(Allusions to Murder on the Orient Express)
You are on a train. There has been a murder on the train. There are seven suspects. One is an heiress, another a known crook. There’s a former circus strongman, a mystery woman who won’t leave her room, and a retired admiral of the French navy. One of them, you are fairly certain, is Meryl Streep preparing to play some role that requires a hefty accent. The other suspect is, of course, you.
The train is heading northeast at 62 miles per hour as it winds its way through the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains with the Arges River flowing rapidly alongside. One mile ahead of you, the bridge is out. Who committed the murder? Who cares. Because if you don’t all get on the brakes right now, everyone—the innocent along with the guilty—are going to be dead in less than one minute.
The missing bridge is climate change. The murder is … anything else.
It has been frustratingly difficult to convince the public, even the progressive public, of the threat represented by climate change. Maybe this will help. It’s Tuesday’s editorial from the Charleston Gazette-Mail of West Virginia, right in the heart of Trump Digs Coal country.
https://www.dailykos.com/
When today’s kindergartners are in their 20s, they may find a devastated world wracked by horrible hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, tornadoes and other tragedies made worse by global warming. Coastal cities may be abandoned, sunken wrecks. Poverty and misery may result.
That’s the latest forecast from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.S. assembly of the world’s top scientists. Their new report is the ugliest yet. It predicts that humanity will suffer $54 trillion in damages by 2040 if the average global temperature rises a mere 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.
By now, most scientists agree that Planet Earth has entered the Anthropocene Epoch, the era when the biosphere — the surface region where life is possible — is permanently altered by human actions. Logging, agriculture and urban construction are factors, but global warming from fossil fuels is the worst cause. Their fumes form a “greenhouse” layer in the sky, trapping heat on the surface below.
Burning of fossil fuels must be reduced drastically, replaced by renewable energy, the report insists. “There is no way to mitigate climate change without getting rid of coal,” says one of the authors, Drew Shindell of Duke University.
Penn State scientist Michael Mann said Hurricane Michael “should be a wake-up call — as should have Katrina, Irene, Sandy, Harvey, Irma, Florence. In each of these storms we can see the impact of climate change: Warmer seas mean more energy to intensify these storms, more wind damage, bigger storm surge and more coastal flooding.”
How long can science-denying politicos keep pretending that global warming isn’t hurting America? For a long time it may have been human nature to dally about the issue. Projections were in a future that seemed distant. Warnings came in the necessarily honest words of science — projections and probabilities, rather than certainties. But that excuse is evaporating, too.
Two decades? When today’s children are young adults. When today’s adults are hoping to retire. That is a very human time scale, and the warnings are getting more certain every day.
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/opinion/ga...f6d70.html
You are on a train. There has been a murder on the train. There are seven suspects. One is an heiress, another a known crook. There’s a former circus strongman, a mystery woman who won’t leave her room, and a retired admiral of the French navy. One of them, you are fairly certain, is Meryl Streep preparing to play some role that requires a hefty accent. The other suspect is, of course, you.
The train is heading northeast at 62 miles per hour as it winds its way through the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains with the Arges River flowing rapidly alongside. One mile ahead of you, the bridge is out. Who committed the murder? Who cares. Because if you don’t all get on the brakes right now, everyone—the innocent along with the guilty—are going to be dead in less than one minute.
The missing bridge is climate change. The murder is … anything else.
It has been frustratingly difficult to convince the public, even the progressive public, of the threat represented by climate change. Maybe this will help. It’s Tuesday’s editorial from the Charleston Gazette-Mail of West Virginia, right in the heart of Trump Digs Coal country.
https://www.dailykos.com/
When today’s kindergartners are in their 20s, they may find a devastated world wracked by horrible hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, tornadoes and other tragedies made worse by global warming. Coastal cities may be abandoned, sunken wrecks. Poverty and misery may result.
That’s the latest forecast from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.S. assembly of the world’s top scientists. Their new report is the ugliest yet. It predicts that humanity will suffer $54 trillion in damages by 2040 if the average global temperature rises a mere 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.
By now, most scientists agree that Planet Earth has entered the Anthropocene Epoch, the era when the biosphere — the surface region where life is possible — is permanently altered by human actions. Logging, agriculture and urban construction are factors, but global warming from fossil fuels is the worst cause. Their fumes form a “greenhouse” layer in the sky, trapping heat on the surface below.
Burning of fossil fuels must be reduced drastically, replaced by renewable energy, the report insists. “There is no way to mitigate climate change without getting rid of coal,” says one of the authors, Drew Shindell of Duke University.
Penn State scientist Michael Mann said Hurricane Michael “should be a wake-up call — as should have Katrina, Irene, Sandy, Harvey, Irma, Florence. In each of these storms we can see the impact of climate change: Warmer seas mean more energy to intensify these storms, more wind damage, bigger storm surge and more coastal flooding.”
How long can science-denying politicos keep pretending that global warming isn’t hurting America? For a long time it may have been human nature to dally about the issue. Projections were in a future that seemed distant. Warnings came in the necessarily honest words of science — projections and probabilities, rather than certainties. But that excuse is evaporating, too.
Two decades? When today’s children are young adults. When today’s adults are hoping to retire. That is a very human time scale, and the warnings are getting more certain every day.
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/opinion/ga...f6d70.html
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.