Forest fires across the world have shown the horrifying impact of global warming... andallwearehearingispoliticalhotair
Global warming has only itself to blame. Part of the reason I think, why some people have previously found it hard to take global warming seriously was, well, the lack of warming. We all know — and accept — that the planet has been slowly but surely heating up over the last few decades.
And that this is indeed leading to climate change (sorry, Sammy Wilson) with unsettled, unsettling weather and extreme fallout including — generally where we are concerned, anyway — persistent precipitation.
In Northern Ireland, in recent years, global warming hasn’t exactly manifested in heatwaves and soaring ice cream sales. Instead we’ve had summer after summer of showers and impenetrable, grey cloud cover.
So it’s little wonder you would occasionally hear the odd mutinous muttering around here about: “Global warming? Bring it on.”
But this year we’ve finally been getting a touch of the higher temperatures. Sunshine, even.
I got a text the other day from my son who lives in London. Capped up like a Trump tweet his weather update was: “B ***** ROASTING. WHEN IS THIS HEATWAVE EVER GONNA END?”
Then hastily, a few seconds later: “Never thought I’d say that.”
We’re lucky in that we live in a relatively temperate part of the planet. A place where you still get rain with your hosepipe ban.
We’ve had a better summer than usual in Northern Ireland, but elsewhere in Europe and around the world, climate change is having a much scarier, even more obvious impact.
In California, Portugal, Greece, even Sweden for heaven’s sake, there have been forest fires resulting in loss of life. Horrific deaths.
Not so long ago I watched an old television repeat of the movie The Day After Tomorrow.
In the film, the whole world — or New York, which to many Americans is much the same thing — entirely freezes over.
Basically an enormous ‘superstorm’ develops and next thing you know the US of A is the US of Antarctica.
Inevitably, brave American heroes save the day — and in the process rescue a group of people who’ve been holed up in a library burning books (metaphor for the end of civilisation).
In the movie, American citizens escaping the bitter chill are subsequently relocated to Mexico. This film, needless to say, pre-dated President Trump’s Mexican wall plan which would presumably stymie similar such evacuation efforts in the future.
But even though it was make-believe, it was still a sobering depiction of what could befall mankind.
The terrifying sight of those real fires, however, and the devastation and suffering they’ve caused in the last few months, has been an even more nightmarish reminder of climate catastrophe.
Fire, more than frost, is our real vision of hell.
According to many science and environmental websites, this is what’s now impacting upon people who might previously have been sceptical or just not all that bothered about the threat of global warming.
It’s shocked people in a way that the beleaguered polar bear on his melting iceberg never quite managed.
Sadly, the even more frightening reality we can now count on is that from here on in, things will get worse.
We know this because, thus far, the world’s political bigshots haven’t exactly distinguished themselves in agreeing and enforcing a strategy to counteract, or at least attempt to slow, global meltdown.
Various parties are, of course, involved in fierce debate about who or what to blame for it all. But between them, all they are producing is even more hot air.
Which right now is really getting us nowhere.
Global warming, I said, has only itself to blame that we don’t take it seriously?
In fairness, we humans may have something to answer for as well.