The Great Climate Migration Has Begun

[David Lockmiller]

The Great Climate Migration Has Begun
New York Times Magazine
July 24, 2020
By ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN

New research suggests climate change will cause humans to move in unprecedented numbers. The Times Magazine partnered with ProPublica and data scientists to understand how.

As the planet warms, the global trend toward building walls could have a profound and lethal effect. By 2070, the kind of extremely hot zones, like in the Sahara, that now cover less than 1 percent of the earth’s land surface could cover nearly a fifth of the land, potentially placing one of every three people alive outside the climate niche where humans have thrived for thousands of years.

I wonder what President Abraham Lincoln of the United States would say to the world regarding climate change in his inaugural address on Wednesday, January 20, 2021?

[Gene C]

He could say something like this from his first inaugural address

"There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection"

- https://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html

[Rob Wick]

Any time someone wonders what Lincoln would say about some 21st century issue, I think back to a speech by Don Fehrenbacher, who was asked what Lincoln would think of bussing. Without missing a beat, he said that the first thing Lincoln would do is ask "what's a bus?"

While I think climate change is real and a serious issue, to try to extrapolate a Lincolnian position is, quite honestly and with all due respect, a waste of time and energy.

Best
Rob

[Gene C]

If all this is true, they might have to put all those Jeff Davis statues back up. The man was apparently a visionary and ahead of his time.

https://armyhistory.org/the-u-s-armys-ca...xperiment/

[David Lockmiller]

I think that President Abraham Lincoln’s principal strength was logical analysis, including the trending of important factors affecting any issue under consideration.

In our planet’s case, the global warming situation is most highly manifested in the recent massive climate events in the Arctic (including well-documented greatly-accelerated Greenland glacier melting) and Antarctic regions that will have major effects on world-wide weather and climate. For instance, in the Antarctic, major ice shelves have broken off to melt into the oceans like ice cubes in a glass of water. The immediate effect is rising sea levels, which obviously cause worldwide coastlines to recede and cause new periodic associated flooding to lands built upon by man over the centuries. For tens of thousands of years, the developing ice shelves in the Antarctic and annual ice formations in the Artic region increased the available land masses above the water level.

That process is now being reversed. Does anyone remember when explorers died trying to find a navigable Northwest Passage? Around the world, major population centers exist in close proximity to our oceans and seas. And, it has been recently reported that because of declining Artic sea ice from year to year, Polar bears populations will dramatically decrease and it is predicted that the species will become nearly extinct in only seventy years (as I recall).

There are now massive fires and record high temperatures with increasing frequency in the Russian Siberia region. And, with the melting of the tens of millions of acres of permafrost, massive amounts of carbon dioxide will be released into the atmosphere. It is carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases increasing levels that are fueling the climate change process.

The key to the centuries-long climate change balance has been the world’s major forests (increasing oxygen levels and decreasing carbon dioxide levels). [The oceans had been another beneficial oxygen producing factor.] These major restorative forests are being decimated at an alarming rate all around the world, especially in both the Amazon region of South America (many news reports of massive illegal forest fire-clearing for farms and ranches in Brazil) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The following is information posted in a graphic at the end of a Friday, July 24 PBS NewsHour story on the extent of illegal tree harvesting in the Congo rain forests. Many of these trees are greater than one hundred years old and obviously cannot be replaced in a short time period.

“Tropical forests shrunk by 29 million acres in 2019. The Democratic Republic of Congo lost 1.2 million acres.“

Unless climate change factors, especially deforestation, that for centuries and even thousands of years had not been an environmental problem, are stabilized, the deteriorating climate change analysis becomes an inevitable conclusion of massive population redistribution with international political considerations involving millions of people. The world's population is expected to increase by 2 billion persons in the next 30 years, from 7.7 billion currently to 9.7 billion in 2050, according to a new United Nations report.

These are world political problems. How well did the world handle “world political problems” in the last century? I believe that World War I was characterized as “the war to end all wars.” How long after World War I ended did it take before World War II began?

In short, civilization’s record for solving “world problems,” such as the relatively new world problems of population growth and climate change, have not been impressive.

What was Einstein’s definition of insanity?

My first post on this thread reads as follows:

New research suggests climate change will cause humans to move in unprecedented numbers. The Times Magazine partnered with ProPublica and data scientists to understand how.

As the planet warms, the global trend toward building walls could have a profound and lethal effect. By 2070, the kind of extremely hot zones, like in the Sahara, that now cover less than 1 percent of the earth’s land surface could cover nearly a fifth of the land, potentially placing one of every three people alive outside the climate niche where humans have thrived for thousands of years.

I wonder what President Abraham Lincoln of the United States would say to the world regarding climate change in his inaugural address on Wednesday, January 20, 2021?

[My Name Is Kate]

Some big name climate change and rising sea levels proponents are so worried about the future of this planet that they are buying up expensive (wealth redistribution be damned) oceanfront property and consuming inordinate amounts of energy living in their mansions and flying around in jets all over the world.

https://nationalcenter.org/ncppr/2019/08...nt-estate/

[David Lockmiller]

“Researchers at M.I.T. and Princeton now consider a Category Six hurricane a realistic possibility.”

Quote from article published in The New York Times Magazine titled “What’s Going on Inside the Fearsome Thunderstorms of Cordoba Province?” (July 22, 2020). Article republished in today’s (June 26, 2020 edition of the New York Times) newspaper online.

[My Name Is Kate]

(07-26-2020 11:36 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  “Researchers at M.I.T. and Princeton now consider a Category Six hurricane a realistic possibility.”

Anything is possible, even that Someone is getting more and more angry and fed up with this world.

[David Lockmiller]

(07-26-2020 01:26 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  

(07-25-2020 07:54 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  I wonder what President Abraham Lincoln of the United States would say to the world regarding climate change in his inaugural address on Wednesday, January 20, 2021?

So, what do you do to minimize your carbon footprint?

So, how do you address the problem of massive annual reductions in the world's tropical forests that provide so much of the world's oxygen and the problem of the increase in the world's population by 2 billion people in the next 30 years that, in turn, will significantly increase the demands upon the world's resources, such as food, water, and a place to live?

These are two world problems that must be addressed on a cooperative world political level and the United States has been the leader of the free world, traditionally.

These are existential issues for humanity.

[Gene C]

I could get real philosophical on this.

The problem with your question is hoping or assuming the world will cooperate to solve the problem. The haven't so far and probably won't in the future.

So what would Lincoln say? Probably nothing at all.
If he did, he might say the same things he did when addressing other serious problems facing this country.

[My Name Is Kate]

Such a fragile, poorly-designed mess of a world. It almost makes one question whether it was designed at all, or isn't just the result of some random, chance kind of thing. If we could just get rid of a few billion people, the outlook for this planet would be so much better. Then, if we could get the remaining people to adopt a much more third-world-like lifestyle, we'd have it made. Of course, the elites (the ones harping the loudest about climate change, etc.) would still be allowed to live it up in their many mansions, privately-owned jets, and so forth. The deprivations suffered by the common, less-important (nonessential, in current parlance) people would make up for it.

"Most of Earth’s atmospheric oxygen that we depend on as humans comes predominantly from the ocean. More specifically from microscopic ocean plants called phytoplankton."

https://bescienced.com/where-does-the-ox...come-from/

[David Lockmiller]

President Abraham Lincoln might cite Hamlet, Act III, Scene I [To be, or not to be] by William Shakespeare:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

---

(07-27-2020 01:16 PM)My Name Is Kate Wrote:  Such a fragile, poorly-designed mess of a world. It almost makes one question whether it was designed at all, or isn't just the result of some random, chance kind of thing. If we could just get rid of a few billion people, the outlook for this planet would be so much better. Then, if we could get the remaining people to adopt a much more third-world-like lifestyle, we'd have it made. Of course, the elites (the ones harping the loudest about climate change, etc.) would still be allowed to live it up in their many mansions, privately-owned jets, and so forth. The deprivations suffered by the common, less-important (nonessential, in current parlance) people would make up for it.

"Most of Earth’s atmospheric oxygen that we depend on as humans comes predominantly from the ocean. More specifically from microscopic ocean plants called phytoplankton."

https://bescienced.com/where-does-the-ox...come-from/

The article to which you refer makes two relevant statements:

1) [M]ost people think that most of earth’s oxygen comes from trees. However, trees are definitely not the only source of oxygen. Actually, the Amazon forest, frequently named as “the lung of the planet”, only produces 20% of the oxygen released on Earth each year.

I previously posted the following quotation from the PBS News Hour:

“Tropical forests shrunk by 29 million acres in 2019. The Democratic Republic of Congo lost 1.2 million acres.“

2) Phytoplankton grow and get their own energy through photosynthesis and are responsible for producing an estimated 50% of the world’s oxygen.

The Scientific American, celebrating 175 years of publication last year, published on February 25, 2019 an article titled "The Ocean Is Running Out of Breath, Scientists Warn."

The subtitle of the article reads: "Widespread and sometimes drastic marine oxygen declines are stressing sensitive species—a trend that will continue with climate change."

[My Name Is Kate]

I've spent a good part of my earlier life worrying about environmental issues and the imminent demise of this planet, yet, decades later, the world is still here, and thriving (depending on your news sources), and more people (in this country, at least) are living well into their 90s and are healthy (which must seem like part of the problem, for environmentalists). I didn't need any encouragement, back then, to find more reasons to not like human beings, but the environmentalists gave me plenty more. I want no more part of such hateful negativity.

(And yes, I do "minimize my carbon footprint." Without going into any details, I am probably one of the most environmentally frugal persons on this forum, or in this city, or even in this country. But it's not because I've been indoctrinated.)

[My Name Is Kate]

(07-27-2020 05:22 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  "Man needs nature, but nature doesn't need man."

Nature is not superior to man. Nature is not even conscious of itself. Nature did not create man, though man is a part of nature. It doesn't make sense to say that nature doesn't need man. Nature has no goals, other than the natural laws governing it. Laws imply a Lawgiver. It would make more sense to say that animals (some of them) don't need man and would be better off without him. But if man is the worst problem this world has ever seen, why does he exist? More specifically, why was he created? Something that is not conscious of itself and has no morality (nature, or any of its building blocks) cannot be responsible for the existence of something that is conscious of itself and is a moral being (or should be.)

[My Name Is Kate]

The implication of the statement, "Man needs nature, but nature doesn't need man," is that this world would be better off if man didn't exist because he is destroying nature. It is only a small step from that thought, to justifying the elimination or suppression of those portions of mankind that are deemed to be the biggest culprits in that destruction, or who are seen as thwarting the agenda of those claiming to be on a mission to save this planet.

Ask Darwin? Darwin is dead in the ground, and he wasn't alive at the inception of humanity. One thing is certain, in my estimation: This world would probably be a better place had it not been for Darwin's cross-species evolution theory, for which there is no proof or convincing evidence. Show me a few examples of species that are, at this moment, clearly evolving from one species to another. Show me some fossils of species in between what they once were and what they were evolving toward (other than the ones "they" keep "digging up" that are supposedly early prototypes of man.)