Pollution has become an everyday affair; a murderous way of life which, according to a report published in The Lancet, is responsible for the deaths of at least nine million people every year. The air we breathe is poisoned, the streams, rivers, lakes and oceans are filthy, — some more, some less — the land littered with waste, the soil toxic.
In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!
— Donald J. Trump
It’s January, yet methane hydrates in the Arctic are growling like an incensed monster on a scorching hot mid-summer day. But, it is January; it’s winter, not July!
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt holds up a hardhat he was given during a visit to coal mine in Sycamore, Pa., April 13, 2017. (AP/Gene J. Puskar)
Published in partnership with Shadowproof.
A senior Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official resigned from the agency in protest against EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s plans for massive industry deregulation that will threaten human health.
Recent news out of the Arctic is alarming scientists as, for example, the Union of Concerned Scientists discussed further on in this article. This extreme bad news is far-reaching, out of the ordinary, and chilling to the bone.
There have been 21 presidential debates, which, by and large, skirted the biggest issue affecting the most people, back-to-back, back-to-back, and back-to-back, and on and on record-setting planetary heat!
Nowadays, rather than hitting yearly heat records, the planet is hitting monthly heat records (maybe global warming’s accelerating): e.g.:
Runaway global warming is far and away humankind’s biggest nightmare, and the Arctic is the likely perpetrator. If it happens, it’ll blister agricultural foodstuff before it can reach the outstretched arms of the multitudes. Then what?
Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute of California recently warned, “What is happening in the Arctic now is unprecedented and possibly catastrophic. The evidence is very clear that rapid and unprecedented changes are happening in the Arctic.”1
A lone polar bear on a small sheet of ice has become an iconic image of global warming. Unfortunately, the image of the distraught polar bear sends a beguiling image that renders the dangers of global warming a disservice.
A better image, or icon, would be a massive 100-foot thick naturally coagulated renegade iceberg broadsiding an oil rig. More on this truly catastrophic event later.
Climate change/global warming is the main protagonist on the worldwide stage of collapsing ecosystems.
The ecosystem is a combination of living organisms in harmony with nonliving elements like air, water, and mineral soil interacting as one whole. But, what if the living and nonliving elements stop interrelating as “one harmonized whole”? Then, what happens?
As things stand today, the planet’s future is decidedly in the camp of “then, what happens?”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as world governments, ignores the risks of an ice-free Arctic (Wadhams). Rather, an ice-free Arctic is widely applauded by much of the world as a positive way forward for re-opening of northern shipping routes, new trips for cruise lines, and access to a huge cache of fossil fuels.
