Climate Change: a Sunday Sermon ... by gimleteye

The weather is in the news. Again. Last week it was warmer in Bismark, North Dakota than Miami. In January.

No one in Florida worries about no snow in Utah, but we should. In Utah-- John Huntsman territory-- the snow pack has gone from epic last winter to historic low. Sound familiar? South Florida was in the middle of an historic drought a year ago. Odd pulses of rain broke the drought. They didn't come during rainy season, but after.

The news is filled with extreme weather events. These phenomenon-- weather that pushes at the boundaries or beyond historic norms-- is exactly what climate scientists associated with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted. That's the U.N. organized group of nearly 1000 scientists whose conclusions about global warming turn GOP leaders to stone.

"One of the major concerns with a potential change in climate is that an increase in extreme events will occur." (Easterling et al, "Climate Extremes: Observations, Modeling and Impacts, Science Magazine, 22 September 2000)

The question to consider-- even for Republicans voting in the upcoming Florida primary-- doesn't have to do with ski season in Utah or regional economic disruptions. It has to do with food production. 

The 99 percent of Americans rely on food produced by less than 2 percent of the population. If extreme drought or flood conditions disrupt food production, it is hard to imagine that those 2 percent will continue to be able to supply food for the 99 percent.

I don't believe this is going to happen tomorrow, or even the day after tomorrow. But history is instructive.

When I started writing about the decline of Florida Bay in the 1980's, I was called a "Chicken Little". For years, the argument among scientists revolved around sideshows of what was causing the change of sea grass composition on the bay bottom. What we were looking at, then, was a cascade of death in the bay; a cascade triggered by some tipping point.Today, for all purposes, the bay resembles nothing as it was.

There is a tipping point out there, somewhere, and beyond it a world of radically rising food prices. Even Republicans must be interested in that outcome.

Utah has a special place in my memory. I recall vividly the winters in the late 1960's. The snow then was so dry and light you could clear it off the trees by whistling your breath. Although Utah had a record snow pack last year, like much of the West; the moisture content is rising higher and higher. These are signals that climate aberrations will accelerate. They correlate to the rapid rise in global warming gases. Is there really nothing we can do?

In times of hardship the smart squirrels hoard as acorns as fast as they can. That happens in the economy too. Climate change may already be playing a role in the economic crisis, as big shareholders of polluting corporations decide to gather in as much cash as they can while there is still time.

We don't need 50 words for snow like the Eskimos or more evidence to deduce the trend in weather or, even, more science to predict what happens when climate change deprives people of food. On this point, in Africa's marginal, decert-ifying rural populations, climate change refugees suffer indescribable hardships. It is far from bling Miami, but not so far when you look into the sky.

Those who go to church, to temple, or to mosques on Sunday or any other day of the week: by all means pray for a better place in the next world, but what if our world-- this one-- is the next world?  What if we are judged for what we have done to the blue planet that feeds us through a stable climate with predictable growing seasons? We've been lucky. So far.