And we do so little about it. We barely even acknowledge it as a public issue because we have a government lead by idiots who don't even understand the simplest aspects of basic physics (as in thermodynamics and the fact that nature wants to eliminate temperature differences). Basics that even a kid in seventh grade science would know; as in hot things tend to set up fluid motions, which we call circulation currents, to try and keep the hot encountering the cold so that a new equilibrium can be achieved.

And in a way, our planet has been like your favorite cup of tea cooling, or coffee, or hot chocolate, as you wake up in the morning in a still cold house. The upper surface of the liquid, as it has contact with the cold air of the house, cools the liquid, making it heavier, pushing it down so that more of anything still hot can come up and be cooled.

With our planet, though, we used to be able to have a good portion of our cooling happen as radiation in the form of infrared energy; the same emissions that allow missiles to track hot hot airplane exhaust. That can't happen as much now because there is other stuff in the air making that transfer to space happen a lot less. So heat from the sun stays in the total flowing system of all of our atmosphere, and oceans, allowing for the ability to make bigger heat exchange events; as in, for example, sucking up more ocean water in evaporation; especially if there is less sea ice around to reflect that sunlight. That then means more saturated air that must do something with all of that moisture, which is does as horrendous rains someplace else; that often doesn't need it in such amounts. That condensation, to make the rain happen, is another temperature transfer, as well as a pressure affect. That means bigger wind events, and so on, causing the bigger storms we've been seeing.

What this boils (yes, that's a pun. I just can't help it) down to is that our polar ice caps are having bigger and bigger chunks of cold taken out of them, without cold being put back later (in the form of new winter ice) so as to be there for the next round of circulations to try and equalize things. So now places like the Pacific Northwest are getting unseasonably cold, and wet, springs, while other places get no rain at all, when they should, and/or a lot more hot when they are expecting the cold instead. A situation which cannot keep going forever if the poles lose their cold stores for good because no more temperature differences (on a large scale) means all of the good currents and circulations life on this planet used to depend on, go away forever. And that would be the death knell for all but the most extreme forms of life here.

Why does this not get people mobilized, and up in arms, to demand action from all of their governments is a complete mystery to me. The planet is crying out in anguish, life is being gutted in so many places, and yet we can only shuffle on in our spectacle numbed absorption; mesmerized into continuous, easily manipulated stupidity, for the greedy benefit of a quite limited number of people who shuffle along in their own special form of ignorance; thinking that they can buy their way of of any difficulty. It's just a matter of hoarding enough counters.

What madness. What unbelievable madness. Something as precious as life itself and this is the best we can do to account for ourselves. Just absolute madness.

Will you wake the hell up or not? Will you start demanding action? Action that understands that we just can't continue doing business as usual. That we have to stop. All of us stop and start taking responsibility for what we have done. To fix it and make it right. Which we could do if we could find the will to get us out of this commercialized trance we all seem to be consuming ourselves to death with.

How vanishing Arctic ice may set stage for extreme Nor'easters

See Also:

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[Post Note: Can we learn from our children? Can our children learn from our mistakes? Will they abandon "Business As Usual?" J.V.]

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LIGHTNING IS STRIKING THRICE

See Everything Bad About Climate Change In A Single California Town

6 diggs Wired Climate Change

To some, Montecito might just seem like a town hit by a string of superlatively bad luck. But to people crunching the numbers it looks less like an outlier and more like an inevitability of climate change.