Forum Post: Open Letter to Senator Warren

Dear Senator,

I recall several years ago reading an article in the news paper about some U.N. representatives from over 40 island nations appearing at the U.N. begging for action on Global Warming. It seems they were already witnessing an increase in sea level rise and feeling the pressure on their living space and fresh water supply. This was the occasion that produced the first of two poems I have included below. The global response at that time was muted to say the least, and denial of the fact of Global Warming here in the U.S. was loud, authoritative, and unquestioning.

Since that time we have seen a parade of global temperature records fall one after another [1]

we have seen an increase in nighttime high temperatures [2]

and we have seen individual day time high temperature records fall by the hundreds in a single day and continue to do so day after day for an extended period of time over a wide swath of the nation [3]

We have also seen the Arctic ice cap thin to its lowest point in human history [4]

and the Greenland Ice Sheet - a mass of land based ice - is spewing 48 cubic miles of ice each year as it shrinks [5]

We know the seas are rising. The seas are rising at a point in human history where 25% of the human population lives within 100 kilometers of the sea. Rising sea level means absolute catastrophe not just for New York and Miami, but for India, China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, the Maldives and Marshall Islands [6]

We know that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, and we know that water vapor is itself, a green house gas, [7] and that this, as with a shrinking ice cap, represents another feed back loop [8]

We also have every confidence that James Hansen is correct, temperatures are not only rising, but rising much faster than predicted, and the extreme weather events we have witnessed during the past decade and a half are a direct result of Global Warming [9]

And still we see the denialists are hard at work. Just recently 24 house repelicans voted to deny global warming. [10]

Perhaps they say to themselves that this is simply God's plan and that everything will turn out alright.

Surely faith in God is a fine thing, and not to be disparaged. But I have heard there is but one God, and the one God that I have heard of demands more than faith alone.

That God insists - faith without works is dead.

If we do nothing in the face of Global Warming we are dead.

Even Pentagon Threat Assessments make it clear - Global Warming is an issue of immediate national concern [11]

It is virtually certain that hundreds of millions of environmental refugees will soon result from loss of land based ice, and nothing short of Volcanic Perturbation will prevent it. But if we sit here and DO NOTHING, then I fear we will consign all of humanity to huddling in the dark and weeping, as the power goes out, while storms rage overhead, sweeping all of civilization off of the face of the planet and into the faded pages of history.

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Static

There is a lot of static on the air waves.

Turn the dial, it's all hiss and then some garble.

We're in some minor kind of heat wave,

that's all that you can hear among the babble.

Ninety-three degrees up at the airport.

Four days within September, two broken records.

Some kid shut up his school by making threats;

a house a-fire, another woman dead;

the papers pages filled with theives and liars.

The truth among the news you barely see

consumed by all the senseless tragedy.

Over forty island nations going under -

very very slowly slipping under -

by the melting of the icecaps, and rising of the sea.

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© D. Winter

this piece first appeared in print November 24, 1999

http://zendogblog.net/poems/static.htm

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Nature's Autumn

Noontime shadows lengthen, sunlight pales,

leaves slowly browning as the year blends autumn.

Brilliant flaming colors paint the hills

defiant joy in death, Nature's subtle hymn.

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Warmth, morning's early promise, no avail,

cold damp descends in darkness on the land.

The flaming trees too quickly stripped by gales

that leave the branches hung like barren hands.

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Morning after morning, the sky seems mourning.

It weeps it's little bitter acid tears.

The heedless hands of men have wrought this burning

bitter rain, without a care, concern, or fear.

.

Beware, this is Nature's silent warning:

a greater madness man is spawning.

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© D. Winter

Nature's Autumn first appeared in the Vermont Times, November 24, 1999.

http://zendogblog.net/poems/nature.htm

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[1] https://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_983_en.html

[2] http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/record-warm-nighttime-temperatures-a-closer-look

[3] http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/more-records-broken-as-rare-march-heat-wave-continues/

[4] http://drich13.newsvine.com/_news/2012/09/26/14110762-this-is-not-cool-video

[5] http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/tag/greenland-ice-sheet/

[6] http://www.globalgreen.org/articles/global/95

[7] http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/vapor_warming.html

[8] http://cires.colorado.edu/news/press/2013/watervapor.html

[9] http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/climate-change-is-here--and-worse-th%20an-we-thought/2012/08/03/6ae604c2-dd90-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_story.html

[10] http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/28/3215971/house-members-deny-climate-change/

[11] http://www.globalresearch.ca/pentagon-calls-climate-change-impacts-threat-multipliers-could-enable-terrorism/5372112

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That's who I am,

who are you?