Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming
The arctic permafrost contains 1.8 million tons of carbon, more than twice as much as is currently suspended in the earth's atmosphere. Some of this will evaporate as methane, which is 34 times as powerful a greenhouse-gas warming blanket as CO2 when judged on the timescale of a century.
That is one example how the damage changes from an arithmetic to a geometric progression. Warming causes famine, drought, and melting among other things, all of which serve to accelerate the process through carbon release from the permafrost, reduced ability to slow the process because of deforestation, and on and on. If Trump and his followers would (or could) read, they would see the immigration effects drought, flooding, and ruined economies in the world's poorest countries will make today's immigration pressure seem like nothing in comparison. Add to that the political destabilization that will result from those same effects.
Federal court appointments, rollbacks in social justice, the risk of catastrophic foreign policy misstep--all those things scare most of us. But it may be that his deliberate attempts to slow down or reverse efforts to deal with climate change may be the biggest injury he inflicts, not only through his own efforts but through his message to others that IT IS NO BIG DEAL.
The arctic permafrost contains 1.8 million tons of carbon, more than twice as much as is currently suspended in the earth's atmosphere. Some of this will evaporate as methane, which is 34 times as powerful a greenhouse-gas warming blanket as CO2 when judged on the timescale of a century.
That is one example how the damage changes from an arithmetic to a geometric progression. Warming causes famine, drought, and melting among other things, all of which serve to accelerate the process through carbon release from the permafrost, reduced ability to slow the process because of deforestation, and on and on. If Trump and his followers would (or could) read, they would see the immigration effects drought, flooding, and ruined economies in the world's poorest countries will make today's immigration pressure seem like nothing in comparison. Add to that the political destabilization that will result from those same effects.
Federal court appointments, rollbacks in social justice, the risk of catastrophic foreign policy misstep--all those things scare most of us. But it may be that his deliberate attempts to slow down or reverse efforts to deal with climate change may be the biggest injury he inflicts, not only through his own efforts but through his message to others that IT IS NO BIG DEAL.
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