Climate change: Dire predictions

Yes, the patterns of living beings are changing, you're not mistaken

"You're not crazy. Spring is getting earlier. Find out how it’s changed in your town.": Readers told us how spring has changed where they live. Our map shows where leaves are sprouting sooner. Harry Stevens, Climate Lab columnist, Washington Post, March 13, 2024

Scientists have been sounding the alarm for years

"The Great Barrier Reef Has Been Forever Changed By Global Warming, Scientists Warn: Rising temperatures in 2016 caused a catastrophic die-off of almost 30 percent of the iconic reef. Dominique Mosbergen, CNN, Apr 18, 2018

The worst-case scenarios are probably correct

Global Warming: Our Most Dire Predictions for the Future of the Planet Are Probably Right, Sydney Pereira, Newsweek, Dec 7, 2017

Indeed, they are coming to pass

"Australia’s Great Barrier Reef suffers ‘extensive’ coral bleaching, as scientists fear seventh mass bleaching event," Helen Regan, CNN, February 28, 2024

‘Like wildfires underwater’: Worst summer on record for Great Barrier Reef as coral die-off sweeps planet, Rebecca Wright, Ivan Watson and Tom Booth, CNN, May 4, 2024

We are still trying to communicate it

Apocalypse How? What Novels Screw Up About Climate Change: We're obsessed with grim environmental tales, but most of them miss the point. Casey Williams, HuffPost, Apr 21, 2018

As one example, Williams says that “journalist David Wallace-Wells’ 2017 article 'The Uninhabitable Earth' fuses literary conventions with hard reporting to conjure apocalyptic visions of a warming world.”

Read it:

The Uninhabitable Earth: Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think. David Wallace-Wells. New York Intelligencer. July 2017.

Seen from space, the rainforest has decreasing forest:

"In 2001, I flew my first flight into space aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. Roughly a decade later, I commanded that same space shuttle on its final flight. That trip was my fourth journey -- and at least for now, my final one -- from this planet into space.

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When I first looked down upon the Amazon rainforest in 2001, I saw vast areas of jungle and a wide and winding copper colored river that went on and on and on. A river that was impossible to miss and like no other on the planet. By 2011, however, the part that was most noticeable wasn't the river or the jungle but the large swaths of empty land.

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This year has been an unequivocal disaster for the future of the planet. President Donald Trump has managed to take a wrecking ball to years' worth of hard work and painstaking negotiations. If not undone, our retreat from the Paris Climate Accords and the EPA's Clean Power Plan alone mean our planet's temperature will rise at a greater rate and our citizen's health will degrade. Other changes in environmental regulations on drilling and auto and appliance efficiency will only make matters worse."

&,dash; Mark Kelly: This year has been an unequivocal disaster for the future of the planet, Mark Kelly, CNN, December 27, 2017

Released yesterday, a sobering summary on findings in climate change research over the last year. Among other things, that Climate extremes are harming maternal and reproductive well-being. Increasing heat is making more of the planet uninhabitable. 10insightsclimate.science

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— Prof Lisa Schipper (@lisaschipper.bsky.social) October 29, 2024 at 3:35 AM