Used with permission of DW.
In the above YouTube, Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of Postsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research explains jet stream weather changes as “hot dry sunny weather lingers for longer, maybe for weeks on end, therefore causing drought problems, wildfire problems, and also the rainfall systems are moving more slowly, and that was one of the main problems with that flooding in West Germany and Belgium/Holland one year ago [ . . . . ]” He says the “weakening jet stream” also explains “extreme heat in parts of the United States, in Europe, and also in China, and the worst case nightmare of climate scientists is really that there is a [ . . . ] simultaneous harvest failure in the major bread basket region of the Northern Hemisphere including United States, Europe, Russia, Ukraine which could cause a hunger crisis.”
Climate Adam (“Doctor in climate science from Oxford.”), with his typical blend of superb humor/reliable info, gives an excellent answer for a question many students had, “What is the point of climate action if other countries lag?” In my May 19, 2014 blog post it was the same question of Charles Koch. I wrote, “According to Bill Gates’ interview in Rolling Stone, Charles Koch says the problem is bigger than the USA can solve [so why try?].” I added, “When these billionaires discuss climate change at ‘dinner,’ you know there is a problem.”
My favorite recent climate article is “‘Soon it [Earth] will be unrecognisable’: total climate meltdown cannot be stopped, says expert” about a new book Hothouse Earth by Bill McGuire,”emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London.” The 7/30/2022 article by Robin McKie at The Guardian quotes McGuire, “I know a lot of people working in climate science who say one thing in public but a very different thing in private. In confidence, they are all much more scared about the future we face, but they won’t admit that in public. I call this climate appeasement and I believe it only makes things worse. The world needs to know how bad things are going to get before we can hope to start to tackle the crisis.” McGuire added, “Who would have thought that a village on the edge of London would be almost wiped out by wildfires in 2022.” McKie wrote, “McGuire finished writing Hothouse Earth at the end of 2021. He includes many of the record high temperatures that had just afflicted the planet, including extremes that had struck the UK. A few months after he completed his manuscript, and as publication loomed, he found that many of those records had already been broken.”
For many years, my mantra has been “rate of change, rate of change, rate of change,” but now it is “water security, food security, community-building.” Thank you to the recent 241 visitors from France, 123 from United Kingdom, and 78 from Germany.
Leave a Reply