Global warming is real! I am in my sixties. I challenge anyone my age to say that this winter has been like our childhood. If a person does not accept their own lived experience as evidence, what evidence will they accept?
How about handwritten recordings? The Dunkirk Lighthouse has kept temperature and snowfall records since its inception in 1826. I bet those records still exist. If these don’t satisfy you, find others. The Army and Navy recorded the weather in their daily logs. Ships records all record weather conditions.
Can we find individual handwritten journals from 100 years ago? Yes, in small museums, libraries and private collections across the country. They all agree.
All over the world, temperatures are higher. Winters in the Northeastern United States are milder. Droughts in the western United States are longer and worse. Every desert on the planet is growing, every glacier is shrinking. Could all of these sources be fake? It is certainly not possible to simulate them all.
Here in Western New York, we enjoy milder winters. Why should we care if the Mohave Desert grows to swallow up all of Mexico and Arizona?
We should care because Arizona is rich and they consider the Great Lakes to be wasted water. There are already proposals to build a pipeline. Their wells are drying up. We must act to protect ourselves.
We should care because Mexico is poor. Thousands of farms there and around the world have been swallowed up by the desert. People have to move or die. They are climate refugees. There are not many jobs in Mexico. They are desperately trying to cross from Mexico to the United States to do the worst, dirtiest and most grueling jobs.
Climate is made up of a complex combination of many factors. Sunlight passes through the clouds. The chemical makeup of the atmosphere determines how much energy is stored as heat and how much is returned to space. Carbon dioxide traps energy, it acts as a blanket. Look at a graph of our CO2 production and place a graph of global temperatures on it. You will see that they overlap perfectly.
When the air is warmer, it has more turbulence and can hold more water. This means stronger winds pull more water from the landscape, causing droughts and wildfires. On December 30, 1,000 homes burned down in Denver overnight. The wildfire season has changed from a few months to year-round. When warmer air meets cooler air, several things can happen. The two we see the most are water being released all at once and turbulence causing tornadoes and hurricanes. On September 14, 15 people died in a flash flood in New York. On December 10, 69 separate tornadoes swept through Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Do you remember that in the 1990s there was a lot of talk about global warming? The scientist said “Our models from the 1980s were very precise. We must act now to prevent stronger wildfires and flash floods, hurricanes and tornadoes. » Everything we see now was predicted by these models.
These models also predict that our weather will become so unstable that navigation will become dangerous and that we will have to give up farming in Ohio and Illinois. The food doesn’t really come from the grocery store. Much of our economy depends on the grain we feed to livestock. More grain, more cattle.
The oil companies have carried out a massive disinformation campaign in the media. We have been told over and over again that climate change is not real. We were lied to. Even today, many people believe the lie. I wish these people would go to their city’s historical society and look at the data for themselves. The Historical Society will allow you to make copies of diaries and other documents. Share it with other climate deniers. Being informed takes real work, but it is our only hope.
President Joe Biden presented his plan, Build Back Better. It uses a combination of strategies to reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. It meets our needs for transportation, housing, utilities and industries. He invests in trains, the most efficient and fun means of transport. He has money to build new houses and retrofit old ones to be energy efficient. There is money for schools and research into better batteries and house-sized generators. It invests in the electricity grid to make it more resilient. There’s money to help people buy new energy-efficient appliances and plant millions of trees, nature’s air conditioner. You can find details at https://www.whitehouse.gov/build-back-better/
Every Republican in the Senate has pledged to vote against Build Back Better. Do they have their own plan? OK, let’s see this.
You can fight climate change. Find climate action near you at https://www.usclimatenetwork.org/member-organizations
Marie Tomlinson is a resident of Fredonia. Send your comments to [email protected]
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