As Hurricane Florence rampages toward North Carolina, we face yet another horrific storm equaling Katrina, Harvey, Maria, Sandy and dozens of others in the past few years.
Forecasters tell us that American summer temperatures rise ever higher in June, July and August. New record scorching temperatures announced monthly! We see endless wildfires raging across our tinder-dry forests. Last summer 2017, while cycling across America, my companions and I pedaled through Montana’s 300,000-acre wildfire. Smoke and ash surrounded us and I swear that I smoked 10 packs of cigarettes in one day as I pedaled through flames and 360 degrees of blackened landscape. This summer, I witnessed California burning up!
While most Americans give little credence to ‘Global Climate Change’, their children face even greater environmental disasters in the 21st century.
The human race gallops toward its destiny without any idea of the long-term consequences to all life on this planet.
Enter A New Term: Catastrophic Climate Destabilization
While I worked in Antarctica in the ‘summer’ of 1997-98, I reported for the Antarctic Sun newspaper. Each week, I listened to the world’s top research scientists on numerous subjects. They worked on 180 different projects as to weather, species extinction, air pollution over the centuries, ice pack, snow pack, penguins, whales, seals, krill, skua birds, atmospheric aberrations and much more.
At one point, research scientist Dr. Rutledge along with his colleagues gave a presentation on the growing and massive ‘carbon footprint’ in the biosphere and oceans by humans’ burning of fossil fuels 24/7.
Notice that for the past two thousand years, Earth’s temperatures and climate remained mild and stable. Earth featured about 180 parts per million carbon. Today, over 400 ppm as a result of the Industrial Revolution that started in the late 1800s.
We saw catastrophic climate change in the last ice age, and the black- out of the “global winter” created by a meteor hit that killed off all the dinosaurs! At that point, 97 percent of animal and plant life died on this globe. Scientists called it the “Fifth Extinction Session.” From that three percent of surviving organisms, all the life on this planet sprang up to yield what we see today, including humans.
Dr. Rutledge stated, “These climate models show how Earth’s atmosphere moves toward massive changing as the overload of carbon dioxide absorbs into the oceans. The problem we face stems from the ultimate consequences when the oceans become too overloaded with carbon so as to warm them. Once the Earth’s oceans warm and become acidified, they will cause catastrophic climate destabilization. Additionally, acidified oceans will cause the death of plankton that creates 80 percent of our oxygen.”
I wrote about it in my book: Antarctica: An Extreme Encounter available on Amazon.
Expectantly, I tried to interview on “60 Minutes”; NPR and PBS. I attempted to interview on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and FOX. I tried to interview on Oprah. I wrote columns about it. I’ve spoken on 1,500 radio interviews. But no one wants to listen or take action. Al Gore produced two movies that everyone refuted or ignored.
Somehow, world leaders don’t, won’t or refuse to connect the dots. In fact, they rail against all evidence.
Since 1998 when I spent a summer ‘on the ice’, we humans added 1.5 billion of ourselves to reach 7.6 billion on our way to 10.1 billion in 30 years. We’ve added hundreds of millions of gasoline engines of all kinds. We’ve added millions of smoke stacks from homes, factories and coal-fired electrical plants.
It’s not that the oceans create those hurricanes more than usual, it’s that their aberrantly warmer waters and the swirling cold air of the upper biosphere mix it up to create even more horrific Category 5 hurricanes.
As our human mob inundates the biosphere with carbon exhaust from billions of cars and smoke stacks 24/7, and as we add another 83,000,000 (million) of ourselves, net gain, annually—our species and all life on this planet face catastrophic consequences in the 21st century.
Ironically, I find such environmental groups like the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, Audubon, World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, National Wildlife Federation, American Bird Conservancy, Friends of Earth and a hundred others groups – WON’T address, touch or speak up about human overpopulation in the United States.
The fact remains that all their causes will amount to absolutely nothing without facing the fact that we must stabilize human populations around the globe in the 21st century, or, Mother Nature will do the job for us, rather brutally and without mercy.
I want to make this fact very clear: Mother Nature doesn’t give a damn about humans.
How do I know this fact? I’ve traveled on my bicycle through Asia where millions starve to death and live in overpopulated misery. China, India and Bangladesh face catastrophic futures. Africa, on course to grow from one billion to two billion by 2050 to four billion by the end of this century—faces a horrible future. Its people already hopelessly starve to death by countless millions with people living like ants in refugee camps and thatched huts.
And yet, you won’t hear a peep nor will you see anyone connect the dots as to population and hurricanes like Katrina, Sandy, Harvey, Haiyan, Maria and Florence.
It’s called ‘cognitive dissonance’ or intellectual denial of reality. Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump all suffered from it and did and/or are doing NOTHING to change course. PM’s like May, Trudeau, Merkel, Salvi, Macron and others in Europe lead blindly into the future. All of them: terrified to touch this last taboo: human overpopulation. They’re not alone: 60 Minutes, NPR and PBS flee from any mention or interviewing anyone who will speak up about it. How do I know?
For the past 15 years, I’ve given all these organizations contact numbers for the 20 top American experts to interview on what we face by 2050 as our population adds another 140 million people. What did they do at NPR, PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and FOX? Ignore, ignore, ignore.
Let’s just say that Mother Nature sends us Hurricane Florence as another reminder that our continued accelerating carbon footprint caused by exponential growth of the human race, ends up in catastrophic climate destabilization.
It’s not going to be pretty for anyone! And, it’s going to become worse more often.
Frosty Wooldridge is a Population-Immigration-Environmental specialist: speaker at colleges, civic clubs, high schools and conferences. Facebook: Frosty Wooldridge. Facebook Adventure Page: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World. Www.HowToLiveALifeOfAdventure.com. www.frostywooldridge.com.
