It was an extreme heat wave in 2022 that brought the
hottest temperatures since 1901 to the Indian Subcontinent. Heavy
rains followed during the rainy season... as the source of the
moisture, the nearby ocean, was warmer. As could have been expected, floods followed impacting millions
in India and Bangladesh. Floods in Venezuela also in April of the same
year affected more than 85,000 people. It should come as no surprise
when scientists reliably inform us that such catastrophic weather events
are becoming more frequent across the world.
Venezuela has not been spared in 2023 either as heavy rains triggered landslides and floods in February causing widespread damage in the state of Sao Paulo.
Meanwhile, Super Typhoon Mawar is active in the Pacific. Unusual both for bringing an early start to the hurricane season and for its intensity -- over 200 km/hr gusts -- it is barreling northwest towards the Philippines and Japan.
Is
all this a harbinger of a warming planet and more unsettled weather?
One swallow does not make a summer they say, perhaps not even two or
three. So the scientists remain cautious in their predictions, troubled
though they may be.
Then
there is the upper atmosphere, which is much less dense. The CO2
escaping to it has very few molecules to bump up against so it continues
on into deep space. Moreover, the blanket of CO2 causing our global
warming also prevents the normal escape of heat to warm the upper
atmosphere. It is consequently cooling and shrinking, thus allowing more of the sun's rays to penetrate through and worsen global warming.
It
leaves one with a sense of foreboding and uneasiness relieved only by
the thought that it might take a century plus before the earth becomes a
living hell. There is in addition the fervent hope that human nature
would change under greater adversity.
Look at us now. Greed is good. It drives the economy. If people stop buying goods and services, we enter a recession. Yet all of this activity consumes energy and releases CO2, its by-product.
We
love convenience and the easy way. That too drives our economy. Our
demands for convenience can lead to mostly empty trains during off-peak
hours. We prefer to drive rather than walk distances shorter than a
mile. The median distance to the nearest food store in the US is 0.9 miles according to the USDA. We can walk that distance easily yet how many actually do.
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