Disaster, Coming True

 THE INTERNATIOLAN PANEL ONCLIMATE CHANGE,  which consists of esteemed scientists and is therefore doubtless considered fraudulent by American conservatives, painted, the other day, the most dire picture of Earth's environmental future to date. Fraudulent it isn't. Where I live October has during the last decade become a summer month, with daily temperatures hitting eighty five regularly. Spring begins in late February, and it rarely snows, like it used to. Each IPCC report, issued every few years, is more dire (for the elucidation of conservatives; the word "dire" means "bad") than the last. One can scarcely imagine how horrible future reports will be, as climate science keeps improving, and climate progresses. It will get worse, much worse. Consider this summer. The American west is on fire, with larger and more frequent wildfires every year. Heat waves and drought are more severe every year. the current heat wave in the west, with daily temperatures well above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, is unprecedented. the only place for the annual wildfires to spread is east, where there is much more to burn ad the heat waves and droughts are evident. The Ozarks and the Appalachians will eventually burn. So will the pine forests of Pennsylvania and upstate New York. Temperatures well above one hundred all across North America in the summer are no longer the stuff of science fiction, but instead, rapidly approaching in real time, real life. Its the same everywhere. Australia has already burned, last year. So has southern Europe, with hideous flooding and raging wildfires in rapid succession. Every flood is now a once in one hundred or once in five hundred year event. Hurricanes and tornadoes are becoming monstrous, and, it turns out, more frequent. It is now possible to measure precisely the impact climate change has on the frequency and severity of such storms; the impact is considerable. How long before such storms become  incessant? One of my friends sad several years ago that he just doesn't know about this climate change stuff, he has his doubts. Donald Trump knows. He knows it is all a hoax, perpetrated by the media, the Democrats, the Chines, or somebody. Where I live it hasn't rained in nearly a month, and as I watch my lawn die, I wonder how long my trees have. And I remember that day, long ago, when I was half the age I am now, when NASA scientist James Hanson told congress about something called "global warming". He was widely ignored. He still is.