Veteran meteorologist: How a warmer Arctic disrupts global weather

As part of a post on the WWF US Climate Blog, meteorologist Dave Eichorn from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry has explained in a video report how arctic warming is disrupting weather patterns to the south, especially in winter.

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Yep.  Things are changing.  This is probably going to inconvenience a fair number of people . . .to the point of death in some cases, if we refuse to adapt.  But I continue to maintain that we need to stop seeing this as something catastrophic and stoppable.  Climate change is normal.  It really is.  It's been going on for billions of years . . .or we would STILL be one giant swamp full of primitive lifeforms.  Climate is a driver of evolution.  Climate is a cycle that we have had to adapt to for the entire million or so years of being human . . or humanish.

During past shifts, we merely migrated.  North when it go too hot, south when it go to cold.  And that is our problem now, migration is not really an option when there are nearly 7 billion of us and most of the good land is taken.  So this time, we need to hunker down.  But this isn't hard.  We are in the position to evaluate the evidence, find suitable locations away from the most extreme weather (as we are no longer tied to the shores for easy transportation and access to water).  We can build dense metropolises which can house millions and millions of people.  These cities can be green, sustainable and self contained.

And we can stop breeding.  Seriously.  Why is more of our funding not focused on allowing folks to choose when they procreate?  According to one source, 49% of all pregnancies are unplanned, mostly among the poor and uneducated.  And 82% of all teenage pregnancies are unplanned.  We could halve our population growth by just finding a dependable, easy to use birth control and making it freely available.  (For the US that would mean a declining population, in other countries it would just rein in their out of control growth.)

There are many other things we can do to prepare.  But the one thing we can't do is stop it.  Even if magically we could make the carbon offset scam work, the climate would continue to change.  We have millions of years of fossil records that assure us of that.  We have our very existence to assure us that climate change happens, since it was climate change that ended the reign of the dominant lifeforms 65 million years ago, giving rise to mammals and, ultimately, to humans.

So we have two choices: adapt or die