So what happened on Venus to make it
such a biblical hell? Scientists, astronomers, and the like blame it on a
runaway greenhouse effect. The same sort of thing that's beginning to happen on
home-sweet-home Mother Earth right now, with this thing called climate change.
The greenhouse effect is a natural occurring
thing in which some gases in the air have been safeguarding the existence of
life on Earth, to make it livable. Not to mention without oxygen in the
atmosphere, none of us could breath, and without an atmosphere, things would
get very hot and very cold on Earth on a daily basis everywhere -- just depending
on where you're situated in relation to the sun. And without an atmosphere all the water on earth - very essential to any life here - would dry up and float up, up and away.
Simply put, by pouring a lot of extra noxious poisonous gases
into the atmosphere we've succumbed to a man-made 'alternative' atmosphere
that is evolving more and more every single day. And these gases are responsible for the volatile and oftentimes violent weather we've been
experiencing. Now this is a very simplistic view of the climate-change theory -- sort of a Climate Change for Dummies -- but without
getting too fancy, scientific or esoteric, that's climate change in a nutshell.
Yes, in a nutshell: Just add a lot of gases into the atmosphere that really don't belong there and what-da-'ya-know, it's almost like you've got a completely different atmosphere evolving. Or a drastically altered atmosphere that's becoming more like a stuffed-up methamphetamine lab than a greenhouse. Now before you write this all off as just some primitive writing by a simpleton, turn on the TV and see where the big natural disaster is today -- I know there's one somewhere. There's been one every day for years on end now. And if there isn't a big natural disaster on right now, you can hold your breath until the next one hits, because chances are, it'll be here before you become completely oxygen deficient and you die.
*********
The latest study from the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change predicts that most regions of the world will soon witness
a variety of negative effects of global warming. And I don't think they're talking
about the regular onslaught of garden-variety monsoons, the regular fusillade of
tornados (sometimes dozens in one day in one area), or the gargantuan wildfires ongoing in two or
three of many drought-soaked regions - burning houses, trees, wildly scurrying wild animals, and everything else in their paths.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is predicting that the climate will change for good, for keeps, forever. And once it's changed, how will humankind bring it back to how it was in the good old days? Like before the Industrial Revolution and before humankind's insidious addiction to fossil fuels?
It's not too late yet. As stark and sobering
as things may seem (turn on the TV and see if something else developed somewhere
since you began reading this little ditty); no, the worst -- the 'tipping point' --
isn't destined to arrive until 2020.
Researchers
at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who sought to project this 'tipping point' for 54,000 locations, have anticipated that we haven't seen nothing yet -- when temperatures get hot, hot, hotter-than-a-pepper sprout in the
tropical regions of the Earth -- creating temps that are actually so hot that
they are a threat to life.
That's when we're really on the hot plate. That's the real 'tipping point'. Never
mind the polar ice caps melting. Forget about adopting a poor polar bear for
the time being. When it gets so horribly hot around the equator that life is threatened, that's what's been actually deemed as 'the tipping point'. Then it's time to adopt a parrot.
Whew! We're not at the tipping point! Aren't you relieved?
According to U H at M researchers, the transition
would occur by 2020 in Manokwari, Indonesia; by 2023 in Kingston, in the
Caribbean; by 2029 in Lagos; by 2047 in Washington; by 2066 in Reykjavik; and
by 2071 in Anchorage, Alaska (see: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2013/10/10/environment/earths-climate-change-tipping-point-to-start-in-2020-new-model-predicts/#.U3uninZsIdU
).
"The boundary of passing from the climate of the past to the climate of the future really happens surprisingly soon," said Christopher Field, director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science, who was not part of the research team but has read the study, published in the journal Nature.
"Researchers
said at a news briefing that their estimates are 'conservative,' based on
mountains of data from 39 different models and accurate within five years in
either direction for any of the locations they studied.
"Although
scientific research shows more warming occurs nearer Earth's poles -- and the
melting of Arctic ice sheets is the iconic image of a warming planet -- the
tropics are especially vulnerable because even a small change in climate will
affect a wide range of species. It is also alarming because the area around the
equator is home to billions of people in poor nations with fewer resources to
help them cope.
"The
past three decades have been the hottest since 1850, according to the panel --
established by the United Nations -- which added that warming and sea-level rise
will continue through the 21st century." (entire italicized excerpt is taken
from ibid, [http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2013/10/10/environment/earths-climate-change-tipping-point-to-start-in-2020-new-model-predicts/#.U3uninZsId]).
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