Saturday January 5th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing post will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials)😊.
Gettysburg Climate Address
Many of my friends know that besides my primary interest in weather and climate in relation to the future of this planet I am a student of history. There are interesting parallels between the current Climate War and past conflicts. As an interesting exercise I have replaced some wording in association with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I hope you, the reader, can see that we need bold leadership as drawn from this “speech” I have rewritten for today’s times:
Twenty score years ago our fathers brought forth upon the planet an Industrial Revolution, conceived in commerce, and dedicated to the proposition that all men can live better via cheaper harnessed energy.
Now we are engaged in a great environmental war, testing whether any nation, or any culture so conceived, and so dedicated to the cause of prosperity, can long endure because of that Industrial Revolution. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here due to heat waves and storms, that civilization might live. This we may, in all propriety do.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate we can not consecrate we can not hallow, this ground the brave scientists and activists, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here on this planet. Also, may the victims of storms like Katrina and fires that affected places such as Paradise, California rest in peace.
It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us that, from these honored people we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the world, shall have a new birth of renewable energy and freedom, and that civilization of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
By no means when injecting my own wording to bring the Gettysburg Address up to date for the current Climate War do I wish to slight any victims of the Civil War knowing how much was sacrificed, but I hope that their ghosts and descendants of that great battle can appreciate what really is at stake in the long run from today’s conflict. The Civil War lasted only about four years. Human kind maybe fighting the Climate War for centuries long after every internal combustion engine on the planet has been replaced by an electric and every power plant run off coal, oil, and natural gas has been scuttled, replaced by solar and wind. Other wars maybe spawned due to the initial climate crisis. Look at what has already happened in Syria. We are battling both men who refuse to see the light of science and nature made worse by their intransigence.
The Civil War was horrifically bloody, but on the northern side was fought justly to free slaves. Now a real conflict, which isn’t too bloody so far, is being fought between those who will progress civilization via the advice of true science and those who unjustly will keep the human race enslaved to old ways due to short term greed. It is time to cast off the shackles of filthy oil and gas that will eventually be the ruin of all, and to don new, clean clothes of solar and wind power that won’t sully our chances for long term survival. Let us strive now to change so that the Civil War, once history is written, will be by far much more bloody than this New Climate War.
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Here is some more of Saturday’s climate and weather news:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity.)
Rhode Island sued the fossil fuel industry over climate change in 2018, citing risks from sea level rise and extreme weather. It's part of a growing group of cities, counties and even the fishing industry that want fossil fuel companies held accountable. https://t.co/B0vYZJjErN
— InsideClimate News (@insideclimate) January 6, 2019
"Once the ice sheets reach these tipping points, it's thought that they'll go into a state of irreversible retreat, so they'll be responding to what we do now for centuries and milliennia into the future,"#ActOnClimate #ClimateChange https://t.co/XQQwHrjCZS
— Paul Dawson on Climate Change (@PaulEDawson) January 6, 2019
2018 temperature summary for the U.S. compared to all other years. Uses 1,289 stations with at least 50 complete years of data. Dark red areas were in the top 10% compared to their own climate records. @AlaskaWx @SNAPandACCAP @IARC_Alaska pic.twitter.com/hn77l78eIF
— Brian Brettschneider (@Climatologist49) January 6, 2019
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The Climate Guy