Yesterday the American government-run National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, (NOAA) released their monthly national report on the American weather which covers last months coldest February in more than 30 years and the record-breaking freeze which caused many parts of the country, especially Texas, to become, "unlivable!" It was a brutally cold month for Texans: February 2021 brought the coldest air since December 1989 to much of the state. Several locations across central Texas — including Austin and Waco — broke records for the longest streak of below-freezing temperatures. Every county in Texas was under a Winter Storm Warning in mid-February and experienced wind chill values below zero as far south as the Rio Grande River and northeastern Mexico. The Texan infrastructure was brought to its knees.
At one point eight million Texans were boiling their water to make it safe to drink while platoons of plumbers and engineers struggled to repair the damage done to countless homes and businesses by a cruel winter storm. Nearly as many were without electricity for almost a week. Many Texans also faced food shortages as grocery stores tried to stay stocked, huge crowds descended on food pantries already under stress due to the pandemic which continued to threaten a state where, according to NBC News data, almost 50,000 people have died of Covid-19 and 2.6 million people have been infected.
At the height of the storm 1,445, public water systems reported service disruptions due to the cold, affecting 14.4 million Texans across 190 counties. Also, while power had been restored in much of Texas after the state's power grid buckled in the face of historically low temperatures, many people were also hit with massive electricity bills because scarce power means higher prices in the state's market-based system. Millions of Texans were already suffering from a pretty deep recession caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The US had just recovered from September and October 2020 which will be remembered as a month of extremes: Historic wildfires burned across the entire Western coast, unprecedented tropical activity churned up the Atlantic, and parts of the country saw record heat. What’s more, the first nine months of 2020 brought a record-tying 16 billion-dollar weather disasters to the nation, according to scientists with NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. Six of those events — western wildfires, a Western/Central U.S. drought and heatwave, Hurricane Sally, Hurricane Laura, the Midwest derecho and Hurricane Isaias — have all occurred since June.
"UNLIVABLE!" The Year The Mexican Gulf Stream Broke.
In the winter of 1962-63 something incredible happened in the UK as well as parts of Europe. The entire British Isles was plunged into an unexpected and unprepared “Day After Tomorrow” mini-ice-age type winter, lasting from December through January and February and into March. The unexpected blast of cold, wind and snow crippled the country’s infrastructure, economy and labour market overnight and brought the UK to its knees. The record cold and snow of 1962-63 was a record-breaker and was only preceded by the record-breaking winters of 1683–84, (known as the mini-ice-age) and 1739–40. The winter of 1962-63 was so severe the sea froze around the ports of the UK disrupting shipping imports, exports and fishing.
On the 22nd of December, a “beast-from-the-east” type weather front of high-pressure, brought in brutal cold air from Russia only to be followed by another high-pressure system bringing in even colder air from Iceland, the extreme cold established itself over the UK and didn’t move for three months plunging the country’s roads and transport systems to a standstill, isolating towns, cities and villages around the country. Cold northern winds brought blizzards sweeping across the country dumping incredible amounts of snow with drifts as high as 20ft, 6+ metres in many places, an incredible amount of snow for the UK.
The relentless snow, along with cold and fierce winds carried on through January and February causing misery and hardship for millions of British people. Many hospitals struggled to cope and thousands died from the cold. Shops struggled to keep up with supplies and farming was impossible, resulting in thousands of dead cattle and frozen crops. The whole three months turned into a modern-day disaster, highlighting the inadequacy and fragility of modern-day infrastructure when propelled into mother nature's extreme weather path. This inadequacy has suddenly become increasingly evident around the world during recent years after Britain's record-breaking winter of 1962-63.
We didn’t know it at the time of course but the winter of 1962-63 gave the Brits just a tiny glimpse of things to come. How could we have known then, that in just 60 years time our whole world would be in danger of a sixth extinction event? Not only are we now facing the prospect of, losing crops, plants, animals and microorganisms, the very food we need to survive but also, the actual planet itself. Human greed and neglect have brought the entire planet to its knees in just a short time, around 60 years in fact. We didn’t know it then (NASA had a clue), climate change arrived, “baby steps at first,” of course, but, natural disasters, volcanic activity, major earthquakes, floods, droughts, extreme weather events along with other anomalies had suddenly started increasing, while soil, plants, animals and microorganisms suddenly began decreasing. Very gradually, and quietly our eco-system here on Earth begun to crumble and now 60 years later we as a people are staring into the abyss.Our world is collapsing, an implosion on a scale unimaginable just a few years ago. It is now well known among experts and many once doubting sceptics that without a doubt if we continue on our current path we will lose our home and everything in it. It is now an undeniable fact, mankind’s environment is collapsing just as fast as its society. Planet Earth’s resources are dwindling at an alarming rate. Animals, plants, fossil fuels, minerals, water, air and soil are all diminishing at an unsustainable speed while the world’s population is increasing. We will shortly have a situation where nearly 8 billion people will be trapped on a dying planet with no food to feed them and, “Superman” will not be coming to the rescue. If our natural world can no longer support our basic needs then our civilisation will quickly descend into chaos, which of course we are now beginning to see around the world.
David Attenborough claimed in a recent video on the BBC; “The World’s population is facing the biggest threat to its security mankind has ever faced, the stability of our entire world is at risk.” “We are a single global species whose greatest threats are shared and whose security must ultimately come from acting together, in the interest of us all.” “Recognise the moral responsibility that wealthy nations have to the rest of the world and put a value on nature that goes far beyond money.” “We may find, for the first time in human history, know what it feels like to be secure.”
The sad truth is, in 6,000 years of history, mankind has never once pulled together, so sadly David Attenborough can believe whatever he wants but history suggests “acting together in the interest of us all,” has never happened and likely will never happen. As for the moral responsibility wealthy nations have to the rest of the world, just look at how wealthy nations treat their own poor citizens! You would think the Covid-19 Pandemic along with the rest of our planet's problems would have finally taught us a lesson and brought nations and their people together. However, the opposite is happening.
For example, the West is more divided than ever. In America and Europe, the people's trust in their own governments is almost non-existent. Democracy is in tatters in the US with Left and Right-wing supporters unable to work together. In the predominantly Left-wing European Union, Right-wing parties are on the rise and itching for a fight. On the global scene, Western governments bicker constantly with their Eastern counterparts while tensions mount toward another World War with Israel and The Middle East likely to be the trigger. Poverty and food insecurity are beginning to hit hard around the globe. Millions of jobs have gone which will surely be followed by peoples homes.
A“useless society” is growing and on the march, angry at their inability to find work and support their families. They are the victims of the “near future” when the “next pandemic to hit the working-class” will be AI technology which will take away the last manual jobs humans still have. Factory work, truck drivers, taxi drivers, bus and train drivers, construction workers and many more. Incredibly, 1% of the world's population owns more than half of the money in the world and rather than helping the less entitled they are looking to dominate even more and have become more powerful than governments. Governments and politicians are busy lining their own pockets, banks are grossly fraudulent. Yet our banking system, fat and bloated from an 8.5 trillion-dollar bailout in 2008, paid by the very people who now need their help are sharpening their knives ready to carve up more profits when thousands, maybe millions of people are evicted from their properties after falling behind in their mortgage payments due to covid and the grand “RE-SET!” Tech giants have also become more powerful than governments, some of these tech leaders have developed a “Messiah complex” and are driven to changing the world with dark and dangerous ideas. If democracy is killing the poor, well, state socialism is protecting the rich. While there should be enough for everyone, the rich are being fattened up by the undernourished. For the few,,, plundering the poor has become a way of life.
As a species, we have accomplished incredible achievements in such a short time, technology has exploded bringing massive breakthroughs in medicine, science, physics, and communications. Men have walked on the moon and our scientists have sent spaceships to every planet in our Solar System. We seem to be capable of doing anything we want, however, two seemingly simple problems have dogged us for thousands of years: accomplishing peace and eradicating poverty.
Unlivable
Untold billions of animals are being lost every year due to wildfires, drought, heat, cold, floods, disease, neglect, over-farming and natural disasters and while the experts keep telling us we can stop the slide if we work together the problem is increasing dramatically every year and surely we have now crossed the tipping point of no return? Many billions of birds are dying around the world. Billions of fish have been overfarmed and are not being replenished which is causing a knock-on effect in our oceans causing other fish and mammals and seabirds to die of starvation. Crops are failing around the world for the same reasons mentioned above plus, soil erosion. Millions of farms are going bust due to Covid-19, pest and disease invasions and extreme weather events. To make matters worse, we are beginning to see huge populated areas of the world which are becoming impossible to live in, areas which for years have been heavily populated and teeming with life and vegetation. But now, for certain parts of the year at the very least, have become "unlivable," due mainly to extreme climate events such as wildfires, droughts, flooding hurricanes. At the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 we saw almost the entire Eastcoast of Australia on fire and totally unlivable, followed later in the year when the entire Westcoast of the US was also on fire followed by an incredible burst of hurricanes in the Atlantic which caused huge swathes of the Gulf to be unlivable in late summer of 2020 and then the incredible winter of 2021 which brought Texas to its knees along with many other States. Ladies and gentlemen, there are two common denominators during these extreme weather events, the deaths of thousands, sometimes millions of animals and the total collapse of so-called modern infrastructure which cannot cope with these extreme conditions and were never built for the kind of carnage in the first place. Life as we know it is beginning to shut down.
The population of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, insects, bees and butterflies have seen an incredible decline of almost 70% since 1970. Just stop here and wonder! Can you imagine if 70% of humans had died since 1970 with the rate increasing? Well, I’m sorry to announce this but, it is about to happen to us in the “VERY NEAR” future and we can’t stop it and it will happen very quickly too, yes we are seeing it now, our cities are becoming unlivable at least for parts of the year due to extreme weather events and our fragile infrastructure, which cannot cope just when we need it. Why? Because we have left it too late to stop the decline. Hard to get your head around it, isn't it but we can’t argue with the facts.
The Coronavirus has hit the world hard, yet, somehow, it hit the West even harder. The virus has laid the seed for a new pandemic, one which has already taken root and is quickly spreading its tentacles around the world. This new pandemic did not start in China, this pandemic started in the West, in America of all places. The new pandemic is civil disorder and we are seeing this new pandemic spread faster than Covid-19. because people have had enough. A deep division is developing between the useless generation and the have-too-much generation, democracy is crumbling, the left hates the right and the right hates the left, the West is on the verge of collapse in the same way Communism collapsed in the late ‘80s.
An old friend of mine said recently, "leaders and politicians cannot fix a spiritual problem with politics.” Indeed, dark forces appear to be at work, anger and hate and rage are on the rise, the people are saying, “enough is enough”. The rich and the poor have become different species. "We the people," are being plundered and the ruling elite has become the plunderers. This inequality is best seen in a divided United States of America. Billionaires and millionaires work in grand downtown financial or investment offices, often just yards away from poor, uneducated people who roam the streets in abject poverty, homeless and often shoeless, their only interest in life to find their next high or their next drink. The other American addiction, obesity is cancer hitting the poverty-ridden lower class, blissfully unaware or even unable to change a lifestyle which will be an early death certificate for many. Tent cities are popping up all over the US. Many hard-working people are now living in a tent or their automobile because property and housing are now only affordable to the rich and the middle-classes. The number of Americans who say they can’t afford enough food for themselves or their children, never mind health insurance is growing and it is likely to increase as many government benefits begin to expire. Advocates and experts warn that an unprecedented crush of evictions is coming, threatening millions of Americans with homelessness as the pandemic continues to spread. How far behind in Europe? Not too far I can tell you.
I remember the winter of 62 very well, I was only 4 years old, and we lived in a rented farm house. The farmers teenage sons built a full-size Igloo in the garden and were living in it. The remnants could still be seen in June. No central heating in those days, so ice formed on the inside of the windows !
ReplyDeleteThanks John
ReplyDeleteMan will fail you, Jesus Christ will save you. Amen, God bless us all.
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