WORLDVIEW: A reminder that climate change is real & happening now

Decades ago, climate scientists predicted that, if we didn't reduce the amount of carbon we release into the atmosphere, we would experience changes in the climate – or climate change – including more extreme weather, more severe droughts and flooding, worse wildfires, and changing weather patterns.

As you no doubt know, we ignored the warning and dramatically increased the amount of carbon we released. In the last few years, in fact, over the last few weeks, we've seen extreme weather, severe droughts and flooding, terrible wildfires, and changing weather patterns. This is not a coincidence.

In Venice, the city is – once again – underwater thanks to the second-worst floods in its history. Some people will doubtless email me to point out that Venice has flooded before and, therefore, climate change is not the issue (strange logic, like saying that because some people smoke without getting lung cancer there's no relationship between smoking and lung cancer). But according to one climate scientist, five of the ten highest tides – the ultimate cause of the extensive flooding – in Venice's history have happened in the last 20 years. The most recent one was last year. In other words, the flooding problem in Venice is getting worse – as climate models predicted.

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