"Look, Look, Look"

Some thought my last post was a bit dramatic, but it was, unfortunately, factual.
In other words, look, look, look at news the past two days:

"Huge waves and disease turn Marshall Islands into ‘a war zone,’ health official says"
by Susanne Rust in Los Angeles Times. "This week, the picture grew even bleaker as
climate change, disease and political unease collided and officials put out an international
plea for help." See The GroundTruth Project and FRONTLINE's great interactive video "The Last Generation" that "places you in the shoes of [three Marshall Islands] children as they grapple with the possibility of seeing their homeland disappear." The project won "an Emmy Award, an Online Journalism Award, World Press Photo’s Inaugural Interactive of The Year Award, a Scripps Howard Award, and a Webby Award."

"Climate crisis is 'challenge of civilisation', says pope" by Fiona Harvey in The Guardian.
Kat Kramer, "the global climate lead at Christian Aid" mentioned in the article,
noted "The studies published this week showing temperatures and emissions hitting new highs
suggests our leaders are failing us. It’s no wonder that Pope Francis has felt the need to step
in once again to remind politicians they need to do a much better job."

"Florida Keys Deliver a Hard Message: As Seas Rise, Some Places Can’t Be Saved" by
Christopher Flavelle and Patricia Mazzei in The New York Times. "To protect against expected
flooding levels in 2060, the cost would jump to $181 million [ par break] And all that to protect
about two dozen homes. [. . . .] How do you tell somebody, ‘We’re not going to build the road
to get to your home’? And what do we do?' Mr. Gastesi asked. 'Do we buy them out? And how
do we buy them out — is it voluntary? Is it eminent domain? How do we do that?'” Other serious issues, as my students and I wrote before, include what to do about "survivors and victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, especially those from islands of Barbuda and Puerto Rico, as well as Californians affected by fires, and millions globally enduring floods in Bangladesh [widely reported as 1/3 underwater in 2017], Peru, Nepal, India, China, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Canada, Iran, Norway, England, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, and other places." That was before the recent disaster in The Bahamas.

The climate crisis is so obvious, one has to work hard not to notice.  Professor James Hansen said in his COP25 Press Conference "450 [ppm of  CO₂] is a disaster if you leave it in the air for long because we would eventually lose all coastal cities. The safe level is something less than 350 ppm but we are already at 410 ppm." That should be on the front page of each newspaper on Earth.

In another COP25 video Paul Beckwith used the metaphor of humans as the stubborn knight in Monty Python's The Holy Grail which I is something I wrote about in my post "The Black Knight and Climate Change" September 5, 2017. with the video linked.  The difference was I faulted "world leaders" because as Isaac Asimov said, "Well, it’s perhaps not important that every human being thinks so. How about the leaders thinking so? How about the opinion-makers thinking so? Ordinary people might follow them. If we didn’t have leaders who are thinking in exactly the opposite way; if we didn’t have people who are shouting hatred and suspicion of foreigners; if we didn’t have people who are shouting that it’s more important to be unfriendly than to be friendly; if we didn’t have people shouting somehow that people inside the country who don’t look exactly the way the rest of us look, that something’s wrong with them."