Our relentless release of heat trapping emissions by the burning of fossil fuels is loading our atmosphere with Carbon Dioxide and other heat trapping gases steadily warming the biosphere. I will march with Miami’s Resistance this coming Sunday because, we have the green technology to save ourselves from the worst impacts of climate change. At this point in time we just lack the will to implement it on a massive scale. I intend my resistance to force our “leaders” to have the political courage and wisdom to act before the worst case scenario of warming becomes reality. Perhaps the 2016 election will have provided the kick in the ass that we need to finally save the earth.
I do not suggest that humankind will escape great harm, even when we unleash the new green economy. My little corner of the world in South Florida won’t. We lost our chance to stop serious warming a long time ago. The ocean is too hot now, and we are in for a world of hurt as a result. But, we can minimize the damage somewhat, and perhaps save some of what is left of this gorgeous and miraculous world by acting now to eliminate every last molecule of carbon from entering the atmosphere.
Camilo Mora, in an interview with Climate Central, stated the following :
“Imagine you are on a highway, and you spot an obstacle in the road up ahead, Mora said. “Should you step on the gas, or hit the brake?” Hitting an obstacle at a slower speed will minimize the damage to the car and its occupants, in much the same way as hitting a climate threshold at a slower speed would reduce the ramifications for biological systems, he said. “The speed at which you face that (obstacle) is going to make a huge difference."
We in Florida will not live in a safe world much longer. The damage from climate change to Florida will be catastrophic, of biblical proportions and irreversible. It will happen within the lifetime of children today. There is no credible way to sugar coat the climate impacts that this state will face. As recently as a few months ago I had held up hope that even though my home’s future is grim, the country at least recognized that moving ahead on climate mitigation and adaption is necessary to alleviate as much suffering as possible. Alas, the 2016 election burst my hope for progress. This new administration, along with their GOP congress, entered Washington DC with both barrels blasting at scientists of all disciplines. Trump is attempting to sabotage critical climate data and research and they have moved quickly on their top priority, to insure that the fight against planetary climate change is lost.
x xYouTube VideoClimate Change enablers are well aware of who are most at risk from their vicious and relentless assault on our environment; indigenous people, people who live in poverty, and at-risk communities that are often populated by people of color. They know that people are dying from environmental degradation in increasing numbers worldwide, and yet that knowledge clearly does not concern them. When will we acknowledge that those who participate in a climate change cover up are guilty of genocide? As the Huffington Post noted: This goes beyond indifference. This is complicity in mass extermination.
The Resistance is even trolling Trump from orbit. “ The tweet was quoting Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth person to walk on the moon. He famously said of viewing Earth from space: “You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.’ ” This quote has been cited as an example of the overview effect, a perspective shift toward global unity and conservation reported by astronauts struck by the planet's fragility”.The polar regions of Earth are unraveling quickly due to global warming. In fact, the arctic is the fastest warming region in the world. In Greenland, the ice sheets are melting from above and below and the great ice shelves that hold back the land ice from entering the ocean are cracking and splintering. The Antarctic ice shelves are rotting from the inside out from warm ocean water which carves rives and channels into the ice, weakening the floating shelves. But it is the tropics that will suffer the worst climate impacts first.
In Miami, just a foot of additional sea level could force mass evacuation, because the fresh water aquifers we depend on will eventually be poisoned by the intrusion of salt water.
Due to the porous fossilized sponge plateau that South Florida is built on, there is no seawall that can be engineered to prevent the oceans from inundating South Florida. It is projected that sea levels, up and down the east coast, will rise 6 feet by 2100. My region’s infrastructure will falter and fail long before those 2100 levels are reached. Most of the elevation of South Florida is at 6 feet or less, it’s easy to calculate the inevitable destruction and abandonment of one of the world’s great cities to the rising sea.
Scientists suggest that, in the long run, much of South Florida cannot be saved from rising seas despite recently installed infrastructure improvements such as giant water pumps and raising roadways. This new infrastructure has bought us some time. Scientists are encouraging policymakers to take advantage of this window, and start the planning process now for how best to deal with the northward migration of millions of people from Miami in the coming decades.
x xYouTube VideoYale 360 reports on a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on the large swaths of U.S. shoreline that will be uninhabitable by the end of this century due to sea level rise. That will result in waves of American climate refugees. They note that sea level rise will impact all 50 states in one way or another.
Sea level rise could cause mass migrations that will affect not just the United States’ East Coast, but reshape communities deep in the heart of the country, according to new research published in the journal Nature Climate Change this week.
People leaving heavily populated coastal communities inundated by flooding will relocate across the U.S. by 2100, including to landlocked states such as Arizona and Wyoming that are “unprepared to accommodate this wave of coastal migrants,” the study found.