How To Tell If The World Is Heating…

Look at the temperature records. Each new set of temperature records shows how current temperatures compare with previous. It’s the whistle on the teakettle.

So how are recent records playing out? Are we heating or cooling or stating the same?

”Hot-temperature records are far outpacing cool records across the globe this year as Europe and the United States brace again for dangerous heat waves.”

“In the US, 92 all-time record high temperatures had been set through July 16, compared with only five all-time record low temperatures, according to data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Globally, 188 all-time heat records were broken versus 18 cool records.”

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/18/weather/heat-records-outpace-cool-records-globally-climate/index.html

The planet is heating. No doubt about it. Setting heat records right and left is just another way to verify it. These records are temperatures not seen before in recorded history. Setting a new temperature high means temperatures higher than we have ever seen or recorded. Setting a lot of them - far more than low temperature records - means we’re heating enough that temperature variations are shifting higher.

Here’s a graph that shows what’s happening and it’s screaming that we are out of time to act. We either stop emitting carbon or we die. It’s that simple. 1.5C is the point where already-thawing peat bogs go nuts. Methane clathrates melt. And other positive feedback mechanisms take over and we suddenly are no longer causing it. We become passengers just along for the ride as the planet speeds to heat death.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the data in 2016 almost reached 1.5C. That was just over six years ago and we haven’t changed our ways. We may even be past 1.5C (we’re certainly close if we aren’t passing it now).

The news is getting scary. A recent article discussed how pollen loses viability at higher than normal temperatures. Bees are already stressed anyway thanks to pesticides but now the pollen may not be able to fertilize and lead to flowers and fruit. That’s the heart of our food supply and the cracks are getting wider. When our food supply collapses for any of a number of reasons, we starve. On that path people will rob and kill others as society breaks down. How many gunned up maga folk will just sit by and quietly starve? How many of us would?

Anyway, if we aren’t out of time already, we’re damn close. We either start getting off carbon or we die. This is the legacy of the likes of Joe Manchin, Rex Tillerson, the Kochs, the Bushes, the Cheneys, all the bought and paid for politicians who want to tell you how you need fossil fuels pay for schools, etc. Ad nauseum. It’s all happening faster and faster now. Just look at that 2016 data almost standing entirely alone. The trend is there too.

The planet is heating and if we remain complacent, the planet dies. And we do too.