The Climate Crisis

See It, Stop It. No? No Future.

This summer you've very likely felt global heating. One of these days soon, you may be able to see it.

According to Bill Blakemore at ABC News, "Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder have now figured out how to project the computer predictions -- which used to be just rows of numbers -- in the form of changing colors on a 5-foot sphere with the continents outlined on it. A number of these spheres are now being installed in museums around the United States and the world, so the world can see what it's in for. "

Climate scientists are now using new huge supercomputers, much more powerful than the computers used in the 1980s which accurately predicted the heating we're experiencing. This imaging system has color-coded the globe, showing it turn over time to an all-yellow alert in 2001, which was warming, to an all-red U.S. in 2051--the heating.

Blakemore also writes about the first video showing methane upwellings in the ocean. Methane is a major greenhouse gas, and if the deep reserves are released from the permafrost because of melting and now from the ocean because of warmer water, it would push the heating past the tipping point. He summarizes: A number of scientists tell me that would take the Earth up into temperatures humankind has never experienced -- and probably could not survive.

They believe it's happened for natural reasons before -- before, for example, the Jurassic age, when dinosaurs, but no humans, roamed the earth. That's why they insist we must stop the unnatural burning of fossil fuels -- oil, coal and gas -- which risks giving such a methane mega-burp an artificial kick that could -- hard as this is to take in -- end civilization.

He ends with a little counseling: Small doses are the best way to take in such news. Psychologists tell us that a little denial when facing truly frightening news can, at first, be a good thing. It helps us hold ourselves together in face of the threat, helps keep our "meaning systems" intact. As long as we keep working back towards reality.

No child wants to think it can harm the basic wellbeing of a protective parent who provides its only world. They can't even believe they could do such a thing. Climate scientists are telling us we are doing just that to our own Mother Earth, and we should believe it.