“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Maya Angelou

I love that quote. The sentiment is so obviously true and right, but almost always ignored. We’ve seen the quote a lot recently in reference to the Orange One, but it’s pretty obvious that a significant portion (not all!) of the voting public doesn’t (can’t?) read Ms. Angelou. I really don’t want to start talking about him again though. For such an ignorant blowhard, he already has taken too much air out of the room.

If you will permit me, I would like to slightly adapt Ms. Angelou’s words to address our current predicament concerning our world’s climate. If 7000 of the world’s preeminent climate change scientists tell you that human activity is causing a rapid increase in the globe’s temperature, believe them. Believe them based on the first IPCC Report in 1990, believe them after every subsequent report, believe them as their models and warnings became ever more dire, believe them as the deleterious consequences of our actions became more and more obvious to all of us, believe them as natural disasters became more numerous and more devastating, believe them as people died. Just believe them.

For more than 30 years of sound and carefully communicated science, the deniers have won. They haven’t ever successfully refuted any of the evidence or the science, they just shouted louder and trumpeted false claims about the facts and about the motivations of the people who have dedicated their lives to saving us from this calamity. I don’t know specifically what they’ve won, but they’ve won. And all of us have lost. I always found it humorous that a skinny, bow-tied, heir to a frozen food fortune can sit at a news desk and rail about how the climate change scientists are making all of these dire projections to get more funding for their research. Yeah, that young oceanographer is making up all of her data and all of the peer-reviewers are complicit, so she can increase her salary from $70,000 to $72,500. Great journalism, Fox.

So, much of that is past, where are we now? Let’s take a look.

California is suffering from a 1200 year drought. (Btw, for you history buffs, that takes us back to the time of Charlemagne.) That drought will not end. Wildfires, mud slides, floods, crops and livestock perishing – that’s the new future of the Western United States. The inevitable water rationing of the Colorado River will create interstate fighting the likes of which we haven’t seen since 1864.

Kentucky just suffered from a 200 year flood, as did St. Louis, and just last night downtown Dallas suffered major flooding. In some part of the country, 100 year floods now happen every month.

The wildfire season in the Western US now goes virtually all year long. Each year sets a new record for the number of wildfires, the costs of the wildfires, and the deaths from the wildfires. Even Washington and Oregon now experience an ever expanding wildfire field. Hell, I think some parts of California and Colorado now burn all year long. God, I love Colorado. Seeing this hurts.

For the last 20 years, there is a steadily increasing trend in the number of billion dollar natural disasters. Who’s going to continue to pay for these calamities? the oil companies? the coal companies? the Republicans? Nope, we are. Until we cannot and eventually we will come to that point.

Globally, Europe was exposed to 2 major heat waves this year alone. Parts of China are currently in the throes of a 1000 year heat event. India’s heat wave this summer killed thousands. Both India and Pakistan have experienced major flooding events this year in multiple regions of their countries.

The list goes on. I haven’t even mentioned most of the events from this year. I haven’t listed every region. Hell, I haven’t even touched on Africa. I need to do that separately because the impacts on the African people are so terrible.

Also, please remember that all we’re talking about here are the frank, obvious, climate-related events. Climate change will bring many more subtle impacts: disease spread, food deprivation and starvation, altered range for disease vectors, and, frankly, warfare for food and water.

In a word – bleak. Had we listened to the IPCC in 1990, we may have ameliorated some of these dire consequences. We did not listen. Look what is happening. We’re still not listening. Good Lord, I fear for the future and I apologize to the future generations for what we are leaving behind. We had our chance and we blew it. To paraphrase Dickens, I have no comfort to offer.

p.s. I took a long time off from writing. I hope I’m back now for more regular communication. We shall see. If it seems that this essay is a bit of a downer, that’s mostly because of the subject. However, it is possible that the overall tone may be influenced by the fact that my AC has been out in South Carolina for 4 days in the middle of August. I may not be my normal, cheery self.