"Interesting" exchange in the Portland Press Herald......relevant to everyone of us living on this planet.
"This column is a collaboration between a retired engineer and a university student regarding our perceptions of climate change.
Allen Armstrong: As a 75-year-old grandfather, I represent the latest generation responsible for the Earth as it is, to be passed down to Iris, a 20-year-old student, and, later, to the generation of my grandchildren. What sort of stewards have we been? What sort of Earth will we be leaving?
When I was Iris’ age, in 1960, the average temperature of Earth was 1.5 degrees cooler than it is today. Carbon dioxide was 305 parts per million in the atmosphere; it’s now 400.
Fossil fuel emissions are now three times as great. Sea level has risen 7 inches.
THE FUTURE LOOMS
The ocean has become more acidic, coral reefs are dying, we have overfished the oceans and our fertilizer runoff has created dead zones that didn’t exist when I was young. Glaciers are melting. Water supplies are threatened.
If this sort of “stewardship” were to continue during the next 25 years, it doesn’t take much imagination to envision the human misery that will result. Loss of coastal farmland to saltwater intrusion; loss of productivity on the remaining land to rising temperature, drought and pests, and increased dispersion of tropical diseases – all this will cause large-scale migration, with its accompanying conflict."
Continue reading here.
"This column is a collaboration between a retired engineer and a university student regarding our perceptions of climate change.
Allen Armstrong: As a 75-year-old grandfather, I represent the latest generation responsible for the Earth as it is, to be passed down to Iris, a 20-year-old student, and, later, to the generation of my grandchildren. What sort of stewards have we been? What sort of Earth will we be leaving?
When I was Iris’ age, in 1960, the average temperature of Earth was 1.5 degrees cooler than it is today. Carbon dioxide was 305 parts per million in the atmosphere; it’s now 400.
Fossil fuel emissions are now three times as great. Sea level has risen 7 inches.
THE FUTURE LOOMS
The ocean has become more acidic, coral reefs are dying, we have overfished the oceans and our fertilizer runoff has created dead zones that didn’t exist when I was young. Glaciers are melting. Water supplies are threatened.
If this sort of “stewardship” were to continue during the next 25 years, it doesn’t take much imagination to envision the human misery that will result. Loss of coastal farmland to saltwater intrusion; loss of productivity on the remaining land to rising temperature, drought and pests, and increased dispersion of tropical diseases – all this will cause large-scale migration, with its accompanying conflict."
Continue reading here.
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