today’s extreme weather will seem sedate in the future

Es­ti­mated reading time is 3 min­utes.

THE GUARDIAN IS NOT A SU­PER­HERO. At least not this Guardian. Nor is it a movie about a se­date blind priest sit­ting at his open window, pro­tecting our world from the gates of Hell. This Guardian is a British daily news­paper, founded in 1821 as The Man­chester Guardian. Today, the pa­per’s read­er­ship is gen­er­ally on the main­stream left of British po­lit­ical opinion.

Its rep­u­ta­tion for so­cial lib­eral and left-wing ed­i­to­rials has led to the deroga­tory use of Guardian Reader and (my fave) Guardian­ista by those on the other side of the chasm. While it seems to have a lib­eral reputation—not some­thing that is dif­fi­cult to achieve among rightwingers who see any­thing left of right-of-center as revolutionary—the ed­i­tors of En­cy­clo­pedia Bri­tan­nica have a rather dif­ferent take on it:

“The Guardian has his­tor­i­cally been praised for its in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nalism, its dis­pas­sionate dis­cus­sion of is­sues, its lit­erary and artistic cov­erage and crit­i­cism, and its for­eign cor­re­spon­dence. The Guardian’s ed­i­to­rial stance is con­sid­ered less con­ser­v­a­tive than that of The Daily Tele­graph and The Times, its main London com­peti­tors, but its re­porting is also marked by its independence.”

In a 2018 re­search poll de­signed to in­ter­ro­gate the pub­lic’s trust of spe­cific ti­tles on­line, The Guardian scored highest for digital-content news, with 84% of readers agreeing that they “trust what [they] see in it.” (Wikipedia)

 

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The Guardian de­buted in Star-Spangled Comics #7 (April 1942), the cre­ation of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. The story in­volves po­lice of­ficer Jim Harper, who de­signs a cos­tume and learns to fight to take on the crim­inal el­e­ment. He is as­sisted by four street-smart kids who peddle news­pa­pers and are there­fore known as the Newsboy Le­gion, who sus­pect that Of­ficer Harper is also the Guardian. (Dave’s Comic He­roes Blog)

Today’s extreme is tomorrow’s sedate

On Oc­tober 5, 2020, The Guardian launched a new project, En­vi­ron­ment Now, that will “track a se­lec­tion of the planet’s vital signs, from carbon dioxide levels to Arctic sea ice, and au­to­mat­i­cally up­date from re­li­able feed sources, pro­viding a vi­sual rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the cli­mate crisis.” Au­thor Alan Evans states:

“The Earth is changing faster than at any point in modern his­tory as a re­sult of human-caused global heating. From the mid-19th cen­tury, when we began burning fossil fuels on an in­dus­trial scale, we have been mod­i­fying our at­mos­phere and causing the planet to heat up.”

Cli­mate sci­en­tist Dr. Joëlle Gergis notes, “As a cli­mate sci­en­tist, the thing that re­ally ter­ri­fies me is that weather con­di­tions con­sid­ered ex­treme by today’s stan­dards will seem se­date in the future.”

 

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The Jan­uary 27, 2020, dig­ital edi­tion of The Guardian ex­pressing fear that as many as 100,000 people may have the “new” virus around the world. There are also fea­tured pieces on actor David Schwimmer, Saudi crown prince Nesrin Malik, and an obit­uary for bas­ket­ball great Kobe Bryant.

One easy-to-follow source

So, readers wanting to keep up with global changes using one easy-to-follow source, give En­vi­ron­ment Now a shot. The page will re­view the fol­lowing as­pects of global cli­mate change:

Global temperature change

This gives the monthly tem­per­a­ture vari­a­tion com­pared with a base­line using the years 1951-1980.

Atmospheric CO2

This gives the weekly carbon count at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

Greenland ice mass

This gives the change in the ice mass of Green­land since 1992.

Sea level

This gives the Green­land global sea-level change.

Arctic ice extent

This gives the Arctic monthly mean sea ice extent.

To see the En­vi­ron­ment Now page, click HERE.

 

We are now seeing the very worst of our sci­en­tific pre­dic­tions come to pass and everyone’s pa­tience has worn thin. Click To Tweet

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FEA­TURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page ac­com­pa­nied the ar­ticle “Sci­en­tific Pre­dic­tions Come To Pass” on an­other Guardian page. Dr. Joëlle Gergis ex­claims, “As a cli­mate sci­en­tist I find prime min­ister Scott Morrison’s re­quest for people to be ‘pa­tient’ as in­fu­ri­ating as it is con­de­scending. With re­spect to the prime min­ister, the sci­ence of cli­mate change has been ig­nored in this country for decades. We are now seeing the very worst of our sci­en­tific pre­dic­tions come to pass. Everyone’s pa­tience has worn thin. The Aus­tralian people are jus­ti­fi­ably angry and are now de­manding true lead­er­ship in the face of this cli­mate emer­gency.”

 

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