Creation Corner Column for December 2018
Climate Chaos Indicator Studies
"Education is the seed that provides spiritual and individual growth" Catching The Dream organization
1. The U.S. Global Change Research Program issued its National Climate Assessment in November. Three-hundred author scientists from thirteen agencies produced a 1000+ page report without censorship. Climate changes across the United States will result in many consequences of impacts, (damaged community infrastructure and ecosystems, the spread of disease, reduced agricultural crop yield outputs and thus less economic growth) and risks (extreme weather events, coral die-off, arctic region effects, coastal and river flooding, heat-related morbidity and mortality, and tourism impacts).
The report urges "immediate and substantial global greenhouse-gas emissions reductions" to help keep the rising temperature from exceeding a safe level of 1.5 degrees celsius.
As weather extremes become more common, the effects of such warming will "threaten the health and well-being of the American people" and "disrupt many areas of life, exacerbating existing challenges and revealing new risks" said one report author in a TIME magazine of December 10 article, "Trump deaf to dire U.S. climate warning."
An Associated Press story of November 24 notes that warming-charged extremes "have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration" and that the last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015.
It is thought that 90% of the current warming is caused by humans (for example, the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, all fossil fuels), and that only 10% is due to natural cycles.
One report co-author, evangelical Christian Katharine Hayhoe said "As a climate scientist, it is almost surreal...We are seeing the things we said would be happening, happen now in real life."
2. The most recent 2018 findings and recommendations from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.ch) are in the Global Warming of 1.5°C: An IPCC Special Report. A 30-page "Summary for Policymakers" covers the 500-page document.
One commentary on that IPCC report, by United Methodist layman Bill McKibben (founder of 350.org), may be seen as his "A Very Grim Forecast" in The New York Review of Books November 22, 2018 issue.
3. On November 27, the World Meteorological Organization warned of a high possible chance that a natural ocean-warming El Nino phenomenon, worsened by climate change, may strike in 2019.
4. The December United Nations' annual climate change summit in Poland, known as COP24 is a follow-up to the Paris agreement of keeping the global warming well below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Nineteen major economies re-affirmed their commitment to that, the only holdout being the United States. Signatories are expected to live up to their promised efforts to cut their greenhouse emissions and report them.
5. Responding to climate chaos are U.S. youth, claiming that our government is violating their constitutional rights (life, liberty, property) by supporting activities that hasten climate change. Their lawsuit, Juliana v. the United States of America winds its way through the court system. Filed in 2015 by 21 American youth, it reflects their concerns about where they live, for example, on a FL barrier island surrounded by rising water, a LA small town devastated by a 1000 year flood, a Navajo Nation home no longer inhabitable due to the springs the family depends upon for agriculture having dried up. USA public resources are also viewed as being threatened. These young people hope to legally promote a zero-carbon economy.
Perhaps children will yet lead us.
-30-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Ochs blogs at http://lutheransrestoringcreationblog.blogspot.com .
He earned a B.A. from Gettysburg College (1965), and a Master's from Lock Haven University (1989), where he studied the international Green Party movement.
