What will global warming look like? Scientists point to Australia
From Climate Progress:
Drought, fires, killer heat waves, wildlife extinction and mosquito-borne illness — the things that climate change models are predicting have already arrived there, [scientists] say.
That’s the subhead on a stunning L.A. Times piece, “What will global warming look like? Scientists point to Australia,” which opens starkly:
Reporting from The Murray-Darling Basin, Australia — Frank Eddy pulled off his dusty boots and slid into a chair, taking his place at the dining room table where most of the critical family issues are hashed out. Spreading hands as dry and cracked as the orchards he tends, the stout man his mates call Tank explained what damage a decade of drought has done . “Suicide is high. Depression is huge. Families are breaking up. It’s devastation,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve got a neighbor in terrible trouble. Found him in the paddock, sitting in his [truck], crying his eyes out. Grown men — big, strong grown men. We’re holding on by the skin of our teeth. It’s desperate times.” A result of climate change? “You’d have to have your head in the bloody sand to think otherwise,” Eddy said.
You have to have your head stuck in the bloody sand, or just be a consumer of big media — see CNN, ABC, WashPost, AP, blow Australian wildfire, drought, heatwave “Hell (and High Water) on Earth” story — never mention climate change. This LAT story is one of the most powerful pieces of climate change journalism to appear in a major U.S. newspaper. It is the climate story of the decade, literally — and if we don’t reverse course soon, it will be the story of the century, if not the millennium — for America and the world. …
