The Next Added 100 Million Americans, Part 7
By Frosty Wooldridge (11/09/06)
A Global Warming - We could sit back in the old Lazy Boy lounger; press the remote, drink a beer and watch as the next added 100 million Americans pile up on our shores by 2040. We may think that 34 years extends so far into the future that it’s not important to take action today. Ah shucks, 100 million more Americans won’t be any different than the last added 106 million added since 1964! Since we now house 300 million, what’s the problem with another adding 100 million people?
Short, sobering and gut wrenching answer: plenty!
You may find it interesting to note in 1906, India reached 300 million people. Today, demographic experts say India, at 1.1 billion, will out-grow China on India’s way to 1.4 to as high as 1.6 billion people by mid century. Both China and India have become SO accustomed to degraded living and human misery, they think it’s normal.
As the human race speeds toward its mid century destiny of a predicted high of 9.8 billion, I invite you to visit www.populationmedia.org to see a population ticker showing the number of people added to the planet every minute. If you’re drunk, it will sober you up. If you’re having coffee, it will sour your cream. If you added sugar, it will taste bitter. If you’re a parent, you’ll wonder what awaits your children.
But long before we make it to mid century; and long before the United States reaches that next 100 million added citizens; and long before India and China add another 500 million each—all of us must contend with another threat to our existence in the 21st century: global warming.
Yes, you’ll hear naysayers and you’ll hear excuses, but I spent a season “on the ice” in Antarctica. I saw global warming in action. I watched the best scientists in the world report their findings. Folks, we’re in a whole lot of trouble of our own making.
However, some scientists negate the findings of fellow scientists! Professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University William M. Gray said, “I have closely followed the carbon dioxide warming arguments. From what I have learned of how the atmosphere ticks over 40 years of study, I have been unable to convince myself that a doubling of human-induced greenhouse gases can lead to anything but quite small and insignificant amounts of global warming.”
He could be right, but if he’s wrong, why should we error on the side of continued population growth? What’s the point? What positives can you think of that the next added 100 million Americans will bring our children?
I know one thing from simple common sense, we cannot expect to burn 82 million barrels of oil every 24 hours; we cannot burn millions of metric tons of natural gas daily; we cannot burn millions of board feet of wood every day worldwide; we cannot burn billions of tons of coal for electricity around the clock—and think it’s not affecting the planet’s delicate ecosystems. If you do, you’re either a fool, uneducated or intellectually bankrupt. (This, of course, would make you a politician) At this point, I say our president and this Congress are all three! We’re the only country not to sign the Kyoto Accord to address global warming.
It matters little whether you like former Vice President Al Gore or not, but his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” awakens even the idiots among us. Those who counter his movie, from my first hand knowledge in Antarctica and around the globe, illustrate and promote their own form of intellectual absurdity.
Today, we resist the facts; we deny their proven reality; we recoil at what faces us. Most U.S. citizens cower in a corner concerning the reality of global warming. We resist partnering with other nations in finding solutions. We continue accelerating our population which adds momentum to our impending Katrina-like global calamity.
In 2004, John Schellnhuber, a distinguished science adviser at Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in Great Britain, identified 12 global warming tipping points. If ignored long enough, any of them could initiate sudden, catastrophic changes on our planet.
As long as we continue in our bald-faced denial of global warming; as long as we maintain no personal responsibility or action; without a 13th tipping point toward stabilizing global warming—we can’t hope to avoid global mayhem.
Julia Whitty, research writer, said, “The 18th century taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus named us Homo Sapiens, from the Latin ‘sapiens’, meaning “prudent, wise.” History shows we are not born with wisdom. We evolve into it.”
We better get our butts in gear to engage our minds! Once we engage our minds, we must activate solutions to haul our species out of this maelstrom.
I’ve also spent time in the Amazon rainforest. I’ve seen the astonishing, if not sickening, cutting and burning at the astounding rate of 1.5 acres every second. Schellnhubers’ climate model shows that a warming globe will convert the wet Amazonia forest into a savannah within this century, and “the loss of trees will render the region a net carbon dioxide producer, further accelerating global warming.”
What happens next? The more we destroy the support systems developed on this planet over millions of years, the faster we destroy ocean currents that regulate climate around the globe.
“As the Atlantic warms, ice caps melt, diluting the ocean and shutting down its thermohaline circulation (THC), the oceanic rivers currently delivering the thermal equivalent of 500,000 power stations’ worth of warmth to Europe,” Schellnhuber said.
That in turn creates another tipping point on the Greenland Ice Sheet. “This ice, if melted, would raise sea levels by 23 feet worldwide—not counting ice loss from the Arctic and Antarctic,” Schellnhuber said.
He continued, “One tipping point affects the other in a balance as delicate as that of an acrobat’s spinning dinner plates at the top of a stick. Greenland’s increasing freshwater flow into the North Atlantic will impact the THC. Warm water recalculating within the central Atlantic may further rearrange airflow over the Amazon, accelerating its dry-down and tree loss, and potentially freeing as much carbon dioxide from its enormous reservoir as the 20th century’s total fossil fuel output. A sudden Amazonian release would melt whatever of Greenland hadn’t already melted, crashing the THC and drastically cooling Europe, in worst-case scenario, freezing it solid.”
As you can see, we’re tinkering with nature’s most delicate balancing system like no other species on the planet. It’s like we’re little kids, who sit intrigued at the operating mechanism of our new watches. We want to see how they work. We pry off the backs and pull out the working parts. We place them over a candle to see if the plastic will melt. We pour Clorox on them to see if those watches can withstand chemicals. We dump oil into the mechanism to see what happens. When we try to put it all back together; we don’t have a clue. Our watches are broken with no way to fix any of them.
This 7th part of the series requires two sections. Next week, we’ll deal with the other tipping points that lead to deleterious global ramifications for not only humans, but for all living creatures on this planet. The second part of this report on global warming will be even more serious and sobering than the first part.
If you would like to investigate further, look for Julia Whitty’s “The 13th Tipping Point: 12 Global Disasters and 1 Powerful Antidote” November/December 2006, page 45-51 at www.motherjones.com
“Pretending or being in denial of global warming is like throwing your children into a tank of sharks and hoping the sharks have suddenly become enlightened vegetarians.” --Frosty Wooldridge
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