How cold is it?
It’s so cold, news outlets are leading with global warming and deniers are responding with “where’s your global warming now?”
Here’s the deal. It is flipping cold out. So much so that we can change the motto to “nothing stops the U.S. Mail except crippling cold.”
That doesn’t mean folks should be pointing to snowballs ala Sen. Jim Inhofe to prove climate change is a hoax. Weather is not climate change, it is a symptom of it.
Here are just three examples to consider when you question the validity of climate change:
This isn’t an Al Gore documentary, this is fact, happening as we speak. Who cares about the cause — if it is man, or just some natural thing that happens as some would claim—you can debate it all the live-long day for all I care. This is reality, not conjecture, and we need to figure out how to deal with it.
It’s not all doom and gloom. The Economist reports that despite withdrawal from the Paris Agreement of 2017, taxes on imported solar panels, and elimination of subsidies for solar and wind, American companies are leading the way when it comes to reducing carbon emissions. Here’s to the free market doing what our lawmakers seem to be incapable of.
What we choose to do — or not — will have profound lasting effects on our economy, security and food supply. Some think it’s easier to bury their heads in the sand and dump this on the lap of future generations.
That is dereliction of duty.
It’s so cold, news outlets are leading with global warming and deniers are responding with “where’s your global warming now?”
Here’s the deal. It is flipping cold out. So much so that we can change the motto to “nothing stops the U.S. Mail except crippling cold.”
That doesn’t mean folks should be pointing to snowballs ala Sen. Jim Inhofe to prove climate change is a hoax. Weather is not climate change, it is a symptom of it.
Here are just three examples to consider when you question the validity of climate change:
- The U.S. military has been studying climate change as a national security issue for several years, including the effects on bases and strategies in a rapidly changing arctic region where world powers are scrambling for an advantage. They can’t afford to wait out the politics, they deal in reality.
- Nowhere is climate change more evident than in the dangers posed to Alaskan fishing villages, as rising waters threaten their very existence. "Climate change is not just an environmental issue. It is also a social, cultural, and economic issue important to all Alaskans. As a result of this warming, coastal erosion, thawing permafrost, retreating sea ice, record forest fires, and other changes are affecting, and will continue to affect, the lifestyles and livelihoods of Alaskans," so reads a 2007 executive order signed by then Gov. Sarah Palin, a couple of years before it became politically expedient to take an opposing tack.
- The U.S. government’s National Climate Assessment, released late last year, found that climate change was likely to “increasingly disrupt” American farming with conditions that will be harder on livestock and crops. And this isn’t conjecture. A recent study found climate change in Michigan has led to warmer, drier growing seasons, stunting the growth of sugar maples. The result is a syrup shortage is well in the cards in our future. Think about the impact of the maple syrup industry in the northeast, and how that will change the economy.
This isn’t an Al Gore documentary, this is fact, happening as we speak. Who cares about the cause — if it is man, or just some natural thing that happens as some would claim—you can debate it all the live-long day for all I care. This is reality, not conjecture, and we need to figure out how to deal with it.
It’s not all doom and gloom. The Economist reports that despite withdrawal from the Paris Agreement of 2017, taxes on imported solar panels, and elimination of subsidies for solar and wind, American companies are leading the way when it comes to reducing carbon emissions. Here’s to the free market doing what our lawmakers seem to be incapable of.
What we choose to do — or not — will have profound lasting effects on our economy, security and food supply. Some think it’s easier to bury their heads in the sand and dump this on the lap of future generations.
That is dereliction of duty.