps to reduce energy use and help to reduce dangerous emissions, but we need industry to live up to its duty to be good citizens of this planet.

They will have to live here too.

Our Earth

There are people who oppose renewable energy sources, including the dontard.  The reason for this is pretty unclear, except for those who have a vested interest in carbon based energy sources like oil, gas, and coal.

Creating energy using solar, wind, tides, water flow or any other renewable source eliminates pollution and provides essentially the same energy as the other sources.  In some cases affordability cold be a factor but if you consider our recent past, the use of windmills and water mills were quite common.

We went through a period that we are still in where cheap carbon based energy became inexpensive and transportable.  We were able to have a tremendous expansion of industry, transportation and provided the ability to heat and cool our homes.

The side effect of this was that we saw an increase in pollution and a release of carbon into the atmosphere that creates a greenhouse effect.  Much of the pollution, especially some of the most visible has been controlled or eliminated.

We still rely to a great extent on carbon based energy, but we have taken many steps to be more efficient and we have seen some move towards use of renewable energy.

The point is that we have released so much carbon into the air that we are at a point where we need to change our ways to avoid fairly catastrophic results.  In fact we may be already be at a point where we already face dire consequences.

Each of us needs to continue reducing our use of carbon and require our politicians to accept the reality of climate change.

Legacy?

Most people want to see their children, grandchildren and further descendants thrive.

It is probably our strongest instinctual feeling, since not caring for your offspring means they are unlikely to survive in nature.

We tend to think of their success in material and family terms but what good does any of that do if they inhabit a world more and more uninhabitable?

Its odd as people look at the world they live in and generally all they see are man-made cities, man-designed farms, man-designed livestock and pets and still deny that mankind is having an impact on this world.

Consider the air pollution and smog that we have in certain areas, the water contamination, the extinct species that can be associated directly with our activities.  Is it really hard to imagine that we are impacting the atmosphere as well, introducing or reintroducing carbon that wouldn't be there if not for us?

Climate change deniers are simply ignoring reality.

Yes the climate is also impacted by natural causes but those exist with or without us.

What we add is in addition to those causes and we have interrupted the natural order of events.

We are creating and have already created a new normal where the world is warmer and therefore has more energy.

Events that used to happen every 500 years are happening almost annually.

We have calculated the impact and our time is starting to run out, yet we do very little.

There is a saying that forewarned is forearmed.

In our case we are forewarned but foolishly doing almost nothing.

Unfortunately, the ones who will really suffer are future generations, our descendants.

What kind of legacy is that?

Climate

Once again the dontard has gone on National TV and acted like all the scientists in the world are conspiring together about climate change.

The idea that the data itself is making them all draw the same conclusions apparently didn't occur to him.

He appears to be one of the remaining few who hold to that opinion and his belief seems to be that it is some sort of attempt to get us to lose some competitive advantage.

The biggest competitive advantage would be to shift as much energy into renewable since it would require absolutely no imports.

We are going to need to continue to harness some fossil fuels and logically they should be the cleanest ones possible which in never coal.

It is possible to use coal if we scrub the emissions or capture the carbon, but to continue to burn it recklessly is to invite large scale glacier melting and rising sea levels.

Its a mystery to the dontard and he thinks it might just reverse itself.

The part that is due to natural causes does vary, but our emissions of carbon into the atmosphere is a one way street.

It also looks like we may be seeing an uptick in volcanic activity which is natures way of releasing carbon.

Fake news, fake science are not problems.

Fake politicians are.

Climate

We see the continuing flooding as a result of Hurricane Florence and it is being described as unprecedented and historic.

It is becoming a common refrain after each new historic and unprecedented storm moves through.

Hurricanes have always been violent and dangerous but each year they seem to increase in intensity to some extent.

It isn't a straight line but it seems like a trend as the number of high category hurricanes trends up.

People in the Carolina's are facing devastation even if they live quite a ways inland from the tremendous amount of water carried and dumped by Florence.

Is this a result of Climate Change?  Still not quite enough evidence to say that unequivocally.

Whether you believe in Climate Change or not, wouldn't it be prudent to take action to stop emitting CO2 into the atmosphere?  We already have to some extent and switching to renewable and solar is a growth industry.

It might have some impact on the energy industries but they are already exploring getting into the other technologies.

Coal would probably be hurt but progress causes industries to evolve.

No short term solution is going to immediately reverse the effects of the greenhouse gases we have already spewed into the atmosphere, but that doesn't mean we should keep making it worse.

Water levels are rising, weather is getting more intense and we are contributing to the problem.

Why not become part of the solution?

Hot Tomorrows

I gather some people still don't accept the scientific evidence about climate change or don't think human activities play a part.

The evidence is really beyond reasonable or any doubt so I think that is simply wishful thinking.

Either way why would you not want to stop the abuse we impose on nature every day?

It shouldn't be a political issue, although it has been turned into one.

The main opposition comes from those whose profits are related to polluting the earth and who don't want to cut into profits to stop.

This is similar to the cigarette manufacturers who argued their product wasn't dangerous just to make some extra money.

They mostly got away with it and the victims who suffer from or have died from lung cancer and other ailments are the victims.

In this case we are all going to be the victims of the changing climate with admittedly varying results.

Certainly our coastal communities should be the most concerned but heat waves, fires and droughts might impact many areas as the temperature keeps rising.

We shouldn't be rolling back regulations, we should push harder for clean air and a better tomorrow.

We need forward looking leadership, not ones trying to switch into reverse.

More Pollution

Reports are that the current administration is planning on rolling back requirements related to reducing air pollution.

Specifically they are going to allow power plants to pollute more than the current rules allow going forward.

As I understand what they are arguing it is because the current rules were imposed in violation of the authority of the EPA.

Of course it also may benefit some coal mine owners as demand for coal will be reduced less quickly.

To a small extent it may save some coal mining jobs but coal is not the fuel of the future, natural gas is abundant, cleaner and cheaper.

Of course as solar technology improves, we will see it overtake the other methods more and more.

The fact that solar can be installed at the point of use and reduce energy bills mean it will continue to grow in use over time.

Is this attempt to appease some coal mine owners a dangerous thing?  Well we have a crisis coming of biblical proportions with climate change.  Every thing that makes it worse is a problem, its just a matter of degree.

These are pretty significant impacts based on the projections but of course they are going to play with the numbers and show that emissions will still be going down, just not as much.

As the glaciers melt and flood our coastal cities assuming they haven't been destroyed by hurricanes due to rising ocean temperatures we should consider that argument.

Maybe we just need to remember it while we vote in November.

Weather or Not?

One of the things about science, at least good science, is that it accepts the possibility that new data or new facts might change accepted theories.

Some things are of course much more settled than others, but you will generally never hear scientists say something is 100% certain.

Clearly some science is so well established it approaches that degree of certainty, but a good scientist is always open to the possibility that some new data or event will cause a theory to change.

You see this degree of uncertainty used by some individuals to deny what are probably science facts as "unproven" theory.

We saw this for many years when the tobacco companies tried to argue that they weren't selling cancer sticks.  They knew they were but were able to promote the idea that it was "unproven" science.

Every unbiased experiment and test came to the same result, that smoking was a factor in increased levels of certain cancers but that is only proof beyond a reasonable doubt as opposed to "proven".

As I said most things in science can never be proven but we accept that if every observation shows the same result that it is in fact true.

We see this now with a few people arguing that climate change isn't caused by human activities, and in fairness not all of it is.  What we do know is that human activities, primarily the release of previously trapped carbon into the atmosphere contributes to higher worldwide temperatures.

This greenhouse effect has been tested extensively and al the experiments and calculations show it has that outcome. Is it the only factor? No, the earth has gone through multiple climate cycles over its existence caused by natural factors, but we know that industrial age human behavior has an impact.

Every year we observe weather events that are supposed to be exceedingly rare but are happening fairly frequently.  We see the rise in the oceans and the melt of the polar ice caps proceeding.

Lets suppose for arguments sake that only a small percentage of this is the result of human carbon release. Why wouldn't we stop it anyway?

Is a few dollars saved today worth watching our children being forced to move to higher ground?

The potential future cost of the environmental damage will be astronomical, and like most things early efforts can have significant future benefits.

A single weather event is not climate change.  When weather events form a trend it is.