APOCALYPSE NOW

 

 

Man shall have dominion over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

 

Elizabeth Kolbert book, The 6^th Extinction tracks the catastrophic events that led to five extinction on planet Earth.    The 6^th extinction to be brought about by mankind, ‘who has led a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature’, and has drastically altered earth’s climate over a duration of one century.

  

Her new book, Under a White Sky reviews man’s technological research to deal with the results of the climate change we are presently witnessing.

 

There is no doubt that the world we live in will look dramatically different in one-hundred years; if we survive this era.   Mankind is only limited by the speed of his ability to compute and the volume of information he can retrieve; and with super computers mankind has conquered that deficiency.  There is some confidence in the scientific community (the brain trust of mankind) that we will be able to adjust to the changing climate.

 

CASSANDRA PROPHECY

 

Cassandra was priestess of Apollo in Greek mythology; cursed to utter true prophecies, but never to be believed.

 

Though climate change is of major concern to the survival of the human race, it is not the elephant in the room, the most likely scenario to apocalyptic destruction of every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

  

We are looking at the possibility of another massive war in Europe.  But this only highlights the concern.

 

Nuclear weapons have proliferated through the earth’s nations: Chins, North Korea, Pakistan, India, undoubtedly Israel, soon to be Iran; and of course, the United States and Russia.

 

The world has two nuclear super powers, each with the capability of destroying all life on earth many times over.   So far, we have had reasonable men holding the reins on the world nuclear arsenals; but that is not a guarantee.  

 

President Trump asked general Kelly why we have nuclear weapons and don’t use them?

 

In Ronald Regan’s last year in office, he suffered from dementia.   Donald Trump was called a moron by his Chief of Staff.  The world is full of despots, and then we have religious fanatical states each looking forward to an end of the world scenario.  It is not beyond belief today that Republicans could elect Marjory Taylor Green or that ilk to be in charge of our nuclear arsenal.

 

We should not believe that nuclear weapons will never be deployed against humanity.  It had been done before.    In 1945 two very primitive nuclear weapons destroyed two Japanese cities killing over three-hundred-and-fifty-thousand civilians.

 

This is a scenario waiting to happen.

 

Mankind still possesses a primitive strain in his DNA that effects the species beyond reason.

Have a nice day

the Ol’Buzzard

A BOOK REVIEW

The sky is falling!   The sky is falling!

Chicken Little

If you only read one book on science this year it should be Field Notes from a Catastrophe – Man, Nature and Climate Change; written by Elizabeth Kolbert and published in 2006.    This book addresses the issue of climate change with startling examples that verify legitimate science predictions.  

For the decades after the industrial revolution the idea that mankind could be instrumental in changing the environment was never considered.

Because of concerns of some scientist a study was undertaken in 1979 by members of the National Academy of Science and NASA on the effect of increase carbon dioxide emissions in our atmosphere.   The findings were so startling that President Carter commissioned a special panel led by a distinguished meteorologist from MIT for further study.    In the three decades since the predictions of this panel have come to fruition, but at an accelerated rate.  

There have been hundreds of more peer reviewed studies since, all verifying the results: until at last we can make a definitive statement that the CO-2 in our atmosphere is increasing beyond the predictions of normal climate variation and that the results is an increase in global temperature – and the results are verifiable by visible and measurable observations. 

Starting in 1991 the earth temperatures have exceeded all temperatures recorded since instrumental temperature recording began.   The results are most startling in the Arctic where glaciers are melting at an alarming rate.

As CO-2 increases more of the suns energy is trapped in our atmosphere.   As glacier ice recedes solar energy is absorbed by the ocean causing water temperatures to rise, which results in more glacial recession…   As permafrost melts CO-2 trapped in the ice for millions of years is released into the atmosphere…  Add this to population increase and industrialization of third word countries and the outcome is bleak.  

“Computer models of the earth’s climate suggest that a critical threshold is approaching.   Crossing over it will be easy, crossing back quite likely impossible.”

Elizabeth Kolbert has just released a second book The Sixth Extinction; and I have my name on the reserve list at the local library for when it becomes available. 

Good science – good reading – a good book

the Ol’Buzzard