Artist and author Michael Benson speaks about the tragic evidence of climate change's destructive power and shares images taken by three geostationary weather satellites in his recent article Watching Earth Burn for The New York Times. 

"The planet shines spectacularly in steady sunlight. It’s white and blue, green, ocher and tan, with complex coruscating swirls of cloud. An exquisitely thin aquamarine line defines its dayside limb, delineating its atmospheric perimeter and shading gradually to black at the migratory border between day and night. There’s something sacred to this sight. As the source of all life, as the birthplace of our species, it deserves veneration. It follows that any harm done to it — and we’re doing plenty — is a desecration.
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It’s also a stage, the only one we’ve ever known. All the individuals who’ve strutted and fretted here for millenniums, or for that matter fled and trembled, producing what we call history, are merely players. But even by the standards of that problematic legacy, this latest period seems different. It’s more worrisome, more global, and with increasing frequency, more terrifying."
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Read the article here.

Image credit: Michael Benson/CIRA/NOAA