What if this year’s records extend last year’s? 2 months to go…
On Saturday the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) was less than 0.1 °C below last year’s record set in August. Traditionally the global peak temperature for the year is reached in March. This year will probably be well and truly off this chart, yet humans are still burning fossil fuels at an increasing rate driving us ever faster towards global mass extinction in runaway warming as polar permafrosts and retreating ice-sheets release vast stores of soil carbon as methane and CO2.
Note that about 90% of the excess solar energy absorbed by our planet goes into the upper layers of the oceans before being redistributed via increased atmospheric humidity and heat to fuel increasingly extreme and lethal climates and weather events.
The only hope our species has to stop this apocalypse is to reverse greenhouse emissions (stop new emissions and ‘draw down’ and sequester some of the existing excess) and reflect more solar energy away from Planet Earth.
Isn’t it time we made our governments work towards this rather than increasing the obscene profits of their mates and patrons in the fossil fuel industries?
If you want more evidence in favor of this choice, please read my past posts on Climate Sentinel News. As well as using your vote effectively, Vote Climate One suggests a number of things you can do between elections to pressurize your governments to work with you (rather than against) to solve the climate emergency.