Year 2, Month 12, Day 19: Hey, I Just Heard They’re Selling iPads For $19.95!

Mike Tidwell analyzes the gloom in the Baltimore Sun, with an op-ed called “The hottest issue: Climate change dwarfs other problems.” Not much to add to this:

An optimist might want to raise a glass as 2011 winds down. U.S. troops will be out of Iraq by New Year’s Eve. The global AIDS pandemic is ebbing. And the U.S. unemployment rate dropped by nearly half a percent in November.

But an optimist would have to totally ignore one really important number to maintain the cheer. That number is 11. It was tossed out by scientists and economists at the international climate talks that just ended in Durban, South Africa.

If we human beings continue to torch fossil fuels — oil, coal, natural gas — without any serious limitations in the next few decades, our planet could warm a full 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. That was the message from the highly respected International Energy Agency in a report just released in Durban.

How much is 11 degrees of warming? For help, let’s inventory the warming we’ve already seen on our planet. Already, the Arctic Ocean has lost 40 percent of its ice mass since the 1970s. Already, wildfires in the American West destroy six times more forest land per year than 40 years ago. Already, the biggest hurricanes come more frequently, and the city of Virginia Beach is starting to plan a methodical retreat from its shoreline due to sea-level rise. Already, Allstate insurance company won’t issue any new homeowners policies in coastal Maryland and Virginia because of stronger storms.

And how much warming did it take to trigger all of the above? How much to trigger the extreme floods and droughts and heat waves from China to Australia to Texas that scientists say are connected to climate change?

Answer: 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

I’m gloomy today. Wonder why? Sent December 15:

The climate-transformed planet of 2100 offers, as Mike Tidwell states, little reason for optimism. Further gloom is warranted by the fact that a plurality of Americans have been egregiously misled by the industry-fueled message of triumphant consumerism and climate-change denial prevalent in our media. In the fantasy land inhabited by conservative denialists, the notion of climate change as a liberal conspiracy to enact a one-world government (forced re-education camps for SUV owners!) is more likely than the greenhouse effect, a scientific theory which has been verified repeatedly over the years since its discovery almost two hundred years ago.

In a political culture obsessed with short-term gain and empty symbolic gestures, the systemic changes necessary for the survival of our species (and the countless others sharing our planet) will never be discussed, let alone implemented. Too risky; too costly; too boring. Let’s go to the mall instead — there’s a sale!

Warren Senders

Published.