I'm writing this post on Friday the 1st of March. During the next fortnight two big climate change events will take place. A book
Two yearsWallace-Wells has spent the last two years delving into all the science reports about global warming and has concluded that climate change consequences are going to be far worse than most of us realise. Most of us, he says, think that sea level rise and thus the threat to coastal strips and low lying islands is the main concern. "But this is pure fantasy. No one will avoid the ravages of warming, and the reality of this will be impossible to ignore in the coming decades." "Last year in the summer of 2018 in the Northern Hemisphere you had this unprecedented heat wave that killed people all around the world. You had the crazy hurricane season. In California, wildfires burned more than a million acres. And we’re really only just beginning to see these sorts of effects. "If we continue on the track we’re on now, in terms of emissions, and we just take the wildfire example, conventional wisdom says that by the end of the century we could be seeing roughly 64 times as much land burned every year as we saw in 2018, a year that felt completely unprecedented and inflicted unimaginable damage in California. "And we see trajectories like this in basically every area of potential climate impact — from impact on agricultural yields, to public health issues, to the relationship between climate change and economic growth, climate change and conflict. On virtually every conceivable metric, things are going to get considerably worse. And if we don’t change course rapidly, they’re going to get catastrophically worse." (Quotes are from an interview by Sean Illing. [See references at end.]) Read and seeThis is frightening stuff and already some reviewers and critics have accused Wallace Wells of hyperbole and and misrepresentation. Other reviewers have thought he is largely right. So I guess what we will all do is get the book and judge for ourselves, then decide what we can do about it. New Zealand readers will be well aware of droughts and fires and other extreme weather events in their own country. Student strikeThe second big climate change event in the next two weeks is the world wide student climate change strike set for Friday the 15th of March. This is astounding isn't it? Where did this all come from? Greta Thunberg
Very soon there was an international linkage followed by school strikes in different ccountries. Now there is a world wide school strike scheduled for Friday the 15th. New Zealand students are participating. National co-ordinator Sophie Handford said protests were being organised in more than 20 towns from Russell in the Bay of Islands to Invercargill. Please lookGreta Thunberg has been invited to speak at a number of conferences. She is astounding. Please click one or both of the following. The second is more personal. My viewI'm going to read the David Wallace Wells book. I'm in full support of the school strikes. I'm glad the young are taking action. I hope they will persist and help the rich nations transform lukewarm policy into something bold. I think what's happening to the earth is terrible. Our leaders are pussy-footing. Self interest and inertia and money and politics get in the way. In New Zealand, Simon Bridges should go see Jacinda Ardern and say "Okay Jacinda, politics aside; global warming is serious. What are we going to do together now, to hold temperature rise at 1.5 degrees C." Panic or purpose? I'd be pleased if we panicked but then turned the panic into purpose. ########## John McInnes Friday 1 March 2019 Additional references: just click the name Sean Illing - Interview with David Wallace Wells TED - what it is Catherine Ryan interviews David Wallace Wells on RNZ National -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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