Troubleshooters.Com^(R)

We're shut down to acknowledge the Climate Crisis

Troubleshooters.Com suffered no damage: We could have come back up the night of Wednesday, 9/4/2019. Instead, we're staying down until Sunday evening, 9/8/2019, to call attention to the Climate Crisis.

From the time I started my first business in 1982, I've always kept my politics and my business completely separate. In saner times, that's the best policy. But the way humanity is damaging the planet, if we don't change radically and immediately, our children and grandchildren will inherit a planet incapable of supporting anything like our current world population, let alone the 10.9 billion expected by 2100. Famine, water wars and climate refugees will be the world norm in the lifetime of anyone currently under 30. Unless we take massive action right now.

Weatherpeople on every channel all said that Dorian would intensify hugely while travelling through extremely warm water, because ocean heat is a hurricane's energy source. Meanwhile, everyone who took high school physics knows that some materials, like glass, methane and more to the point carbon dioxide, are transparent to visible light but absorb infrared. The sun's energy checks in, but it can't check out. We burn oil, coal and gasoline, the earth's carbon dioxide increases, the earth and oceans get hotter, and two islands of The Bahamas get wiped out by a formerly rare 185 MPH category 5.

You can't cause and effect it down to the butterfly in Brazil, but consider that in the 76 years from 1924 through 1999, there were 22 category 5 hurricanes, for an average of 0.29 per year. From 2000 through (almost) 2019, there have been 19 cat 5s, average 0.65 per year: More than double. Even if you call 2005 an outlier and remove it and its four cat 5s, you still get 0.47 cat 5s per year. Meanwhile, from 800,000 years ago until 1950, atmospheric carbon dioxide stayed below 300 ppm, but from 1950 to 2019 it climbed from 300ppm to 419ppm (ibid). Skeptics say it's correlation not causation, but they fail to come up with a scientifically logical alternative explanation, and global warming is scientifically consistent with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Two islands on the Bahamas are rubble, my house was spared a similar fate by less than 100 miles, and as I write this it's an open question how much destruction the re-energized (after travelling over hotter water) Dorian will visit on the Carolinas and Virginia. Midwest farmers lose money to flooding at never before seen levels. Parts of California burn yearly like never before. And this is paradise compared to the world of 2050, if we don't take drastic action right now.

The necessary action is a process:

1. Serve as a climate role model: Less miles in car, electric or high MPG car, go easy on the air conditioning and heat, don't waste water.
2. Campaign tirelessly for any and all Democrats in order to replace or displace Republicans.
3. Once Democrats are in control, remind them daily to do the right thing and implement sound climate law forcefully and immediately.
4. But whatever you do, don't vote third party or refuse to contribute, campaign or vote because the Democratic nominee isn't climate friendly enough. The most climate ignorant Democrat is better for our planet than the most clued-in Republican. And it was those who voted for Ralph Nader, and later Jill Stein, who got us in this climate crisis in the first place. Keep your eyes on the prize.

Yes, I went there. I'm not going to blame it on "congress" or "society" or "ourselves", when for decades Republicans have rolled back or sabotaged every climate advance, real or symbolic, put forward by the Democrats or others. Oregon Republicans left the state to prevent Oregon from capping carbon emissions. Republican President George W. Bush refused to publicize a report that called human activity the cause of climate change (UCS-GAP report page 11). Two investigations found that the Bush administration attacked scientific integrity (UCS-GAP report page 6). He reduced NASA's climate science budget. (UCS-GAP report page 10)

Republican former Florida governor Rick Scott banned the terms "climate change", "global warming" or "sustainability" from official Florida government communications.

And then we come to Republican President Trump, who relaxed the car mileage standards. President Obama negotiated tirelessly to get 180+ countries to sign on to the Paris Climate Accord. It wasn't perfect, but it was a start, and a heck of a lot better than previous climate accords. For the first time the entire industrialized world acted as a team to decrease global warming. With a stroke of a pen, Donald Trump pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accord.

And just today, as the Bahamas began to size up their devastation, Floridians finally got back to work after a week of hurricane preparations, and a million Carolinians were under mandatory evacuation, Trump rolled back efficiency standards on light bulbs, guaranteeing more energy usage and therefore more carbon dioxide and a hotter planet. Not a peep out of congressional Republicans, who have supported Donald Trump regardless of his actions.

I could deliver a hundred more examples of Republican malice toward our climate, but you don't have the time to read them. And it looks like I don't have the time either: NOAA's Five Day Graphical Weather Outlook currently shows a tropical wave that just came off Senegal is headed in the typical path of Florida-busting hurricanes, so I might need to prepare yet again.

Troubleshooters.Com will return to normal operation Sunday evening, 9/8/2019.