While our Florida State and local governments fiddle, our frail planet is on fire. We must elect Democrats and independents to public office. As would say, "It is not enough to allow dissent, we must demand it, for there is much to dissent from." He quoted the French philosopher Albert Camus, who said that, "Perhaps we cannot make this a world in which no children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of children who are tortured. And if you do not help us do this, then who else in the world will help us do this?" The future of our children, and seven generations of children, is at risk due to the hostile working environment that Dull Republican lobbyists and lobbyists saddle us with in the current Florida legislature, which has a Dull Republican supermajority of smarmy straps and cynical misanthropes. Listening to today's January 9, 2024 BoyGovernor RONALD DION DeSANTIS smarmy "State of the State" ukase today, reminds me: we must stand up against oppression against insolent insurrectionists.
From Los Angeles Times:
Earth reaches grim milestone: 2023 was the warmest year on record
An astonishing seven consecutive months of record-breaking warmth has culminated a grim milestone for humanity: 2023 was, officially, Earth's hottest year on record.
That assessment, announced Tuesday by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, follows a year in which extreme heat smothered multiple continents simultaneously, pushed ocean temperatures to alarming highs and spurred dire warnings about the worsening effects of climate change.
"2023 was an exceptional year with climate records tumbling like dominoes," read a statement from Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus. "Not only is 2023 the warmest year on record, it is also the first year with all days over 1 degree Celsius warmer than the preindustrial period. Temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years."
With a global average temperature of 58.96 degrees, last year was about 0.31 of a degree warmer than the previous hottest year on record, 2016, according to data from Copernicus. December was also the warmest on record globally, as were all the months from June through November.
Official record-keeping of global temperatures began in 1850, or shortly after the end of the Industrial Revolution. Analysis of those records reveal that 2023 was 2.67 degrees warmer than the preindustrial period — or just shy of the2.7-degree limit(1.5 degrees Celsius) established under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, an internationally recognized tipping point for the worst effects of climate change.
Nearly half the days last year reached at least 2.7 degrees over preindustrial levels, Burgess said.
While global average temperature is an abstract concept for many people — nobody actually lives in a climate that is constantly 59 degrees — the effects of extreme heat were felt by the vast majority of Earth's inhabitants last year.
In July — Earth's hottest month on record — 81% of people on the planetexperienced soaring temperatures made more likely by climate change, according to an analysis from Climate Central, a nonprofit news organization that reports on the effects of climate change. Heat waves roiled parts of China, Europe, North Africa, South America and South Asia.
That same month, Phoenix experienced 31 consecutive days of temperatures of 110 degrees or hotter — conditions so stifling that airplanes were grounded and sidewalks caused second-degree burns.
Off the coast of Florida, the Atlantic soared to 101 degrees — the temperature of a hot tub.
And in Death Valley, the mercury skyrocketed to 128 degrees, a near world record.
Experts say much of the heat was supercharged by the June arrival of El Niño, a climate pattern associated with warmer global temperatures.
Read more:The L.A. Times investigation into extreme heat's deadly toll
Still, the primary cause of increasing global temperatures remains human-caused climate change driven by fossil fuel emissions. The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2010.
"We know for sure that the two main reasons 2023 was warm were an El Niño event on top of long-term climate change," said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist with Berkeley Earth. "The long-term warming is the basis on which any of these records are set, necessarily."
The latest El Niño arrived on the heels of a rare three consecutive years of La Niña, its cooler counterpart, which may have had a masking effect on the heat, Hausfather said.
"When you flip from temperatures being suppressed to temperatures being enhanced, you might see a bigger effect this year than, say, comparable El Niño events where you went from neutral conditions," he said.
Read more:A warm, wet El Niño winter is in store for California and much of the U.S.
The right wing says there's no climate change. Of course they also claim stolen election and resurrection from the dead so no surprise there. These people can't be taken seriously and have no business anywhere near politics.
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