Commentsby
Bob Brandon....
Gotta
Wear Shades
In
1443, a Japanese Shinto monk began to record an event that had happened
for eons: The freeze and thaw dates of Lake Suwa. The holy
men consider it a sacred body of water where Gods are believed to travel
only when fully frozen. Over the centuries, the records have been
faithfully maintained and documented. The facts are irrefutable.
The earth is getting warmer.
This
conclusive claim doesn't rely only on the Ice Monks, others have kept winter
records for centuries, including Ship Captains and Mountain Men Fur Traders.
It's an amazing compendium of weather facts, and it points incontrovertably
to the fact that winter in the northern hemisphere is not quite as cold
or as long as our ancestors had to endure.
The
Journal, Science
features an article today (9/8/00)
that cites sources in the US, Scandanavia and Russia that show rivers are
frozen an average of 18 and a half days less today than just 150 years
ago. So what's the big deal? Isn't winter a bad thing, and
warmer weather good?
It
may feel better to your skin, but a warmer planet could mean trouble.
The experts have been warning us about the Greenhouse Effect for years,
but most of us have chosen to ignore the warnings. I mean, what can
I do? It's the weather, nobody can do anything about that...and besides,
I've got to go online. And so we consume more and more energy, creating
mammoth power grids that spit out megawatts and foul the sky.
But
what the hell, the sky is infinite, so just keep pumping in that coal and
oil. See? There goes the smoke. Bye bye. And besides,
powerplants aren't the only culprit. Look at all those cars!
By
far, due to sheer numbers, cars and trucks create the most pollution, followed
closely by factories. But old coal fired powerplants are filthy beyond
words. On average, one plant belches as much poision into the atmosphere
as nearly 20,000 cars. Multiply that number by they dozens of coal
fired operations, and it's amazing we have any blue in the sky at all.
And
then there's the need many of us have to consume mass quantities of energy.
Most of it we can see, like right now to power your computer, or TV, or
anything else you can turn on and off. But then there are all the
adjunct energy requirements. The clothing you wear, the cereal you
eat, the newspaper you wrap fish in, all have added to the greenhouse mass.
Hey, it's not our fault that we can waste more energy in a single hour
than a family in Rwanda uses in a year. We're entitled to it.
We know how to rape the planet and scoff when it balks.
I admit
to being an energy pig. I drive my car too much, too fast, burn too
many lights, buy too many disposable items, and generally live it up at
the expense of my grandkids. We all do. People who have tried
to warn us of the impending doom have always been viewed as somewhat odd,
hippies, or less than serious. Hey shut up, let's go to McDonalds.
It's
all coming together now. The more disposable things you buy, the
more pollution is created making them. The gargantuan appetite the
world has for energy can be satisfied with renewable resources like solar,
wind, hydro and others that until now just didn't make good economic sense.
So
what are we going to do? Choose to ignore the fact that every 8 years
winter grows a day shorter? Remember Pope Gregory XIII? He's
the guy who fixed the calendar. It was ok for a few hundred years
after the Julius Caesar, but by the 16th century, the vernal equinox was
happening almost two weeks early. That's an example of what's happening,
but now much more quickly. By the middle of the next century, there
could be no snow at all.
What
will that do to the delicate balance of our global weather? I don't
think anyone really knows conclusively, but the general conjecture from
those who have devoted their lives to its study indicate intense climatic
changes, including huge killer storms, droughts, floods, and extensive
crop loss.
With
an increase in pollution, and you can count on an increase, it could happen
even earlier. Many people are living well into their 90s and even
beyond. It's likely this is a problem that could affect you personally.
As the temperature goes up, so do the diseases that threaten human well-being.
Food will be more difficult to grow, and more expensive, people will be
hungry.
Maybe
that will get us to wake up. Maybe we'll start riding public transportation,
turning off lights, and stop buying so many throwaway stuff. Maybe
we'll force carmakers to evolve past hydrocarbon fuel. Maybe we'll all
become hippies and give a damn. But it probably won't help much.
It
may slow the process, but this train is on an express route. And
it's entirely possible Earth would warm anyway. While the industrialization
and consumer demands have helped nudge the thermostat, the records scientists
have been studying show an increase beginning before the the industrial
revolution, suggesting this may be part of our planet's natural cycle.
We
know this piece of rock is over 6 billion years old, and we are pretty
sure mankind came to the party about 25,000 years ago. Our recorded
history is just a blink of an eye in the geologic record. It's possible
that no matter what we do, we're all gonna be more tanned in the future. |
