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To make it easier for mobile device users, I've made this Web page rechable via a Web browser capable of using emojis as a URL (the Opera Web browser is one of them)! :-)
You simply put the emojis in the address bar AKA address field of the Web browser (hold your mouse over each of the following emojis to see the name which each emoji can be found with by doing a search on your smartphone or tablet, unless they're in the recent section):
Easier than typing in the URL, yes? ;-)
In 1974, the study Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems was given out by the CIA. It stated that climate change (later known as climate breakdown) had started in 1960, as evidenced by crop failures in countries such as India and the (then) Soviet Union, but few had correctly interpreted the cause for such events or realized it was a sign of things to come (which wasn't true, as, several weeks before the report was published, Henry Kissinger had told the United Nations that those not living in the wealthier nations would be victims of changes in the climate, Lyndon Johnson had addressed the matter in a speech given in 1965, it has been brought up on television and in newspapers for years, and many scientists had been talking about it for some time before then). The report stated that those living below the Sahara Desert including Mali, Chad and Niger were amont the first to experience what would happen in other parts of the world. Among the subjects detailed in the CIA's report was a massive growth of the number of people trying to migrate to America and how it would cause more political un-rest in the people already living there and strange weather in the coming era. Unfortunately, nobody gave it more than a passing thought or thought it would be something to worry about . . .
In the summers of 1977 and 1978, climate change and how releasing an ever-growing amount of carbon dioxide AKA CO2 was affecting the environment was talked about among JASON (an advisory group), which the government took advice from, who were a secret group of some of the top scientists (although they later lost their contract with the American Department of Defense in April, 2019).
In November 1980, Ronald Reagan (full name Ronald Wilson Reagan) was elected president of the United States and he nominated James G. Watt as his Secretary of the Interior, which was confirmed by the United States Senate. The leader of the National Coal Association stated that he was deliriously happy over the appointment. James Watt was infamous for his hatred of environmentalists, publicly declaring them to be "a leftwing cult dedicated to bringing down the type of government I believe in." The running joke after this among corporate lobbyists was "Question: How much power does it take to stop a million environmentalists?The answer: One Watt!"
In 1988, in the June 24th edition of The New York Times, it stated that a climate expert, NASA climate scientist James E. Hansen testified before Congress that he was 99% certain that the effects of man-made climate change were already detectable.
In 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was formed.
The fossil fuel industry joined up with libertarians and conservatives and their think tanks (yes, that phrase sounds like something out of a movie from the 1950s with a tank driven with a human brain extracted from a body and wired up to a control system) which opposed fossil fuel regulation on ideological grounds and promoted free market economics.
In 2006, Al Gore wrote a book entitled An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It and, in the same year, a documentary movie An Inconvenient Truth (directed by Davis Guggenheim) came out, based on Al Gore's campaign to educate people about global warming. The sequel book, Our Choice A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis was published in 2009.
| Climate Effects on Health
The CDC made a Web page about Climate Effects on Health It should open in a new tab and was last reviewed (the last time I checked) on March 2nd, 2021. |
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| YouTube Originals: Dear Earth
On October 23rd, 2021, YouTube streamed a special focusing on It starred Barack Obama, Blackpink (who performed their song Stay at one hour, 36 minutes, 14 seconds into the video), Pope Francis, Justin Trudeau, Billie Eilish, Desmond Tutu, Tinashe, Marsai Martin, Kermit the Frog, The Muppets and others. |
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| Blackpink's Stay
Or, click here to watch Blackpink's music video Stay with English subtitles The music video has a post-apocalyptic look to it and please read the writing on the walls and in the signs! |
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| United States' Megadrought
In 2022, I was told the megadrought in the western United States was the worst in 1,200 years. 42 percent of it was linked to human-caused warming! |
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How Sure Are Climate Scientists, Really? The highest percentage of climate change climate breakdown (technically, the latter is a more accurate phrase, as humans destroyed the environment for coloured pieces of paper) deniers are located in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and the United States, where, just a couple of years ago, 130 members of Congress doubted or outright denied that climate change was real (the latter was from Ellen Cranley in Business Insider on April 29th, 2019). But, I'll save you some time. Start watching at about 15:52. I can guarantee you that the proposed drastic cuts will NOT happen.
The next good time segment to watch starts at 17:24 for reasons that will be obvious fairly quickly. In regards to the 2017 entry "EPA head questions human role in climate change, aims to repeal climate regulations," the head of the EPA in 2017 was Scott Pruitt and he was nominated by Trump and he got over $200,000 from the fossil fuel industry just between 2010 and 2014. Other shocking behaviour by him or attributed to him is available at Scott Pruitt's Secrecy and Controversies, including both the EPA under Pruitt and the White House halting publication of a study on PFOS and PFOA that showed the levels deemed dangerous were much lower than what the EPA declared to be safe. After that, reporters were banned from a 'leadership summit' about PFOA, PFOS and related chemicals that Pruitt attended. If anyone still thinks there's no cover-ups in governments and that corporations aren't in control, it's past time to wise up!
There are points throughout this video where the creator of it puts in things that some will notice are seemingly anti-science. One of the visual examples is the not-so-happy face at 18:21 in the lower portion of the screen. Yes, scientists sometimes make mistakes and are not infallible (is anyone, really?). But, what we understand is constantly changing as new evidence is discovered to refute past beliefs. Although some still believe the world is flat, despite all evidence to the contrary . . .
At 20:34 is another good point to start watching and more closely matches what I believe is going to happen in this timeline.
The next tune-in point is at 21:06, where it shows the affects of sea level rise on a few of the world's most populated areas such as:
New Orleans (a sea level rise of only two meters produced a drastic change).
Osaka (19.3 million people affected by only a few meters of sea level rise).
The Guangzhou area AKA Canton (mostly under the waves with only a two meter rise, where the video states there are 13 million people, but, the 2020 census counted over 18 million at the prefecture-level and subprovincial city).
Mumbai (with over 12 million people and a good portion of it under water with only a few meters of sea level rise, but, like the other cities, if you have doubts, feel free to check the population densities and compare it to the coastal elevations).
Amsterdam and The Hague (over three million people, with many of them forced to re-locate with less than a two meter rise of sea level, so they'll be one of the areas most concerned with sea-level rise).
New York City (five meters of sea level rise and most of the land is under water, and, the lower part of Long Island will be the first area affected and the last is likely to be Todt Hill on Staten Island).
South Florida (the Everglades covered in less than ten meters and most of the rest covered with only 14 meters rise of sea level and Miami (the metro area is over 6 million people and that area, on average, is only about two meters above sea level) completely going under the waves at about that same time).
Pay attention to the Thwaites Ice Shelf (different from the Thwaites Glacier) and other points of interest. Expect the former to go bye-bye by 2027. Do you know what happens when you un-cork a bottle when you're holding it sideways?
The Shell Oil Company, among other fossil fuel companies, claim they'll try to be at net-zero for carbon emissions by 2050.
Other major companies' climate pledges:
Amazon: "Net zero carbon by 2040."
Microsoft: "Carbon negative by 2030."
But, as one site put it "only 4% of the 3,000 largest public companies have made commitments to completely eliminate direct CO2 emissions from operations."
They won't even say anything for the sake of PR? Now, that is a cause for concern, yes?
Also . . . Do big corporations know the meaning of the word hypocrite? Companies with strong climate policies support weak climate candidates. Why does a company which makes a climate pledge give donations to a politician who made 62 anti-environment votes and only two that were in favor of the environment in 2018 and 2019 combined?
Update: April 4th, 2022: The United Nations has issued a warning in the latest IPCC report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2022, Mitigation of Climate Change, written by hundreds of scientists from around the world and details of it can be found here) that (according to the BBC) said greenhouse gas emissions from 2010-2019 were at the highest level in all of human history and further states, emissions of greenhouse gases need to peak within the next three years at the very latest if we're to stave off the worst effects of climate change and even then, we'd still need new technology to suck carbon dioxide out of the skies by the middle of the century.
In the latest report, UN scientists are warning we are on course for devastating changes to our climate and the head of the UN called out government and business leaders for saying one thing on reducing emissions and doing another. Put simply, he said, "they are lying and the results will be catastrophic."
The UN published a road map for saving the world from the worst of climate change that comes with a massive warning. It is now or never!! "There can be no more broken promises on climate."
From the United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres: "Some government and business leaders are saying one thing but doing another. Simply put, they are lying. And, the results will be catastrophic."
He also said "It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an un-liveable world." and "This is not fiction or exaggeration. It is what science tells us will result from our current energy policies." In addition to this, he pointed out that renewable energy is often already far cheaper than oil or gas, but, the global shift to renewable energy must be triple the speed it is now. Personally, I believe it should be much faster than that . . .
In the PBS NewsHour video (found here), he said "The jury has reached a verdict and it is damning. This report on the intergovernmental panel on climate change, it is a litany of broken climate promises."
Diana Olick of CNBC stated that "The report emphasizes that funding of renewable energy, both public and private falls far too short. Three to six times lower than where it SHOULD be. The money is there, the report says, but, financial institutions, governments, all of commercial finance, are not adequately assessing climate risk."
Things you can do to help: Take less trips via airlines (they're more sensitive to bad weather, which is only going to get worse, so, expect more cancellations with you either having to sleep in the airport for hours or days or staying at a local hotel, which could cost you more money than the airline ticket or what the airline might give you because they cancelled the flight), consume less meat and use more environmentally-friendly ways to get around AKA greener transportation. Bicycling or public transit are things that even the poorest can afford to try.
What do I expect will happen? Things will get worse. More empty promises from politicians and corporations and more lies. In other words, business as usual. More destruction of the world's rain forests such as the Amazon, where they cut down, bulldoze or outright burn the trees and also keep destroying the world's super trees such as the Indonesian Rhizophora Mangrove, the Afrormosia Congo's Teak Tree and the Brazil Nut tree.
That goal to keep temperatures less than +1.5 Celsius over what they were in pre-industrial times? It won't happen. In fact, it'll climb well over +3 degrees Celsius!
The result will be more serious, irreversible and permanent changes to the environment. The storm surges and flooding you have in some areas will only get worse. The droughts, the bleached coral reefs, the loss of wildlife, the increase of climate refugees . . . All this and worse are what's in the not-too-distant future.
Do those who are profiting the most from the destruction of the environment realize that their names will be cursed for centuries to come? If you think I'm exaggerating, think of how infamous those are who were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people or millions of people and think of how much more infamous and hated someone will be when the world realizes that their actions caused the deaths of billions of people, with millions dying in India, alone, before 2080 By the year 2050, four billion of those who are currently alive (2010) will be dead, despite all scientific and medical field advances and over 90 percent of the world will have at least tasted human flesh and the majority of people in the wealthiest countries, including America, will have tasted it. Cannibalism will be seen to be an accepted part of every day life in the near future before 2060 (for them). And, that isn't an exaggeration, either. Death from not being able to breathe properly, getting sick and dying from tainted water, malnutrition and starvation (crop failures in many areas and fish populations severely decreasing), death from drowning, structural collapses, arson, torture, murder, weather disasters, deaths from animal-borne diseases or diseases spread by insects, death from organ failure from the extreme heat, droughts and megadroughts, suicide, wars fought over land, food and sources of drinking water . . .
Life on Earth is a delicate balance. Even the basic essentials such as drinking water is a very rare thing and is in short supply. For those who are un-aware, only about 4 percent of the water on planet Earth is fresh water as opposed to salt water and of that 4 percent, around 68 percent is in the form of ice, such as glaciers and the polar ice caps, while another 30 percent or so is in groundwater, so, people only have easy access to about 2 percent of the fresh water on Earth! If you use up these sources of fresh water and/or allow them to become contaminated or mixed with salt water, what do you expect to drink in order to continue to live??
Healthcare in many countries are already strained to the breaking point with the current Covid pandemic (Covid and its variations will be around for a long time to come). Imagine how much worse it will be when temperatures increase in areas by tens of degrees hotter than normal for even a brief period of time. Many will die from the heat in the cities, which will steadily increase in size. But, I don't have to imagine these things . . . I see them every night in my nightmares. The bodies of the recently dead and those which had been dead for days, bloated and floating in the water . . . And the stench of rotted corpses of not just people but also of the native wildlife and family pets. The other things I saw were far, far worse and another reason that I see most humans as cruel and sadistic monsters, but . . . telling others about them wouldn't be very nice.
While some of you can believe that humans are kind, caring, considerate, responsible, honourable, willing to do the right thing, care about the environment and how their actions and greed affect others if you like, history itself shows that isn't the case and I have seen this in the real world and on-line for . . . a very long time, so, no, I don't expect it to change in the next few years, even though it seriously needs to!
Do you know what it's like to be scared nearly every moment of your life since you were a child and have nightmares which make horror movies seem pleasant? I do. And, in time, many others will, also.
While I'm not comfortable saying too much about what I went through when I was little, I'll give you a hint . . . I could set my own broken bones before I was an adult. Which freaked out an emergency room doctor who saw the x-rays when I had multiple broken bones after one 'accident' and then asked me how I learned to do that, but, I didn't answer him. Have a polygraph machine? Hook me up and ask me about my early childhood and my very first memories of life and what I experienced on an almost daily basis as a young child! But, if I answer you honestly and you have any empathy whatsoever in your soul (which, if you're a human, I don't believe it's possible, as I've seen over and over again what people do when they think they can get away with doing something to someone), don't expect to sleep that night . . .
Even after I was grown up enough to ride a bicycle, I was the target for homicidal people with 0 empathy, after an 'accident' I was in with a woman driving a car which broke my arm (it was sticking out of my arm and I didn't try to set it with a crowd around me), and, when I tried to be nice and told the cop who showed up afterwards that she didn't hit me, she said the first words I heard her say after the 'accident' "oh, good, my insurance won't go up, then."
Anyway . . .
What I see coming is a future that I worry is unavoidable and as certain as the sun 'rising' the next day, but, I am doing all that I can to stop it, if for no other reason than to not let other children experience it. Xanax AKA alprazolam and herbal teas, for me, is about as effective as trying to put out a wildfire with a water pistol AKA water gun AKA squirt gun. Only a monster would make millions of children experience something horrible for years which haunts them for the rest of their lives! But, then, aren't almost all humans monsters? At least, that's how I see almost every single person I've ever met and, when I meet someone, I wonder how they're going to hurt me or screw me over, even if they're a doctor or a nurse!
How do I know this future that I've seen will happen? Corporations and governments have known of the problem for many years and the danger of ignoring it and did little to nothing to stop it. Greed is mankind's religion and money is worshipped as their god, from whom all blessings and big-ticket luxury items flow, worshipped far more than all the deities in all the books ever written and they are willing, nay, eager to kill for it. This has been the case for centuries and it very likely will not change in time to make the changes needed to stop what's coming.
Corporations control the majority of the politicians, buying them like any other commodity and those politicians protect the corporations' profits, allowing them to destroy the world for more money for both them and their corporate masters. CEOs of major corporations take flights to outer space on fountains of fire (which put even more CO2 in the atmosphere) while the environment is destroyed for greed. Will laws which penalize polluting corporations help? That's been tried before, and many of the existing laws against pollution aren't enforced. Even if they were, in the more corrupt countries, those with the best lawyers frequently win the cases, even when the charge is murder. Class action lawsuits? The lawyers who win the cases get a lot of money, whereas the victims and the surviving members of their families get little, sometimes things which cost the corporations little to nothing.
Unfortunately, nobody will listen and only after I'm gone will people begin to realize that what I've been trying to tell them was the truth. But, I'm not the only one who's been trying to warn you! Hundreds of scientists, including some famous environmentalists who even went so far as to make documentary movies about climate change climate breakdown, its effects on the environment, wildlife and people, have been ignored, too.
But, while I'm alive, I'm willing to try to help! Okay, technically, I've been trying to help for several years, even on-line and on this Web site (which has been on the Web at one location or another for decades), with multiple help and tip pages (some of which were made when I could only use a maximum of eight characters), but . . . I'll do more for you! :-)
Ideas that might help:
Earthships in areas where they can be built. These are homes which need little to no heating or airconditioning, supply their own power, collect rainwater from their roofs and grow their own food and can be built with dirt and used tires for their walls! They've already built many of them throughout the world and some of them have been built in the United States' Southeast, in the desert, and people are living in them for a fraction of the cost many others are paying elsewhere!
Roofs made of photovoltaic materials (and, preferably, more resistant to wind from tornadoes and hurricanes, which are also able to collect rainwater, at least to flush toilets in houses which have flush toilets) to decrease the demand on the grid, which, in many places, is still using coal to generate power.
Smaller and inexpensive electric vehicles, such as fully-enclosed electric powered and autonomous trikes for the elderly and disabled with small cargo space and a low-powered heater/air conditioning system. Their range could be around 100 miles, which would allow them to travel to the local stores to purchase groceries and the like. If the vehicle's body also had photovoltaic panels in it, the range would be extended and it could slowly charge itself up in places where there was sunlight. This would also allow the elderly and disabled to have more independence and self-sufficiency. Impossible? Not so! In places like China, they make electric powered pick-up trucks with more range, which even have hydraulics to lift the back end and empty whatever's in the back of it for less than $6,000 (USD), so, the technology exists and something much smaller with less power requirements should be much cheaper to make!
This may be your last change before irreversible and permanent damage is done to the environment. Will you listen? Please?? I'm trying. Will you?
Primary funding via lobbying efforts for climate change climate breakdown deniers (not including the obvious ones in the media) include FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity (funded by the Koch brothers, Charles and David Koch (the latter died in 2019) of Koch Industries), followed by the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Marshall Institute, the Heartland Institute and the American Enterprise Institute (the Guardian reported that AEI received $1.6 million in funding from ExxonMobil and that former ExxonMobil CEO Lee R. Raymond was the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees).
Between 1998 and 2017, the latter, AEI AKA the American Enterprise Institute received the biggest portion of money from ExxonMobil, over four million dollars of the 36 million dollars (that they knew for certain, at least, which doesn't include stuff that isn't on the record) they gave out to fund climate change climate breakdown denial or outright obstructed climate action.
The Koch Family Foundation gave out at least 123 million dollars in that same period for the same purposes.
Others included John William Pope Foundation (21.9 million dollars), The Searle Freedom Trust (21.7 million), Howard Charitable Foundation (24.8 million), John Templeton Foundation (20.2 million), The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation (29.6 million) and the Scaife Foundation (with a whopping 39.6 million!).
During the last two decades, over 2/3 of the oil and gas industry's political contributions went to republicans.
However, as more people wise up, more contributions to climate change climate breakdown deniers are done using dark money, so it's more difficult to trace. How you ask? I'm only too happy to tell you! These contributions are made via 3rd parties, intermediates, such as DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, anonymously, and said 3rd parties give the money to whoever they're told to. Chevron, ExxonMobil and BP all claimed that there was no record of them donating to either group.
In regards to the fossil fuel companies' supposed turn-around, admitting they're part of the problem and seeking solutions: I'm not buying it. And, they don't seem to be putting their money where their mouth is. They appear to spend more money on PR-related ads to convince the public that they're working towards cleaner sources of energy than they do on actual research. One example is ExxonMobile, with their ad claiming they were growing algae for biofuels. They spent tens of millions of dollars on that ad, but, what have they spent on low-carbon energy sources? For ExxonMobil, it was less than 1% of their total capital expenditure! ExxonMobil's revenue for 2019 was over 250 billion dollars. You'd think they'd be able to afford to spend a little more money, especially after admitting they're at least part of the problem . . .
InfluenceMap, a non-profit, stated that ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and others had spent over one billion dollars on climate-related lobbying and advertising since the Paris Agreement. As I've stated in earlier post in different places on the Web, this is an investment strategy that pays off very well for corporations, as the U.S. government gives out hundreds of billions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies every year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
On May 17th, 2019, Umair Irfan of Vox quoted an International Monetary Fund working paper that stated the "fossil fuel industry got a whopping $5.2 trillion in subsidies," and that was just in a single year (2017). That 5.2 trillion dollars? That's 6.4% of the global gross domestic product.
If fossil fuel companies claim they accept the evidence of climate change climate breakdown and are trying for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, then why are they looking for more sources of oil, coal and natural gas to last them beyond that date? Does nobody else but me think there's something wrong with that??
America's top crude oil producers are Texas (with almost two billion barrels in 2020) and North Dakota (with a little over 430 million barrels of oil in 2020), followed by the federal offshore rigs. America currently (2022) produces the most crude oil of any nation in the world.
America is also the country which produces the most natural gas in the world, outputting over 30 trillion cubic feet. 23% comes from Texas and 21% from Pennsylvania.
China (which produces almost half of the world's coal and uses coal for half of its power generation).
India (which uses coal for about 3/4 of its electricity generation).
The United States (which produces about 10% of the world's coal, but, uses about 9% of all the world's coal and about 1/4 of the power generation in the United States depends on coal, with Wyoming and West Viginia producing most of it). The largest coal mining companies in the United States are Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, Cloud Peak Energy, Murray Energy, Alliance Resources Partners LP, Revelation Energy, NACCO Industries, CONSOL Energy, Foresight Energy and Contura Energy.
Companies like ExxonMobil are losing their places in the stock markets. Between 1980 to 2015, they were in the top five of the S$P 500. In 2019, they weren't even in the top ten. When I checked the S&P 500 Companies List by Market Capitalization 2022, ExxonMobil (XOM) was 23rd on the list. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Tesla, Meta Platforms (hello, Facebook!), Nvidia, Berkshire Hathaway, JP Morgan Chase all surpassed it. The Dow Jones Industrial Average? They were dropped from it in 2020. Chevron is the only fossil fuel company left in it, now, and, their current (January 18th, 2022) stock price is well below many other companies listed, so, they might not be there for very long, either.
In 2020, almost 90% (!!) of the newest global electricity generation sources were renewables (solar, wind, hydroelectric, you get the idea).
According to a January 21st, 2022 story in the Chattanoogan, Ford, General Motors and Volvo are planning to go to all electric by 2025.
In other parts of the world, they're succeeding. In the United States . . . Don't get your hopes up, considering the power the corporations have with all their money.
In February, 2022, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in West Virginia versus the EPA AKA the Environmental Protection Agency, in regards to the CAA AKA the Clean Air Act which might limit what the federal government can do to corporations that pollute the environment.
Cross your fingers, pray, give out the URL to this page, write to the politicians, heads of government agencies and CEOs of corporations (preferably, in all cases, the non-corrupt ones, but, you're welcome to give it a try) . . .
Been trying to make the world a better place for a very long time! Many of my older help pages have eight or fewer characters, back when that was the biggest file name we could use. I've warned people about threats to their lives and the growing threat of corporations and governments spying on them decades before people like Edward Snowden did (back in the 1990s I had a 4,096 bit encryption key for even my (at the time) publicly-known e-mail address). Did people listen? No. But, I've been telling people what the future holds for a very long time. And, yes, I have a Cassandra complex (who had an interesting story, herself) . . .
After years of trying, of spending so much of my spare time and money in an attempt to make the world a better place, the world and the people in it only seem to get worse. My struggles have left me very tired, weak, frustrated, and, if I was being honest, few would miss me if I was gone. But, I never fit in, anyway . . .
Is this the end?
* The human population of this planet and especially the corporations, seem intent on destroying the world or at least, polluting it to the point where many people and other lifeforms suffer and die. Humans are the species who claim to be intelligent, yet, they destroy their own habitat, usually for coloured pieces of paper which have no real value (fiat currencies). They pollute the land where crops are grown, the water that we drink and even the very air we breathe. There are huge floating garbage patches in the oceans which are hundreds of kilometers across, polluted with the world's garbage, including many plastic shopping bags and millions of tons of garbage.
This plastic gets broken down and eventually finds its way into people's drinking water. When they drink it, those chemicals pollute people's bodies and are now in their bloodstreams. CO2 levels are rising and more is being pumped out than there was during the thermal maximum era, when there wasn't any ice on the planet's surface. This is frightening enough, in itself, but, not the whole picture.
Methane (sources include both landfills and ranch animals) and other VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) output are even more powerful greenhouse gases and their levels are also climbing steadily, and that's rarely talked about. The ice caps are melting and breaking apart and climate breakdown and global warming deniers shout how it's all a hoax (I'll bet none of them own property in the Marshall Islands). Do you live in a place that's less than a few hundred feet above sea level (in 2018)? You might want to move, soon, especially if the ground is only a few feet above sea level, as tall buildings' foundations could weaken, causing them to crumble. There's a reason that there are few buildings with basements in such areas, and, if engineers don't do structural integrity checks at least once every few years, the odds go up. If all the ice covering Greenland and both poles melt . . . Well, use your imagination, but, the ice covering Antarctica (which is about twice the size of Australia) alone is miles thick in some spots . . . Then, there's thermal expansion to consider . . . Want to do the math? Or, listen to the deniers?
However . . . There's something I should tell you. Al Gore and the scientists he based his predictions on were all optimists. Global warming and climate breakdown with the droughts, forest fires, increased strength of storms, flooding, et cetera, will be even worse than they imagined. This, in turn, will increase the number of climate refugees trying to get into countries where they can have a better life. This number will, in time, be in the millions, starting with a relative trickle and small surges of people to a flood of climate refugees. What choice do they have when their crops repeatedly fail, there's no food to feed their families, the air becomes more unbreathable, the drinking water is un-fit to drink and the places they live are repeatedly struck by more powerful storms, hurricanes and floods, destroying their homes over and over again?
Even if you're in one of those wealthier countries and have a fairly good income, you can look forward to a future with less clean air, healthy drinking water, rice (which about half of the world's population eat just to stay alive and there will be less and less of it as the temperatures rise) blueberries, beer (and blueberry beer), chocolate, coffee or even water to take a long shower with.
How do I know such things and why have I placed such a high value upon the items in the above paragraph for decades? That's one of the things I can't tell you, although some may've guessed . . . But, they're likely to be some of the first things people will realize will be in short supply in the near future. Those who know me well, know that some of the things I've bought some time ago include an air purifier with a UV light in it, electronics devices which have silicon chips (as well as surveillance cameras), a water tester, a radiation tester (I've also always carried a radiation badge in my bag for years), a Faraday bag for my spare phone and an air quality tester and knew how to homebrew my own beer decades ago (ask some of my ex-roommates) and I've recently built a computer, making absolutely certain to buy all of the components I needed before the end of 2019 because . . . Reasons! Let's just say that confirming it would be an extremely bad thing and leave it at that, okay?
If all of the above wasn't bad enough, the Amazon jungle and many other trees in the southern hemisphere are being chopped and bulldozed down and wildfires are burning the forests elsewhere, so, less plants and trees to convert CO2 into oxygen! In the case of the wildfires (where parts of the world are literally on fire and climate breakdown deniers still claim that it's all a hoax!) you have to wonder who's responsible for them, but, maybe a hint can be found in who profits from other people's losses, such as those who are quick to offer a small percentage of what a property's worth to those who just watched their homes burn down and turn around and sell it to someone else for a much higher price, which, let's be honest here, sounds ghoulish! Just a quick question to ask my readers . . . Ever wonder who owns the United States Congress or the United States Senate? When you find out, ask yourself how much hope you should have of things ever changing from the way they are.
Some of the more important trees are the supertrees AKA super-trees, such as the Indonesian Rhizophora Mangrove, the Afrormosia Congo's Teak Tree and the Brazil Nut tree.
Many politicians are essentially owned by the corporations which are responsible for polluting the world or making money off of disasters and those politicians keep things as they are for their corporate masters, even deregulating them so there are no restraints on what they can do, which results in their profits increasing multiple times over their 'investment!' Need a visual image to help you understand the situation? Okay, I can do that . . . The majority of humankind are like the dog locked up in a hot car in a store parking lot with your owners (the corporations and politicians they control) refusing to lower the window, insisting that there's no danger whatsoever to your health or life.
While this system continues (AKA business as usual), there is very little hope that things will ever change, although I feel certain that the rich and powerful have contingency plans for themselves . . . Will all the rich and powerful who were responsible for the destruction of the environment receive the punishment they deserve in every country affected by their actions? Don't get your hopes up! Those with extreme amounts of money can afford the best lawyers! I encourage everyone to follow Mother Jones' (AKA Mary G. Harris Jones) advice and pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!
Other pages on this site:
CyberWoLfman's Pix #3. Pictures taken in the ActiveWorlds 3D chat program.
CyberWoLfman's Pix #4. Back to the real world. Includes Halloween pictures, party pictures, more pictures of Bloomington-Normal Illinois including events, people, theatres and bars.
CyberWoLfman's Pix #5. Mostly pictures taken in bars, but also other places.
CyberWoLfman's Pix #6. Not mobile-friendly (I was in an odd mood when I made it) and only a few pictures of Bloomington-Normal Illinois, including a nearly-abandoned mall, so, probably skippable.