Europe, they say, is freezing. Brazil is scoured by floods. Here in the western United States – you can pick your disaster – torrential rain, floods, mudslides, avalanches or blizzards. For the past few weeks I’ve felt like I’m trapped in an Irwin Allen movie.
Worse yet, these winter carnivals of catastrophe are getting to be annual events. And the same bad jokes are repeated every year. Just as I’m helping a neighbor push his car from a snowbank, some wiseguy sticks up his head and makes a crack about how he could stand a little global warming right now. What that person fails to understand is that he’s already getting it.
Let me state this again for those of you who may have already missed it: Climate change doesn’t always mean warmer. Yes, the globe as a whole is getting warmer and the average mean temperature is rising, but other consequences of global warming include disruption of familiar weather patterns and an increase in the frequency and intensity of storms.
When we burn fossil fuels, we produce large amounts of carbon dioxide. That excess carbon dioxide is called “greenhouse gas” because it catches and holds heat from the sun. It is the addition of large amounts of carbon dioxide at various places around the globe that shifts normal weather patterns. The bottom line for all of this in California was five years of drought and now – floods.
The big oil companies still dispute the connection between burning fossil fuel and global warming, but their shrill protests find a smaller audience with each passing storm.
There is one industry that is sitting bolt upright and taking notice of the global warming crisis. It is the insurance industry. Around the world, the insurance industry is paying the bill for our environmental foolishness. For instance, no hurricane in U.S. history caused a billion dollars damage until Hurricane Hugo sailed in at $4.2 billion in 1989. Hurricane Andrew rang up $16 billion in damages in 1993. Now that’s the way to get the attention of a capitalist.
Shortly after Andrew and the Mississippi River floods of 1993, representatives of the insurance industry began to show up at global warming conferences, calling for a reduction in the emissions of carbon dioxide. On the other hand, organizational communication seems to be as bad at insurance companies as it is everywhere else. The people who have to pay off the claims for storm and flood damage have gotten wise to the effects of global warming, but the people in charge of investing all our premiums are still buying billions of dollars of stock in those oil companies that are causing so much grief to the world’s meteorologists.
You should know by now that I will not leave you without hope. Late last year in the UK the inaugural Oxford Solar Investment Summit was held. These meetings will provide and ongoing forum where environmentalists, academics and industry can join to find new ways to put money to a good purpose for once.
It’s time to stop talking about the weather and do something about it.
Climate Change Doesn’t Always Mean Warmer
Europe, they say, is freezing. Brazil is scoured by floods. Here in the western United States – you can pick your disaster – torrential rain, floods, mudslides, avalanches or blizzards. For the past few weeks I’ve felt like I’m trapped in an Irwin Allen movie.
Worse yet, these winter carnivals of catastrophe are getting to be annual events. And the same bad jokes are repeated every year. Just as I’m helping a neighbor push his car from a snowbank, some wiseguy sticks up his head and makes a crack about how he could stand a little global warming right now. What that person fails to understand is that he’s already getting it.
Let me state this again for those of you who may have already missed it: Climate change doesn’t always mean warmer. Yes, the globe as a whole is getting warmer and the average mean temperature is rising, but other consequences of global warming include disruption of familiar weather patterns and an increase in the frequency and intensity of storms.
When we burn fossil fuels, we produce large amounts of carbon dioxide. That excess carbon dioxide is called “greenhouse gas” because it catches and holds heat from the sun. It is the addition of large amounts of carbon dioxide at various places around the globe that shifts normal weather patterns. The bottom line for all of this in California was five years of drought and now – floods.
The big oil companies still dispute the connection between burning fossil fuel and global warming, but their shrill protests find a smaller audience with each passing storm.
There is one industry that is sitting bolt upright and taking notice of the global warming crisis. It is the insurance industry. Around the world, the insurance industry is paying the bill for our environmental foolishness. For instance, no hurricane in U.S. history caused a billion dollars damage until Hurricane Hugo sailed in at $4.2 billion in 1989. Hurricane Andrew rang up $16 billion in damages in 1993. Now that’s the way to get the attention of a capitalist.
Shortly after Andrew and the Mississippi River floods of 1993, representatives of the insurance industry began to show up at global warming conferences, calling for a reduction in the emissions of carbon dioxide. On the other hand, organizational communication seems to be as bad at insurance companies as it is everywhere else. The people who have to pay off the claims for storm and flood damage have gotten wise to the effects of global warming, but the people in charge of investing all our premiums are still buying billions of dollars of stock in those oil companies that are causing so much grief to the world’s meteorologists.
You should know by now that I will not leave you without hope. Late last year in the UK the inaugural Oxford Solar Investment Summit was held. These meetings will provide and ongoing forum where environmentalists, academics and industry can join to find new ways to put money to a good purpose for once.
It’s time to stop talking about the weather and do something about it.