SORRY WORLD

I started this post on June 1st, 2017--The day Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord. The withdrawal cannot actually take place for four years so in some ways it is right now "symbolic". I stopped writing right after I typed in the title because I wanted to do some research to find out if global warming and climate change were real or a "hoax" as some have said.  

95-97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and much of it is related to human causes. Why then does the President and many of his Republican colleagues and base of supporters maintain that there is no global warming because at times there is record cold and record snowfalls? One reason maybe that oil and gas companies, along with the coal industry to lessor degree, make large contributions to their campaigns. Many claim that weather changes are all part of a "natural cycle". There is a difference between climate change and a natural cycle. Quoting from an OSSfoundation.us.projects/environment/global-warming/ article found when doing a Google search: "in a natural cycle CO2 lags behind the warming because it is mainly due to the Milankovitch cycles.* Now CO2 is currently leading the warming. Current warming is clearly not a natural cycle."

 From articles I have read and scientist I have listened to on television I believe global warming is real-- I feel sad that people, including many of them leading our government, have chosen to ignore or contest the beliefs and evidence held by such a large segment of the scientific community. I am far nearer to the end of my life than to the beginning so these changes will probably not directly affect me, however it is likely that they will affect my grandchildren and their children and their children and many future generations. The loss of plants, insects, birds and animals will undoubtedly be dramatic. While many go extinct as a natural process we are currently losing species at an accelerated pace due mostly to humans activity. Why would we want to hasten their disappearance? 


The day that we were going to leave the Paris Climate Agreement I felt sad, sad that it seemed we were taking steps backward instead of forward. What came to my mind were the words, "Sorry World". 

This post has taken me a long time to finish (was it really 2017 when I started it??) I am not sure why, maybe I just felt that since Trump's withdrawal was almost 2 years ago it wasn't as meaningful as it might have been in June, 2017. Lately however there has been 
even more startling information on the acceleration of changes which will result in not being able to reverse the damage. 

Sorry World.

*Milankovitch cycles describe the collective effects of changes in the Earth's movements on its climate over thousands of years. The term is named for Serbian geophysicist and astronomer Milutin Milanković. Wikipedia