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The Tipping Point: Climate Change Just Hit the Gas
It’s not your imagination. Things just got a lot worse.
Mark your calendars. It’s January 2023 and things just got a lot worse outside. Before I go into the obvious doom and gloom stuff, here’s my take: start thinking about where you are going to live if you live in a dry drought area like the southwest US, or anywhere near the ocean or large rivers, or anywhere that gets a lot of snow now. Stay out of forests. I’d probably avoid the prairie states because of that dust bowl history during the Great Depression.
Fun fact: estimates released today put the total cost of climate disasters in the US alone at $165 billion. That’s money that will not improve the future, fund innovation, build new transportation systems, or anything else positive. Much of it will go towards rebuilding communities, communities that should not be rebuilt.
Unless we want to do it again and again, which seems to be the plan.
Here’s a suggestion:
Have your own plan for what you would do if you had to leave your home, now. Not an hour from now, now. What would you grab that would help you in the immediate future? If you live in a winter area, assume your car will get stuck and it will be cold. Keep a sleeping bag, water and protein bars, and one of those portable phone chargers in the car. Some flares might not be a bad idea.
Well, I guess that is some doom and gloom right there. Sounds like the apocalypse is just around the corner, right? For a lot of people across the planet the apocalypse has been here for awhile and it’s not going anywhere. Pakistan, for example, has been flooded for months. It’s not receding. If you live in California, the Golden State, right now, you might be thinking about building an ark.
The atmospheric river is not an exaggerated name for what is going on there. Storm after storm building in the Pacific, fueled by warm waters and a warm atmosphere that can carry more of that water as vapor; that river is flowing without stopping and dumping unprecedented amounts of water on the West Coast.
Unprecedented? Consider this alarming statistic: the amount of rain that has already fallen and the projected amounts to come next week will be…
