Control the Weather

Kamala’s Coming

Look, I know this isn’t the time or place to talk about this.  There’s a Presidential election in twenty-six days.  I should be yelling from the rooftop, hanging lanterns from the church tower (one if by land, two if by sea), riding one of the dogs through the streets:  “Kamala for President, Kamala for President”.  But yelling from the rooftop would probably disrupt the neighborhood and stir up the “MAGA” crowd, and there isn’t a church in town that would let me in the belltower.  Besides Lou (the biggest of our dogs) couldn’t go the distance with me on his back.  

But you get the point, it’s the Presidency, it’s Harris versus Trump, it’s an election which may determine the future of the American experiment in democracy.   Talking about anything else seems to be inconsequential.

Unless, that is, you happen to live in the United States, and go outside. Or, to put it even more specifically, even if you don’t go out, the outside comes to you.   Because we live in an era of climate change, what we used to call “global warming”.  And it is warming, beyond a reasonable doubt if you want to apply the legal standard.  Every reasoned scientist, around the world, agrees.  It’s only the outliers, the ones who are looking for a platform and funding they can’t get in the mainstream, that think differently.  Those outliers are like the scientists who claimed using tobacco didn’t cause cancer, or nicotine wasn’t addictive: just wrong.

Warming Up

Now I’m not going to throw out a bunch of scientific evidence; except the record July 22^nd, 2024 average daily temperature of the earth of 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit (that includes the southern hemisphere at the height of winter, Antarctica, and above the Arctic Circle). Or the Gulf of Mexico that set a record high of 88 degrees at a depth of 165 feet in the summer of 2023.  But  dates and numbers aren’t really persuasive.  

How about these numbers:  there are 30 uncontrolled wildfires in the United States today, with 1.25 million acres burning (National Interagency Fire Agency).  Two huge hurricanes struck the United States in the last two weeks.  One damaged the coast, then deluged the Southern Appalachians with a “thousand year rain”, 18 inches that destroyed towns and infrastructure.  The other brought 126 tornados to eastern Florida, then slammed into Western Florida with Category 3 winds and, again, a “thousand year rain”, that included five inches in one hour.

It’s not that we haven’t had events like this before; we have.  But we haven’t had the frequency of fires, tornados, droughts, and hurricanes, and we haven’t had the intensity.  And they weren’t in such tremendous succession.  The poor folks in Florida weren’t even done cleaning up from Helene when Milton literally “popped up”, grew to Category 5, then weakened to Category Three before it actually hit land.

And, by the way, Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene, if we really could direct storms, don’t you think we’d dump the 18” of rain on the 1.25 million acres on fire – duh???

Yes, We Can

Our world is growing more hostile, because we haven’t done enough to control the weather.  Congressman Greene is right about one thing, we do have an opportunity to control our future weather.  But she won’t agree with the answer:  reduce the amount of carbon emissions that we are putting in the atmosphere.  Carbon emissions trap heat, causing the global temperatures to rise.  Those rising temperatures are “stored” in the air, but also in the waters of our oceans.  And that warming water creates the energy that drives our more extreme weather.  

It’s science, but it isn’t “rocket science”.  It’s actually common sense.  And the common sense solution is to stop adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, to stop increasing the world temperature.  Hold the temperature, and hold the energy that’s increasing the storms.  See Marjorie:  we really can control the weather.

Millions of Tons

How do we do that?  Again, it doesn’t take a “rocket scientist” to figure this out. (By the way, I know some rocket scientists, and they really are incredibly smart people).   Carbon emissions is a “code word” for the exhaust gases from burning carbon based fuels.  Those are the fuels we dig and drill from the ground; coal, petroleum, natural gas.  So everything we do to reduce using those fuels reduces the amount that go into the air.  In 2022, we (the United States) put 5,489 million metric tons of carbon in the atmosphere (EPA).  That’s millions of tons, one little particle at a time.

Now we can be like little kids and whine, “Well China and India put more out than we do, so go stop them” (world carbon emitters-EPA). But the answer is, the atmosphere doesn’t care what nationality the carbon emissions came from.  We made a good start a decade ago with the Paris Accords, setting benchmarks for reducing world emissions.  But we, the United States, blew that up.  And we all know who was responsible for that:  saddle up the dog.

There are lots of ways to reduce carbon, from finding alternative sources of energy (wind, solar, even nuclear – yikes!).  And there are changes we can personally make.  We can drive hybrid and electric cars, and we can drive cars that get better mileage (says the guy with a Jeep and a truck).  We can elect officials who recognize our choice: we can live in a world with less fossil fuels, or we can live in a world with more storms, tornados, fires, and droughts.  

Just another reason to think about who to vote for in twenty-six days.