Global warming no joke; we are feeling it

Anyone who believed global warming and its impact on our lives was some esoteric subject with relevance only to those in search of a liberal cause to support, must certainly be reassessing their positions.

Global warming has been characterised as “long-term warming of the planet’s overall temperature”. Admittedly, the warming has been taking place over many years and its pace has significantly increased in the last hundred years due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Back in the 1990s when advocates such as United States Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Al Gore were making a push to increase the level of consciousness and public engagement around the topic, many people, including those in the petrol and manufacturing industries, were quick to dismiss the concerns.

Environmentalists were described as alarmists and doomsday prophets who were creating anxiety among the population when there was no need for immediate action.

A report last year on US network NBC highlighted the concerns articulated nearly 30 years ago which cautioned that while “no one weather event could be decisively attributed to climate change, the overall pattern pointed to hotter temperatures and more disruption”.

Gore called it correctly. We should not look to any singular natural disaster to try to make a case for global warming. We, however, have too many years of evidence to support the theory that long-term warming trends were “greatly increasing the odds that any given year will produce [temperatures] of 37 degrees Celsius”.

Here in Barbados, that trend has been evidenced over the last several years with stronger, larger, more destructive weather systems that form off the African coast and make their way across the Atlantic, becoming more intense as they reach the Caribbean.

Earlier predictions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of a moderate 2023 hurricane season had to be adjusted midway through the season.

The adjusted outlook from August through to November 30 called for 14 to 21 named storms with winds of 39 miles per hour or greater, of which six to 11 of them could become hurricanes with winds of 74 miles per hour or greater. The NOAA predicted that two of those five could go on to become major hurricanes with wind speeds reaching 111 miles per hour or greater.

After months of scorching sunshine and miserably hot days where temperatures have risen to almost 35 degrees Celsius, today we experienced a burst of rain that resulted in severe flooding, storm-force winds in sections of St George that residents described as a tornado and hundreds of lightning strikes that forced the Met Office to issue a warning to stay indoors.

The effects of global warming are hitting home, and ordinary citizens are making the connection between this concept and the increasing droughts and access to adequate potable water.

They now understand that long droughts like what we have experienced in Barbados this year impact food production and quality as crops are unable to thrive in the current conditions. Even local fishermen are remarking on how warm the sea temperatures have become and they link it to reduced fish stocks.

The intense heat wave is also negatively affecting our mental health, the experts are telling us. Just as COVID was associated with isolation and depression, extreme temperatures also have physical and mental health consequences. People are unable to enjoy a comfortable night’s rest as a result of the heat and so it impacts their mood and ability to function optimally at work.

Yes, the average person is realising that global warming is not an abstract but a very real issue that must be confronted and they also support calls for real action.