What just happened in Texas a few months ago was weird.
It was also predicted.
For roughly a decade now, scientists have been saying something like this would happen.
Intuitively, it doesn’t make sense that “global warming” would cause freak snowstorms, but the people who research these things and create models of how things will play out under certain conditions have warned us that the two are related.
Why?
Because of the polar jet stream. See, the polar vortex is always swirling around the Arctic. These are super chilled air currents. The polar jet stream rises from southern regions and whips around the polar vortex. The difference between the two air temperatures keeps the polar vortex securely in the north.
But, what’s happening now is that those two air temperatures aren’t so different. The polar vortex is heating up faster than the polar jet stream. That means that the polar jet stream is no longer creating a wall protecting southern parts of North America from Arctic temperatures.
And that’s how “global warming” creates snow havoc in Texas.
What’s more is that what happened in Texas was devastating.
Equipment froze, the power went out, and people were left without clean running water. Not only did the power go out, but it went out in the midst of a new winter the likes of which Texans had never seen before.
These people went through hell.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go through what they went through. And I hope they don’t go through that again.
The realization of that hope, however, is not going to happen on its own.
We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing and hope that we can avoid a similar fate. That’s just not how the balance of nature works. That’s not how physics works.
When I was growing up, we watched cartoons where dastardly villains invented devices that controlled the weather and used those devices to make life worse for everyone around them, including themselves.
It seems we’ve managed to do that exact thing, except by accident.
The events in Texas are the result of our weather machines. The difference is that we don’t want the consequences of those machines – and I’m not just talking about freak snow storms.
In 2017, Arizona saw temperatures so hot that planes couldn’t take off. That’s more than inconvenient – it threatens the very life we’re afraid of losing. Climate change isn’t happening because people are evil, it’s happening because there are things we want, and those are the very things we stand to lose, except in a much larger way than if we took proactive steps to curb our carbon footprint.
But, it gets worse.
One of the biggest problems we’ll see in the coming century is that of the climate refugee. Already 20 million people around the world each year are forced out of their homes due to climate change – and that number is only going to grow.
There is, of course, the danger that you could become a climate refugee, yourself. With the weather acting unpredictably and with droughts and wildfires on the rise throughout the world, what once seemed like “safe” places could become threatened.
Even if you aren’t directly a victim of climate change, the refugee status of other people could still be a threat to you. Desperate people do desperate things.
And here’s the rub: we’re creating those desperate people, and we’ll continue creating more and more of them without direct and drastic action.
Small actions that individuals, communities, corporations, and nations take today could prevent much more devastating upheaval later.
At some point, we’re going to have to make changes. The question is, will those be small voluntary changes, or enormous, life-altering changes forced upon us by an angry planet?
