COTW: Global Warming Gets Worse

 The chart from NOAA says it all:

The Earth's temperature has risen by .32F per decade in the last forty years.  2020 was the second warmest on record as you cans see on the right side of the chart.  The ten warmest years on record have occurred since 2005. 2020 was hot despite a La Nina that cooled vast areas of the Pacific Ocean.The heat reached all the way to the Antarctic, where the station at Esperanza Base, at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, appeared to set a new all-time record high temperature of 65.1 degrees F on Februay 6, 2020 If the yearly emissions continue to climb as they have done, climate models predict that global average temperature will be 5-10 degrees hotter than the 1901-60 average. Our climate destroying activities dump 11 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. If we are to survive as a species, we have change the way we live our lives.

A mew study, one of the most extensive of its kind, was conducted by CSIRO the Australian government's scientific research body that found the fire season is lengthening into autumn and winter with increased activity over the last thirty years. These effects are driven by climate change according to CSIRO researchers. The study considered eight drivers of wildfires. Climate was found to be the overwhelming driver of fire activity. The frequency of mega fires--over a million hectares burned--has jumped since the year 2000, a trend that is likely to continue in an era of global warming. Although globally wildfires have decreased, Australia has experienced an increase in the extent of wildfires. In some areas of the southeast and south with fire intervels less than twenty years, which is significant since some ecosystems cannot fully recover in such a short time frame.

Australia has faced international criticism for its government's refusal to advance emission targets it set or 2030. The country's rank has dropped to 58 out of 64 places in the Climate Performance Index ahead of Saudi Arabia and Iran. Althoug the nation's alternative energy sector is robust, most of the work is being done by individual states, not the national government. The Morrison government has refused to make plans for phasing out gas and coal, a major export