There is still time
Digby yesterday on the climate crisis:
So kids, I’m begging you to devote as much energy as possible to this issue and make the smartest political decisions you can make right now. This just can’t wait. — there’s literally nothing more important to your future. None of the other things you care about will matter if this doesn’t get fixed. It’s now or never.
It’s been gently raining all night. It’s supposed to rain all day. Steady, gentle rain. That’s different from the violent summer downpours that flood streets and basements across the neighborhood. No amount of hydrological remediation in your yard is going to stop that.
The problem is climate change may be accelerating (Washington Post – gifted):
For the past several years, a small group ofscientists has warned that sometime early this century, the rate of global warming — which has remained largely steady for decades — might accelerate. Temperatures could rise higher, faster. The drumbeat of weather disasters may become more insistent.
And now, after what is poised to be the hottest year in recorded history, the same experts believe that it is already happening.
In a paper published last month, climate scientist James E. Hansen and a group of colleagues argued that the pace of global warming is poised to increase by 50 percent in the coming decades, with an accompanying escalation of impacts.
According to the scientists, an increased amount of heat energy trapped within the planet’s system — known as the planet’s “energy imbalance” —will accelerate warming. “If there’s more energy coming in than going out, you get warmer, and if you double that imbalance, you’re going to get warmer faster,” Hansen said in a phone interview.
Not everyone, agrees, the Post adds.
Still, “The truth is bad enough,” University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann writes in a blog post. There is still a degree of uncertainty about the acceleration (no pun intended).
Data suggests that warming began its acceleration about 1970. The Post account describing the trends and drivers you can read for yourselves via the gifted link.
Hansen acknowledges that the global surface temperature data, alone, isn’t presenting an entirely clear picture of acceleration yet – but he predicts that it will be soon, as temperatures spike much further in the current El Niño.
“There won’t be any argument [by] late next spring, we’ll be way off the trend line,” Hansen said.
Some climate models also predict an acceleration of warming in the years to come, as aerosols decline. “While there is increasing evidence of an acceleration of warming, it’s not necessarily ‘worse than we thought’ because scientists largely expected something like this,” said Hausfather.
Not necessarily worse than we thought is not exactly comforting.
Yes, it’s serious. And yes we can still do this. But it’s going to take the people with most of their lives still ahead to fix what those of us with most of ours behind us have left them. “We didn’t know” is no longer an excuse. It never was much of one over 50 years ago when high school friends and I helped organize the first Earth Day events at our school.
The cohort of voters with the most untapped electoral power is under 45. Use it or lose the planet. Your state looks like mine, trust me.
Happy Hollandaise!