Aug. 8, 2006
COMMENTARY: Global Warming: A Warning
By Tom Proebsting
Special to HNN
If you step outside your front door, you will know we are in the grip of a
torturous heat blast. This year’s heat wave has killed more than 100 people
in California alone, but is also taking lives in the Midwest.
Bob Herbert, in a recent New York Times column, pointed out that the first
six months of this year were the warmest on record in America. In the same
article, he claimed more than 50 cities have set records this year for high
temperatures across the continental United States.
Anybody with their head out of the sand will agree that global warming is
alive and well on planet earth. This man-made phenomenon is caused by an
increase in concentrations of greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide makes up most
of these gases, along with methane, nitrous oxide and various trace gases.
Carbon dioxide is put in the air by deforestation and by burning coal and
petroleum. Carbon dioxide has increased 40% since the start of the
industrial revolution, the bulk of the gain since 1945. Man requires and
builds more vehicles and burns coal to power his home. Besides causing
global warming, the resulting excess carbon dioxide is dangerous to breath,
it poisons our water, and it creates smog.
Deforestation is a foreign malady, occurring rapidly in South America,
Africa, and Asia. As much as 20% of the Amazon Forest is gone forever. Rain
forests, which take millions of years to form, once covered up to 15% of the
earth; they cover only 6% today. We lose 78 million acres of precious forest
land a year. Also, deforestation exterminates many species of plant and
animal life, all which are needed for the ecological cycle and many which
could be used for medicine and research.
Global temperatures rose 0.2 degrees Celsius between the middle 1960’s and
the mid 1980’s. They warmed 0.4 degrees Celsius over the past century. The
facts of global warming are difficult to ignore; they are folly to
disbelieve.
Al Gore, who made the environmentally-conscious film “An Inconvenient
Truth,” said of the 21 hottest years ever measured, 20 have occurred within
the last 25 years. Do you recall the scorcher of 1995 when 700 people in the
Midwest died from the heat? Do you remember the more recent killer heat wave
in 2003 when 35,000 people in Europe perished?
Hurricane Katrina and the other storms that blew through the South last year
were believed to be connected to global warming. Lake Chad in Africa used
to be the size of Lake Erie before global warming dried it up. Most
scientists and science academicians preach the truth of greenhouse gases and
their resultant afflictions.
What consequences can we expect if nothing is done about our excess burning
of fossil fuels and about deforestation? First, with melting snow and ice
from both polar icecaps, sea levels could rise a few meters or more. This
could displace millions who live along coastal areas.
Second, with less snow covering there will be more absorption of solar
radiation, producing more killing heat and the drying up of bodies of water.
Finally, droughts, which occur 5% of the time today, could happen 50% of the
time by the year 2050.
The spread of freaky storms, more heat, and increased droughts could snuff
out the lives of thousands, even millions of people in the years and decades
to come. The loss of lives could well exceed the numbers lost in both world
wars last century.
We ignore an environmental prophet like Al Gore to our great peril.
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Tom Proebsting is a writer and blogger in Missouri. Tom Proebsting, 823 N.
Ault St. Moberly, MO 65270
e-mail: truthprobe777@yahoo.com
Proebsting invites comments. Reply to: http://truthprobe.blogspot.com