Life on a Warming Planet

Any time I post something having to do with global warming, also known as climate change, I eagerly await the pathetically goofy comments I know I'll get from at least one or two contrarian unbelievers. It's interesting to me that these people are still able to convince themselves, in the light of overwhelming scientific evidence and agreement, that global warming is some kind of Liberal Left Conspiracy. What can they make of something like this:

Snows fail to fall in Arctic tundra. Reindeer are vulnerable when winter snows don't fall, according to the indigenous people of the Arctic Circle. HARSTAD, Norway (Reuters) -- Life is harsh on the freezing tundra of the Arctic Circle where Anna Prakhova lives. But it can be much harder when snows do not fall.

Or this: Polar Bears Face Up To Warmer Future, a heartbreaking tale of ice forming later and later in the Hudson Bay, leaving polar bears unable to access the seals that are their main form of sustenance. They can only hunt the seals on solid ice, and they are now starving as a result of the usual ice-timetable being so delayed.

If our contrarian friends don't care about reindeer or polar bears, or even indigenous peoples who live in these same climates and are also suffering the early results of global warming, one might think articles like this: A cautionary picture of water supplies as Earth warms: New studies forecast declines for rivers in the US and elsewhere, or this: As Earth warms, health risks grow. Studies link climate change, deaths, might make a dent in their stubborn refusal to believe. The first informs us that shrinking snowpacs and vanishing glaciers will make a huge difference in the supplies of water all over the planet, and the necessity of making large changes in farming techniques, industrial practices, and lifestyles. The second article points out that...

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the World Health Organization have compiled a series of studies showing that people have been adversely affected by regional and global climate change. The WHO suspects 150,000 people per year, for the past 30 years, have died as a result of a gradually warming planet. The WHO says that annually, 5 million cases of illness can be attributed to it, too.

And they think things are only going to get worse.

These are but a few of the bits and pieces I have run across recently on the well-documented subject of global climate change. It seems to me that the sooner we take our heads out of the sand, start paying attention, not to mention making some large changes, the better the lives of all young people now on the planet will be in the approaching future. What are the advantages in denying the truth of something so obvious?

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