The Truth of Consequences

The weather may be exceptionally frigid in New York or surrealistically pleasant in California, but the consequences of the climate crisis are becoming starkly clear.

New York City peers through the snow at the future, as reported in Scientific American:

Heat waves and floods caused by climate change could mean disaster for the Big Apple's five boroughs by the end of the century, with sea levels now predicted by a new report to climb by as much as 6 feet by 2100.

According to the New York City Panel on Climate Change, an independent body composed of climate scientists, New York could see a 6-foot increase under a worst-case scenario that has been revised from previous estimates that 2 to 4 feet would be the maximum rise.

The report also marked a new estimate for how hot it could become within the next 80 or so years, with the panel projecting a temperature increase as much as 8.8 degrees Fahrenheit and a tripling in the frequency of heat waves by the 2080s in the city.

As for the current cold, yes--the climate crisis, the warming Arctic, is definitely involved.  So: colder, snowier winters AND way hotter summers.  Meanwhile, records reveal that sea levels north of New York rose faster in a two year period (2009-11) than ever in history.

California is acutely aware that despite (or because of) the winter sunshine, the state is in deep drought.  A mid-February report suggests this is the wave of the future.  As the SF Chronicle reported:

The Southwest, including California, along with the Great Plains states, will endure long-lasting “megadroughts” in the second half of this century, worse by far than anything seen in the past 1,000 years, a team of climate experts said Thursday. The driving force behind the devastating droughts? Human-induced global warming, the team reported.

Then as the month ended, a report from Stanford piled it on.  The San Jose Mercury News:

Human-caused climate change is increasing drought risk in California -- boosting the odds that our current crisis will become a fixture of the future, according to a major report Stanford scientists released Monday. The finding comes as cities across the Bay Area wrap up the warmest three-month stretch of winter on record.

Moreover, there are signs that the recent slowdown in the rate of actual heating
as predicted could be coming to an end--and we'll get compensating and dramatic spikes in temperatures.  This could accelerate concern--or panic--at least concerning effects.

What happens when you are not prepared for the consequences of global heating--when you don't even see them as consequences?  Another report points to Syria, as described by Salon:

A major new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examines climate change as a contributing factor to the 2011 uprising in Syria, connecting the dots from our greenhouse gas emissions to an international conflict that’s killed 200,000 and displaced millions.

It's not the first such study to reach those conclusions, and not the first region of the world with warfare ascribed in part to the effects of climate change, though most reporting ignores this.  But the Pentagon and others are taking it all pretty seriously.  It is already in many places what Michael Specter in the New Yorker describes as "A Thirsty, Violent World."

Here in the states at least some people are asking the questions that are likely to become louder and louder, as in this article that asks "Are We Even Ready for a Megadrought?"

Are we ready for the effects?  Sooner or later, the public outcry will begin.  Is anybody ready to link the effects to the causes, so the future won't be even worse?  On the megadrought, for instance, one of the authors of the previously noted report emphasized: "And that's a really important point - we're not necessarily locked into these high levels of mega-drought risk if we take actions to slow the effects of rising greenhouse gases on global temperatures."

He's not saying drought won't happen--just that it could be less than the worst case scenario, particularly further out in time, if we deal with the causes of global heating.  But the connection has to be made--we must always be talking about both causes and consequences.

Meanwhile, mega-funded denialist nonsense continues in Washington, abetted by our lamestream media (yes, Sarah, I'm with you there, though for entirely different reasons.)  John Podesta left the White House with a hopeful statement about the prospects for action on the causes of the climate crisis.  I hope he's right, but until the public dialogue links the causes and consequences, we're unlikely to address the climate crisis intelligently and with the required focus.