Diary Of The Last Age

This is an important announcement: UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon , is expected to announce on Wednesday that he has secured enough commitments from world leaders to ensure that the 2015 Paris climate accord will enter into legal force this year, binding the next American president, whoever it is. If our children and grandchildren are going to have a future this pact must be agreed to.  It is however just a tiny first step, but if it doesn't happen it's a giant, possibly catastrophic backward step. If Donald Trump were to be elected, it could become interesting.  He doesn't seem to me to be the kind of person to honor a treaty he doesn't agree with no matter the dishonor he would be bringing on himself and our country.   Of course with Hillary Clinton, we will have made some progress towards a future for our planet since she is an honorable person.

Ghost forests are eerie evidence of rising seas Bare trunks of dead coastal forests are being discovered up and down the mid-Atlantic coastline, killed by the advance of rising seas. The “ghost forests,” as scientists call them, offer eerie evidence of some of the world’s fastest rates of sea-level rise. Climate scientists like Walker , a PhD candidate at Rutgers University researching sea-level rise, have begun investigating these dead forests, which are becoming common features along some coastal landscapes. The poison that kills the trees is salt, delivered to their roots by rising tides.

Obama is stating his case that his efforts against climate change will matter the most. “What makes climate change difficult is that it is not an instantaneous catastrophic event,” he said. “It’s a slow-moving issue that, on a day-to-day basis, people don’t experience and don’t see.” Climate change, Mr. Obama often says, is the greatest long-term threat facing the world, as well as a danger already manifesting itself as droughts, storms, heat waves and flooding. More than health care, more than righting a sinking economic ship, more than the historic first of an African-American president, he believes that his efforts to slow the warming of the planet will be the most consequential legacy of his presidency. .... Benjamin J. Rhodes, one of the president’s closest aides, recalled Mr. Obama talking about “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,” Jared Diamond’s 2005 best seller, which explored the environmental changes that wiped out ancient societies like Easter Isla...

Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun Scientists’ warnings that the rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline are no longer theoretical. Highway 80, the only road to Tybee Island, Ga., in June. High tides are forcing the road to close several times a year. Credit Stephen B. Morton for The New York Times          The inundation of the coast has begun. The sea has crept up to the point that a high tide and a brisk wind are all it takes to send water pouring into streets and homes. Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding — often called “sunny-day flooding” — along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, m...

I've posted many times on the carbon tax, or "carbon price" as the only path to a future on this planet with humans in it.  The IMF has called for it, the World Bank , and world leaders .  And now the California Senate is joining in.  They are asking it to be revenue neutral, that is, the money from the tax is to be returned to lower and middle income people to reduce its impact on them. WHEREAS, A national carbon tax would make the United States a lead er in mitigating climate change and the advancing clean energy technologies of the 21st Century, and would incentivize other countries to enact similar carbon taxes, thereby reducing global carbon dioxide emissions without the need for complex international agreements; now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Assembly and the Senate of the State of  California , jointly, That the Legislature hereby urges the United States Congress to enact, without delay, a tax on carbon-based fossil fuels; and be it further Resol...