Way back in the 70s I “predicted” an environmental crisis/catastrophe. Way back when I was still a teen, it was obvious to me.
Over the years, then the decades, I watched the natural world around me change…for the worst. I watched forests leveled, wetlands decimated, natural meadows destroyed, waters polluted. I watched man encroach on nature more and more, pouring cement and asphalt, building wider, spreading out, not higher and consolidating. I watched wilderness and rural land become industrial parks and subdivisions, wild mountains become wastelands of erosion, everything devastated wherever man touched…encroached.
So, now — now that it is too late — suddenly the environment is “big news.”
I’m sorry. Didn’t you notice it before? Didn’t you see, hear, feel, taste and smell it in the air? And not just the complete saturation of herbicides, rodenticides, pesticides, fungicides…that permeate our water, our food, our air — every aspect of our lives. A change has happened. To the biosphere. Life as we know it is on the brink. A new world, a new biosphere, hostile to the present reign of the oxygen revolution dynasty, is about ready to emerge. It has to. Life is endemic to this world. Life will continue. But it won’t be life as we know it. It won’t be life that is comfortable for us…even if some of us adapt and survive.
We’ve got less than ten years. That’s my opinion. Less than ten years. After that, life as we know it on this planet is gone forever. No more cushy lifestyles, no more pleasant afternoon strolls along the beach. You’ll be fighting to survive…if you live through the wars that are bound to rage as people…nations…reach out in desperation to secure the resources they need for them to survive and damn anyone who gets in their way.
A bit extreme in my viewpoint? Maybe. But, all around me, the signs point it out. Trees are dying…for no known cause. When the sun shines, suddenly the temperature spikes from normal to a hundred and more degrees, while when it’s cloudy, we’re at normal temperatures. Winter: a fifty degree difference between sunny daylight and nighttime temperatures. (Now, that’s extreme.) Insects are dying. Birds are dying. Fish are dying. All of them for no known cause. This isn’t disease. This is environment — hostile environment. It’s reached its tipping points long ago, yet the dimwitted, from neocon to SUV Sally, just laugh and deny.
Okay. Yes. I may be wrong. But, you know what? I’m not a proponent of “end of the world” anything. I just have watched all these years. I see it in the animals, the plants, the insects. I see it in the soil and the air. I feel it in the intensity of the sun. And I’m not alone. Others see and feel it, too. We’re just quiet about it now. Because we know that it’s already too late.
I laugh when I hear the scientific community quoted to the media. In 2050..in 2100. How about, “You’ll be lucky (or maybe very unlucky) if you’re still alive in 2015.”
You know, even my “environmentally conscious” friends scoff at my saying this. They don’t believe it. They think I’m nuts. Well, maybe I am. Maybe I’m wrong. You know what? I sincerely hope so. Truly. I love this world — not man’s world — but the world of nature — the sky, the forests, the mountain lakes…the earthworms I rescue from the pavement, the birds that fly the skies…the birds that used to sing the morning and the evening (They haven’t come this year, you know. Neither have the humming birds. Nor the butterfies. And the bumble bees, which were here this spring, have vanished too.)
…Yes, I hope I’m wrong. Let’s hope I’m not dead right.
I see this possible problem as an opportunity to stretch my imagination and ingenuity to survive a potentially difficult situation. That is life, adjusting to change as a surfboarder adjusts his board position to a wave.
I’m fairly optimistic about such things, aside from the population issues…but not because I think average humanity will suddenly become more altruistic towards the future.
I think it will have more to do with advances in technology and simple economics. In other words, it will become cheaper to be less destructive.
There are many examples already afoot!
Not in time, I think. The planet will get too hot, and, at the extent the biosphere is losing species, the emergency warning knells are ringing.
Yes, I think mankind will survive. There are just too many of us around statistically not to, but the survival won’t be pleasant, IMO. And you’d better be one of those rich elite who is prepared. Forget most of the poor and middle income, especially in America, where when the power fails for more than three days, suburbans have to find emergency shelter.
Of course, I’d vote for a miracle…non-godist, man-initiated variety. I’d love a huge turn-around to happen — for the biosphere to heal, for the consumerism that has been driving this since the industrial revolution to dry up, for humans to stop proliferating — but I don’t think it will happen. A century and a half to get us in this pickle, and a decade to turn it around, convincing 7 billion people that they don’t need more and they don’t need to have more than one child (adopt number two)? I don’t think it will happen.
As the frogs, so we, dried up to dust.
I am an optimist by nature. Really. But when the trees are dying around me as I watch, due to nothing more than solar radiants having become too concentrated for them to survive, when there is more than a fifty degree temperature variation between daytime and nighttime temperature, winter or summer, take your pick, when winter turns to summer instantly, going from twenty degrees F outside daytime temp to over seventy F outside daytime time, and the sun’s rays are so intense that they cook me inside my white car even with the fan on and a veil of clouds obscuring that sun, it tells me we’re in the doo-doo. Fifty degrees, ambient temperature outside, and I, olive complected and an outdoorswoman, am burned by the solar radiants while sitting INSIDE my car — we’re in trouble.
And what is the point of wanting to survive in a world bereft of all that I hold precious — wild nature, giant trees in deep, closed canopy forests, the wildlife and all that is untouched by man?
We become a sterile, manipulated environment, Earth “parked out,” little sun-resistent trees, genetically manipulated and grown by Dow or Monsanto, all planted in nice tidy rows on verges bordering cement highways laden with supermarkets and shops?
Anyway…can you tell this is before coffee? I’m never very coherent in the morning before my jo.
Rambling off.
Lots of people have noticed changes in solar irradiance, and this in fact is the other competing explanation of recent warming trends.
Theres a new book that just came out called ‘Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years’.
Its an assemblage of peer reviewed studies by over 500 scientists that takes a long range view of climate change, pointing out that there have been more than a dozen warming trends since the last ice age, and that the current one is coincidental with solar cycles.
Carleton University geologist Tim Patterson echoes the same ideas in a huge newspaper article published today…that arctic temps in the 1930s were actually higher than they are today, and then fell through the 40s until approx 1975, when they started going up again.
He argues that we simply wriggling our way back down to the next ice age, there being only 10-14 thousand years of warm periods for every 100 thousand years of glacial desolation.
We are currently in the midst of solar cycle 25, which will be at its weakest by approx 2020, preluding another cold period similar to the ‘little ice age’ of the 16-19th centuries.
I don’t think so. I think this would be accurate were it not for the man-made problems. But I think we’ve altered the balance. Scientists can argue all they want. The reality will happen and prove the truth. We just will, whether we like it or not, discover that truth once it happens.