It’s time to take action on climate change

by RICHARD MASON Special to the Democrat-Gazette | December 8, 2019 at 1:53 a.m.
The inhabitants of our planet cannot continue along the same path we are now treading. If we do, there will be such a reduction in the quality of life for the peoples on the earth that life for huge parts of the population will be at risk. But as the 16-year-old young lady from Sweden Greta Thunberg said, “Adults don’t care.” She’s right. As one reporter wrote about her address to the United Nations, “She called them a bunch of jerks.” As Greta said to that bunch of bureaucrats as she fought back tears, “People are dying, and dying ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is the money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

In Sweden, over 100,000 children have joined her crusade, with thousands more school-age kids around the world joining every day … “And a child will lead them.” In spite of what you hear and read, basic science should be a non-political item. Anyone who doubts settled science in place of political rhetoric should rethink their position in the light of the obvious, and climate change caused by global warming is as certain as gravity. As multiple storms tear Houston apart, are we seeing one of the country’s great cities becoming unlivable? I’ve lost count of how many storms the city has suffered through in the past five years. How many more will it take before there is a mass exodus? New Orleans and Miami will also become inhabitable and the Bahamas will be history, and what is even more unthinkable is the worst is yet to come. After another 20 years, when only a few flat-earth non-believers are remaining, it will be too late.

The atmosphere will be so toxic that large areas of the world will suffer from extreme drought while other parts have never-ending torrential rain. The remnants of coastal cities will be under constant flooding, and will send torrents of refugees into the center of countries around the world. Venice will only be a memory.

The hottest September on record tells us that global warming is getting worse; and tornadoes are sweeping the country in areas where they haven’t occurred for years. But we are not only asleep at the wheel, we are cascading off into the ditch as fast as we can.

We pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, stating, “We don’t want to do anything that would harm our economy.” And then to pile stupidity upon stupidity, our government is suing California because its new pollution standards are tougher than the recently drastically reduced federal standards. Instead of trying to combat the inevitable warming of the earth’s atmosphere, we are doing everything we can to increase the problem.

The California wildfires have destroyed thousands of houses. Consider 80-mile-per-hour winds on top of an exceptionally dry season and add flames. On the flip side, Colorado and Wyoming set October records for low temperatures, and the recent November cold snap set hundreds of records nationwide. That is exactly what scientists have predicted as side effects of our plant’s warming. We can look forward to a winter where one week we will set a record for the warmest January day on record, and before the month is out, a record low-temperature snowfall will pound us.

The scientists who predicted this global disaster are stating that the situation is deteriorating much faster and more severely than expected. With that in mind, as soon as 20 years from now, we can expect an exodus of biblical proportions to begin from coastal cities, and within another 15 years after that these cities will become uninhabitable. That sounds like a doomsday scenario, but consider that if someone had predicted exactly the weather we have encountered recently 10 years ago, we would have dismissed them as an alarmist.

While isolated weather events such as flooding, hurricanes, and tornadoes are terrible for the local inhabitants, they really don’t affect the majority of the world’s citizens. However, the overall result of global warming, which is more sinister and not as noticeable, is the real danger. The population of the earth is currently around 7.7 billion and is increasing yearly. As it stands now, just trying to provide food for that many people is taxing the arable land available for food production. If the scientists are right, droughts will eliminate huge swaths of land, and in other areas torrential rains will make food production difficult. Frantic people by the millions won’t be able to find food. Chaos will ensue, and the world’s civilizations will be reduced to a constant economic war of the haves and have-nots.
Is this the world we want to give our children and grandchildren? Every minute wasted in denying global warming will contribute to the impending disaster.

God help us! Email Richard Mason at richard@gibraltarenergy.com.