Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week's shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history)? No, that doesn't mean a thing.
It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas -- fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they've ever been -- the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they're somehow connected.
If you did wonder, you see, you would also have to wonder about whether this year's record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest -- resulting in record flooding along the Mississippi -- could somehow be related. And then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.
It's far smarter to repeat to yourself the comforting mantra that no single weather event can ever be directly tied to climate change. There have been tornadoes before, and floods -- that's the important thing. Just be careful to make sure you don't let yourself wonder why all these record-breaking events are happening in such proximity -- that is, why there have been unprecedented megafloods in Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan in the past year. Why it's just now that the Arctic has melted for the first time in thousands of years. No, better to focus on the immediate casualties, watch the videotape from the store cameras as the shelves are blown over. Look at the news anchorman standing in his waders in the rising river as the water approaches his chest.
Because if you asked yourself what it meant that the Amazon has just come through its second hundred-year drought in the past five years, or that the pine forests across the western part of this continent have been obliterated by a beetle in the past decade -- well, you might have to ask other questions. Such as: Should President Obama really just have opened a huge swath of Wyoming to new coal mining? Should Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sign a permit this summer allowing a huge new pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta? You might also have to ask yourself: Do we have a bigger problem than $4-a-gallon gasoline?
Better to join with the U.S. House of Representatives, which voted 240 to 184 this spring to defeat a resolution saying simply that "climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare." Propose your own physics; ignore physics altogether. Just don't start asking yourself whether there might be some relation among last year's failed grain harvest from the Russian heat wave, and Queensland's failed grain harvest from its record flood, and France's and Germany's current drought-related crop failures, and the death of the winter wheat crop in Texas, and the inability of Midwestern farmers to get corn planted in their sodden fields. Surely the record food prices are just freak outliers, not signs of anything systemic.
It's very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies. If worst ever did come to worst, it's reassuring to remember what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Environmental Protection Agency in a recent filing: that there's no need to worry because "populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations." I'm pretty sure that's what residents are telling themselves in Joplin today.
This piece originally appeared in Tuesday, May 24th's Washington Post.
Follow Bill McKibben on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billmckibben
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Putting additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere traps heat that would otherwise radiate into space.
These are two different things.
http://notrickszone.com/2011/05/20/duh-oceans-drive-climate-not-co2-says-new-nature-study/
"Roy Spencer comes up with some great idea, all but proving the establishment wrong. Instead of trying to work on his idea until it’s in good enough shape to pass peer review, he posts it on a blog or publishes it in a book, and then accuses the other scientists of ignoring evidence. His true believers shower him with accolades (see the comments on his blog), and he leaves it up to others to point out the flaws in his methods."
You can find actual facts at http://climate.nasa.gov
The earth and its climatic systems are immensely complex. But when you learn such things as how melting ice alters the salinity of the oceans, which causes some major currents to alter their course, which affects temperatures of the continents touched by those currents, which affects relative moisture in the atmosphere, which can shift water to one region and away from another, which can lead to a proliferation of species in one area and dying out in another....then you might realize how freaking uninformed your observations are. Unless you're being paid by BP or MobilExxon to just fill space here and create ignorance, please give this better-considered thought (if you ARE paid by the oil companies, then you obviously need the money). I honestly worry how some of these people drive cars and parent children.
Let me repeat myself: the normal state of nature is a "struggle for existence". It is a state of famine and death. We have accelerated this pattern for many now extinct species, and now we are starting to feel it ourselves. Sure we have had and will continue to have periods of excess, enlightenment, and prosperity, but these are the anomolies that we fail to recognize since we are so short-lived and myopic.
Think of the way that many native peoples operated. They were far more sustainable, because their lives depended on it.
Now the developed nations have reversed the effects of so many diseases, that we continue to pass these deleterious genes to future generations. We've outsourced everything from growing food to building shelter, and producing clothing.
Every civilization has a half-life. Tell me, who will survive when it all collapses?
Long story short: they don't explain the above-discussed patterns.
Really, I am starting to enjoy how the uneducated will just make an argument about something they don't understand with prefaces that they don't even know.
The problem with the whole "time and place" argument is that, and I know you probably haven't noticed this, there has CONSTANTLY been a weather-related disaster of epic proportions on this planet for a little over a year. They're overlapping, and getting closer together. Saying "there's a time and a place", and during a catastrophe isn't it, is about the same as saying "let's never talk about this".
ECOPOLITICS
Mark Twain Dead!
An old saying goes like this: What has gone bad in the morning,
Cannot be made good in the evening
Now we are facing the outcomes and it will soon be each man for himself.
David Edwards, "Life Or Death"
The only reason we cannot have a more rational energy policy is because fossil fuel corporations make enormous amounts of money extracting fuels. They don't want us to switch over too soon which would prevent them from extracting their last barrel of oil or last ton of coal. The simple fact is that we ought to treat oil and coal as a precious commodity worth conserving while we make the necessary transition.
I believe that our economic systems is so broken that it makes decision for us, the people, which are without exception wrong choices. Why should we tolerate such a system? The answer is not to be found in the current debates but in more simple question - what kind of people do we wish to be? After we decide that we must create systems which will reflect that. If we were to do this, I bet you we would be making prudent choices in our energy consumption.
The spikes are volcanoes, which have a net short-term cooling effect.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-do-volcanoes-affect-w