As Sandy’s winds finally subside and thousands of people assess their losses, I remember my first experience with climate change. It was 1972 and back then the word climate change didn’t exist. I was taking meteorology and climatology courses at the University of Wisconsin. My mentoring professor was one of the premiere experts on Arctic climate. So he would travel yearly to both poles and collect data for his studies.
In late spring 1972 he came back from an expedition and was quite upset about what he found; it appeared that there was quite a spike in CO2 in the ice cores he had sampled. The cores covered about 150 years prior to 1972. He was quite alarmed but didn’t know what to make of it. We didn’t much talk about it after that initial conversation and I had not thought about it for over 35 years.
There was an increase in interest in global warming and climate change after Al Gore’s movie. Two months ago I read two articles on climate change. The shocking conclusion was its coming and it’s coming very fast. Before I had read the articles I was of the opinion that we had 30 to 50 years until the problem really became apparent. But now the climatologists are saying that we only have 5 to 10 years before heavy impact, such as severe drought, climate temperature extremes, super storms and rising oceans. This will cause famines and possible reduction of 50% of the earth’s population.
Folks, the horses and all the other farm animals are out of the barn and they are not coming back preparation is our only choice. So – it is kind of simple, move to high ground-500 ft above sea level a minimum.
And move to US Pacific Northwest –Oregon and Washington. That will work for awhile and next step if you can, get into Canada, also some of the higher elevations in the Rockies will also work but again for only awhile.
And forget trying to find someone to blame – presently that’s just a waste of time, unless we can find a real way to reverse the problem. It’s coming and it’s coming hard.
MWiz, Life is short, so always enjoy the present.