Reaching the Tipping Point, and Beyond

LAST SUMMER in Phoenix, Arizona the temperature reached one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit on thrity one different days. Not one hundred degrees, one hundred ten. There were many ore days on which it reached a mere hundred. Meanwhile, off the western, Gulf Coast of Florida, near Tampa Bay, there was an oceanic heat wave in which the water temperature was one hundred degrees for several weeks, and coral reefs were damaged, bleached and white with death, and every species of plant and animal marine was stressed and strained. Heat waves are more prevalent and more dangerous in the ocean than on land. Much of the world's heat is stored in its oceans. Much stored ocean heat ultimately gets relesed into the atmosphere, only to further exacerbate heat waves on land. More famously, with the gradual but increasing and inevitable melting of the arctic tundra, billions of tons of methane gas, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the thawing ground already is releasing and will release billions more tons of carbon into the atmosphere. All this adds much to accelerating climate change. The total amount of atmospheric carbon put there by human industrial activity over the past one hundred years now approaches one trillion tons. It seems like just yeasterday, and was actually just a few years ago, when our published articles warning about climate chnge stated the number, reasonably accurately, as about eight hundred and fifty billion tons. Nearly eveybody my age and older, and many younger, have noticed in their neighborhood, the cliamte has already changed drastically. Spring arrives too early, summer lingers too long, droughts are more frequent, severe, and prolonged. When it rains, it pours. Floods are more frequent and severe. Storms are more frequent, larger, more violent. We are told that it is still not to late to prevent the worst outcomes of climate change by making fundamental changes to our energy and economic systems now, but it must be done now. There are two problems with this. First, it is now obvious that we are indeed not going to do enough, if anything, "now". And, secondly, it is already too late to prevent drastic change to the climate through global warming, because climate change is already well underway, and has already become drastic. It has already caused significant damage, many billions of dollars worth, has turned millions of people into climate refugees a they flee famine and flood, and has killed tens of thousands of people. There will come a time, soon, when the summer of 2023 seems like the good old days, when the climate was still normal. Recently on National Public Radio I listened to a program about "the emotions of climate hange". It must be, in a twisted sort of way, very emotionally comforting to be a climate change denier. Convince yourself that its all a liberal hoax, problem solved. No wories about any need to redesign your sacred capitalistic economic system, no worries for the Earth's fufuter even with unlimited fossil fuel driven economic expansion and corporate profit. Drill baby, drill. The climate change crazy libs are crazy, just ignore them, or ridicule them for political advantage. Accepting reality rather than self delusion about the climate is far more complicated,far less pleasant, and requries intelligence,and sometimes courage. The primary emotions for those acknowledging and understanding the science of cliamte, so strongly confirmed by the weather over time, are far less pleasant, more frightening. There is the dread, the anxiety, the foreboding. Knowing that next summer, and every summer after that will almost certainly become the hottest summer ever, just as the summer 0f 2023 was, inspires dread and apprehension, appropriately. People grounded in our dire reality feel not only a sense of dread about the present, but dread about the future, long and short term. People know that we no longer need to fear only for our remote descendants, but also our children and grandchildren, and for ourelves. Climate change is here, and is becoming worse fast. Fear and dread are turning to panic, appropriately.