Standing on the brink

“We have met the enemy and he is us” - Walt Kelly’s Pogo

A recent article found on the MIT Technology Review Web page informs us that the catastrophic Australian fires have pumped out more emissions than 100 nations combined, estimated to be around 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide

These massive fires are the result of extreme drought conditions that have been attributed to man-made climate change.  Climate change is driving climate change.  It’s a condition known as climate forcing.

“A climate forcing is any influence on climate that originates from outside the climate system itself. One example of external forcings is any human induced changes in greenhouse gases.”   Not only has the loss of trees and other plant life created greater CO2 emissions outside the natural climate cycle but it has removed their use as carbon sinks to absorb CO2 and convert it into oxygen.

Climate change deniers will be quick to point out the benefits of CO2 in the life process.  But this is a 3rd grade understanding that intentionally omits that excesses of CO2 are detrimental to ecosystems as they increase the amount of green house gases in the atmosphere, beyond what nature allows to sustain life on earth as we’ve known it for several millennia.

The Australian fires are just one of multiple examples of increasing extreme weather conditions that can no longer be attributed to a natural course of climate events.  Though droughts, floods, hurricanes and other climate conditions have been with us since our earliest human forms, science has sufficiently demonstrated they have not occurred with the intensity and frequency that we are now experiencing them.

As one astute observer notes, “The models and the observations match.
There is simply no other mechanism that can explain the significantly altered climate path and the changes in the radiative forcing [like the Australian fires] other than human causes.”

We have been recent witnesses here in Denton to such extreme and rapid changes.  On Friday, January 10th we experienced an abnormal high temperature of 71 degrees.  By the next morning, temperatures dropped to 30 degrees with wind chills at 19 degrees and a 2-3 hour snow storm that left at least two and half inches of snow.  The snow had significantly vanished by the end of that day and and by this Tuesday, temperatures are expected to rise once again to the low 70’s.

I’ve lived in North Texas all of my life and climate changes of this nature were rare at best.  Winters have become warmer and shorter while warming seasons are seeing record high temperatures that are lasting longer. 

The existential threat that man-made global warming poses mainly for those under fifty years of age and live at or below the poverty line supersedes all other socio-economic factors that touch our lives.  Without a sustainable ecosystem to raise our families and create jobs in, we are at risk of enduring health and safety risks that will over shadow the plagues and diseases in past eras that wiped out millions around the globe.

“a decade of GOP climate denial, fossil fuel industry obstruction, mounting climate disasters, and the cataclysmic election of Donald Trump pushed the climate fight into a much more radical and confrontational mode”   -SOURCE

We currently have elected officials in the Republican party that refuse to acknowledge the science and physical evidence we are all experiencing. If we are to have a chance for future generations to safely survive we need to put people in positions of leadership who will bi-pass partisan politics and corporate special interests to work towards those efforts that will reduce our carbon foot print.

Time is of the essence.  We have already exceeded thresholds that will effects us for decades.  Unless we make drastic changes with cleaner energy sources and away from human activities that destroy vital plant life, life as we’ve known it will be unrecognizable before the end of this century.