Reese Halter: Insane Fossil Fuel Ecocide
Distinguished conservation biologist.
Award-winning author & broadcaster.
Eco-stress physiologist Reese Halter specialises in Earth life support systems.
The whales, turtles, manatees, dugongs, albatross, ravens, hummingbirds are his brothers and sisters.
Visit DrReese.com
*all blogs and the views expressed are entirely the writers own and Living Ocean waives any responsibility for views expressed, even if we believe them to be true.
*Earth is roasting right before our very eyes.
The heatwaves in Siberia and Lapland have begun with fury, again. Alaska recorded its hottest spring on record. It’s warming at 2.2C (3.96F), or, twice that of continental United States.
The more fossil fuels burned, the faster the globe heats. That means less polar ice and more global heating methane and laughing gas from the thawing soils. A deadly feedback loop.
The second heatwave in three weeks is parked over Siberia. Image credit: Twitter
At the melting North Pole, researchers have linked Man-made heat from fossil fuel combustion with the jet stream’s erratic sinuous behaviour.
In the past, the six-mile high tropical, mid-latitude and polar jet streams reached wind speeds averaging 300 mph, powered by the difference in temperature between the tropics and Arctic.
Today, the northern hemisphere jet stream winds repeatedly sputter. Instead of tightly hugging tropical, mid-latitude and polar bands, huge jet stream waves are stretching across the northern hemisphere. Climate instability has broken loose. Not just in the winter.
In USA the March 2019 prediction that two-thirds of the lower 48 faced flooding for months, came true. Image credit: NOAA
Epic flooding across the U.S. this spring has prevented farmers from planting corn and soybeans. Some estimates predict as many as 10 million acres were under water or too soggy and late to plant. 125-year flooding records were squashed and there’s more flooding ahead.
Heatwaves and droughts are wreaking havoc amongst Earth’s emerald crown, its largest remaining tracts of ancient forests. It’s tinderbox dry across northern Canada. Firestorms are raging. One out of control monster, the Chuckegg Creek Fire, is roaring near Alberta’s fossil fuel tar sands. It’s 50 percent larger than last year’s record breaking Mendocino Complex Fire in California.
As many as 11,000 people were evacuated from their homes as firestorm embers spewed over parts of northern Alberta. Image credit: CNN
Across Canada, 87 wildfires are scorching the land and incinerating wildlife. 6 million acres are charred each year. It’s doubled since the 1970s. The fires season is beginning sooner, burning hotter and lasting longer into the autumn. Human fossil fuel fingerprints are all over this crime scene.
Forests are the lungs of Earth, vital climate stabilizers. The more subsidized fossil fuels that are combusted, the faster atmospheric oxygen tumbles.
Greenland’s melting ice will flood coastal megacities around the world, from New York to Sydney, as sea level rise accelerates from burning fossil fuels. Image credit: Henry Patton
On the other side of the world, India a nation of 1.3 billion humans is broiling. Earlier this week, the capital of New Delhi broke its all-time high of 48C (118.4F). A day later, a merciless heat dome smothered many millions of people as the mercury soared to 50.6C (123.1F). India has a water shortage. How will they contend with the next decade?
This 32,000 square-mile Antarctic sea ice hole was detected in September 2017 from satellite imagery. Image credit: NASA
In the middle of winter, the South Pole, too, is melting at an unprecedented rate. Vast holes the size of South Carolina and larger are splitting open sea ice. There’s so much fossil fuel heat stored deep within the Southern Ocean, it’s begun to surface and devour sea ice with vengeance.
Earth is losing its white reflective surfaces everywhere. While these Man-made telltales are flashing code red, rapacious bankers are instructing corrupt politicians to greenlight more fossil fuel plays and disregard all scientific warnings.
For example this week in Queensland Australia, the government rubber-stamped a water permit enabling the Indian-based Adani Group to drain a rare oasis, the Doongmabulla Complex Springs, for a new behemoth coalmine.
If that isn’t heartbreaking enough, the Carmichael coalmine contamination will seep into the Great Artesian Basin, the largest aquifer on Earth. That ancient freshwater is vital for all life especially as the climate gets hotter and drier in Queensland, New South Wales, Northern Territory and South Australia, or, 22 percent of the area of Australia. To poison that sacred life-sustaining water and knowingly fricassee our only home is deranged ecocide!
We must all do our part to protect our glorious planet and our brethren, the animals.
