A pipe fitter once told me he could put on enough clothes to keep warm in winter but he couldn’t take off enough clothes to keep cool in summer and be socially acceptable. It was meant to be a humorous comment about working in different seasons.

            If we don’t stop adding to carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere his quip will be how to keep cool in winter and stay alive in the summer. The planet Venus has a runaway global warming where lead melts on the surface. It will be centuries before Earth becomes so hot life cannot exist and thousands of years before lead melts.

            Will this happen? Probably, because humans can’t comprehend that every day’s contribution of gases brings the end closer. Many religions say humanity will end in fire. Is out-of-control global warming that fire? Is our inaction like a reverse of Russian roulette in which the cylinder has five bullets with one empty chamber? We have one click to save humanity and five shots to destroy it?

            Billions of us believe in “Living in the moment” for greed and not caring about the future. That means bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

            At the time when we are being torn apart by strife, disease, lies, misinformation, social media, political obstruction, infighting, racial justice, racism, egotism and of course, gullibility and stupidity, we can’t work together on solving the climate crisis. We are facing the greatest threat to not only the United States but to the entire world and we can’t get our act together.

            Law suits have shown the people running fossil fuel companies have known they are responsible for the warming of the planet. Many of our elected officials in the state and federal governments know this is true but to keep getting money for themselves and their campaigns they have prevented most of the action to reduce the danger. Some of the officials like Senator Manchin either own or are major stockholders of fossil fuel companies.

            I have proposed to some of the ecological organizations we support to come up with a list of the 100 most responsible for causing the damage or preventing its reduction. Such a list will allow their generations to come to know which ancestor was responsible for the conditions they are hoping to survive in. Perhaps if they can realize how what they are doing will affect future generations, they might help to save them.

            This blog was named after what the Earth looked like to astronauts going to and from the moon. It was an apt description of a blue sphere in the blackness of space. It is symbolic of the fact this is our home and there is no other place for us to reasonably go. We must try to repair the damage we have done and are still doing to it.

            Thousands of sci-fi movies concern humanity destroying the Earth or life on it by some stupid thing we did. Will the movies show us our future or scare us into changing our ways?

            For almost a century and a half we have known the importance of carbon dioxide in regulating the planet’s temperature. We have increased the gas so much the planet’s temperature has risen over half a degree in the past few years. This has caused the glaciers and tundra to melt. The melting tundra is releasing methane which is thirty times more damaging than carbon dioxide Recently the temperature in Canada’s Arctic went over 100 degrees.

            We know that we will have a great deal of trouble in reducing CO₂ to cut the temperature rise to about 4 degrees Fahrenheit. We have already lost most glaciers around the world. Greenland and Antarctica glaciers are rapidly moving into the seas to melt. That melt water plus the expansion from warming oceans is causing flooding in coastal cities like Miami and Charleston.

            Global warming projections are coming true for the high heat and drought in the West and greater rainfall in the Southeast and East. Extreme weather will now become normal causing immigration from hot dry areas to cooler wetter areas. More and more violent storms and hurricanes will become the norm. Because the seas are warmer earlier, hurricane season has gotten longer and more violent.

            Views from the space station are of forest fires and large holes in the Earth we have dug. They can even see the massive trash islands in the seas.

            Not only are the seas being used as dump grounds, the rising seas are becoming warmer and more acidic causing coral to die and shellfish have trouble getting calcium to make shells. The sea is absorbing as much CO₂ as it can, but it is nearing its maximum capacity. Many fish and plant species are struggling to survive with the greater temperature and acid.

            Aquifers here and around the world are being sucked dry with no surface water to use when they are dry. These aquifers took thousands of years to fill. The Ogallala Aquifer under the plains states was filled with water from the last ice age. When it is gone much agriculture will be gone, ranching and feedlots gone, and people will have to move away. This is already happening in other parts of the world.

            Rising seas are not only flooding cities at high tide, they are destroying the coastal wetlands and deltas fish and wildlife need to breed, grow, and survive. We depend on those wetlands to feed and protect us from storm surges. Saltwater and high water kills the marshes forever and further damaging the world’s ecology.

            Flora and fauna are moving to higher elevations or towards the poles to escape the rising temperatures. Insects are moving in the same directions affecting flora where they had not been able to survive before. Animals associated with the southern states are moving north. One example is armadillos that are moving into Central Illinois.

            Diseases which can only survive in warmer climates are now being contracted by humans, animals and fauna in the Northern Tier of American States.

            We are polluting small streams which flow into larger and larger ones until the Mississippi River dumps the pollution into the Gulf’s dead zone. Efforts to reduce the size are stymied by the greed of special interests.

            Special interests are digging huge holes in the planet that can be see from the space station. Others are spilling oil into wetlands and waterways in countries that don’t hae the ability to stop it and compel cleaning up of the damage.

            Companies and cities are dumping the trash in the oceans creating trash beaches and islands larger than some states and countries. Most of the articles in the islands will float for centuries. The micro particles are ingested through natural processes by organisms and small fish to be eaten by larger ones until eaten by humans. There the particles become part of us or go down the sewer into the rivers again.

            Extinctions are occurring at a rate of more than one each week. Hundreds of other animals we know and see in our zoos may only exist in those places in a few years. How sad when creatures having existed for hundreds of thousands to millions of years go extinct every few days.

            How can people be so consumed with their petty viewpoints, arguments and greed when we should be doing everything we can to save life on the Blue Marble? We need to do so much and have so little time to do it. For once, let us all join together before it is too late.

            An advertisement for a new series asks if this is the beginning of the end. What an interesting question when we see what is going on with global warming.

            Today’s news was forest fires in the Western states, flooding in Omaha, heat waves in the east and west, depressions in the Atlantic that might become hurricanes, and recovery from previous floods in the Eastern states.

            The international news covered the fires in Italy, Greece, and Siberia. There was a brief replay of the recent floods in Germany and North Korea. The international temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were still extremely high and those in the Southern Hemisphere which is supposedly in winter are barely cool.

            We have known for decades burning fossil fuel was causing the world’s climate to heat up but greed and some inconvenience has prevented stopping the rise. The Republican Party is still trying to obstruct the science from being dispersed by firing scientists and disbanding departments that release the facts. It may be too late but they are protecting industries pumping more CO2 into the air.

            Eighteen of the last twenty years have been the hottest on record. Imagine how hot the next 50 can be. If it is too late to stop the rise then we may be turning Earth into an uninhabitable Venus!

            What will be the dominant species on this planet in a few million years? A few little mammal species survived the last extinction when the dinosaurs lost their position as the top of the heap. The first dominant creatures were aquatic, then reptilian, now mammalian, and then what – insects?

            Why wonder about what will replace us? We are destroying this planet with global warming. If we can’t get it under control in the next few years most animal species won’t exist. Cockroaches have always been the presumed survivor after a nuclear war and they like warm areas.

            If we can’t cut the increase and turn it around, Earth will become superheated like Venus. Venus used to have a climate similar to ours before the volcanic activity put gases into the air. They heated the oceans putting lots of moisture into the air causing more heat to be trapped. Does that sound familiar? Our CO₂ is acting like the volcanic gases and our atmosphere is carrying an increasing amount of moisture. We call Venus’ condition “runaway global warming”. Could we be in the early stages of the same condition?

            The time to act was decades ago when the problem was easier to correct. It now will demand greater and more abrupt changes in our behavior. Are too many people and businesses more concerned with politics and greed than saving all life? Is it already too late for all life to exist in another thousand or so years?