Nothing like starting your Tuesday with some doom and gloom from Climahysterics, eh?
The impact of a changing climate is already being felt across the United States, like shifting migration patterns of butterflies in the West and heavier downpours in the Midwest and East, according to a government study to be released on Tuesday.
I doubt we’ll have anything like what happened when the Little Ice Age started, and the Black Death ran rampant. Or, when the Big Ice age was ending, and sea levels rose hundreds of feet.
Even if the nation takes significant steps to slow emissions of heat-trapping gases, the impact of global warming is expected to become more severe in coming years, the report says, affecting farms and forests, coastlines and floodplains, water and energy supplies, transportation and human health.
So, even if we destroy the economy to “save the planet,” little will be accomplished.
Some of the effects being seen today and cited in the report are familiar, like more powerful tropical storms and erosion of ocean coastlines caused by melting Arctic ice. The study also cites an increase in drought in the Southwest and more intense heat waves in the Northeast as a result of growing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases in the atmosphere.
Actually, storm cycle between strong and less strong, and we have had periods during the 20th Century where storms have been just as powerful. That is nature.
As far as erosion goes, the sea heights have been going up since the end of the last ice age, and, erosion happens. Interesting that there was a considerably worse drought back in the 1930’s, and heat waves in the Northeast at the same time.
Reduced mountain snowpack means earlier melt-offs and reduced stream volumes across the West and Northwest, affecting residential and agricultural water supplies, habitats for spawning fish and reduced hydroelectric power generation, the study found.
More water melting but less water in the streams? Which is it?
“What we would want to have people take away is that climate change is happening now, and it’s actually beginning to affect our lives,†said Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a principal author of the report. “It’s not just happening in the Arctic regions, but it’s beginning to show up in our own backyards.â€
Yes, it is, but, it’s mostly natural. It certainly isn’t a crisis, but, I’ll tell you what. When the True Believers start matching their crisis rhetoric to actual crisis action in their own lives, get rid of their SUVs, trucks, mini-vans, get a tiny rice burner, install solar panels, paint their roofs white (not a bad idea in hot areas, actually), turn their thermostats up higher in the summer and keep it colder in the winter (not going to mention Obama, not going to mention Obama, Obama free post), and so many other actions, then I might start thinking it is a man made crisis, rather then a movement to control people, economies, and countries.
Until then, Climahysterics, leave me my choice, and keep your dirty stinking hands off my Jeep Liberty.
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU
