{"id":70425,"date":"2016-03-07T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=70425"},"modified":"2016-03-07T02:05:18","modified_gmt":"2016-03-07T02:05:18","slug":"the-mercurydoesnt-lie-weve-hit-a-troubling-climate-change-milestone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/03\/the-mercurydoesnt-lie-weve-hit-a-troubling-climate-change-milestone\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mercury Doesn\u2019t Lie: We\u2019ve Hit a Troubling Climate Change Milestone This Week"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A view of the Kronebreen Glacier in northern Norway. DOMINIQUE FAGET\/AFP\/Getty Images\/File 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

5 Mar 2016 \u2013 <\/em>Thursday [3 Mar], while the nation debated the relative size of Republican genitalia, something truly awful happened. Across the northern hemisphere, the temperature, if only for a few hours, apparently crossed a line: it was more than two degrees Celsius above \u201cnormal\u201d for the first time in recorded history and likely for the first time in the course of human civilization.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s important because the governments of the world have set two degrees Celsius as the must-not-cross red line that, theoretically, we\u2019re doing all we can to avoid. And it\u2019s important because most of the hemisphere has not really had a winter. They\u2019ve been trucking snow into Anchorage for the start of the Iditarod; Arctic sea ice is at record low levels for the date; in New England doctors are already talking about the start of \u201callergy season.\u201d<\/p>\n

This bizarre glimpse of the future is only temporary. It will be years, one hopes, before we\u2019re past the two degrees mark on a regular basis. But the future is clearly coming much faster than science had expected. February, taken as a whole, crushed all the old monthly temperature records, which had been set in \u2026 January. January crushed all the old monthly temperature records, which had been set in \u2026 December.<\/p>\n

In part this reflects the ongoing El Nino phenomenon \u2014 these sporadic events always push up the planet\u2019s temperature. But since that El Nino heat is layered on top of the ever-increasing global warming, the spikes keep getting higher. This time around the overturning waters of the Pacific are releasing huge quantities of heat stored there during the last couple of decades of global warming.<\/p>\n

And as that heat pours out into the atmosphere, the consequences are overwhelming. In the South Pacific, for instance, the highest wind speeds ever measured came last month when Tropical Cyclone Winston crashed into Fiji. Entire villages were flattened. In financial terms, the storm wiped out ten percent of the nation\u2019s gross domestic product, roughly equivalent to fifteen simultaneous Hurricane Katrina\u2019s.<\/p>\n

This was followed by a few months of the highest wind speeds ever recorded in our hemisphere, when Patricia crashed into the Pacific coast of Mexico. And it joins all the other lines of misery: the zika virus spreading on the wings of mosquitoes up and down the Americas; the refugees streaming out of Syria where, as studies now make clear, the deepest drought ever measured helped throw the nation into chaos.<\/p>\n

The messages are clear. First, global warming is not a future threat \u2014 it\u2019s the present reality, a menace not to our grandchildren but to our present civilizations. In a rational world, this is what every presidential debate would focus on. Forget the mythical flood of immigrants \u2014 concentrate on the actual flooding.<\/p>\n

Second, since we\u2019re in a hole it\u2019s time to stop digging \u2014 literally. We\u2019ve simply got to keep coal and oil and gas in the ground; there\u2019s not any other way to make the math of climate change even begin to work. There is legislation pending in the House and Senate that would end new fossil fuel extraction on America\u2019s public lands. Senator Sanders has backed the law unequivocally; Secretary Clinton seemed to endorse it, and then last week seemed to waffle. Donald Trump has concentrated on the length of his fingers.<\/p>\n

No one\u2019s waiting for presidential candidates to actually lead, of course. In May campaigners around the world will converge on the world\u2019s biggest carbon deposits: the coal mines of Australia, the tarsands of Canada, the gasfields of Russia. And they will engage in peaceful civil disobedience, an effort to simply say: no. The only safe place for this carbon is deep beneath the soil, where\u2019s it been for eons.<\/p>\n

This is, in one sense, stupid. It\u2019s ridiculous that at this late date, as the temperature climbs so perilously, we still have to take such steps. Why do Bostonians have to be arrested to stop the Spectra pipeline? Anyone with a thermometer can see that we desperately need to be building solar and windpower instead.<\/p>\n

In a much deeper sense, however, the resistance is valiant, even beautiful. Think of those protesters as the planet\u2019s antibodies, its immune system finally kicking in. Our one earth is running a fever the likes of which no human has ever seen. The time to fight it is right now.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________<\/p>\n

Bill McKibben is the founder of the climate campaign 350.org, and the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 bostonglobe.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5 Mar 2016 \u2013 Thursday [3 Mar], while the nation debated the relative size of Republican genitalia, something truly awful happened. Across the northern hemisphere, the temperature, if only for a few hours, apparently crossed a line: it was more than two degrees Celsius above \u201cnormal\u201d for the first time in recorded history and likely for the first time in the course of human civilization. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}