@ghdprentice
I'm embarrassed to live in the state of HI, with the power plant just recently converted to the crack-cocaine of energy sources - from coal to oil...
Although, both have to be shipped in here, and I suspect easier to ship oil than coal... As both arrive here on boat after crossing an ocean, the total energy costs of energy here are truly explosive.
During the past two decades, especially the last five, the weather has massively transformed here, and the heat waves and humidity are getting pretty brutal as the trade winds are failing. 20 years ago the trades (winds cooling the islands & protecting us from hurricanes) have stopped only for 2-3 days a year, and the past years we have several month stretches, entire summers and falls without them!
I have had a keen interest in climatology and climate changes from early on, and have followed the peer-reviewed scientific literature from the 1990s.
The geological records indicate that we are currently experiencing the most drastic temperature increase period the Earth ever went through. The closest we had was shortly after the extinction of dinosaurs, 64 million years ago when Earth turned into a hot sauna in the span of 4000 years. At that time the ocean temperature at the arctic warmed up to 20 degrees Celsius, and the equatorial ocean temperature was warm enough to prevent swimming. I guess the next century's Titanic story will be people perishing by heat stroke in the water, instead of freezing to death... as sadly, the current warming is an order of magnitude faster than that cataclysmic one.
Research on the conveyor belts has very scary results. The Atlantic conveyor belt cools the equatorial region and warms colder regions. It makes both Central America and New York and Northern Europe habitable... It has already slowed remarkably to critical speeds. The models of the two leading expert research teams both show that with very high probability we are already past the point of no return. They do not dare to spell out the consequences, just state, loosely quoted: "we hope our models are wrong, but we checked each others data a dozen times, tried a different model, and the prediction is the same". The Atlantic conveyor belt will shut down in the decades to come, and we can't do anything about it.. even stopping all emmissions to zero right now would not reverse the process.
As a scientist, I dearly hope that my fellow academia members are all DEAD WRONG, and we can keep on chanting "Atlantis is not sinking" and bumping up fuel and energy consumption......... at least for a few more decades at best before the planet starts shutting down the heritage of Homo sapiens for good. (Sad.)
I was so much against energy and resource wasting, air conditioning my whole life - I could not justify using energy for such purpose: warm the planet to keep me cool... but I had to install AC three years ago, as the environment became unlivable without AC. Curiously though, the split AC uses less energy than the fans the AC replaced!!!
I also added serious insulation to my home as well, and that drastically reduced the need for cooling. (So much, that I basically need the AC to dehumidify - as humidity gets to intolerable levels.) Yet, 99% of Hawaii homes have virtually non-existent heat insulation, and everyone is blowing their AC at 200% creating arctic cold instead of simply cool...
If we had all acted sensibly, at least start making steps in the right direction...
Human resourcefulness is surprising though,,, especially when it's about our survival. I suspect that the decades of 2030-2040 will see the vast majority of every nations GDP being used to save ourselves from extinction. I believe we can do it.
Actually, our children and grandchildren will do it! And curse our generation in their every waking hour.