It’s time to listen to the scientists about climate
It’s time to listen to the scientists about climate
22 November 2013
published by www.thecourier.com.au
Australia — THE strongest storm (Typhoon Haiyan) in recorded history hit the Philippines earlier this month.
Thousands of lives have been lost the ‘super-storm’ caused human tragedy on a massive scale, with winds gusting to 370km/h followed by storm surges causing extensive and sudden flooding, together with mudslides.
Over recent years the Philippines has experienced an increasing number of extreme weather events causing great human tragedy.
Climate scientists have been warning us of this trend over many years.
A one- to two-degree Celsius average surface temperature rise on Earth is of momentous magnitude.
It builds within our atmosphere and oceans, eventually unleashing extreme weather events such as typhoons, flash flooding, mudslides, droughts, record air temperatures and raging bushfires.
This outcome is both inevitable and predictable and is occurring at an alarming rate due to ever-increasing CO2 emissions discharged into our delicate atmosphere.
Many people are not aware that even if we arrested our excessive CO2 emissions as of today, a return to global weather stability would not occur for at least 30 years, as today’s pollution is still to yield its reserve negative effects over the coming decades.
The longer we stall on positive action to reduce our CO2 emissions, the more energy we provide to our weather system, thereby fuelling future extreme weather events similar to Typhoon Haiyan, and the longer and more difficult it will be to overcome the problem of global warming.
Scientists describe this trend as ‘runaway global warming’.
For Australia, we can expect more bushfires similar to those that ravaged the Blue Mountains. But alarmingly, the acceptance of man-made global warming is still resisted by many and ridiculed by those with selfish vested interests, who show total disregard and little understanding of the science of global warming.
For our current political leaders this may well be a situation parallel to what occurred in Rome (AD64) when Nero became known as the emperor who fiddled while Rome burned.
Surely, it is indeed time to heed the wisdom of the world’s best climate scientists and ignore politicians who continue to demonstrate little comprehension of scientific analysis and reasoning. Australia is not immune from future catastrophes, so we too must unite and act now. The safety and stability of our future is in our hands.
