In James Lawrence Powell's e-book, Rough Winds, Extreme Weather and Climate Change, he reminds us of the fact that we humans are collectively emitting over 30 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide every year. And, along with the rest of our greenhouse gases, we are capturing an awful lot of heat, which will "cause future temperatures to be higher than they would otherwise have been."
From that elemental fact of science, there is no escape. And the warmer the Earth, the more extreme will be the weather."
Recently, Seth Borenstein, an AP reporter interviewed 15 climate scientists who told him "that this long hot U.S. summer is consistent with what is to be expected in global warming." One of those scientists was "Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in fire-charred Colorado, (who) said these are the very record-breaking conditions he has said would happen, but many people wouldn't listen. So it's I told-you-so time, he said."
Only four months ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report that said, "Evidence suggests that climate change has led to changes in climate extremes such as heat waves, record high temperatures and, in many regions, heavy precipitation in the past half century."
The IPCC said in its Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX), "Climate extremes, or even a series of non-extreme events, in combination with social vulnerabilities and exposure to risks can produce climate-related disasters."
Chris Field, Co-Chair of IPCC's Working Group II, said, "The main message from the report is that we know enough to make good decisions about managing the risks of climate-related disasters. Sometimes we take advantage of this knowledge, but many times we do not."
Remind me Chris. When have we ever taken advantage of this knowledge?
According to Qin Dahe, Co-Chair of Working Group I, "The SREX provides an unprecedented level of detail regarding observed and expected changes in weather and climate extremes, based on a comprehensive assessment of over 1,000 scientific publications."
"The report's 592 pages cite thousands of scientific studies and have been subjected to three rounds of review by experts and governments to ensure that the findings are firmly based in the underlying scientific and technical information."
"A total of 220 authors from 62 countries worked on the report, for which 18,784 outside expert and government review comments were received in the three rounds of formal review."
While all this sounds impressive, the fact that the media largely ignored the report's release begs the question: Does it matter that scientists know that we are increasing the odds of extreme weather if we have no interest in changing the lifestyles that are responsible for these disasters? When do we finally admit that we just don't care to know that we are to blame for all this?
Unfortunately, scientists have trouble writing these reports in a manner that interests the typical environmental reporter or science journalist. It is sad to admit but they need to dumb it down more before most of us will care to pay attention. For example, there is this:
There is evidence that some extremes have changed as a result of anthropogenic influences, including increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. It is likely that anthropogenic influences have led to warming of extreme daily minimum and maximum temperatures at the global scale. There is medium confidence that anthropogenic influences have contributed to intensification of extreme precipitation at the global scale. It is likely that there has been an anthropogenic influence on increasing extreme coastal high water due to an increase in mean sea level."
The average person will react to this paragraph in the same way a smoker reacts to the warning on a pack of cigarettes. The only thing that stops some smokers is serious illness related to their smoking behavior. And while we are now experiencing the direct effects of our greenhouse emissions with current extreme weather events, the media is still reluctant to connect these important dots between our actions and our suffering. They ignore it so we can ignore it.
The suffering is all too real but the message is clear. There is nothing we can do about it because that is how we want it. We don't want to accept responsibility for this and so the media complies with our collective desire to continue our lives as we always have. As a psychologist I find this whole process to be one of the most interesting experiments in human behavior ever conducted. Like Jonestown, we are happily drinking the Kool-Aid while denying that we are doing so.
While the IPCC report warned of "unprecedented extreme weather and climate events" and its lead author, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University, said, "It's really dramatic how many of the patterns that we've talked about as the expression of the extremes are hitting the U.S. right now," none of this matters.
If we ever do anything about global climate change, more suffering will be necessary before we act. In fact, until we experience massive and devastating catastrophes on a previously unimaginable level, we will continue to ignore this issue. But one thing we do know for sure. This will only get worse with the passage of time. God knows we are going to keep producing greenhouse gases.
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