MICHAEL AND FLORENCE AND THE GLOBAL WARMING DENIERS

If there was any doubt in people’s minds that our only inhabitantable planet is suffering from “global warming” these last two hurricanes: Florence and Michael will have made those folks think again.

Before the thousands of dead fish could be washed off the shoulders of North Carolina highways  and while vivid stories of the  plague of frogs in North Carolina yards and homes are splashed across  local newspapers, a second “hundred year storm” only three weeks later (Cat 4 Michael) barrels into the Gulf Coast on the Florida panhandle.  These two massive “”once-in-a-hundred-year-storms” arriving on our shores in quick succession only weeks apart have put the lie to the idea that “global warming” is only a plot of the left and the “commies” to undermine the power and wealth a nation rich in fossil fuels—like the USA.

When will the President and the Congress wise up and act?  Human caused climate change  is not “fake news”.  The gases that cause our atmosphere to hold on to the energy it receives from the sun are at the highest level in history.  We generate those gases by burning fossil fuels.  The more of these gases in the atmosphere the greater heat energy the atmosphere holds and the more violent our storms, the more rain we get, the more snowfall that accumulates in winter and the higher river floodwater reaches.  It also causes the rise of sea level as glaciers melt and add water to the oceans.  These effects of climate change are real and are a major threat to the health and well-being of our citizenry and the economy of our nation. There is no ignoring it.  We do so at our peril.

 It was just a few days ago that the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) met in Seoul, South Korea (Oct 7, 2018) to evaluate the 2018 global response to the Paris Agreement on climate change of 2016.  The original IPCC meeting of 2016 was attended by 175 countries including 55 industrialized nations which generate  more than half of the world’s  “greenhouse gas” emissions (such as carbon dioxide and methane) at that conclave the attendees agreed to make national efforts to keep global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius (@3.6 deg Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels and stabilize those emissions by 2100.

The recent 2018  in Seoul, South Korea to evaluate those efforts Concluded with some dire predictions.  There were some holdouts—the USA one of the major contributors to the atmosphere’s burden of atmospheric  warming gases did not attend.  Australian continues to back its coal industry in defiance of the IPCC recommendations,  The  scientists  agreed  that our efforts so far have not been successful and that we have only to about 2030 to make significant changes in how we use fossil fuels before we reach a point of no return —“tipping pint” in the global climate.  We have only a mere 12 years to avoid catastrophic climate change...according to these most recent assessments.    The storms we have just now experienced affecting our southern states seems to underscore those predictions with a frightful emphasis.