By Pepper Parr
August 24, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
There is very little wind left in the “climate change is a plot to scare the world” argument. The federal government has instructed all its members to get into the community and ask for ideas on what can be done about managing the change we are going to see in our climate.
This summer taught us what it is going to be like when we get exceptionally hot weather over a longer than normal period of time.
Just how bad is it going to be?
The New York Times recently published a series of maps showing what NASA estimated the changes in temperature in the decades ahead.
Note that the American do not use the metric system of measurement.
Heidi Cullen, chief scientist for Climate Central, an environmental research group and the author of “The Weather of the Future” points out that 14 of the 15 hottest years have occurred since 2000
Based on the map data, the number of 100 degree plus days will skyrocket making working or playing outdoors unbearable and sometimes deadly
“The quality of the food we will be able to grow and the impact on our water supply will only get worse”, she said.
It is not going to be a pretty picture.
It’s interesting how blind some people choose to be when it comes to the reality of where this is all heading. Increasing temperatures, melting polar ice caps, increased ocean levels, decreased dry land, decreasing crop production, increasing population, decreasing oxygen levels, decreasing food and water. It’s not good folks!
Our planet is billions of years old, and we humankind are just a tiny blip on the history timeline of Earth. Look at how much damage we’ve done in just the past 50 years alone, and how that damage is escalating at an ever increasing rate. It’s scary to think what life will be like in 200 years from now. The truth is that our current lifestyle and population is not sustainable. We’re like parasites feeding off our host, but when the host can no longer support us, then what do we do? Fighting over food and water will become a very real problem, maybe not in our lifetimes, but someday. Natural selection, battle of the fittest, call it what you will, but whereas we live our coddled little lives now, a time will come when only the strongest will survive. Technology can’t save us from everything. We already fight wars over oil, who’s to say the same won’t happen for clean drinking water? We can survive without oil, and look how many people have died fighting for it. We cannot survive without food or water, so the motivation to acquire it will be infinitely stronger. It’s going to get ugly.
The Earth, as it’s done many times in the past, will go through a course correction. With it will come a mass culling of our population. Like all lifeforms that have lived on this planet before us, humankind is not immune to extinction. The “if” isn’t the unknown.
I would be really impressed if the author of the maps could tell me what the weather will be next week
Well we had better raise the taxes, I mean fees, carbon offsets or is it credits? Do it fast or we’ll all melt.
Agreed, the climate is changing. So what? Perhaps we should enact some sort of fee for evolution too, no?
On basis we as a species have been around for about 5 thousand to 2 million years, dependent entirely upon your sources, the fossil record clearly demonstrates that there were in the pasttropical ferns growing at the North Pole. What is the Earth’s steady state? Anybody want to weigh in on that?
Some experts have cited the fact that in the Hundred or so years of maintaining temperature date the mean temperature has risen by 1.8 degrees and on basis of the inaccuracy of measuring methodology and the fact that the locations were changed this actually points to a very and almost impossibly stable temperature over the same time period.
Seriously, on the other side of this coin it means that the cereal grain growing belt just becomes a few hundred miles wider.
That’s good news for northern Canada.
Canada’s total contribution to CO2 is ~2-3% of total world output, this before you calculate that Canada is 3rd largest forested area in the world being taken into account after Brazil and Russia.
How is the raising of taxes in Canada influencing the waste and CO2 output in places like India and China?
We have largely committed to elimination of coal burning electricity production by closing a few dozen plants and in the same time China “Builds” 500 new units per year!
Go ahead raise the fees and beggar us all. Please Dear Leader we must save the planet for the love of the planet raise our eco fees too!
Editor’s note:
Did he say: “Agreed, the climate is changing. So what?”
Amazing!