Global Warming's Chilling Consequences

You might think I, a native of the tropics, would welcome some warming in the cool rain forest around Helen Gone. Some of my neighbors do, if they don't deny the mounting evidence outright.

“Climate change” is a better term for local effects of global warming, which are not and won't be uniform. Here in Oregon's Coast Range, experts and computer models predict increased precipitation and slightly higher average temperatures.

“More rain? Around here, who'd notice?” asked my friend Harry Mossback the other day. “A little warmer? Bring it on!”

Others, like restaurateuse Cheese Louise, worry less about a climate shift than the influx of Californians it could spur. “But that's nothing an open season couldn't fix,” she recently assured me, “along with some dynamite in the passes. Boat people shouldn't be much trouble, this far inland.”

“No need for violence,” her friend Mystic Mama put in. “Those Bambi Wiccans bring their little white magic up here, I'll teach 'em The Real Thing and scare 'em back to California.”

It is comforting to think our wet neck of the woods might ride out the change so pleasantly. More organic farming, a strong trend already, would feed us well even if the outside world fell apart. Still, as a world traveler I can't help considering the bigger picture, and I monitor www.sciencedaily.com – one good place to start checking facts.

As ocean temperatures have risen since the 1980s, Arctic and Antarctic ice packs have been shrinking along with most of Earth's glaciers. In Greenland, covered with enough frozen water to raise sea levels at least 20 feet, the rate of melting keeps accelerating.

Western Europe and eastern North America are warmed by the Gulf Stream, one of the “global conveyor” currents that distribute the oceans' heat around the world. As it cools on the surface of the North Atlantic, Gulf Stream water gets denser and sinks before flowing south again, helping drive the oceanic heat pump. Adding too much fresh water from melted glaciers would reduce surface density, slowing or stopping the stream's sinking while diminishing or halting its flow.

In fact the Gulf Stream's flow has been diminishing in recent years. Without its warmth, within very few years the lands around the North Atlantic could be plunged into another “little ice age” like the one that ended in the 1800s – even as warming continues elsewhere.

Meanwhile Earth's orbit is slowly growing more elliptical as part of a roughly 100,000-year cycle. Our planet will receive a bit less sunlight for the next few thousand years than for the last few thousand, being on average a little farther from the sun. That could bring back the major ice ages that dominated Earth's climates during most of the last million years.

Could stopping the Gulf Stream trigger a major ice age even sooner? No one really knows, but I hope not.

Western Europe and eastern North America produce so much of the greenhouse gases warming the oceans, some might see poetic justice in their being the first to face returning glaciers. Personally, I'd miss imported Guinness Stout and The Daily Show.

I'd also hate to see the current wave of species extinctions accelerate as climate change destroys ever more ecological niches. But maybe it's all just a great conspiracy by millions of scientists around the world to scare us into boosting their collective grant funds.

Last time I went to town, there was a sign of the times hanging in the front window of Cheeses of Nazareth. It said, “NOW SERVING VELVEETA,” and under those words someone had scrawled, “due to global warming.”

It's good to know that some of us, at least, take the threat seriously. I'd stock up cases of Guinness, but it just doesn't keep that well -- even on ice. ;->

copyright 2009 CE by Harry Heyoka

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarryHeyoka