El Niño: 2015 Second Year in a Row

Within the last week we have learned that the world is looking at a second year in a row of El Niño, the weather phenomenon of the warm Kelvin wave moving west to east across the tropical Pacific.  I don't pretend to be a climatologist or meterologist so I listen to those who are and try not to panic.  Why?

Last year little Nicaragua had the worst drought in 32 years because of El Niño.   2014 was the hottest year recorded.  This year is predicted to be even hotter. 

The last time the world experience two years in a row of El Niño was 1998, the hottest year in the 20^st century with the deadliest hurricane of the 20^st century, Hurricane Mitch.  Hurricane Mitch left

Hurricane Mitch

Honduras and Nicaragua with nearly 11,000 dead, over 11,000 missing and 2.7 million homeless.  Nicaragua is just now recovering from it, though families still grieve the dead and missing.

The general trend of warming of the earth's surface is considered by the vast majority of scientists to be caused by the greenhouse emissions that are being pumped into our atmosphere…and this pumping is a result of humans' use of machines, agriculture, and the way of life of those of us who are consume much more than the poor.  There are scientists that say there is no turning back only slowing down the trend of the raising of the

mile wide tornado

GLOBAL average temperature, the rise of the ocean’s temperature, the melting of ice caps and glaciers, the rising of the sea level, and the increase in droughts, tornadoes, and category 5 storms.

Who is hardest hit? The people living around the seas and around the equators; in other words, the places where most of the desperately poor

live…those who have little to no safety nets.

The United States, my home country, has been one of the highest producers of greenhouse emissions in the last century and a half (see below for current producers).   

It is amazing how little responsibility we as a nation have taken remedy the crisis, let alone acknowledge that we have a grave problem.  Recently two states, Florida and Wisconsin, banned state employees from discussing or working on climate change.

Obstructionists like those in government, these states, and corporations have this bazaar notion that they can do whatever they like within their own boundaries.  It is their property, their nation, their business, their profit…their space.

If the rest of the world could send these obstructionists to their rooms and close the door…let them make a mess of their own space…then that would be one thing, but we live together not in the same house but in the same room on

this rock flying through the solar system.  There is NO "your" space and "my" space…there is only OUR space and WE all need to have a say in keeping OUR home healthy and livable...especially for those suffering the most.

-Kathleen

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