Creeping Climate Change Becomes Deadly Obvious

CREEPING CLIMATE CHANGE BECOMES DEADLY OBVIOUS

Creeping climate change, like fascism, only becomes deadly obvious when it directly effects us ~ and then it's usually too late ~ for we all ignored the early warning signs: Allen L Roland

With the worst monsoon floods in living memory killing at least 1600 people along with 20 million people effected in Pakistan ~ it's time to acknowledge that Global Warming has finally become deadly obvious.

Pastor Martin Niemoller's famous quote about creeping fascism in the 1930's is oddly appropriate in that Climate Change eventually effects us all ~ First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist ... Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist...Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew ... Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

But the more appropriate quote regarding the analogy of creeping climate change and fascism in the 30's would be from Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 ~ " Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'.....must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.....Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.
"You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone.....you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. "

Well, the shocking occasions of Global Warming are now happening and they can no longer be ignored.
The world is getting hotter as 17 countries are now experiencing record high temperature as 2010 sees record highs in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine but also many African, Middle Eastern and Latin American countries. http://bit.ly/cgpOBf

The incredible flooding in Pakistan is a case in point and the experts seem to agree ~ Brian Tokar is the director of the Institute for Social Ecology and the author of “Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social Change,” and he believes that the Pakistan flood, along with recent freak weather like Russia’s drought and fires, can be traced back to our destruction of the environment ~“The weather is noticeably more chaotic,” he writes in his book, “corresponding rather closely to climate scientists’ long standing predictions.”

Mathew Rothschild writes in Global Warming and the Pakistani Flood of those earlier global warming predictions in 2007 now becoming reality ~ " In one of those predictions from 2007, the IPCC said global warming will cause “increased deaths, disease, and injury due to heat waves, floods, storms, fire, and drought.” And while pinning any one event on global warming is tricky, Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, director-general of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, told Reuters: "The only explanation can be the link to climate change. Because that area very rarely receives monsoon rains." http://www.progressive.org/wx081310.html

The Center for American Progress sums it all up by stating that all of these catastrophic events including the 100 square mile island of ice that recently broke away from Greenland's glacier are fueled by Global Warming.
Excerpt: " The flooding in Pakistan comes during a time when smoke from unprecedented wildfires outside of Moscow have "choked the city," major landslides in China have killed at least 1,000, and a "sweltering" heat wave descended on the Middle East. Meanwhile, a 100-square-mile chunk of ice calved off from a glacier in Greenland -- "the most massive ice island to break away in the Arctic in a half-century of observation."
" Some scientists are now stating the obvious: these disasters are fueled by global warming. "It's not just a portent of things to come, scientists say, but a sign of troubling climate change already under way," the AP reports. The "weather-related cataclysms of July and August fit patterns predicted by climate scientists."
" Indeed, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "has long predicted that rising global temperatures would produce more frequent and intense heat waves, and more intense rainfalls." The 2007 IPCC report said rains "have grown heavier for 40 years over north Pakistan and predicted greater flooding this century in south Asia's monsoon region." In Russia, it's been "the hottest summer ever recorded," fitting with the 2007 report, which predicted "a doubling of disastrous droughts in Russia this century." China is witnessing its "worst floods in decades," something the 2007 IPCC report also warned of."

So there you have it ~ Creeping climate change has not only become deadly obvious but the global warming signs have now become storm warnings.

Allen L Roland http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/creeping-climate-change-becomes-deadly.html

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Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net
Cartoon courtesy of Tom Toles / Washington Post

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