Dear Editor:
RE: Confused, Sept. 26.
Jane Vandervliet has brought up a few questions that I’m hoping to answer with logic, from my geo-science background.
1. Why freak out about a warmer Earth? Well, for one if the overall mean temperatures of our oceans, land and atmosphere rise too much the consequences become very dire for life. Period. It’s not just “turn up the A/C and get a cold beer from the fridge.” It’s the myriad of chemical reactions happening on both a micro and macro-scale.
2. Yes, mankind (sorry JT) has survived hotter climates, whether it was a temporary anomaly in the middles ages or currently what we see in a classic desert setting. But the real take-home message re climate change is what has happened over a relatively short period of time, since the Industrial Revolution. A time period so short, it’d be very difficult to show, if at all on a geological time frame. That is the real issue … what has happened over the past 200-plus years should really have folks look up and take notice.
A simple thing like recording daily temperatures of our oceans, from Darwin’s time to now has shown a warming trend. Even terrestrial temps taken during that time period have supported a warming trend. Not convinced? Well how does one explain disappearing ice caps, glaciers and rising seas, happening all at once? The irony of Greenland should not be lost on anyone.
The mini-ice ages and hot spells of the Middle Ages were for the most part localized events. What is happening today is happening on a global scale. And why? Not the burning of trees as Jane suggested, but the massive expulsion of anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gases (i.e., burning of fossil fuels), heat generated from massive cities, and the associated solid, liquid and gas pollutants, being dumped in Herculean quantities everywhere. This is all having an effect on the health of our planet and not in the way Mother Nature had intended or is able to deal with.
So why are “changers” and “deniers” arguing all the time? Well, despite most using Google in lieu of a properly educated background in earth-sciences, the problem centres around things we can’t see. Sure we see garbage strewn everywhere. Heck we have a plastic continent in the middle of the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas. But when it comes to climate change being man-made or natural, it’d sure be a lot simpler if the two sources had two definitive but different colours, so everyone can determine just how much an effect we have had in such a short period of time, without the benefit of understanding the science.
Then maybe, just maybe, we humans can wake up and see the destruction we’ve caused in the name of civilized progress. If it’s not too late that is.
As George Carlin once said, “The planet isn’t going anywhere. We are!” Brilliant.
Brett Davis,
Orton