Carbon, Accumulating, Dangerously

CHENISTRY, AN ANCIENT SCIENCE, has advanced much over the past two centuries, and reveals much about the universe we inhabit. It is possible, indeed easy, to measure the exact composition of the Earth's atmosphere, down to the molecular composition and percantage of its constituents. We know that air is composed of slightly more than seventy eight percent nitrogen, about nineteen percent oxygen, and approximately three percent "trace elements", tiny quantities of light atoms of helium, argon, carbon, among others. We know that over the past several million years, the percentage of carbon in the atmosphere has been about two hundred parts per million, a trace element. We also know that since the advent of the industrial revolution, since about seventeen fifty, the perentage has increased to its most recently measured level, which is precisely four hundred twenty six point nine parts per million. This is more atmospheric carbon than at any point in the past several million years, and it is growing steadily, at a prodigious rate, due to our higher than ever level of fossil fuel emissions. Carbon a heavier element than nitrogen and oxygen, absorbs more heat than they, and releases it back into space at night much more slowly. We know that this is unsustainable, that it has already reached catastrophic levels, that is is causing the climate change we are obviously experiencing now. We also know that despite the current movement to fight climate change by changing to "clean" energy technologies, our transition to electric cars, to solar and wind energy, to mmore fuel effcient energy systems of all sotrt,that the rate of increase in carbon emissions is still not slowing, but indeed, continues to increase. Four hundred anf fifty parts per million is at catastrophic level, and we are guaranteed to reach that level within the next decade,no matter what we do. Extreme climate change is "baked" into our future, inevitable, unavoidable, no matter what we do to prevent it. It is too late to prevent it. Extreme heat, extreme weather volatility, more frequent storm and rain events, prolonged droughts, steadily, drastically rising sea levels; these things we are experiencing now, and they will only continue to get worse. Every year the global temperature is greater than the previous year, and that will continue. Our descendants are doomed to live in a difficult to endure global climate environemnt. Their only recourse will be adaptation. Half the world's population lives within a few miles of the ocean. Billions of people will be forced to retreat inland, taking their cities and homes with them. The cost will be astronomical. Atready rising sea levels are causing daily flooding of coastal areas on the east coast of the United States, with regular flooding in the tidweater piedmont conutry. The coastal highway in Miami,florida,becomes submerged in seawater routinely. A sea wall is being built, which will only postpone inevitable disaster. Florida will become a tiny sliver of a peninsula, with only central Florida remaining above water. New York City is experiencing regular flooding in its subway system, which will only get worse. And yet, close to half the American population, mostly consrvatives, refuse to accept this obvious reality, preferring to place head in sand, and to continue their profligate, material, hedonsitic lifestyle, dooming their children and grand children to untold misery.These people are our modern criminals, and they deserve the same fate they are leaving to their hapless descendants.