Even as the world prepares for the grand climate meet at Copenhagen this December, a large part of South India has gone under water. And while talks have already begun on coming up with an equitable deal and the very fear that there may be none, over 300 people have already lost their lives while millions are displaced and missing in this global warming related freak weather event, predicted well in advance by the IPCC in its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.
If you were to click on my bio here for Sustainablog, you’d see that I started down this green path because my son who was six at the time had read about global warming and gave us the “what for” over the SUV we owned. We joke now with him that he was the one that got this whole thing started for our family, yet at times he seems, at almost ten years old, the least interested in the environment. In a way, that may be a good thing.
The Boston Globe reported that Climate change takes a mental toll, and that children and adults alike are starting to have “psychosis or anxiety disorders focused on climate change.” Children especially “are having nightmares about global-warming-related natural disasters.”
Oymyakon (map) is the coldest inhabited place in the northern hemisphere. It’s so cold, locals say that birds freeze to death in mid flight. Ironically, the village is named for a hot spring. In the local minority language, Sakha, the name means “non-freezing water” because of a nearby hot spring that keeps water from freezing. The village is home to about 800 people, a school that only closes when temperatures sink below -52°C, and one general store. (For reference, at -60°C, spit freezes before it hits the ground.) In the winter, daily life includes ice fishing and hanging around at the store. The coldest temperature was recorded on January 26, 1926 at −71.2℃ (-96.2°F).
What will a future world shaped by accelerating climate change look like? Imagine this season’s Atlantic hurricanes and devastating flooding in India, and kick those up a notch or three, says the head of the United Nation’s Environment Programme (UNEP). As of this June, the world has already seen some 400 natural disasters (including the non-weather-related Sichuan earthquake in China) rack up damages of $82 billion. [...]
With just about every report linking the increase in extreme weather to global warming, it was quite a coincidence that four tornadoes touched down near Denver on Sunday. With the Democratic National Convention beginning there on Monday, it seemed like an attempt by Mother Nature to remind the Democrats to treat climate change with the attention it deserves.
Perhaps one of the more confusing factors regarding global warming is the suggestion that parts of the planet will indeed get a whole lot colder. It doesn’t seem to equate, does it?
Surely, as harmful emissions trap heat from the sun, then logic would dictate that the planet would uniformly heat up as a result.
Well, perhaps that is a little outmoded now. The constant reporting on climate change has left a majority of us with a good grasp of the situation. Perhaps that’s why I personally feel “climate chaos” best describes the planet’s current transition.
