Bad news from NASA
I can’t think of any other pair of major conspiracy theories, in this case flat earth belief and global warming denialism, where both get to share the same villain — NASA. In a world now awash in crackbrained conspiracy theories it had to happen sooner or later, I suppose.
Giving the whole matter a moment of critical thought, something conspiracy theorists never do, would expose the preposterousness of either idea. Certainly most of NASA’s 18,000 employees would need to be in on the lie. Anyone with experience with office gossip would know that would eventually include all of them.
I can say with absolute certainty that the earth is an oblate spheroid, and global warming is an established fact. Others, for whom reality is not their cup of tea, can go on thinking what they like. But the five year data from a study recently published by NASA shows beyond question a considerably greater rise than was previously thought in the intensity of weather events such as droughts and floods.
The surprising part is that this intensity of weather events is greater than the overall global temperature was previously thought to merit. So we are now experiencing warming problems that NASA thought shouldn’t happen for a few years down the road, when the average global temperature would be higher — if we didn’t undertake drastic measures to reduce it.
Weather events are hard to foresee anyway. With global warming entering the mix they have become dangerously harder. This lack of lead time in preparing for storms and floods will mean higher death tolls and the laying to waste of whole economies in small and vulnerable countries.
America is particularly vulnerable now that Trump has gutted both FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and the National Weather Service. Thanks to Trump, not only do Americans now have less time to prepare for extreme weather events due to lack of adequate weather forecasting, there could be little or no help for them from the federal government when they hit.
This new NASA data has not yet been peer-reviewed, and researchers say they will need another ten or more years to confirm it conclusively before they can call it a trend. Those are the dry facts. The reality is we don’t have ten years. We will be living the reality of the consequences of these predictions, be they as bad or not as bad as NASA’s predictions suggest.
But what possible reason would we have to wait to do something about it? Even if early predictions from this recent NASA data turns out to be flawed, effects of global warming are already upon us. They are already causing devastation worldwide, and every year is now hotter than the previous year. I can say without fear of contradiction that, even though it’s only half over, 2025 will be remembered as the hottest year in human history.
The world isn’t prepared for the droughts, rainfall, storms and extremes of hot and cold temperatures we’re experiencing right now. It will get worse, and the only point that remains to argue is how much worse, a point that will seem moot to those who are living the nightmare right now.
Global warming needs to be our number one political priority now. We must, of course, rid ourselves of Trump and his “administration” of thugs to begin making progress in the most powerful nation on earth.
I don’t know if progress will be possible by then, but naysayers and doom predictors need to keep their mouths shut. If hope is foolish, let’s be foolish and proceed anyway, as if there is hope. We may have little chance in fixing this problem as things stand, but I guarantee you we will have no chance if we don’t try.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.