The Great Climate Migration Has Begun

[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?