Thursday, January 18, 2007

el niño & the other thing

A couple of weeks ago everyone everywhere was happy about the mild winter weather & welcomed it with open arms. No one really cared about the environmental implications or the repercussions. Let the glaciers melt! Let the polar bears starve! Let the animals that normally hibernate be awake to enjoy the warm weather! Well, we only have ourselves to thank. We've put out as much carbon dioxide in the air in the last century with all our industrial & technological revolution, that we've upset the delicate balance for good. Do not console yourself with the fact El Niño has been around or that global warming has been in motion for thousands of years because it was never at this frequent nor this fast a rate.

The overall temperature has increased by a couple of degrees - seems minor, but it is major damage for the North pole. Once those glaciers melt, we won't have as much land mass nor fresh water. I can tell you that everyone would want to be Canada's best friend, as we'd be the only country with the world's largest fresh water supply. Maybe Bermuda won't be affected? Think again. With the rising sea level, Bermuda may just be underwater.

The sad unfortunate news is that while we may curb our wasteful ways significantly, the damage has already been done. Our changes will only prevent any further escalation. Any positive changes will only help the temperature to remain stable but it will not lower what we have caused to rise in the last century. The glaciers will continue to melt, that's a given. What is to be determined is at how fast a rate. But please, don't let that discourage you into making a change for today. Scientists have been looking 50 years into the future to predict what the world & our environment will be like. Why 50 you ask? They chose 50 because that's when most of us will be around. It's sad when the scientists have to cater to us, the current generation, to make it more of a reality for us. We obviously don't care enough to leave the world in good hands for our future generations, so why on earth would we care about the state of the world 100 years from now? So what are we going to do about it?

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