Sunday, September 25, 2016

Dangerous Denial of Global Warming

Direct and indirect dangers from global warming are so grave that 
the issue should be near the top of the U.S. campaign agenda, 
instead of being downplayed or denied.
 
Published on
by
The image of the Earth rising over the surface of the moon, a photograph taken by the first U.S. astronauts to orbit the moon. (Photo:NASA/cc)
President Obama calls it “terrifying” and the greatest long-term threat facing the world. Three hundred seventy-five of the world’s top experts just warned of “severe and long-lasting consequences” for the planet if America’s next president drops the ball. Yet only 19 percent of registered voters say it’s a top issue; Hillary Clinton increasingly ducks the topic, and Donald Trump characteristically dismisses it all as a “hoax.”

The issue, of course, is global warming. While reporters offer endless stories about Clinton’s emails and fainting spells, and Trump makes up new lies faster than fact-checkers can swat them down, few people in politics or the media are talking about the accelerating effects of climate change.

Global warming isn’t just a theory any more. NASA recently reported that this August tied with July as the “warmest month ever recorded,” following 11 straight months that set new global heat records. Since 2000, the Earth has experienced 14 of the 15 hottest years on record.

Relentless burning of fossil fuels and release of other heat-trapping gases has already increased the Earth’s average surface temperature by about 1 degree Celsius relative to the late Nineteenth Century. And that’s just for starters.

“Even if every nation in the world complies with the [2015] Paris Agreement [on climate], the world will heat up by as much as 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 — not the 1.5 to 2 degrees promised in the pact’s preamble,” according to climate activist Bill McKibben.

Even today’s limited warming is wreaking havoc all across the globe. After storms in Louisiana last month dumped two feet of rain in 48 hours — killing 13 people, damaging more than 60,000 homes and businesses and causing $9 billion in economic losses — scientists reported that “climate change played a very clear and quantifiable role” in causing the disaster.

In other regions, from parched California to fire-ravaged Alberta, warming has caused record droughts, raging forest fires and billions of dollars more in damage. In the eastern Mediterranean, the worst drought of the last 900 years is causing hunger and widespread social disruption, contributing to mass migration and devastating conflicts like the wars in Syria and Libya.

Warming is bringing disease vectors, like mosquitos that carry malaria and Zika virus, ever deeper into formerly temperate areas. Warming and related ocean acidification are also “bleaching” coral reefs and wiping out fisheries. Warming is rapidly thinning Arctic ice and putting polar ecosystems at risk. As glaciers melt, sea levels are rising rapidly, inundating not only island nations but highly developed coastlines like the Eastern seaboard of the United States.

Worse Down the Road

And all this is just a start. An open letter just issued by 375 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and its foreign affiliates, including 30 Nobel laureates, warns that “rapid warming of the planet increases the risk of crossing climatic points of no return, possibly setting in motion large-scale ocean circulation changes, the loss of major ice sheets, and species extinctions. The climatic consequences of exceeding such thresholds are not confined to the next one or two electoral cycles. They have lifetimes of many thousands of years.”

They also took a direct swipe at Trump, saying “it is of great concern that the Republican nominee for President has advocated U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord. . . . Such a decision would make it far more difficult to develop effective global strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change. The consequences of opting out of the global community would be severe and long-lasting – for our planet’s climate and for the international credibility of the United States.”

Surveys show that Republican are twice as likely as last year to express doubts about the existence of global warming, According to University of Michigan researchers, one factor may be their presidential candidate’s oft-repeated insistence that global warming is “a total, and very expensive, hoax!”

Clinton is squarely on record as acknowledging the challenge of global warming, and advocates massive investment in solar energy to make the United States a “clean energy superpower.” Evidently fearful of being branded “anti-jobs” or “pro-tax,” however, she has markedly downplayed discussion of the issue since beating Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.



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