Tuesday, August 04, 2009

This particular blog is to create an understanding and awareness, and avoid panic reactions, on the media excitments created over "doomsday" and "Global Warming".... by expressing my views and many feedbacks from the world over,

Well. consider, in recent past, the so called experts have warned of certain doom from, The Population bomb, Nuclear winter, the new Ice age, the ozone hole, Y2K, killer bees, Global Warming, and now Global Climate Change. More locally (Mumbai), high tides of devestating proportions, killer rains in July and the Mars effect, and of-course, the "once- in- a- life- time" solar eclipse !
The truth is that scaring people is a good way to get your papers published, and get some research money. People often buy material that scare them, they like to be frightened.

The news/media industry may have made a fortune out of scaring people.
Many people WANT to be scared, I think they seek it out, and this is just another thing they can latch on to. maybe it’s genetic. It’s almost a survival trait. So as a species we get some kind of perverse satisfaction out of thinking doom is right around the corner and for some reason we’re not happy if we think it’s not, so we run around finding things to be scared of (Dinosaur killing Asteroids! Super Novas, Super Earthquakes, Super Volcanoes, Super Hurricanes, Nuclear War, Swine Flu, High tides, Low Tides and what not. What more is to come ? I dont want to know !!
Like, any minute now the Lord is going show up and tell everyone to get out of the pool.

Global Warming isn’t a lot different. Carbon, well, we think we can DO something about that (we’re not sure what, but doing something is extremely important!)

Consider some weather facts of the past....
“The 1936 North American heat wave was the most severe heat wave in the modern history of North America. It took place in the middle of the Great Depression, and it contributed to it, and led to catastrophic human suffering and an enormous economic toll. The death toll exceeded 5,000. Agricultural losses were enormous as well, as crops were destroyed by the high heat and lack of moisture. Many of the state and city record high temperature set during the 1936 heat wave still stand to this day.
The year 1936 brought significant amounts of extreme weather. The winter was one of the coldest on record, and the summer was one of the hottest.The 1930s are remembered as the driest and warmest decade for the US (the Dust Bowl years). But help came in the 1940s with heavy rains.”--(from Wikipedia).

And then 40 years hence.....
The year? 1972. The problem?
Global cooling:
"In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada’s wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone’s recollection.
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades.
Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round".--Quote from the Time Magazine.

The reason(s) for the contrast change in a reasonable time period ?? Man? Man was throwing up too much “dust and other particles”. And obviously, during this period there was hardly any industry and we had the most fuel efficient transportation possible.

The earth’s current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age.

Weather changes come and go. Records are happening all the time. Many warmings and coolings can be quoted, and I can fill up pages and pages.... A 50 year high in day temperature means this temperature happened 50 years ago also !!

Lets not panic, and trust nature to take care of things. But lets not abuse nature.

kapadias@gmail.com

4 comments:

Mani said...

Well Said....

Unknown said...

somehow you have managed to hit the nail on the head !!! we have been victim of pulp news for too long !!!

Unknown said...

wonder what made you say today.. which ought to have been said eons ago....

Anonymous said...

Whoa!! That was one aggressive blog. But, I completely agree to your views, if one would believe every over hyped thing then we all should have been dead and gone by now. I guess in the era of 24*7 news channels this is a reality

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