Texas Governor Greg Abbott has tried to blame solar and wind power generation for the power outages. Perhaps the solar farms were snow covered for a while before it slid off or the solar unit melted it off. Abbott said the windmills froze and wouldn’t rotate. Could it be because they don’t use the same oils and designs used in northern climes?

            He was angry at the company managing the state-owned electric grid for its failures. The grid can’t produce power. It just moves it around Texas. Most of Texas generation is from fossil fuels. Northern state’s fossil plants insulate their piping so they don’t freeze. Texas doesn’t. Their gas fired plants apparently draw from gas and oil production wells and not from man-made underground storage and above ground tanks as we have. When the oil and salt water in the lines at the wells froze, they lost their supplies. The coal fired plants shut down because their feeding equipment couldn’t handle coal that had froze solid. Their one nuke plant had one unit down for some undisclosed reason. Probably for refueling as winter usually has a less need for power.

            A decade ago a smaller cold snap had created a small disruption. Outside consultants were brought in for advice. Their report advised insulating the plants as well as updating and expanding the grid. It also suggested connecting it to surrounding grids as a back-up. All of this would cause the state to spend its own money, increase customer bills, and cause the power and production companies to spend money on those improvements. The report was mostly ignored.

            Texas is controlled by Big Oil and other powerful companies which don’t want state interference causing them to spend more and create regulations in a state that is abhorrent to regulations.

            Finally we again have a President and an administration that is going to try to save humanity. Biden said “If it isn’t too late to save us from the worst effect of climate change…”. His question is critical to life on Earth/

            The projections worrying him are for the conditions in 2100 without considering what conditions will be in 2150 or 2200 is like the analogy of someone falling off a building and saying “so far, so good” with each floor. The question for us is how high the building is. Is it one floor and we can limp away, or two floors and we can crawl away with a few broken bones, or maybe three floors with too many broken bones to move, or four floors with a cracked skull and internal injuries? Projections for 2100 are for four floors of damage. Beyond 2100 is like falling off the fifth floor to splat on the pavement.

            Biden is right in the question. We are already experiencing long term droughts broken by a heavy rain or two before resuming, greater numbers of storms and hurricanes, warmer winters, and flora and fauna moving farther north. Glaciers around the world are melting. The seas are rising and flooding of cities is already happening. His question is this. Is it like a two or three story building, or are we just passing the top floor of a skyscraper saying “so far, so good.”

This letter is to those extremely few people who have decided that they know more than a fifth grader. (It was a TV show about first to fifth grade questions.)

When I “go shopping” with my wife, I usually stay in the vehicle reading or talking on my flip-phone. Most days I end up rolling down the windows to cool off. Even a fifth grader knows that the sun’s rays come into the vehicle’s cabin and warms the seats and trim. The air gets hot because the sun’s rays can come through the glass but the heat rays can’t go back out.

Why? In the nineteenth century, a physicist discovered that extremely minute amount of carbon dioxide will block infra-red heat rays from escaping a confined area. We live in a confined area called Earth.

Earth is surrounded by an atmosphere with a very small amount of carbon dioxide. For life to survive on this planet we need a tiny amount. Just a few parts in a million less means Joliet is under thousands of feet of ice or a few more gives us Venus’ atmosphere. Glacial ice in Greenland indicates the air in 1744 had 277 parts per million. That period was before the industrial age started. The amount in 2017 was 407 ppm. Major volcanic activity can have a temporary cooling period such as the Little Ice Age but as CO₂ has increased so has the temperature.

Now almost every year is hotter than the previous one, the world’s glaciers and ice caps are melting, oceans are expanding from heat, and the world is changing fast. For a week last winter Antarctica was warmer than Disney World!

Even fools can realize the truth by wading coastal cities’ streets during king tides each month. It is stupid and foolish to deny facts you can see.

I am fairly convinced that we will lose the battle with global warming. The goal is to stop the rise at no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. We are already almost half that rise with little sign of slowing. Current efforts to reduce the amounts of carbon dioxide and methane entering the atmosphere will not be sufficient to cut the rise.

The Trump administration, fossil fuel companies and those who are duped into believing it isn’t happening are keeping America from leading the effort to saving humanity. The President says fossil fuel jobs are more important. The companies consider profits are more critical. Well, the deniers are just duped by those people who use bad science for ego and profit. In a few years all deniers will be pilloried for their belief and inaction.

We are all contributing to the destruction of humanity as we know it. Some more than others are responsible for our crisis. It is easy to see and feel the effects so why do some people deny what they can easily know.

Individually we can do little to help save future generations. We must support organizations that will have a larger voice and vote for people who want to work on solutions. We can try to cut omissions as best as we can, but our greatest contribution is to stand with others who know we are in trouble. When tens of millions of us stand together perhaps we can make something change but it starts with leadership in the oval office. If it doesn’t happen in 2020 then don’t worry about future generations needing heavy jackets for the winter.

For years some people with the Republican Party have been denying climate change and the rising seas. These people keep saying it isn’t happening but even the Denier-in-Chief was filmed a few weeks ago saying it is occurring. He also said he is not going to do anything about it because it will cost jobs. The jobs he is worried about is the coal miners who are already being displaced by those in Natural gas and Green Energy.

For those who never leave the safety of the mid-west to see the effects of rising seas, I suggest you see the picture of a corner in downtown Charleston, South Caroline in the December 8 Chicago Tribune. It talked about the billions it would take to make Charleston another bowl like New Orleans! We can’t afford to do it for all the coastal cities and towns. Miami can only build on higher ground and sacrifice first floors. A wall won’t work in Miami because of its limestone base.

We not only must stop creating the problem, we must start actually working on helping Americans that is going to be affected. This must be ours and this world’s first priority. Anything less should be a crime against humanity!