Perhaps the fact I am writing in the midst of an official Excessive Heat Warning between this morning and next Tuesday morning here in the City of Lost Angles, and hoping that the computer screen is not going to go black in the midst of writing this due to a power failure from the heightened usage of so many of us running air conditioning while it is currently 103 degrees here in Encino - usually one of the “cooler” (temp-wise) neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley - and thanking my lucky stars it is “only 103 since it is hotter not too far away from Le Chateau du Chat, has me thinking today about the cost of climate change.
THE COSTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE: it’s personal; it’s expensive; it's catastrophic; it’s all over the place and it’s down to earth. A knowledgeable guy we know relates how his life, your life, the whole damn country and world are being affected by climate change. Some of us thought that it was in the future. Tomorrow is today and TC counts the ways this is life changing. Don’t let it scare you, TC’s pocket guide is a handy look into the future and it’s friendly, up to a point!
The earth is screwed. Humans, supposedly the smartest of all life forms has set its total destruction in motion. It’s too late to turn back and stop it. Lets hope wildlife survive the destruction. By now I don’t care much for humans.
Water is, indeed, the most urgent limiting factor for us in the Colorado River basin, but to grow our food we need vast amounts of ammonium nitrate fertilizer (it doubles crop yield world wide). You guessed it, this fertilizer is derived from fossil fuels. So, too, are the manufacture of steel, plastic, and cement, all vital pillars of modern civilization. (Thanks to Vaclav Smil). and heavily dependent on fossil fuels. TC, if your scifi imagination visualizes total conversion of energy/electricty to derivation from renewable sources, and electric vehicles suddenly transform our transportation landscapem all by the end of this decade, our use of fossil fuels will remain huge. And the coal smoking diesel truck drivers are not about to give up their toys. Don't even think about deforestation for animal feed, forest fires, climate related insect infestation of our forests, logging, all of which remove natural CO2 sinks in vast quantities. The four horsemen of theApocalypse are saddled up and on the prowl.
As climate change worsens climate change accelerates. This is a bigger problem than most can fathom. Systems that change exponentially, are difficult for most people to grasp, just take the pandemic for example, or compounding interest of an IRA account. The math isn’t that hard to understand, yet people never want to be the Debbie Downer that is reality. Some examples, as TC describes of the Greenland ice shelf melting and the rise in Ocean levels affecting coastal population centers. Oh wait, doesn’t the majority live near the coast line? Yup. But the warming isn’t just about ice melting and Oceans rising. There is the Tundra too. As the Earth’s tundra thaws out, the co2 locked in it for several millennia will release. The amount of co2 Will massive. It will accelerate climate change and accelerate the crisis. CO2 is more than a greenhouse gas, it also is acidic, and an increase in atmospheric CO2, is also an increase in dissolved CO2 in the Oceans surface water. The increase in the Ocean acidity will kill off the algae that produces most of the oxygen we breathe. So more CO2, less O2 production. No algae. Then what happens to entire ocean ecosystems without algae? No plankton, and so on....Less aquatic life,less food, more food inflation. The exponential changes are coming. Soon. We need to vote with the reality that we have only one spaceship to sustain us, our Earth. Hopefully we won’t be too late.
TC, you alluded to the buying of books and subcribing, well I have subscribed and would like to know if you have authored any books we can buy as well to help with your ever increasing water bill.
TC, you paint a picture that Republicans refuse to look at. Republicans and millions of others. It's already too late to prevent mass extinctions of all manner of life and perhaps billions of human deaths. But there might be time to slow it down enough to prevent the scenario in the book "The Wall" by John Lanchester. Look it up. It's a quick read.
I heard an interview with an architect in Miami who can't get folks to listen. What ought to be happening there and in Boston and NYC is a carefully planned withdrawal. All three of these cities are seeing sustained flooding during ever more frequent "events". Coastal cities are doomed. Infrastructure will be undermined, tall buildings will topple. These cities were built on "reclaimed soil" - dredged up and deposited. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Manhattan_expansion#:~:text=It%20is%20estimated%20that%20by,had%20been%20created%20by%20reclamation.
No amount of sea walls or pumping will matter. But we refuse to think like a species. We just want our pleasures and we want them now. The future is what we are seeing in Pakistan today.
As my grandad said: "I'm glad I lived when I did."
An all-renewable power grid is not going to happen, not until we build a lot of (hopefully advanced, safe) nuclear power plants, because wind and sun are intermittent. Those advanced nuclear plants are probably 20 years away and we will be in big trouble before then. And renewable energy is not what we’ve been led to believe; read “Bright Green Lies” for a harrowing look at the real story.
THE COSTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE: it’s personal; it’s expensive; it's catastrophic; it’s all over the place and it’s down to earth. A knowledgeable guy we know relates how his life, your life, the whole damn country and world are being affected by climate change. Some of us thought that it was in the future. Tomorrow is today and TC counts the ways this is life changing. Don’t let it scare you, TC’s pocket guide is a handy look into the future and it’s friendly, up to a point!
The earth is screwed. Humans, supposedly the smartest of all life forms has set its total destruction in motion. It’s too late to turn back and stop it. Lets hope wildlife survive the destruction. By now I don’t care much for humans.
Water is, indeed, the most urgent limiting factor for us in the Colorado River basin, but to grow our food we need vast amounts of ammonium nitrate fertilizer (it doubles crop yield world wide). You guessed it, this fertilizer is derived from fossil fuels. So, too, are the manufacture of steel, plastic, and cement, all vital pillars of modern civilization. (Thanks to Vaclav Smil). and heavily dependent on fossil fuels. TC, if your scifi imagination visualizes total conversion of energy/electricty to derivation from renewable sources, and electric vehicles suddenly transform our transportation landscapem all by the end of this decade, our use of fossil fuels will remain huge. And the coal smoking diesel truck drivers are not about to give up their toys. Don't even think about deforestation for animal feed, forest fires, climate related insect infestation of our forests, logging, all of which remove natural CO2 sinks in vast quantities. The four horsemen of theApocalypse are saddled up and on the prowl.
As climate change worsens climate change accelerates. This is a bigger problem than most can fathom. Systems that change exponentially, are difficult for most people to grasp, just take the pandemic for example, or compounding interest of an IRA account. The math isn’t that hard to understand, yet people never want to be the Debbie Downer that is reality. Some examples, as TC describes of the Greenland ice shelf melting and the rise in Ocean levels affecting coastal population centers. Oh wait, doesn’t the majority live near the coast line? Yup. But the warming isn’t just about ice melting and Oceans rising. There is the Tundra too. As the Earth’s tundra thaws out, the co2 locked in it for several millennia will release. The amount of co2 Will massive. It will accelerate climate change and accelerate the crisis. CO2 is more than a greenhouse gas, it also is acidic, and an increase in atmospheric CO2, is also an increase in dissolved CO2 in the Oceans surface water. The increase in the Ocean acidity will kill off the algae that produces most of the oxygen we breathe. So more CO2, less O2 production. No algae. Then what happens to entire ocean ecosystems without algae? No plankton, and so on....Less aquatic life,less food, more food inflation. The exponential changes are coming. Soon. We need to vote with the reality that we have only one spaceship to sustain us, our Earth. Hopefully we won’t be too late.
This set me on my heels. Great writing.
TC, you alluded to the buying of books and subcribing, well I have subscribed and would like to know if you have authored any books we can buy as well to help with your ever increasing water bill.
Great column. What a mess.
2000 newly elected President Al Gore leads the fight to establish sane climate change policies!!
Instead we got little bush aka shrub! Thus the crisis of today!
TC, you paint a picture that Republicans refuse to look at. Republicans and millions of others. It's already too late to prevent mass extinctions of all manner of life and perhaps billions of human deaths. But there might be time to slow it down enough to prevent the scenario in the book "The Wall" by John Lanchester. Look it up. It's a quick read.
I heard an interview with an architect in Miami who can't get folks to listen. What ought to be happening there and in Boston and NYC is a carefully planned withdrawal. All three of these cities are seeing sustained flooding during ever more frequent "events". Coastal cities are doomed. Infrastructure will be undermined, tall buildings will topple. These cities were built on "reclaimed soil" - dredged up and deposited. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Manhattan_expansion#:~:text=It%20is%20estimated%20that%20by,had%20been%20created%20by%20reclamation.
No amount of sea walls or pumping will matter. But we refuse to think like a species. We just want our pleasures and we want them now. The future is what we are seeing in Pakistan today.
As my grandad said: "I'm glad I lived when I did."
An all-renewable power grid is not going to happen, not until we build a lot of (hopefully advanced, safe) nuclear power plants, because wind and sun are intermittent. Those advanced nuclear plants are probably 20 years away and we will be in big trouble before then. And renewable energy is not what we’ve been led to believe; read “Bright Green Lies” for a harrowing look at the real story.
Cadillac Desert / Cadillac Planet