“From sea to shining sea …” America the Beautiful tugs at the hearts of all patriots …
At this time, America the Beautiful is facing a painful reality of being flooded, scorched, and threatened from ‘sea to shining sea’ by climate catastrophes.
- Houston is just starting to dry out from Hurricane Harvey’s 50 inch rain totals.
- California is burning up
- “the greatest heat wave California has ever faced …”
- Los Angeles is burning, with the largest wildfire in LA’s history.
- Washington and Montana (here too) are burning up.
- Record breaking heat in Oregon and Washington in August
- Glacier National Park is burning and evacuated.
- The East Coast is beginning to batten down the hatches.
- Hurricane Irma could be a category 5 hurricane.
- Storm tracks remain extremely uncertain, but odds are growing that somewhere on the East Coast will suffer a direct hit from this major hurricane.
Fires rage through West; Los Angeles declares state of emergency https://t.co/HY8V7Efezh pic.twitter.com/aL742Ov2EW
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 3, 2017
Something that all these events share … climate signals, signs (with scientific basis) that human-driven climate change is exacerbating the situation.
Climate catastrophes are happening not just From Sea to Shining Sea but across all the seas — massive flooding in South Asia (with thousands dead and millions displaced), mudslides in West Africa, drought in Italy and massive fires in Portugal, record low-levels of Arctic ice, melting Greenland, …
All too often, commentators will argue that “we must act now to avoid catastrophe …” Looking at flooded Houston and burning Los Angeles, it is far past time to face reality: we are already in catastrophe and feeling catastrophic impacts. (Consider what you might have thought would be ‘catastrophe’ in terms of climate impacts decades ago ..) Across the globe, human-driven climate change (AGW) is exacerbating, accelerating, worsening, amplifying weather events to make hard situations into horrible. And, the situation will get worse — no matter what — due to latent impacts (the time delay) from the pollution we’ve already pumped into the atmosphere.
What we — humanity — does have is a choice to act to reduce just how catastrophic those events and the future situation(s) will be, to reduce the risks of total calamity for human society.
Even as the occupant of the Oval Office declares climate change a “Chinese Hoax” and fills the US government with climate science deniers, reality is reality …
As to reality
While it is far past time to #ActOnClimate,
It is time to #ActOnClimate.
It is not as if no one warned about this future…#lafires #harvey #climate pic.twitter.com/hfcBDbBj4O
— Elias Hinckley (@EliasHinckley) September 4, 2017
6 responses so far ↓
1 #Trump’s @EPA to #Flint: let the #bedbugs bite (to scientists: don’t study/mention #climate change) // Sep 5, 2017 at 6:58 am
[…] ← #Climate catastrophes striking “From sea to shining sea …” […]
2 Ted Glick // Sep 5, 2017 at 1:19 pm
It’s like the earth is hitting back at Trump and his minions and all climate deniers all over the world right now. Rev Yearwood once said, “Man hurts earth, earth strikes back.” My son in Montana told me yesterday about how there’ve been fires there for weeks. And right now a very close friend in Vieques, PR is about to get hit very hard by Hurricane Irma. It really is a new Eaarth, as Bill M. wrote about several years ago.
3 The contrast stuns me/should stun you: Climate Catastrophes vs Fossil Foolish Promotion // Sep 7, 2017 at 7:54 am
[…] world and punditry, has picked up and run with a stunning contrast yesterday. As fossil-fueled climate catastrophes strike the United States “From Sea to Shining Sea”, Donald Trump fly out to North Dakota to speak at an oil […]
4 Irma: considering the worst … // Sep 7, 2017 at 11:22 am
[…] The nation is being struck by a series of “unprecedented”, “never seen before”, “record-breaking” #climate catastrophes From Sea to Shining Sea. […]
5 The morning after Back-to-School: Six points to explain climate change // Sep 8, 2017 at 9:22 am
[…] Regretfully, the US government is controlled by those who best resemble two of the three monkeys: See No Evil, Hear No Evil. However, they certainly aren’t that third monkey as people like Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt and those dominating the GOP have no hesitation in their willingness to Speak Evil in their climate science denial even as climate catastrophes (“augmented weather events”) literally kill and otherwise threaten …. […]
6 Polluters as proud parents: Climate-enhanced weather event achievements // Sep 12, 2017 at 8:42 am
[…] night to …). Considering the significant accomplishments of the past month’s climate catastrophes From Sea to Shining Sea, the public affairs staffs of the 90 global firms responsible for “more than a quarter of sea […]