Runaway global warming is far and away humankind’s biggest nightmare, and the Arctic is the likely perpetrator. If it happens, it’ll blister agricultural foodstuff before it can reach the outstretched arms of the multitudes. Then what?
Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute of California recently warned, “What is happening in the Arctic now is unprecedented and possibly catastrophic,” Ian Johnston, Arctic Warming: Rapidly Increasing Temperatures are Possibly Catastrophic for Planet, Climate Scientist Warns, Independent, February 25, 2016. “The evidence is very clear that rapid and unprecedented changes are happening in the Arctic.”
Dr. Gleick finds a growing body of “pretty scary” evidence that increasing temperatures create horrendously dangerous storms throughout the Northern Hemisphere. For example, the polar vortex and anomalous jet streams brought record-breaking hot and cold weather to the U.S. in 2015. In the UK, unusually strong storms brought massive flooding with record rainfall.