Life Is Adaptable
Is that a smile or a smirk on Al Gore’s face? He is lounging in a comfortable recliner in his million dollar, air-conditioned home as he reads his news magazine.
The article he just read was about the public schools in Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania and elsewhere canceling classes because of the heat. He was gloating just a bit as he thought, “I warned them about this global warming, but they did not listen. They would not quit all of that polluting that is going to burn this old earth to a crisp.”
What a shame that he did not read a little further in his magazine. What he would have found there would make anyone who looks beyond his computer screen think, “Hey!, look, history is repeating itself again.”
An article on the page after the news about the school closings may have been about the current reappearance of the Hunger Stones.
You may not know about the Hunger Stones because they are not seen very often. These huge stones in the bed of the Elbe River in Europe are normally under water. They can be seen only during prolonged hot, dry droughts.
When they are out there hot and dry, food crops are not maturing and people are starving and dying from other effects of the drought.
Six hundred years ago in the 16th Century, some German with knowledge of the history of the stones chiseled into one of them, “When you see me, Cry!”
Could he have been reflecting the reaction of Europeans of that long ago century to the global warming of the time?
Then, if he read on a little further, he would find, “But researchers now think they have identified the real culprit: a crippling, decades-long drought…. They calculated that the area experienced a 50% decrease in annual precipitation from 800 to 1,000 A.D. and that over some periods, rainfall declined by up to 70%. ‘A climate change was a driving force of the downfall,’…” (The Week, 8/31/18, page 20)
This climate phenomenon was not causing the Hunger Stones to become visible in the Elbe River. It occurred half way around the earth and caused the disappearance of the Mayan civilization on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Now go back another 5,000 years to Kenya, a spot midway between the Elbe River and the Yucatan Peninsula. Archaeologists studying an ancient cemetery there report, “As a result of their social cohesion, the herders thrived at a time of major change in the region’s climate, when rising temperatures and droughts depleted food sources.” (The Week, 9/7/18, Page 20)
How could this be? Al Gore and his cohorts seem to be totally unaware of this history. Ignoring the evidence of the repeated cycles of catastrophic droughts, they shake their fingers at us mortals and cry, “You are causing this unparralled heat. You are causing it by consuming and burning too much carbon fuels. If you do not spend trillions of dollars to get out of the clutches of the carbon economy, you are going to burn the earth to a cinder.”
But here is indisputable evidence that there was searing heat and droughts 500, 1,000, and 5,000 years ago. This was way before hungry humans were polluting the air with smoke belching factories and gasoline burning automobiles.
There is no question that we are entering another extremely hot, dry period. It is a repeat of what the earth has gone through many, many times before in its very long history.
What caused those earlier heat waves and what ended them is not known. It is reasonable to conclude, however, that they are just routine climate cycles that will cool somewhere down the line.
Life though is adaptable. Humans have learned to cover themselves with heavy coats and animals add more fur when it gets cold. Today, as it heats up, humans have developed air conditioning which those schools up north may want to consider and animals head for water and shade.
So here’s the perspective.
It is getting hot. It may get real hot and dry as it has repeatedly done through the centuries.
So, Al Gore et al, turn on your air conditioner, prepare for those floods that frequently come with heat waves, and thank our President for saving us billions of dollars by pulling out of that international climate change treaty.
enough
