Volodymyr Kish.
I spent a lot of time over the past month following the details and images of the destruction wrought by Mother Nature on a world that has done ill service in looking after the paradise we have been blessed with to live on. From forest fires on the west coast, to flooding in Texas, to hurricanes in the Caribbean and earthquakes in Mexico, we have come to understand that despite all of our technology, intelligence and might, we are powerless in the face of nature’s power to wreak havoc on all that we build and erect. The result has been untold billions in damages and all too many lives lost.
Of course, forest fires, floods, hurricanes and earthquakes are nothing new. They have been with us for as long as mankind has been on this earth. What is different, is that in recent decades, most of these natural disasters have become much more powerful and violent than at any time in recorded history.
This is no accident. As the overwhelming majority of most scientists involved in trying to understand this phenomenon will tell you, the biggest reason for most of this is runaway climate change caused by mankind’s over exploitation of fossil fuels. Our atmosphere is getting more polluted, our planet is getting warmer, our ice caps and glaciers are melting, our sea levels are rising, and our weather patterns are getting more and more extreme. As much as the climate change deniers may want to keep their heads buried in the sand, the facts are becoming increasingly indisputable.
The increasing strength and destructiveness of hurricanes in recent decades is but one telling example of this. As hurricanes move over the ocean where they originate, they pick up energy from the warm waters below. The warmer the ocean water, the stronger these hurricanes grow. The average temperature of the earth’s oceans has been steadily increasing for the past century. This results in ever stronger hurricanes. Further, as water warms up, it expands, so as the oceans heat up, water levels rise, eroding coastlines and leading to more frequent and damaging flooding. It is a fact that the hottest ten years on record since we began recording weather statistics have all occurred in the past twenty years.
The rapidly changing climate is also resulting in more and more unpredictable weather, with extremes becoming ever more frequent. No doubt many of us are becoming more familiar with the well-known El Nino weather events that originate in the Pacific Ocean and have such a dramatic impact on North America and even beyond. They too have also occurred throughout history, yet it is worthy of note that there were twice as many of them in the latter half of the twentieth century as there were in the first half.
I am sure that on a personal basis, most of you will remember as I do, that the weather from season to season was fairly consistent when we were young. Over the past few decades however, it has become almost impossible to see any consistency in the way our four seasons roll out each year. One winter we see tons of snow, and the next winter almost none. Some summers assail us with almost intolerable heat and humidity, whereas others, like this summer of 2017, have been quite mild resulting in my not having to use my air conditioning on more than a couple of days throughout the whole of this summer.
We must keep in mind that uncertain weather is more than just a matter of comfort or the occasional disaster. It can have tremendous geopolitical and economic consequences. In some parts of the world it has caused persistent drought leading to starvation and a mass exodus of refugees. Climate and agricultural experts are predicting that at current trends, many inhabited areas of this globe will lose their ability to sustain agriculture and correspondingly support any significant populations. This will most certainly cause mass population shifts that have great potential to create political and military friction leading to bloody conflict.
These are not improbable scenarios. They are already happening and they will continue to happen and intensify in our lifetimes. Regrettably, we see little recognition or planning by the world’s nations or their leaders of how to tackle what will be existential challenges to way of life of billions of people on this planet. We need to stop the childish alt-fact questioning of whether climate change is true, and start taking concrete steps towards insuring the continuing existence of mankind on this planet.
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