Global Boiling: A Drop In A Bucket, Dust On The Scales

Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket;
they are regarded as dust on the scales;
he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust. — Isaiah 40:15

As the United States Senate dithers over the possible costs of global warming policy, the world’s increasingly unstable climate is extracting a deadly toll.

Surely the nations are like a drop in the bucket . . . Residents of Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee now have “a chance to mourn, recover and repair after devastating floods” killed ten people earlier this week. Gov. Sonny Perdue “has declared a state of emergency in 17 flood-stricken counties, and State Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine estimated that the flooding has caused an estimated $250 million in losses.” The catastrophic flooding comes after a “two-year regional drought that had residents more used to water restrictions than inundated interstates.” In 2007, Gov. Perdue prayed for rain.

They are regarded as dust on the scales . . . Eastern Australia is suffering an “unprecedented” dust storm, a catastrophic combination of “earth, wind and fire.” The epochal dust storm, “carrying an estimated 5 million tons of dust,” has “turned Sydney into Mars.” Up to “75,000 tons of dust an hour” are being blown across Sydney by winds of more than 60 miles per hour. Much of the dust is dessicated topsoil, as eastern Australia enters its twelfth year of severe drought. Since 1979, “all but four years have been warmer than average in Australia.” The catastrophic dust storm follows Australia’s unprecedented wildfires in March. This August, the heart of the Australian winter, Australian mean temperatures were “2.47°C (4.4°F) above the long-term average, breaking the previous record by 0.98°C.”

He weighs the islands as though they were fine dust. Each year, the oceans, swelled by heat and melting glaciers, further submerge the islands of the world. “If things go business-as-usual, we will not live, we will die,” Maldives President Mohammad Nasheed told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. “Our country will not exist. We cannot come out from Copenhagen as failures. We cannot make Copenhagen a pact for suicide. We have to succeed and we have to make a deal in Copenhagen.”