Clyde Burnett, Peak to Peak. Check NASA/vital signs/NOAA Climate Change Report. The northern hemisphere land-sea temperature for September was 1.24 C above the 20th century average. 

And the warmed Gulf of Mexico is responding to 539 cal/gm of trapped heat producing water vapor that traps more heat before fueling storms like Michael and dropping rain and flooding or destroying homes in the gulf states. And FEMA uses our tax money to rebuild in place so it can happen again. 

An Earth response to global warming is a stronger vertical circulation of moist warm air from the equator upward with condensation to the tropopause to the northern hemisphere and subsidence as warm dry air to the surface at 30o latitude, called the Hadley cell. It is credited with producing the Sahara Desert. Now it may be increasingly responsible for the hot dry high pressure in southeast U.S.  Along with the Arctic Sea, ice melt affects the weather circulation in unexpected ways, like cold and snow here and winds spreading fires in California. 

A Weather Channel interview with a flooded Houston resident, “Enough! I’m moving!”  And 350.org has a message from one of the 21 youth plaintiffs in the climate lawsuit against Feds for causing climate change. His family in Belize migrated to White Plains, NY, to escape sea level rise and coral reef damage. Then he had Sandy. Can’t outrun it!!

Ain’t it Awful! And in contrast to the Climate Strikes, the HCN essay of Oct 14, “An Act of Hope”, suggests stop worrying about climate change and go camping with your kid. It expresses hope that we will survive. I suggest we elect new leaders who will make the right response. But the CNN questions for debate continues policy to ignore.

Some will expect the technology of geoengineering to modifying radiation will solve future global warming. Or future technology of removing CO2; we haven’t done it for CFC. But such engineering may cause other disasters. Then there’s carbon farming, now being given serious study by Al Gore. This is part of the thousand-year carbon cycle that sequesters more carbon in the soil. A more immediate solution is to stop emissions. We can pay for this by transferring subsidies of fossil fuel to wind, solar, and nuclear.

Hope for nuclear fusion, as in the sun for energy. But the ITER is still projected to complete in 2035. And success is not certain; other problems of magnetic confinement or divertor removing impurities, or trapping the neutrons from fusion reaction.

We have parents who have spent thousands of dollars to get their offspring into prestigious universities. I wonder if they have considered a few bucks to make their transition from fossil fuel electricity to solar. Or if they are financially supporting new government leaders who will try to make their childrens’ climate future tolerable.

See photo. We imagine Momma Moose thinking, “Aspens may be wildfire mitigation to you, but they are breakfast to me. And with a hard look she says, “Don’t even think about coming out of your house to get a closeup of my baby!”

(Originally published in the November 7, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)