A new study published in the journal nature.
Climate change says that even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases immediately, right
now, no more emissions effective immediately, Greenland would still lose 3.3% of their ice
sheet, which would result in a 12 inch, one foot sea level rise across the planet.
We have hit the point of climate change that even if all emissions were to cease to exist
right now, we're still headed for catastrophe.
That is what this new report tells us.
And the worst part about that is is that's the optimistic part of it, right?
They still carry that message that do not despair.
We can do something.
We can actually stop even worse things from happening, but this one foot sea level rise
at this point, you know, based on my reading of this does appear inevitable and that's
a terrifying thought.
And it's something that, of course everybody's been warned about many times for several decades
now.
And we as a country only just recently passed our very first piece of, I guess, climate
legislation ever, ever folks.
That's how bad we have been as a country.
You know, that's not even including.
I know, but other countries are bigger polluters.
I get it.
I'm not a moron.
Okay.
One other country is a bigger polluter and that's China.
We're number two.
And then I think it's India.
And we could go down and down and down, down that list, but that's not important.
We should be the leaders on this issue and we're not.
And the reason we're not is because every couple years, we end up with a dufus in the
white house, typically with an R next to their name that pretends that climate change doesn't
exist, or that tells us that climate change is a Chinese hoax or is too dumb to understand
what sciences is telling them.
We have Republican politicians who when asked about climate change, say, no, it's not real,
but I'm not a scientist man.
And this is what we get.
We're gonna get a foot of sea level rise by the year 2050.
So we got 28 years and a foot of sea level rise by the way, just so everybody understands,
cuz I know there's a lot of people who don't quite understand this.
It's like, oh, that means the water comes, you know, closer to shore by one foot.
No, no, no, no, no.
A sea level rise of one foot.
And then that one foot extends all the way out until it hits the shore again.
Right?
As the shore curves down up, they meet.
So a one foot sea level rise is about an eight to 10 foot, uh, encroachment of water.
That's how that works.
Depending on the way the shoreline is sloped.
So it's a significant problem.
But again, we could be working on this.
We could be doing something about it because if we do not, and again, that 3.3% melt of
Greenland's ice sheet is only if we stopped all the emissions right now, it gets so much
worse.
Um, when you look at it, if Greenland's ice sheet were to disintegrate completely
sea levels would rise more than 22 feet enough to double the frequency of storm surge flooding
in many of the world's largest coastal cities by the end of the century.
Uh, so the stakes for adequate climate action are still immense.
Even if a certain amount of melting has been deemed irreversible, which is the situation
we're in right now.
You know, I talked in another story about the fact that the state of, uh, Mississippi,
180,000 people in the capital of Jackson, uh, Mississippi without water because the
recent flooding, you know, climate related events damaged their water system so badly,
they can't pump water.
That's climate change, Texas, their energy grid failures, that's climate change lake
Mead drying up the Hoover dam may not even have enough water to produce electricity in
a couple years.
Folks.
That's climate change the wildfires in California, the wildfires in Colorado, the winter storms
up north folks, all of this is climate change.
And we're sitting here watching it, get worse.
We're sitting here watching these scientists, give us warning after warning after warning
and what are we doing?
We're tuning it out.
We're pretending it's not real.
Oh, it's a far off threat.
We don't have to worry about it.
As I always say, it's not knocking on our door.
It has already burst through the door.
It is in our living room.
It's obstructing our view of the TV and we're still just trying to, oh, I don't wanna see
it.
I'm trying to look around it.
It's here.
And we're already seeing the bad things, but these bad things are nothing compared to what
could be coming down the pipeline.
If we do not take action, 150 million people are expected to be displaced by the year 2050
on current projections, 150 million.
And you've seen how Republicans freak out.
When you have a couple hundred people, try to cross the border, imagine a couple million,
maybe then they'll start taking it seriously.