Global Warming: We still have a tiny chance. Time for Climate Ostriches to note and act!

We lived in denial and recklessness about global warming. Now, it’s here. Hot and scalding! Before asking people and governments to change at least now, let us ask if all of us acknowledge Global Warming atleast now? The historic heat records unleashed this year by El Nino are a direct fall-out of Global Warming

Led by unfathomable leaders like Donald Trump and the merry-go-happy ignorance of hordes people around the world, the Global Warming marched on and the Climate Change might have reached a point of no return and as some scientists say the march can still be halted or slowed down if we act with resolve. To ignore them is like the proverbial ostrich.

• Besides the historically prominent El Nino system we are witnessing right now, the damning indications of Global Warming are many and outlined here:
• The Ice melt rates in Arctic, Antarctic, Greenland and worldwide glaciers are more than predicted.
• Disease causing vectors, especially mosquitoes, are increasing as predicted.
• Another doomsday prediction coming true is lowering of crop yields which should be of immediate concern to the governments. Its a terrifying ramification.
• Corals are bleaching at alarmingly higher rates, endangering marine fauna. In certain areas, the loss appear total and irrecoverable.
• All glaciers are receding or disappearing altogether. Snow lines of mountains are moving higher disturbing mountain eco-systems and human settlements alike.
• With a third of entire insect population about to disappear, the vanishing of bees, wasps and other crop pollinators is putting a strain on global food security.
• Forest fires are raging like never before in duration, extent and intensity across the world.
• Thousands of animal and plant species are going extinct, a substantial fraction of them even before identification. Its an unforgivable catastrophe caused by humans.
• Drying up of estuaries and swamps, heating up of oceans and thawing permafrost would release huge amounts trapped carbon into atmosphere.
• Melting of prehistoric ice and thawing of permafrost may release, God knows, what kind of pre-historic micro-organisms, into our unprepared world! Covid19 has amply proved that humans are incapable of facing quick surprise pandemics.
• The melting polar icecaps would unleash unprecedented oceanic disturbances. Besides sea level rise, intensity and frequency cyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc., would increase.
• Melting of ice into fresh water by millions of tonnes every month would alter salinity and temperature of sea water, consequences of which are unimaginable on global weather patterns with changing ocean current and wind flow patterns. The Gulf Stream deflection can put Northern Europe and Canada in first human induced Ice-Age.
• Seasons are shifting and seasonal variations are blurring.
• In the face of fast rates of changes of air, land and water temperatures, shifting seasons, changing precipitations and oceanic changes, the life forms’ limited ability for quick adaptation may result in millions of species to go-extinct.

The list is not exhaustive and in the face of this much evidence, to deny the Global Warming and Climate Change is idiotic, irresponsible and fatal. Its time the Climate Ostriches lift up their heads out of sands of criminal ignorance and see the harsh global reality!

Author: TVP Desk