Fading Out Earth
The other day, my aunt was describing her vacation in
Alaska. She journeyed several hours in the frigid
cold just to walk on a glacier for a few minutes. She
said it was an experience she wouldn’t forget.
I then read about the Himalayan glaciers and was upset that the world’s largest ice body outside of the polar caps could disappear entirely by 2035. I can’t fathom the gravity of this calamity and the disastrous implications it might have on our survival, except that it is a source for Asia's biggest rivers, the lives and livelihoods of millions of people depend on it and all hell will break lose. I want to say, we should do everything in our means to prevent this disaster, but that would not only be stating the obvious but also asking to postpone the inevitable.
It then reminded me of a Disney film I saw recently called Earth, from which I picked up facts about the Boreal forest. The forest wraps itself as a ring on top of the earth, spreading over three continents. It has over a third of the trees found on Earth and is often referred to as the “lungs of the planet”. Everyday, as the trees breathe in carbondioxide and breathe out oxygen, they behave as storehouses for the greenhouse gases (when breathing in) and re-oxygenate the earth (when breathing out), thereby giving us clean air to live! But, this rhythmic process is now under great stress like everything else in the world.
I can’t imagine this ten thousand year old ecosystem - a major source of oxygen on the planet, the largest storehouse of carbondioxide, and one of the last remaining old-growth forests in the world might be ruined by something as lame as industrial activity! I say lame because I want to think of the earth as this awesome celestial body, the design of The Great Spirit, which is impervious to such trivial things as human follies! Of course, I also never imagined that the Himalayan Glaciers or the poles for that matter will melt away entirely in a few decades!
I am going to stop reacting to news about the environment except in amusement... I already have a Gedanken-like question and this is not a thought-experiment, just a rhetorical inquiry. Could the north pole be freezing while the south pole is melting?
I then read about the Himalayan glaciers and was upset that the world’s largest ice body outside of the polar caps could disappear entirely by 2035. I can’t fathom the gravity of this calamity and the disastrous implications it might have on our survival, except that it is a source for Asia's biggest rivers, the lives and livelihoods of millions of people depend on it and all hell will break lose. I want to say, we should do everything in our means to prevent this disaster, but that would not only be stating the obvious but also asking to postpone the inevitable.
It then reminded me of a Disney film I saw recently called Earth, from which I picked up facts about the Boreal forest. The forest wraps itself as a ring on top of the earth, spreading over three continents. It has over a third of the trees found on Earth and is often referred to as the “lungs of the planet”. Everyday, as the trees breathe in carbondioxide and breathe out oxygen, they behave as storehouses for the greenhouse gases (when breathing in) and re-oxygenate the earth (when breathing out), thereby giving us clean air to live! But, this rhythmic process is now under great stress like everything else in the world.
I can’t imagine this ten thousand year old ecosystem - a major source of oxygen on the planet, the largest storehouse of carbondioxide, and one of the last remaining old-growth forests in the world might be ruined by something as lame as industrial activity! I say lame because I want to think of the earth as this awesome celestial body, the design of The Great Spirit, which is impervious to such trivial things as human follies! Of course, I also never imagined that the Himalayan Glaciers or the poles for that matter will melt away entirely in a few decades!
I am going to stop reacting to news about the environment except in amusement... I already have a Gedanken-like question and this is not a thought-experiment, just a rhetorical inquiry. Could the north pole be freezing while the south pole is melting?
