I know many CycloneReport members have little to no concern about the changing climate. Personally I have been concerned about it for quite some time, although I have had my disagreements with how we are going about addressing it. Most of us will be long gone, but as time goes by more sensible options will no longer be on the table and more extreme measures may become necessary. I do have some concerns about how increasing temperatures affect the water supply in parts of the country that go to great lengths to supply their large population centers with enough clean water that it's competing with water needed to sustain farming.
This morning the Ames Tribune had a page one article on the rising global temperatures. I've provided the link below and have clipped a paragraph from it. My hope is that people can realize this is a real problem due to human activity that's not just part of global weather cycles. The US can't solve this on our own, but what we can do is work on technologies that bring economical solutions that can close a business case for doing something about it. Done right there would be profit to be had in those ventures. But first we have to understand the issue is real. About that there should be no argument (although I know there is).
This morning the Ames Tribune had a page one article on the rising global temperatures. I've provided the link below and have clipped a paragraph from it. My hope is that people can realize this is a real problem due to human activity that's not just part of global weather cycles. The US can't solve this on our own, but what we can do is work on technologies that bring economical solutions that can close a business case for doing something about it. Done right there would be profit to be had in those ventures. But first we have to understand the issue is real. About that there should be no argument (although I know there is).
Climate change heats up global weather
Although heat waves are a natural part of the climate, the severity and extent of the heat waves so far this year are not “just summer.”
A scientific assessment of this year’s heat wave estimates that heat this severe and long-lasting was two to four times more likely to occur today because of human- caused climate change than it would have been without it.
This conclusion is consistent with the rapid increase over the past several decades in the number of U.S. heat waves and their occurrence outside the peak of summer.
These record heat waves are happening in a climate that’s globally about 2.2 degrees warmer than it was before the industrial revolution, when humans began releasing large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions that warm the climate.
While a temperature difference of a degree or two when you walk into a different room might not even be noticeable, even fractions of a degree make a large difference in the global climate.
At the peak of the last ice age, some 20,000 years ago, when the Northeast was under thousands of feet of ice, the globally averaged temperature was only 10.8 degrees cooler than now. So, it is not surprising that 2.2 degrees of warming so far is already rapidly changing the climate.
Countries promised in 2015 as part of the Paris Agreement to keep warming well under 3.7 degrees, but current government policies around the world won’t meet those goals.
Temperatures are on pace to continue rising, with the increase likely to more than double again by the end of the century.
