'Ecologists Warn of A Lethal, Ghastly Future & They Insist We Stop Sugarcoating It'

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Sat Feb 6, 2021, 06:57 PM - Edit history (1)

'Ecologists warn of a lethal, ghastly future, & they insist we stop sugarcoating it.' Daily Kos, Feb. 6, 21.

- "In all things of nature, there is something of the marvelous." ~ Aristotle

It is a fact that the biggest threat to our species is not climate change, though it will likely end much of what we experience today, but rather our war on bio-diversity. Bio-diversity is under attack from a swelling human population that consumes more than what Earth can replace. Very little of the natural world remains, falling victim to agriculture, our cacophony of noise, plastics, fossil fuel waste, insecticides, and other pollutants, radioactivity, outside electric lighting. Human greed, invasive species, and of course, climate change.

Amanda Gorman, who received international acclaim with her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, works her magic on why we need to act now in her clarion call to prevent climate calamity that can be seen in the video at the bottom of the story.

Peter Brannen writes an incredible piece in The Atlantic on how climate change is not only godawful right now, but he describes a past in compelling and vivid detail about what the history of rocks tells us about how vulnerable we truly are to even the slightest change to the atmosphere. I recommend you read the article in its entirety; the research and links are remarkable.

- Below are some excerpts:

We live on a wild planet, a wobbly, erupting, ocean-sloshed orb that careens around a giant thermonuclear explosion in the void. Big rocks whiz by overhead, and here on the Earth’s surface, whole continents crash together, rip apart, and occasionally turn inside out, killing nearly everything. Our planet is fickle. When the unseen tug of celestial bodies points Earth toward a new North Star, for instance, the shift in sunlight can dry up the Sahara, or fill it with hippopotamuses. Of more immediate interest today, a variation in the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere of as little as 0.1 percent has meant the difference between sweltering Arctic rainforests and a half-mile of ice atop Boston. That negligible wisp of the air is carbon dioxide.

Since about the time of the American Civil War, CO2’s crucial role in warming the planet has been well understood...

More + Comments,

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/5/2011101/-Ecologists-warn-of-a-future-so-lethal-so-ghastly-they-state-it-is-time-we-stop-sugarcoating-it
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- 'The Terrifying Warning Lurking in the Earth’s Ancient Rock Record. Our climate models could be missing something big,' by Peter Brannen, The Atlantic, 3/21.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/extreme-climate-change-history/617793/

[hedda_foil]

1. The Atlantic article linked in the OP is the very best I've ever read on climate change. MUST READ!

It's well worth using one of your four free articles from The Atlantic this month. I finally gave in and bought a digital subscription, though I was able to get it at the educational rate luckily. It's pricey but consistently superb.

[Nitram]

2. What is probably not emphasized enough is how little we know about some of the more extreme

dangers of global warming. The one that concerns me the most is the potential disruption of the global circulation of the dominant ocean currents. The British Isles would become uninhabitable if the currents keeping them warm failed. Ocean life that depend on currents would suffer catastrophic extinctions if current circulation failed. The second most severe effect will be coastal flooding as sea level rises. Then there will be the disruption of rainfall patterns, which could turn fertile areas like the Midwest into deserts. I don't expect to see any of this happening during my lifetime, but our grandchildren will face extremely dire worldwide changes if we don't act now.

[hatrack]

4. On the narrowness of the path our species walks, here's five minutes on "Stupid Design"

[appalachiablue]

5. Very enlightening, thanks