Some folks say that we ought to wait around until global climate change starts causing problems before we do anything to prevent the looming catastrophe from getting worse. Then there are the rest of us, who bother to read, and know that global climate change is already causing environmental and economic problems around the world.
One of the regular posters to our Irregular Forum left a message about an article in Discover Magazine today, and so I picked up a copy of the magazine from a local newstand. Inside, I found two short items about how global climate change is leading to troublesome changes around the world.
First, there’s the fact that the Swiss Alps are losing their glaciers. That’s a big deal to the Swiss economy, which benefits a great deal from tourists who come to Switzerland to ski. It seems that one Swiss ski resort, Andermatt Gotthard Sportbahnen SA, is losing so much of the glacial cover on which its customers have traditionally enjoyed skiing that the resort is now placing an artificial sun shield over the glacier during the spring and summer months in an attempt to stop the Gurschen glacier from melting.
The World Wildlife Fund is complaining about the big blanket, saying that people need to learn to treat the causes, and not the symptoms, of global climate change. That’s kind of missing the point, in my mind. Now that global climate change is making a big impact of people’s lives, it’s too late to focus on pure prevention of damage. Thanks to the delays from the Republican political elite, we now have to deal with the causes of global climate change and the symptoms of its arrival.
More serious is what’s going on atop Asia’s greatest mountain range. Major declines in snow cover in the Himalayas is resulting in higher regional temperatures, in a dangerous cycle of heat building on heat. Anyone who lives in an area with significant winter snowfall will understand why this is occurring. A driveway covered with snow will melt even in sub-freezing temperatures, so long as there are some patches where the snow has been removed. The dark surface of the exposed driveway heats up in the sun to a much higher temperature than the ordinary air temperature, melting off the snow around it. The same thing is happening in the Himalaya mountains, with rocks that have not been exposed to the direct rays of the suns in millenia.
As a result of these increased regional temperatures, monsoons are becoming more powerful. These powerful monsoons are, in turn, stirring up the waters of the Arabian Sea, resulting in immense algal blooms. These algal blooms, when they decompose, rob the water of oxygen so efficiently that they often end up creating large dead zones, where no animals can live. Thus, local people who have depended upon fishing to make a living are suddenly left without any means for survival. That’s the real face of environmental destruction – not the sacrifice of the spotted owl, but human beings starving. Fossil fuels are not pro-life.
By the way, it’s not some left-wing eco-environmentalists who are talking about this regional Asian disaster. It’s NASA scientists, who published the results of their study in defiance of the Bush Administration’s desire to pretend that global climate change does not even exist.
I’m thankful to Discover for continuing to pass along this troubling information. Now more than ever, when the federal government has been caught censoring science and cable television is transforming news into infotainment, good citizenship depends upon having multiple independent sources of information to get a picture of what’s really going on.
i heard GEORGE WILL say on a sunday pundit show that 30 years ago science said we had a global cooling problem.
and they had evidence, too!
therefore, no amount of proof can ever be enough for the right wing. GEORGE WILL is their big “go to” guy on the t.v. circuit.
if this is the bush camp’s best defense of their environmental policy they need to go back to the drawing board.
GEORGE WILL is SO SMART that i’m sure he’ll do much better next week
Well, 30 years ago, there was actually no evidence of a decades-long global cooling problem. There were a few cold winters, and some people who were sick of the snow started complaining and talking about whether an ice age might be coming. I remember seeing a talk show with people talking about the issue, and it was never claimed that there was a human-caused clear global cooling problem. What was said was that an Ice Age would almost certainly come again one day, but there was no scientific reason to say that we were entering one.
George Will’s denial is dishonest. The situations are not the same. Global warming has been measured. With thermometers. As a decades and decades long trend.
Oh, please. ALL rain now being ACID rain, that’s slowly destroying monuments, and in worse cases devastating whole areas (as in the famous “acid rain” pictures), we don’t NEED global warming as an excuse to cut back on polluting.
It’s dangerous. And nature’s delicate.
True, nature can also wipe out man kind’s ass in almost no time at all, but it’s also pretty sensitive in its balances. Ignoring the problems of pollution is like repeatedly hitting a tiger’s tail with a big stick.
everyone should be able to see the destructive effects of polluters and everyone should know the dishonesty of arguments for stalling any action protecting the environment.
problem being: they (“the liberal media”) give these bubble-heads all the air time they want and cut-off anyone with a sensible point of view. and then the bubblehead gets to spew his mumbo-jumbo again on the next show. it is soo aggravating!
and GEORGE WILL thinks he’s SOO SMART!!!
OK, so all we have to do is get everybody in Bangladesh to chip in for a giant blanket to cover the Himalayas, and their flooding problem’s solved! Why not? Worked for the Swiss…