(Illustration found here).

Sundown Wednesday here on California’s north coast, clear, dying-gray skies, touched along the westward edges with a little bright tinge, a sense of approaching dark.
Chilly, though, as it’s been since about noon-time today when the icy-north wind arrived — earlier was easy warm, was hoping it would stay that way, but alas, the usual-inevitable for our particular shoreline.
Gorgeous day, however, and our weather’s expected to stay dry with periods of sunshine until supposedly the end of next week. We do have a Frost Advisory for early tomorrow morning, but we’re mostly good for a stretch.

In regards to our weather is our environment, which regulates the climate of our region, as it does worldwide, location-to-location. And the climate’s changing, fairly rapidly.
And like a lot of other circumstances/situations, the subject is becoming more and more obvious, and dire.
Today carried some news on that front, some not so good:

A United Nations report released Wednesday issued a blunt warning about the effects of human activity on the Earth, projecting that air pollution and other environmental consequences could lead to the premature deaths of millions of people over the next few decades.
The U.N. issued its sixth Global Environment Outlook, which is intended to help policymakers worldwide assess the state of the planet and layout environmental goals.
“The overall condition of the global environment has continued to deteriorate since the first edition of GEO, despite environmental policy efforts across all countries and regions,” the report states.
“Environmental policy efforts are being hindered by a variety of factors, in particular unsustainable production and consumption patterns in most countries and climate change.”
…
Wednesday’s report is the latest instance of the United Nations warning countries of the impending consequences of climate change.
António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, told global leaders in September that the world has less than two years to avoid “runaway climate change.”
A report issued in October by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the world might be on a path toward catastrophic climate change if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t cut dramatically by 2030.

And it’s a two-banger today from the UN:

The Arctic is now “locked in” to experiencing unnatural levels of temperature rise by as early as 2050, according to a new United Nations environmental report out Wednesday.
Dramatic temperature increases in the globe’s northernmost region, which is typically covered by permafrost, is unavoidable, according to the report released at the United Nations Environment Assembly.
Even if countries were to meet the original goals of the Paris climate agreement, it would do nothing to stop Arctic winter temperatures from increasing 3 to 5 degrees Celsius by 2050 and 5 to 9 degrees Celsius by 2080, according to the report.
The resulting sea level rises worldwide would be devastating.
The report also warned that the rapid thawing of permafrost in the region could likely accelerate the effects of climate change, which could completely negate any long-term international pacts and goals to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius compared to 1986-2005 levels.
The report comes the same day that the U.N. released its sixth Global Environment Outlook, which is intended to help policymakers worldwide assess the state of the planet and layout environmental goals.
The outlook issued a blunt warning about the effects of human activity on the Earth, projecting that air pollution and other environmental consequences could lead to the premature deaths of millions of people over the next few decades.

Former U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco, who wasn’t part of the UN reports, noted the urgency, however: ‘“The report provides a roadmap to move beyond ‘doom and gloom’ and rally together to face the challenges and take the future in our hands — This is an all-hands-on-deck moment.”‘

And further human-induced environmental problems (the Guardian yesterday):

More than 1,200 species globally face threats to their survival in more than 90-percent of their habitat and “will almost certainly face extinction” without conservation intervention, according to new research.
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The new research, published in PLOS Biology, maps “hotspots” where species are most affected by threats such as agriculture, urbanisation, night lighting, roads, rail, waterways and population density, and “coolspots” that provide refuge from these threats.
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Two major threats they had not mapped were diseases affecting amphibians and climate change, which threatens all species.
Human impacts were found on species across 84-percentof the earth’s terrestrial surface.

And the unusual high hopes, this time from James Allan, University of Queensland post-doctoral researcher, and the research-study’s lead author:

“The obvious thing we need to do is protect the coolspots, the unimpacted areas of species ranges.
“We need to stop threats getting into those areas.
“There’s room for optimism.
“Every threat that we mapped can be stopped through conservation effort.”

The hope springs eternal, especially from the young. This Friday, a worldwide school strike for climate change action takes place, participated in by thousands/millions of student around the globe, including American students, and will draw focus on humanity’s plight.
Haven Coleman, student climate activist, and longtime environmentalist Bill McKibben, together co-produced an op/ed in the LA Times today about the strike — some snips:

It was 30 years ago that scientists first explained that burning fossil fuels was changing the composition of the atmosphere and driving the rapid warming of the Earth.
That is enough time to educate a student all the way from preschool to a PhD, but it hasn’t been time enough for our politicians to learn how serious a climate catastrophe we are facing.
The American government, in particular, is a study in inaction.
Our federal government has reversed course on every effort to change laws and regulations.
Our current president has taken steps to drop out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the only international effort to combat global warming.
Young people see that their future is on the line, which is why they’ve been at the front fighting against oil companies, pipelines and fracking wells.
…
So, lacking access to piles of cash, young people do what they can. And a strike is one such measure.
…
A school strike, instead, recalls some of the most pivotal moments in American history.
In 1963, for instance, the Rev. Martin Luther King found that he had run out of adult volunteers to stand up to Bull Connor at the height of the civil rights battle in Birmingham.
So, after much soul-searching, King asked the city’s schoolchildren to leave class and face the police dogs and firehoses.
“Don’t worry about your children,” he told their frantic parents.
“They’re gonna be all right. Don’t hold them back if they want to go to jail. For they are doing a job not only for themselves but for all of America and for all mankind.”

Authority comes from NASA, which has the scoop (the site updated last Wednesday, March 9, 2019): ‘The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is extremely likely (greater than 95 percent probability) to be the result of human activity since the mid-20th century and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented over decades to millennia.’
And they go through the list, from global rise in temperatures, to sea-level rise, to ocean acidification, the ugly works.

Yet we’re bogged down with the Orange Denier Turd:

And here we are…