Wind

A number of states, Kentucky in particular, have been devastated the past few days with tornados and other kinds of wind storms. As someone who has been spared that kind of devastation it's always been hard to understand the damage that moving air can cause.

I think it was about 1976 or so that James Hansen from NASA started testifying regularly before Congress about the change in our climate caused by air pollution, specifically the byproducts of burning fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry has been so entwined with our car culture in the US that many people, specifically politicians, were able to ignore the science and just maintain the status quo.

Four decades later and we are reaping what we have sown, although that phrase isn't accurate. The world's population has reaped what the polluting nations have sown. The world I leave behind will be very different than the world I was born into. 

One of the fundamental issues of climate change is that we are charging the atmosphere with more and more energy this year, energy that our pollution traps from the sunlight. So we have more and more tornados each year, and leaders who are paid to lie continue to lie and collect their pay.

It would be good at some point to identify loudly the politicians and pundits who have claimed that climate change was a hoax as we deal with these ongoing weather disasters. Their counsel in all areas is suspect as their reckless disregard for life reminds me of drunk drivers who think that they have gotten away with it, not realizing all the people they've hit.