This Christmas past I found myself searching for light at the end of the climate crisis tunnel. It was during the week of the shortest day and longest night of the year, a time when ancient holy people lit “yule logs” to push back the darkness and bring back the light of summer. I remained in the dark.

The reality for me is that any hope of constraining our climate crisis to an increase of even 2 degrees Celsius is all but gone.

Achieving the legally binding international treaty adopted by 196 parties at the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP2) in Paris in 2015 remains stymied by the global wealth pandemic and interconnected politics. Other factors include the fact that most of us will not accept the lifestyle constraints this now 9-year-old earth temperature “limit” calls for.

I am hoping (fruitlessly), along with perhaps millions of other people, that scientists can come up with a solution. If not, we will soon be forced to increase the billions of dollars already being spent on climate-related damage. The U.S. has sustained 373 weather and climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. The total cost of these 373 events exceeds $2.655 trillion. And we’re worried about Social Security and Medicare?

My apprehension about what my grandsons will be facing continues to mount.

We, the people, are just not listening. There have been many voices over the years alerting us to the poisoning of our planet and its people. Following are two important ones.

■128 years ago in 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.

■33 years ago, Goddard Space Flight Center’s James Hanson was best known for his research in climatology, but more importantly, for raising public awareness about global warming and advocacy for action to avoid dangerous climate change in his congressional testimony in 1988.

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The recent COP28, like all the climate conferences before it, ended with “But there is still time to achieve our goals.” This, in the context of current fossil fuel government subsidies that are at an all-time high. And the fact that we used more oil in 2023 than in 2019, before the pandemic. Yes, we are increasing the use of alternative energy sources at a good pace, but the constant growth and demand for energy is consuming that additional power … so no net gains.

Massive amounts of data show that the Earth is trending warmer and has been since the mid-19th century. There’s no previous geological or archaeological record of such rapid “natural” change. And if you compare the temperature increases to the calendar starting with the Industrial Revolution, you will see that it aligns with, and correlates to, humankind’s increasing introduction of CO2 into the atmosphere.

There’s nothing we can do now to save the equator; this region will become unlivable in the next few decades. The number of climate refugees will be in the hundreds of millions and the resulting political instability that follows will be catastrophic. Today’s refugee crisis at our southern border will be minuscule in comparison.

The absurd claims of “no scientific basis” by the climate denial crowd only highlights their ignorance or denial of science. Even high school students learn that the record of Earth’s temperature is written in proxies such as tree rings, ice cores, ocean sediments, isotope ratios, and fossils of all kinds, to name a few. MAGA Republicans are working to destroy education to produce deniers who are easily fooled.

Climate trends are what are important to note, not individual data points. This hottest year record could provide the knee-jerk deniers a “see, I told ya so” claim if next year isn’t quite so hot. One wouldn’t point to a good or bad stock market day as definitive of a market trend.

Our children and grandchildren will curse us for the world we are leaving to them. There are already regional conflicts waging over what will become wars fought over fresh water and food. The number of “natural” disasters will continue to increase to the point that governments are unable to help their own citizens, much less the rest of the world.

What is it we are not seeing? Or not wanting to see?

We can remain lobsters in a pot endlessly debating climate warming theories, or climb out of the bubbling baloney and at least attempt to turn the heat down.

John Bos ponders the world we find ourselves living in from various perspectives by “Connecting the Dots” every other Saturday in the Recorder. He makes similar attempts under the cloud of our growing climate crisis as a columnist for “Green Energy Times.” www.greenenergytimes.net. Comments and questions are welcome at john01370@gmail.com.