There’ll be a change in the weather…
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Posted on January 30, 2008
Filed Under Justice, Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
I don’t know about you, but I have been pretty awestruck by the series of snowstorms in Idaho and other parts of the country. Folks there are saying nothing like this has happened in decades, or ever in memory, and more snow is coming. Awestriking snowfall has also hit parts of Colorado, then the weather system raged across the upper Midwest into the Northeast. MSNBC has this story that sums up the weathery rampage of snow, ice and wind. The system included killer thunderstorms in Indiana.
And this winter has a long way to go.
But the U.S. is not alone. Check out this story on Fox News (not my favorite source, but this is a straight news story), China Struggles to Cope With Winter Storms as More Snow Forecast.
Now as we repeat here over and over again, climate and weather are different. Bad weather does not equal proof of climate change. However, the patterns do.
As we have also said before, more moisture in the atmosphere because of warmer global temperatures will add energy to weather systems — which means more extreme weather as part of the climate change scenario.
We don’t have extreme weather now and then anymore — we have it all the time.
So when I googled this topic, I came up with this 2001 article from CommonDreams.org, Extreme Storms Darken Global Horizon, and I want to share it with you. The article summarizes concerns of scientists working on earlier research for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
…the most serious threat to humanity isn’t the forecast rise of several degrees in global average temperature by 2100 but the projected increase in the number and severity of floods, cyclones, droughts, heat waves and other examples of extreme weather.
Now I am not interested all that much in the arguments regarding extreme weather events and climate change, and I am not consigning any one weather event to global warming. But I am saying what is obvious — we have already warmed the atmosphere enough to create havoc in climate systems and we are very likely seeing the results.
As this article suggests, while many think we will simply adapt to rising temperatures, they forget the suddenness of extreme onslaughts from the natural world whose atmosphere has become more unstable and therefore its weather more unpredictable. It’s the suddenness that is frightening and for which we seem remarkably ill-prepared.
Just imagine how this will play out in the poorer nations of our world where people are the most unprotected. Our consciences ought to shake us out of our lethargy into action — to slow global warming as rapdily as possible, and to build resilience among the poor of our planet through our foreign aid tax dollars.
Remember, we are far more responsible than they could ever be for the climate turbulence to come and that will impact their lives far more than ours. There is a moral obligation here of rather enormous consequence.
Technorati Tags: extreme weather, snow storms, moral obligation of climate change, adapting to climate change
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We are already facing this in India. Day and night temperatures up by 3-5degres celsius. People are getting rare ailments. Probably there may be famine shortly, if proper precautions are not taken, as our countries agro base depends on rain water.