~ Dahr Jamail, Truthout.org (12.03.18)
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Not easy agreeing with these words, but they are absolutely true...
...we have decisively entered a time of altered 'earth-systems'..
- ...at 1.5°C warming (Earth currently is 1.1°C), the planet will lose 80% of its coral reefs... at 2°C they will all be destroyed... the whole prognosis is extremely somber, for not much can be done, given there's nearly a 50 year time lag between us trying to control carbon dioxide emissions, and ocean temperatures beginning to drop...
- ...rapidly disintegrating Arctic sea ice leaves scientists ‘shocked’.. and the stunning result of this is that 95% of the oldest & thickest Arctic sea ice has disintegrated in just three decades. That means faster sea level rise, faster global warming, and more extreme weather for us.
- ...run-off from the vast northern Greenland ice sheet – currently the biggest single source of meltwater adding to the volume of the world’s oceans – is 50% higher than pre-industrial levels and increasing exponentially... rising dramatically over just the past 20 years....the recent increase in ice melt is ominously unusual...and the response more rapid than previously expected.. (now up to 500 billion tonnes of melt a year..!! ..and increasing annually)
- ...climate policies of China, Russia & Canada alone will bring Earth above catastrophic 5 degrees Celsius (9°F) warming by the end of this century...
- ...warmer temperatures are wiping out bird species already living atop mountains for the cooler climate... the 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years, and the top four in the past four years...
- .. powerful heat waves are contributing to declines in biodiversity around much of the world, along with many other factors, mass extinction of the planet’s wildlife is now as big of a danger as climate change itself... ...since 1970, humans have annihilated 60% of Earth’s mammals, birds, fish and reptiles...
- ...one of the largest sources of freshwater on Earth, part of a massive blanket of ice in Central Asia, called the “The Third Pole".. the 3rd largest store of ice behind Greenland & Antarctica (size of New Mexico & Texas combined), it is vital as a water source for billions in Asia... The Third Pole contains the world’s highest mountains, including all 14 peaks above 8,000 meters (26K ft), and is the source of 10 major rivers in Asia, that rely heavily on seasonal melting, forming a formidable global ecological buffer... The Third Pole is in serious trouble, loosing 60% of its ice mass since just 1982... scientists found in 2015 that 82% of glaciers in China had retreated.
- ...California isn’t the only place experiencing increasingly intense and devastating wildfires... unprecedented fires all over the planet are worsening due to ongoing drought and increasingly warming temperatures...
..(see.. World Wildfire Map.. patience loading)..
- ...climate warming is allowing species to spread northwards, which is bringing new diseases with them that are having an increasingly devastating impact on the invaded region’s fragile ecosystems...
- ... 'co-extinctions'...plant & animal species wiped out by any extreme environmental changes dramatically increases the risk of a domino effect that could annihilate all life on Earth... heating tends to remove the ecologically most important species first.. loss of plant life set in motion the annihilation of life on Earth, because plants have a relatively low tolerance to rapidly changing temperatures, and when the plants die, so do the herbivores that eat them... then, obviously, the predators that eat the herbivores are left foodless... including humans... ..in the case of global warming, the combination of intolerance to heat combined with co-extinctions mean that five to six degrees of average warming globally is enough to wipe out most life on the planet.
..“last-chance tourism” is having a dramatic rise.. people wanting to see places already irrevocably changed by climate, likely soon to be gone entirely
...every U.S. president from JFK on was warned about the dangers of climate change... and what really did ANY of them do.. very little, or nothing..!!
...we must brace ourselves for a truly dystopian climate future that is inevitable.. we’re not just facing a “new normal” of climate extremes and the catastrophes accompanying them... in effect, we are entering a New Cretaceous period...where global temperatures were 3-10°C hotter than pre-industrial temperatures..
- ...CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are 146% higher today than they were before the industrial revolution...
- ...a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, methane (CH4) is now present in the atmosphere at 257% of its level before the industrial revolution, with a rate of increase constant over the last decade...
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| 10,000 species are wiped out every year.. |
...we are fast approaching an end to 'our' world..
...catastrophic impacts of runaway climate are upon us as of right now...
..each and every one of us must consider how to use our time and energies most wisely and carefully, facing down the most monumental test of survival
humans have ever experienced...
..some might not want to listen.. disregard being their false-immunity..
..the planet doesn't care.. what we're doing to it, will eventually catch up to everyone..
..some might not want to listen.. disregard being their false-immunity..
..the planet doesn't care.. what we're doing to it, will eventually catch up to everyone..
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