At the end of December 2015, the North Pole registered at a temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit above average. Our planet is warming faster than the predicted worst-case scenario climate models.
From 1997 to 2015, the oceans were supercharged with man-made heat from burning hundreds of gigatons of fossil fuels — equivalent to that of a Hiroshima atomic bomb exploding every second for 75 straight years. Sea life is perishing en masse as thousands of dead squid washed up on the Chilean shores of Santa Maria Island in the middle of January 2016. Thousands of miles to the north, mass deaths of seabirds have escalated in Western U.S. at an unprecedented rate. The staggering cumulative mortality may be as high as 100,000 birds; many are Cassin’s auklets, and the culprit? An unseasonably warm Pacific Ocean.
Briefly in February, temperatures soared in the Northern Hemisphere to 2C (3.6F) for the first time since human civilization began thousands of years ago. The Arctic ice in February reached another all-time low coverage, missing the equivalent area of Texas and Montana combined (448,000 square miles). The latent heat escaping from the Arctic Ocean into the atmosphere, the potent El Niño in the Pacific and the consumption 134 million metric tons daily of fossil fuels make this winter the hottest ever recorded in the U.S.
In the Southern Hemisphere, an over-heated Pacific Ocean in February spawned Tropical Cyclone Winston with ferocious wind gusts of 205 mph — the strongest wind speeds ever recorded; the top end of Category 5 of the Australian tropical cyclone scale. Winston was the equivalent of 15 simultaneous Hurricane Katrinas, demolishing the Fijian Islands, leaving 120,000 people homeless.
The current El Niño is bleaching coral reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef, at an unparalleled rate. It is also wreaking havoc across Papua New Guinea as drought has dried up freshwater and laid waste to the food supply. This is a terrifying glimpse of the future.
My colleagues predict more deadly, costlier wild weather events in the near future. It is time globally to heed the Australian Climate Council’s warming that society is unprepared to deal with “killer heat” in the coming decade(s).
Clearly, it’s time to end paying the largest and most deadly polluters — the fossil fuel industry — $5.6 trillion annually.
Solar roads are being rolled out in France. Municipal water pipes in Portland are generating energy. We have the technologies, they safeguard fresh water, so let’s roll up our sleeves, embrace change and lower Earth’s fever, now.
Earth Dr. Reese Halter is the author of “Wild Weather: The Truth Behind Global Warming.”
