We have stood, many times, on the very spots in Kailua Kona where uninvited guest waves crashed the wedding.
Kona, of course, is in Hawaii. Island nations are both a wonderful warning, and a testing ground to see how people respond to a quickly heating world.
For us, it became too hot to farm, there, anymore. We were too tired to cope with the toil, invasive species, and unpredictable storms each of which is a different effect touched by heat and unpredictable weather, so we moved home to the Pacific Northwest, (which has it’s own warming issues, smoke, fire, drought, heat domes, Etc.)
The wedding wave was just a warning.
Crashing the wedding
No one was hurt, but this is only the beginning of rising seas. If you imagine a foot, or more, of water, all the way across the width of the whole ocean, you can begin to conceive of the volume of water it takes to add more fury and power to any system.
The heat and currents, the high and low pressure mixing, the condition of things like barrier reefs, and the La Nina and El Nino patterns will all play a part, to name just a few factors.
Our immediate emergency is to stop fossil fuel use as soon as humanly possible, create adaptation plans, and mitigate for the worst of the coming damage in low-lying coastal areas.
The refugee and displacement crisis is very worrying, especially in a time where migration has become just as hot as the heatwaves.
As the poles melt faster than any other part of the globe, we will begin to see more water and hence, more impact in every kind of climate. Wet conditions in some places will result in dryer places in others.
As atmospheric currents, on a vast scale, suck the moisture out — and dump in some regions — drought, dust storms, and resulting conflicts over supplies will occur in other places. Ocean expansion in some places will actually result in waters decreasing in other places.
The IPCC, world governments, NASA, and militaries are monitoring the on-going situation. Measurements are made and data is collected daily, but changing the political power-scape seems to be the biggest obstacle to improving our infrastructure.
This one little wave should have crashed in the ears of people all over the world.
Young people marrying today have every reason in the world to be alert and turn the tide.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Silas Baisch on Unsplash