Why should I be so concerned about global warming? I’ll be six feet under if
major catastrophic changes decide the world’s fate, too late for me and too
late for people finally waking up to the threat. Expect for scientists,
climatologists and a small percentage of ordinary folks, the rest take the
danger in their stride, naively believing that somebody or something will solve
this problem. Maybe it will be robotics or storm management or some miraculous
invention to save the planet. Hasn’t every doomsday scenario in history been
resolved up too now with some silver bullet! Believe it folks, we are now
living in a new normal and it’s not the ‘We Movement’. It is the environment
and the weather that is moving in the wrong direction.
Despite a colder than usual fall in Canada, the world has experienced a
summer of hell with extreme temperatures. The northern hemisphere sweltered
under record setting heat, a dress-rehearsal of what is to come, the weather
experts proclaim. Extreme temperatures were felt around the globe. “Japan
struggled with a deadly heatwave. Death Valley had its highest recorded
temperature in 102 years. Montreal saw 70 heat-related deaths, British Columbia
experienced its worst fire season and two brief thunderstorms
caused widespread flooding in Toronto, all because we’re under a global
heat fever,” said David Phillips of Environment Canada. He added, “The effects
of extreme temperatures are and will be felt around the globe. The planet is
going through aglobal heatwave.”
There’s another jolt in the forecast. Odds-makers predict that 2019 will be
even hotter. In fact, it will likely be the hottest summer in recorded history,
partly because an El Nino effect will amp up the extreme weather — already
made worse by climate change. This is ghastly for me especially since I am
allergic to the sun because of a thyroid condition. Canada Day was a scorcher
too and an extreme heat alert for the area was issued. Those volunteers that
barbecued chickens outside the Community Hall were frying as much as those poor
chickens were.
This past summer I only went outdoors if it was overcast or raining and
there wasn’t much of that. For the Tour de Whitewater cycling event, a week
later, another boiler-maker. For the first time I wasn’t disappointed that I
had never taken up cycling. I’m already dreading this coming summer and winter
has barely begun.
Is the Effects of Global Warming Really that Bad? The short answer is “Yes”.
If the world gets warmer by one more degree Celsius, it is screwed. In a
seemingly toothless effort, the United Nations signed the Paris Agreement, an
international treaty designed to keep the average global temperature less than
two degrees above pre-industrial levels (what the Earth was like before
factories started spewing greenhouse gases into the air). At the current rates,
we are headed for “the danger zone” to adjust around the year 2030. A
degree or so at first glance might seem inconsequential, a modest uptick in the
temperature scale. But climate scientists warn that in an increasingly warming
world, this uptick in fact represents a crucial tipping point.
Even this seemingly slight average temperature rise is enough to cause a
dramatic transformation of our earth, one that is already becoming apparent for
every ecosystem and living thing, it will mean the earth is on course for the
start of a sixth mass extinction of life mainly due to the amount of carbon
being pumped into the atmosphere.
Then there is the flip side where futurists (I call them pop-scientists)
predict the next century will seem like science fiction compared to now; the
internet being mounted in one’s contact lens and driverless cars flying in the
air as well. Doctor’s will be able to grow ‘spare parts’ to significantly extend
life span. Molecular “smart bombs” circulating in one’s blood will home in on
and kill cancer cells and destroy them, years before they become a problem. And
in the event things don’t turn out as anticipated , there is the far-out theory
of packaging the human genome in tiny capsules and sending millions of them
into space in hopes that one might take root, seeding human life on a distant
planet.
The robot industry will dwarf the size of the current automobile industry.
Robots will be everywhere, performing dangerous and tedious tasks. They will
have emotions too. There could even be a space elevator to permit tourists to
soar into outer space. By the end of this century there will be a small outpost
established on Mars.
I for sure, will never know what the future holds in 80 years but for sake
of children and ones yet to be born, I wish them the best. But it will take
more than hope for the world to survive as we know it.
