As climate change denial has reached a fevered pitch in this country, its presence is becoming undeniable.
Over the past year, there’s been a series of unprecedented events: massive floods in Australia and Pakistan, enormous fires in Russia, never-before-seen strings of tornadoes in the midwest US, fluctuating droughts and downpours in the southeast US – dropping rain in one day that’s usually seen in an entire year.
Now, the drought in Texas is worse than at the height of the 1930s Dust Bowl.
And what does Texas Governor Rick Perry do? He asks Texans to pray for rain.
A spokesman for the state’s forest service describes the fires that have broken out across the state this way, "This is a situation of historic proportions. The fuels are so dry. The winds are astronomical. The behavior of the winds is a perplexing situation. It’s never been like this before."
Meanwhile, the carbon content of our atmosphere stands at 390 parts per million – scientists have warned over and over again that we can’t exceed 350.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned that by 2010 parts of the Southwest faced irreversible droughts during the dry season, comparable to those during the dust bowl era.
Although Texas holds the top spot in the US for wind farms, the state has been furiously opposing the EPA’s attempt to regulate greenhouse gases. It’s the only state that has outright refused to comply and has taken the agency to court.
If Texas were its own country, it would rank #7 in greenhouse gas emissions. The governor has tried to speed construction of 11 new coal plants and the Republican House voted earlier this month to deny that global warming exists.
See the 21st Century Water Forecast for the US West:
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Interesting that the scientifically literate and informed are able to weigh the available evidence and have concluded there is a man-made climate problem. Those who feel that their pocket book, livelihood or ideological world view is threatened do not want climate change be be real. Its irrelevant what they want. The chemistry of carbon dioxide and the physics of warmer air and oceans will have their way, regardless. It is our children and grandchildren and most other living things who we are mortgaging with sub-prime environmental loans. Unfortunately our current politicians are not being held accountable for this.
I’d like to address the above comment with a quote from an article circulated by Alternet by Steven D. | Sourced from Booman Tribune
“Well, you can’t suppress science forever. Just ask Galileo. However, it does seem that with enough money and power, corporations with a vested interest in denying the existence of man-made global climate change can either help elect officials who will ignore the problem, or convince enough people that the climate scientists are the real villains here, lying to obtain government grants and make Al Gore rich.
Corporations like Exxon and BP have done a pretty good job pulling the wool over a lot of people’s eyes. I’m certain a number of people, even here at Daily Kos, will contest the validity of the predictions made by climate scientists, despite the increase in severe or extreme weather events to which we bear witness seemingly every month if not every week. Like new theories of cosmology to the Roman Catholic Church in the 1600’s, and medical studies revealing the dangers of smoking cigarettes sold by the Tobacco companies in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the science of climate change threatens large, powerful and profitable institutions that will not easily give up their positions of wealth and power, despite knowing that the truth is not on their side.”