A warming trend followed by a freezing trend may be a sign that the greenhouse effect is increasing because of human activity. Global warming is often linked to the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas – by industries and cars. These chemicals are also called greenhouse gases. This is the wisdom of those who are in charge of knowing such things. I not only believe in climate change but I believe some of these things they attribute to climate change are causing damage to our planet. We as humans would be happier without all these emissions even if they did nothing to change the climate.
As a child, I remember the weather being pretty much the same each year. Toward the end of September, you needed a light jacket, and by Halloween, it would be time to break out the big coats, depending on what part of the country you lived in. I have lived in a lot of places. I have Trick-r-Treated in the snow in Alaska, and wearing shorts in southern Texas. However, it was always the same year after year.
Then things started to change. It wasn’t a great change, but a change nonetheless. An odd snowstorm would hit after the winter should have been over, or a freeze in Florida would destroy the orange crop. Or a Christmas where everybody is outside and the temp is in the seventies when normally it would be snowing.
Back in the ’60s I read a book by some professor, whose name I’m sorry I can’t remember, nor the title of the book, but I do remember the substance of what he tried to warn us about. It was Africa!
He had been studying the effects of industrial growth in Africa on Africa’s environment. He began to notice a change in the upper air temperatures over the cities. And where highways were built and jungles destroyed the warming was greater. Overall, the air over the entire continent of Africa was getting warmer. You get the idea.
And he concluded that the continent of Africa was in for a change in its weather pattern. Regions that had been dry would see more rainfall, and fertile farmlands would become deserts.
The professor (I am sorry I can’t give him credit by name), said we could expect bigger and longer droughts and flooding. He said that once it began, there was no going back, and it would keep changing until it reached a new normal. He had no solutions for preventing it from happening. He did, however, say to prepare for great changes.
What I’ve written here I intentionally wrote matter-of-factly, because my personal opinion or feelings will change nothing. I fear that our world, as we know it, is dying and it is too late to stop it. We might slow it down some, but in the end, the ice caps will be gone, the rainforests will be burned to the ground and we might have air we can breathe. But that will be all. We humans have a history of not demanding certain things until it is too late. We have lived for a long time with corporations killing us, while we said nothing in order to keep a job, buy a car, eat chemical-laced food, and sit on our asses to watch TV. What’s coming won't be good for humans, but Planet Earth needs a restart, and after we’re gone she will have it. Hopefully, the next dominant species will treat her better than we have.
| Copyright © 2021 by Ed Rogers |
Ed, fantastic article! People will ultimately become more aware about climate change, too bad they will try to wait until it is too late. If it isn't already.
ReplyDeleteI worry the "scientific types" have failed the general public because they keep talking about "climate change" and what it might someday do, instead of pointing out what it has already done to the world water situation.
In some parts of the world, villages are having to move, and towns and cities are having to make drastic changes, because ocean water levels are rising. Meanwhile, freshwater supplies are dwindling.
Lake Chad, in Central Africa, lost 95% of its volume the last half of the 20th century. That was initially blamed on regional overuse, but it turned out air pollution in Europe was having a huge effect because it was affecting rain patterns in Africa. When Europe addressed its pollution, Lake Chad began to refill. Good thing, because 40 million people rely on it for their survival.
Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest "man-made" reservoirs in this country, are currently at record low levels: 41% of capacity. 40 million people pretty much rely on them for their survival.
"Climate change" may be a difficult concept for people to understand. What happens when people run out of drinking water is easy to understand. Hopefully people start taking that fact seriously.
I just read this morning that there is a mass movement of fish from along the equator toward cooler waters. Your son will live in a very different world than the one we have known.
ReplyDeleteEd, moving back to where I grew up, and raising my son on the same property, and taking him many of the same places I went when I was his age, has made me acutely aware of climate differences.
DeleteWe just had one of the worst winters in the modern era; it would have been one of the best 60 years ago, when I was my son's age. The outdoor projects my dad and I always made a point to wrap up by Halloween are now tasks we target for Thanksgiving, and there's no panic if we don't get to them until Christmas. At our favorite local lake, the oak, hickory and maple trees are in peak fall color in mid to late November; they were brown or barren of leaves by then when I was a child.
You mentioned fish movements: if my son decides to pursue ocean-going fish, whatever I learned in a lifetime of fly fishing will be irrelevant in his world. At the local level, our best trout streams 60 years ago have warmed so much they now hold mostly smallmouth bass, as do some favorite lakes along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Considering the rate of change is predicted to accelerate, there is no guessing how different the natural world will be by the time my son is my age. People seem to think it will all work out okay; I'm not so optimistic.
Has anyone else noticed that this past year or so the actual Sun has changed positions?? Clearly if this is the case then it’s the Earth has moved but that also, no doubt, is contributing to the climate change.
ReplyDeleteBit like which happened first- the chicken and egg conundrum.