"We have to," he replied impatiently. "We only get one chance every seventeen years
to reproduce; if conditions have changed too greatly for that to happen, then,
well, it's game over for us!"
"I do know," I began, more
sympathetically, "that scientists expect the Arctic Ocean to be ice-free in
summers. Glaciers will be melting around
the world, especially in our Glacier National Park. The oceans will warm and Greenland will
continue to calf its ice sheets at an increasingly rapid rate."
"I'm talking local," my guest
replied, and he flapped an iridescent wing on his inch long body to point out
the adjoining area.
"On a warming planet--and it will
probably be about a half degree warmer--all our weather conditions are
interconnected. What's happening in the
Arctic, doesn't stay in the Arctic. It
influences the flow of the jet stream around the planet," and I took a sip of
my still warm coffee from the side of the cup my guest hadn't landed on.
"The energy we use to warm our
coffee," and I held up my cup, "build our houses and run our cars" and I
pointed to the two vehicles in the driveway, "comes from fossil fuels that have
been buried underground for many millions of years."
At this he flew up and landed on my
arm to be closer to my face. "Let's get
to the point," he interrupted. "I
haven't got a lot of time. As I said at the start, I'm here to find out what I
should pass on to future generations of cicadas--what conditions will be like in
seventeen, thirty-four, fifty-one years."
"Different," I replied right away to
give me time to think the situation over.
I added that while the entire planet would be, on average, only slightly
warmer, human fossil fuel emissions were adding so much heat to the system that
extreme weather events--floods, droughts, storms--would be more frequent.
"How's it that one species, even
humans, can add heat?"
Explaining climate science to a Brood
II cicada was far more challenging than communicating it to my fellow humans.
"We add the energy contained in four
Hiroshima size bombs to our planet every second," I said before realizing he
didn't have a clue what a Hiroshima was.
"The gases we put up in the atmosphere trap some of the heat from the
sun and keep it from escaping to space," I said, attempting to speak his
language.
"Ah, the sun. We worship it. We see it once every seventeen years. We look forward to its heat." I was glad he understood that much.
"But we can trap too much of a good
thing," I assured him.
"Why do you do it?"
"We use energy to produce all the
stuff we've been talking about," I said and reminded him of where our
discussion had started. "Warming the
planet is a byproduct."
"Like littering?" he asked.
"Exactly," I replied.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
