I started thinking.. not always a good idea

[bill_schubert]

I can't remember what got me going down this road but I think it was a Prolific.ac survey about my feelings on global warming.  Their position was so milk toast that I got annoyed and it occurred to me.  I once had someone ask me to define existential and I had a hard time doing it.  The pundits are throwing around 'existential threat' a lot and I think I won't have to define it.  We can just watch.

Nothing anywhere other than something like a Dr. Strangelove nuclear war matters by comparison.

Not #metoo, not gun proliferation, even with the daily mass shootings in the U.S. it pales in comparison.  Not Democrat, not Republican, nor our rain 3rd party, Trumpism (although he apparently wants to see the cataclysm in his lifetime so he's rolling back anything that will slow the progress.  Not immigration.  Not economic collapse (yeah, recession or something new in that vein is on the way).  Not my life, nor my death, nor yours.  

None of it is as important as the fact that we are watching climate change in progress and still half of the country and all of Fox News do not believe it is happening.

Just in the U.S. we're going to, in my lifetime, short as it is, watch Miami, New Orleans, the North Carolina cape, some of New York all under water more and more.  We call them hurricanes but they are just tide pushers and each one is a preview of a more permanent condition called underwater.  And if you think (as I used to since we're unlikely to have a hurricane in Austin) that this does not effect you, check your insurance rates.

I live in central Texas where we'll only have to deal with four months of the year in 100+ heat.  It is worse this year than last.  And worse by far than just 14 years ago when we got here.  It actually snowed six inches in 2006 in our area but will probably not do that again while I'm around.  That much change.

And that does not begin to address the many island nations and the northern arctic world nor mosquitoes in Michigan now spreading encephalitis nor whatever comes out of permafrost we've not yet thought of much less combated.

There are no boundaries, not sexual, racial, ethnic nor national respected by the relentless change of a warming globe.

George R.R. Martin said it best and discussed, over 9 seasons, global warming.  'Winter is coming'.  That group did manage to get their collective assesses in gear long enough to defeat the winter but it was such a clear metaphor.  We can watch it happen day by day as our own special Nero tweets while our Rome burns.