Weather was on my mind a lot this week and not just because
heavy rain pounded the South Valley.
On Wednesday, the Kyoto Protocol went into effect.
Weather was on my mind a lot this week and not just because heavy rain pounded the South Valley.
On Wednesday, the Kyoto Protocol went into effect. This international treaty is a well-intentioned attempt to lessen the potential impact of “greenhouse” gases (chiefly carbon dioxide) from vehicles, industrial power plants and factories run by fossil fuels.
Computer models and scientific evidence indicate the large-scale dumping of these gases into our atmosphere is dramatically warming the Earth.
Some scientists believe the modern world’s re-engineering of the climate might create huge headaches for future generations. If they’re right, the South Valley one hundred years from now might face weather systems so intense, they’d make this week’s rains look like, well, a drop in the bucket.
About 140 of the world’s nations ratified the Kyoto Protocol to lower greenhouse gas emissions. But the United States – the chief polluter, expelling one-quarter of all industrial gases – won’t participate. Some folks in Washington think the potential problem is not worth addressing.
When he came into office in 2001, President Bush pulled out of the treaty. His logic: Kyoto is costly to American industry, and scientists haven’t yet proven global warming is caused by greenhouse gases.
Our Industrial Age is not the first time human beings might have messed with Mother Nature’s amazing weather machine. Surprisingly, the first known occasion of human-induced climate change took place on the continent of Australia thousands of years ago.
At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in December, scientist Gifford Miller of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research described how the arrival of humans from South Asia turned the land down under from a lush, tropical region into an arid wasteland.
“The systematic burning of vegetation by aboriginals, beginning some 50,000 years ago, may have changed the climate and kindled the desertification of Australia’s interior,” he told conference attendees.
The burning of Australia’s once wide-spread rain forests changed its ecosystem by stopping cloud formation. Vegetation plays a crucial role in recycling rain through plant transpiration and evaporation.
By burning forests, Miller suggests, Australia’s aboriginal population unintentionally altered the seasonal monsoon cycle. They thus transformed the continent’s interior landscape into the desert it is today.
That man-made climate change might be the culprit that killed off 85 percent of Australia’s large animals – including tortoises the size of Volkswagens and 19 marsupial species.
I have a hunch the story didn’t end there. I believe this re-engineering of Australia’s weather patterns had a domino effect on the rest of the global climate.
Weather does not stop at continental boundaries. Earth’s weather is a complicated and delicately balanced system that spreads around the planet.
It’s a self-sustaining series of cause and effect. What happens in one corner of the world eventually effects another region far away.
The cliché of chaos theory goes that a butterfly flapping its wings in San Francisco today might cause a hurricane in Hong Kong next week. Little things do have a big impact – especially in dynamic systems such as weather.
Australia’s climate changes over time might have tipped the weather scales around the world.
Human-set fires burning Australia’s rain forests for thousands of years sent countless tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And the billions of gallons of water stored in those forests also went elsewhere.
Here’s a possible scenario: Around 12,000 years ago, man’s drastic changing of Australia’s interior triggered the beginning of the end of the last major ice age.
The overall temperature of the planet started climbing. Ice caps started melting. The oceans started rising rapidly.
Ironically, this rise in ocean levels increased the distance from Australia to Asia, essentially “trapping” the aboriginals on their continent.
But the rising oceans also had another dramatic effect on humankind, one found in a famous biblical story.
Around 5500 B.C., the Black Sea between Europe and Asia was an inland valley with a large fresh-water lake 500 feet below sea level. A thin strip of land at the point of the Bosphorus (where the city of Istanbul now stands) created a natural dam keeping out salt water. But as the ocean levels climbed, the pressure on this barrier grew.
Perhaps an earthquake caused the initial crack. A powerful gush of sea water soon shot through, cutting the Bosphorus channel.
Scientists calculated the flow of this water might have been 400 times greater than Niagara Falls. The roar of the blasting water would have been heard more than 60 miles away.
The sea water flooding the valley advanced about half a mile a day. The primitive farmers and villagers who lived in its path would be forced to flee the rising water.
They could not possibly have understood the real cause. Perhaps their priests told them their gods were angry at their wickedness.
This was their punishment. For many, the cataclysmic event was literally the end of the world.
After three months, 60,000 square miles of their valley home was flooded. Many would drown in the birth of the Black Sea.
But the survivors would remember. They told the history of the rising water as a warning such catastrophes might happen again. Each passing generation added details.
They eventually transformed history into the legend of a farmer named Noah who built an ark to escape a great flood.
Of course, it’s only my unproven speculation Noah’s famous flood resulted from aboriginals burning Australia’s rain forests. Perhaps the idea might one day be tested in a supercomputer’s climate-modeling system.
Even with modern tools, accurately forecasting next week’s weather is impossible.
But it’s child’s play compared to predicting what the global climate will be 100 years from now.
If my suggested scenario is true, Noah’s apocolyptic flood story gives humanity an important warning we must heed.
The world may now be at the crossroads for deciding what becomes of our future climate.
With the Kyoto Protocol, President Bush must indeed plan for a rainy day.
Or start building that ark.
