Climate Change Is Real
Tomorrow is officially Summer. But, here in the Puget Sound area, we got gypped out of Spring. We can count on one hand, well maybe not quite two hands the few days that have come close to 70 degrees.
The truth is, it has been flat out cold. In this month of June, Fairbanks ,Alaska has already had 10 days above 70. The “Icebox of our Nation,” International Falls, Minnesota has had four days top 70 degrees so far this month. The mercury has been topping seventy in Oslo, Norway nearly every day recently.
Even Tomsk, Russia, in Siberia was warmer than Seattle on the 10th of June. They hit the 70’s in Siberia and we were still sporting our sweatshirts and hoodies at 55 degrees. The snow plows were back out on Snoqualmie Pass, clearing another 7 inches of snow, just last week. That’s happened only two times in the last 30 years. This has been a record year for snow in our mountains.
We are praying for a slow thaw, or we will be looking at terrible flooding like we had in December. It was the worst flooding here in over 100 years.
Perhaps we shouldn’t complain too loud, at least we don’t have to be looking for relief like they were on the East Coast last week, sweltering at more than 100 degrees in places. Not to mention, an early start to the fire season in California, in April, and an already record number of hurricanes, tornados and severe storms in the Midwest, doing billions of dollars of damage.
According to the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, which is a combined effort of more than a dozen government agencies, we can expect to see more severe and intense weather patterns ocurring. There will be more severe droughts, more disastorous (stormier) storms covering wider and more diverse places,plus more and deeper flooding as part of our changing climate. Events that are rare to an area, can and will become commonplace. A rise from moderate to high sea surface water temperatures have been linked to increasing power and more hurricane activity. Last season there were approximately 900 hundred hurricanes, this year they are expecting at least 1800 to pass through the Midwest. The season started in April, and as evedent by the damage so far, has been relentless.
CO2 emissions have caused the global average temperature to rise 15-60 times faster than the natural historic rate. Our Earth’s climate system is changing more rapidly than some species are able to adapt. These changes are already affecting more than half of Earth’s wild species. More than 16% of all coral reefs have become damaged, or even died because of high sea water temperatures. Coral reefs may even become extinct in this century, if we don’t concentrate on controlling and stabelising CO2 emissions. There is no time to waste on this issue. It affects all life, even our own.