Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Monday, July 18, 2022

The future is now

If you're just waking up after a 72 hour coma, you need to be told that western Europe is suffering from an unprecedented heat wave.  But it's worse than unprecedented. As the linked Reuters article tells us:

Britain’s Met Office weather agency also issued its first-ever “red warning” of extreme heat for Monday and Tuesday, when temperatures in southern England are forecast to reach 37 Celsius (98.6 Fahrenheit). Britain's highest recorded temperature, from July 2019, was 38.7 Celsius; the country's weather agency forecasts an 80 percent chance that this current heat wave will overtake that record. There is a 50 percent chance, they recorded, that it will hit 40 degrees, or 104 Fahrenheit, for the first time.

Two years ago, the country's meteorological service presented a hypothetical forecast for Britain's expected temperatures in 2050 in order to demonstrate the effects of climate change to the public. That forecast, supposedly slated for 30 years from now, is expected to hit the country next week.

Portugal, France and Spain are battling unprecedented  wildfires. Alaska and Siberia are also on fire, and it isn't even making the news.  And yes, the situation we are confronting right now, today, is exactly what has long been predicted for 2050. That Chinese hoax is looking more and more convincing. And oh, by the way, this is a big part of why there are all those desperate migrants at the southern border, and Syrian society collapsed, and there are all those migrants in Europe. It's just going to get worse and worse..

There are no more words left to mince. Joe Manchin and the Republican party are enemies of humanity.

7 comments:

Truman Bradley said...

I hate to press the point, but the elephant in the room is China and yet, no one is talking about it. China produces almost three times the CO2 as US. Let that sink in. X3.

China is the key and without China's cooperation, none of the proposed climate actions in the past or today would make any difference whatsoever. But we only hear about Republicans.

Blaming Senator Manchin in particular and the Republican Party for something they didn't/aren't doing that would not have made a difference anyway just smells of disinformation for political purposes.

Follow the science

Cervantes said...

I think that is insanely misguided and flat wrong. It is true that China emits more greenhouse gases than the U.S. but that doesn't mean that the U.S. should do nothing about its own emissions. Unlike Manchin and the Republicans, the Chinese fully acknowledge the reality of anthropogenic climate change -- in fact your cult hero Donald Trump calls it a hoax perpetrated by them. They have pledged to eliminate their emissions, and they are taking steps to do so. China is the world's largest producer of photovoltaics. But we can't put any pressure on them to do more so long as we do nothing.

Truman Bradley said...


The US is not "doing nothing". It's done so much that the UN says it's ahead of the Paris Accord schedule. Good for us!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2020/12/10/the-un-makes-the-case-for-the-us-to-stay-out-of-the-paris-climate-accord/?sh=405d0f2427e5

China lies. They're building more coal fired power plants around the world than all other nations combined.

The Build Back Better 2.0 bill that just failed was more of a tax and spend bill than anything. But like the silence about China, that wasn't talked up much either. It was all about climate.

This is where climate has transformed from a scientific discussion into a political one.

And those that don't totally agree with you are not all Republicans....and not all Republicans are Trump supporters.

You don't need a boogeyman to make your areguments.






Don Quixote said...

Example isn't merely the best teacher; it is the only teacher. If Truman Bradley wants to truly follow the science, then it's supremely illogical (and false) to assert that complete inaction on the part of the U.S. to address climate change "would make any difference whatsoever." That's like saying that if Putin stopped his insane war now, it wouldn't make any difference whatsoever because so many Ukrainians have already been raped, tortured and murdered.

Huh?

Cervantes said...

U.S. carbon emissions are still increasing. And of course it's a political discussion! The science compels a policy response. That's about politics. And yes, a response requires spending, and spending requires taxes. Any legislation that proposes to accomplish anything, such as say, funding the military, is a tax and spend bill. That's just stupid rhetoric. Yes we need to tax and spend or we'll fry.

We can't force China to do more but they certainly won't if we don't. And at least they don't deny the reality.

Don Quixote said...

Please post this comment, Cervantes.

Hey, asshole: The spelling is "bogeyman." You're misspelling makes it sound like I have something hanging out of my nose.

I use that pejorative term for you because every person has a right to their opinion, including me. You like to demean people, don't you? That's because the power of your arguments are weak, since they're based on fallacious reasoning.

Don Quixote said...

PS: China lies? I haven't seen that there's any country on earth that lies more than the United States. You know, the country we live in? When you point a finger, whether it's at me or an entire country, try to notice that you have three pointing back at yourself.

Like a lot of so-called conservatives, you're full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.