June was a rumbling time on planet Earth. On June 7, a 7.8 magnitude quake off Philippines’ Mindanao resulted in 82 deaths. On the 16th, Indonesia experienced a 6.7 tremor that killed one and injured dozens more. The 6.1 earthquake that struck Afghanistan on the 27th reportedly injured no one.
Of course, the most devastating temblors last month were the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes that struck in rapid succession on June 24 near the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, followed by continued aftershocks, one of which reached 4.8 on the scale. Vast destruction and more than 1,000 deaths resulted from their proximity to people and buildings.
With much of the West Coast overlaying fault lines, many ask often – and angrily – why scientists cannot do a better job of predicting them.
Warnings could save lives!
Or not.
Last month, scorching heat in Europe resulted in more than 1,300 deaths, according to the BBC. France logged more than 1,000 heat-related deaths, including 40 people who drowned trying to escape the record high temperatures in rivers, lakes and the ocean.
The World Weather Attribution group concluded “unequivocally” that climate change made conditions in Europe hotter.
“This event would not have been possible in June without climate change,” Theodore Keeping of Imperial College London, lead author of the rapid analysis, told reporters.
At month’s end, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, secretary general of the World Health Organization [to which Trump’s U.S. does not belong] called out world leaders for their complicity in the deaths, posting on social media: “We were warned.”
He explained: “Driven by climate change and global warming, the phenomenon of the ‘once-in-a-generation’ heat wave is now occurring nearly annual.”
Pointing out that European “homes, workplaces and schools were not built for these temperatures,” he said that the “fastest warning continent of Earth” had “150 million people … living under extreme heat.”
Europe has been under the deadly heat dome for months, countries recording all-time record high temperatures. It has been so hot that Norway’s NHK TV reported at the end of May that insurers were warning people not to “go South” for the summer.
At mid-month, Reuters reported that UNICEF [to which Trump’s U.S. does not belong] estimated “up to 1.8 billion children are at risk from drought and 1.2 billion from extreme heat.” UNICEF issued its non-binding verdict that “national governments must invest in social infrastructure, preparedness and disaster management to reduce children’s exposure.”
“Must?” Governments worldwide, with Trump’s U.S. a leading perpetrator, have lied about climate change and global warming for decades – in order to do rake in fossil fuel profits.
While some people advocate planning our actions for the coming seven generations, those adhering to the Creed of Greed concentrate on filling their pockets today – tomorrow be damned.
Their wealth and anti-social demeanor [getting meaner everyday] insulate them from immediate consequences, and they obviously have no love for their children and children’s children.
Tedros was right. The world was warned. Last month also marked the 20th anniversary of the release of the Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, released at the same time as the book of the same name by former Vice President Al Gore – who began calling for global climate action in 1992 with his book Earth in the Balance.
Interviewed by Ginger Zee, ABC’s chief meteorologist and chief climate correspondent, Gore told her:
“The scientists were dead right on all the important elements of it, and it really is insane that we are continuing to use the sky as an open sewer and we’re trapping so much heat every day it’s equal to the amount that would be released by 800,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every day.”
ABC’s Julia Jacobs added, “In a review of key claims by the documentary, ABC News found that the majority of the scientific observations made in An Inconvenient Truth have come to fruition or are on track to in the years to come. The last 11 years – from 2015 to 2025 – have been the hottest on record, according to scientific data from NOAA and the Copernicus Climate Change Service and summarized in a report released earlier this year by the World Meteorological Organization.”
Among other findings of the WMO [to which the U.S. somehow still belongs] are that temporary cooling by La Niña does not reverse long-term trends and ocean warming continues unabated.
On cue, NOAA announced on June 12 that Earth had entered an El Niño phase, which forecasts increased heating, disruptions in the precipitation norm and the formation of hurricanes. That will only exacerbate recent developments.
On May 28 a University of Edinburgh study reported in Science Daily that “the Arctic Ocean may have crossed a dangerous tipping point. Scientists say the rapid disappearance of sea ice is triggering a hidden chemical shift that is stripping the ocean of nitrate – a nutrient essential for the tiny plankton that support Arctic life. As nitrate levels plunge, the entire food web could feel the impact, from fish and seabirds to whales and polar ecosystems.”
On May 31, Cris Martinez, reporting on WPBF-TV from West Palm Beach, FL, [very close to the home of one of the world’s biggest science deniers and global warming liars], said that the impending hurricane season had some scientists considering the need to add a Category 6 to the weather vernacular to emphasize that “strong hurricanes are becoming more frequent and intense.”
ABC’s Jacobs reminded us that “in the film, Gore also discussed how warming oceans would cause hurricanes to be more destructive. Climate scientists over the last decade have contributed to a growing body of evidence that human-amplified warming is leading to more intense storms and allowing for the rapid intensification of tropical cyclones as they approach land.”
Trump’s response to the warming world was to try to disband the Ocean Observatories Initiative to eliminate potentially life-saving data that might refute his lies. Even short-term science threatens him. The Senate has stopped Trump for now, but, as with tariffs, illegalities mean nothing to Trump.
El Niño does not give us much to look forward to in the immediate future. The long-term outlook is bleaker since Trump wants to vet every scientific study in the country – before and after funding – to make sure that a political operative – not a scientist – gives it a commissar-style stamp of doctrinal approval.
Instead of ignoring the warnings, Trump wants to silence them.
