"The reports of the climatological community have become more agitated—even almost despairing—in tone with every year that passes."
"The reports of the climatological community have become more agitated—even almost despairing—in tone with every year that passes."The world’s scientific men and women continually produce reports detailing conclusions derived from their researches and observations. Some are looked-forward-to with greater intensity than others. With the passage of time the reports of elements of the climatological community have, arguably, become the most looked-forward-to of scientific reports.
There are two reasons for this development. The first is that climate change has become Earth’s No.1 problem—he tweets of President Donald Trump to the country notwithstanding. The second reason is that the world’s knowledgeable people, seeing the increasing frequency and ferocity of natural disasters, want a blow-by-blow account of how rapidly Earth’s physical condition is deteriorating.
The reports of the climatological community have become more agitated—even almost despairing—in tone with every year that passes. A case in point is the National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by US law. The last Assessment was released to the public last year. It is a massive report; the findings of more than 1,000 previous research studies are incorporated in it.
Says the report: “Climate change is transforming where and how (people) live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy and the natural systems that support (people).” These challenges include worsening air pollution causing heart and lung problems, more diseases from insects, nastier allergies and potential for a jump in deaths during heat waves, the report states.
One of the report’s co-authors, Dr. Katherine Hayhoe, had this to say: “We are seeing the things we said would happen now in real life.” (To) a climate scientist, it is almost surreal.” Dr. Hayhoe doubtless had the wildfires in California, the hurricanes in Louisiana and Puerto Rico and the unprecedented floods in the Midwest—among many other disasters in mind.
The report could well have had the Philippines and other island countries in mind when it said that climate change would be especially costly for a nation’s coasts because of rising seas and severe storm surges, which will lower property values.” In some areas … coastal flooding will likely force people to relocate,” it said.
Another co-author, a University of Illinois climate scientist, said this in the report: “We are going to continue to see severe weather events get stronger and more intense.”
As in the rest of the planet, temperatures in the US have been rising at a progressively faster rate during the past century, according to the National Climate Assessment. “The (mainland) 48 states have warmed one degree Celsius since 1900 and slightly higher in the last few decades, (and) by the end of the century the US is projected to be from 1.6 to 6.6 Celsius hotter, depending on how much greenhouse gasses are released into the atmosphere.”
That should be a terrifying thought not only for Americans but for all the world’s people. Everyone, i.e., except the President of the country that accounts for approximately 20 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. Donald Trump’s tweet on the most recent Northeast US cold spell ended with the question: “Whatever happened to Global Warming?”
Reacting to the tweet, another co-author of the report, an international policy expert of the World Resources Institute, said that the Trump administration was “continuing a campaign of not only denying but also suppressing the best of climate science.”
Scary does not begin to adequately describe the latest report on global warming and its impact on the world’s climate.