Global Warming Part II- Texas Freezing and What It Means for Rosella’s World

Texas Freezes. Wind turbines lock up. No water.

Bunk this climate change! Yes it is!

The events of Texas with all the snow and ice, and now the lack of water due to pumps being without electricity, could be signs of a climate in the process of change. But the change into what?
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The etymology of the word climate started in the 14th century and was more about the parallel lines to the equator than actual temperature. It wasn’t until the late 14th century that it became more. As time moved on it came to mean the holistic patterns of weather, temperatures, rainfall, etc. in each region or place.

When scientists today speak of climate change, they are referring to the entire Earth’s weather patterns, average temperatures, etc. Which as a concept is hard for any one person to grasp because most people only know their local or regional climate. This could explain why denying climate change is so easy.

For example, the recent events in Texas. How can one say we need green energy to help stop the planet warming up when Texas froze up!

How Things Can Turn Out...

​In Rosella Tolfree’s world, the average global temperature is a balmy 89 degrees Fahrenheit. The idea of freezing events doesn’t happen. Snow fall doesn’t happen anywhere on the planet. It’s too warm now for snow and ice to form. Welcome to Planet Florida.

My research into climate and how it works has shown me it’s very complex on the large scale. There are so many inputs involved that the impact of the global thermostat by moving one thing can cause that thermostat to go up or down fast locally.

Humanity plays a role in regulating this global thermostat, like it or not those who want to deny things. But we are not the end all in that thermostat equation. Humanity is only one part.

Because of our orbital position, the Earth can either be a snowball or tropical wet world, with swings in between. The Earth will always try to achieve equilibrium. Therefore, you are seeing now extreme weather events going from heat waves to freezing snows. But if we have one major volcanic event send up a ton of dust into the upper atmosphere, this could send shock waves through the entire global climate cooling things down. And if that volcanic event is a basalt lava flow (like what happened in Rosella’s world), then we will see temperatures rise instead because of the amount of gas venting. These are events outside our control with our human technology right now.

The Real Problem With Climate Change

What national leaders are not grasping that I hope my writings of Rosella’s dystopian world shows is that they are not prepared for what’s coming.

While the Earth’s climate shifts back and forth to maintain equilibrium, localities are going to experience freezing events, heat waves, storm flooding, windstorms, large hurricanes, crop failure, pandemics and diseases, and mass migration. This is on top of human conflicts because of these events.

Governments around the world need to start spending more and more money on infrastructure repairs and construction to keep up with all the changes. This is not to mention economic impacts and military costs. The alternative is to do nothing and let society decay. As you can tell, this is much more than investing in green tech. Climate Change is about investing in both dealing with the global thermostat setting, and the real financial impacts of those changes.

In Rosella’s world, the U.S. federal government let things decay.

ADDENDUM

One of my friends forwarded a Tweet from a writer, that she knows that lives in the city of Lake Charles, LA.

It’s had “four federally declared disasters in the last six months,” according to the forwarded tweet.

Her friend says its “utterly exhausting to live in a disaster zone.”

The most recent disaster is the same snow disaster that hit Texas, but no one is talking about Lake Charles.

Majority of the declared disasters for 2020 were hurricanes. Nothing new there. The ice storm is the new one for 2021.

But this gets to the heart of the problem I noted above. As the Earth’s climate shifts back and forth to achieve equilibrium, these kinds of disasters are only going to cost more and more.

The reality is turning the thermostat backwards too far is only going to result in a frozen snowball Earth. There’s no concept of a goldilocks zone for Earth’s climate. You’ll always have some amount of local catastrophic weather. But it’s true at certain temperatures the intensities and frequencies diminish. The problem is, I don’t think science has a clear handle on what that temperature is. A reasonable guess is more like it based on previous information. But outcomes have yet to be determined.

The question to our political leaders is how to handle the constant and repeating costs of all these disasters. My suggestion for the U.S. is to move away from FEMA and start looking towards a universal basic income (UBI) theory with FEMA as a backup. If done right, the UBI payments could provide an economic cushion during these events to relieve the need for FEMA cash relief and other kinds of immediate aide.

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Image- burning earth heat, by Tumiso, Source pixabay. Processed through Adobe Spark.