A Changing Climate around the World

I know that most of the people that read the mouse’s Blog think that I must be a fruitcake and a doom seer, with my predictions of the coming climate change catastrophe. But my predictions are not the visions of a crazed lunatic; they are based soundly on the scientific data available to all. The real problem is that far to many people choose to ignore what is really happening to our climate and our environment, further they assume that as nothing disastrous has happened yet, a climate change disaster must just be a myth.

This attitude is not helped by all the vested interests. People who stand to loose out financially when we are all finally forced to take action to cope with this changed and changing climate.

Even with streets and roads choked with fumes and clogged with traffic, people refuse to give up their cars. But what’s worse, people insist on buying and driving a vehicle that’s much larger than they need and consequently costs more to run. The attitude seems to be that if they can afford to run an inefficient vehicle they will. All this leads to cars that emit more CO2 than is needed.

But its not just cars, I have lost count of the people that I have meet who on the surface are very committed environmentalists, but given the chance of a cheap flight or holiday overseas, principals evaporate as quickly as a jet produces Nitrous oxide and water vapour, both potent and long lasting greenhouse gases.

I keep on looking around me and around the world and wonder if its me? Am I the only one that can see the very real effects of Climate change going on? That question is a rhetorical one, as I know that I am not alone but I do feel like a lone voice in the wilderness.

To give you all a round up: In Australia there has been a drought going on for ten years. While large areas of Australia are deserts, it is the impact of a changing climate that has caused this drought.

In Georgia and other neighbouring states in the south east US there is a drought that has affected towns and cities like Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama where all their water is coming from the same source.

In the Great Lakes region, the water level in Lake Superior is two feet lower than it should be. As each inch represents five hundred billion gallons of water, that’s one point two trillion gallons of water lost as vapour into the atmosphere, with all that water vapour adding to the greenhouse effect.

The forest fires that raged in California were as a direct result of a climate change induced drought. The list could go on, but it’s in the real wilderness places that the effect is most dramatic. The loss of the summer ice at the North Pole has been well reported. But what is less well known is that this level of melting of the sea ice was not expected until 2050. While all the computer models for the climate were predicting this to happen, it has occurred forty years earlier than expected.

While the global average increase in temperatures has only been just over one degree Celsius in two places its four and five degrees. In Japan temperatures are now five degrees higher than they were ten years ago and that has been constant for the past five years. In Southern Spain temperatures are four degrees higher and droughts there have exhausted the aquifers (underground water stored in rocks) to such an extent that salts are now leaching out and poisoning the land.

While each of these impacts are happening in local regions the effect has a global implication. The problem is that because these effects of climate change are occurring locally, they are all parts off a much larger image of global warming.

We already have gone past the point of no return and while governments argue about setting limits to how much we can be allowed to pollute our nest, none of the decisions made in Bali will stop what is already happening. It is in fact down to all of us to take action. Each little action will help.

Firstly we need to stop wasting energy; turning off lights, appliances and turning down the heating.

Further, we need to stop travelling, there are some journeys that are essential, going to work etc but there will be someone you can share your car with on at least some of your trips. However, the most important action must be to stop flying. While aircraft produce only four percent of the global CO2, the Nitrous Oxide and the water vapour generated are magnifying the greenhouse effect as the gasses are released in the upper atmosphere, just where it needs to be to warm the planet.

Water is the key to life on this planet. The human animal cannot survive more than three days without it, yet we are failing to take the global water crisis seriously. We all need to save water, act as though we all are living in an arid region and that water costs more than gold. In a few years it may well become that precious.

Our climate has gone into a feedback system; our climate is and will change. We can’t stop it now, but we can work on reducing the way it impacts the lives of our kith and kin.

I hope to be able to bring you news and information of what people are actually doing to help themselves, and to help the planet. At times I have felt that I am utterly alone in trying to live in an environmentally responsible way, so I hope that here we can all share ideas and information about the way we can all help heal the scars inflicted upon our home planet.