-Caveat Lector-
It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people
believe is true.
-- Paul Watson, founder of Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd
~~for educational purposes only~~
[Title 17 U.S.C. section 107]
The Cooling World
There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather
patterns have begun to change dramatically and
that these changes may portend a drastic decline
in food production with serious political
implications for just about every nation on
Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite
soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions
destined to feel its impact are the great
wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R.
in the North, along with a number of marginally
self-sufficient tropical areas parts of India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and
Indonesia where the growing season is dependent
upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has
now begun to accumulate so massively that
meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with
it. In England, farmers have seen their growing
season decline by about two weeks since 1950,
with a resultant overall loss in grain production
estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During
the same time, the average temperature around
the equator has risen by a fraction of a
degree a fraction that in some areas can mean
drought and desolation. Last April, in the most
devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded,
148 twisters killed more than 300 people and
caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage
in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents
represent the advance signs of fundamental changes
in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree
about the cause and extent of the trend, as well
as over its specific impact on local weather
conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the
view that the trend will reduce agricultural
productivity for the rest of the century. If the
climatic change is as profound as some of the
pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be
catastrophic. "A major climatic change would force
economic and social adjustments on a worldwide
scale," warns a recent report by the National
Academy of Sciences, "because the global patterns
of food production and population that have evolved
are implicitly dependent on the climate of
the present century."
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell
of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground
temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945
and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia
University, satellite photos indicated a sudden,
large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in
the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last
month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount
of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental
U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in
temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading.
Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points
out that the Earth's average temperature during the
great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower
than during its warmest eras and that the present
decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the
way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the
cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age"
conditions that brought bitter winters to much of
Europe and northern America between 1600 and
1900 years when the Thames used to freeze so
solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice
and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost
as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice
ages remains a mystery. "Our knowledge of the
mechanisms of climatic change is at least as
fragmentary as our data," concedes the National
Academy of Sciences report. "Not only are the basic
scientific questions largely unanswered, but in
many cases we do not yet know enough to pose
the key questions."
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the
short-term results of the return to the norm of
the last century. They begin by noting the slight
drop in overall temperature that produces large
numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere.
These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds
over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced
in this way causes an increase in extremes of
local weather such as droughts, floods, extended
dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and
even local temperature increases all of which
have a direct impact on food supplies.
"The world's food-producing system," warns Dr.
James D. McQuigg of NOAA's Center for Climatic
and Environmental Assessment, "is much more
sensitive to the weather variable than it was
even five years ago." Furthermore, the growth
of world population and creation of new national
boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples
to migrate from their devastated fields, as they
did during past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political
leaders will take any positive action to compensate
for the climatic change, or even to allay its
effects. They concede that some of the more
spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting
the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot
or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems
far greater than those they solve. But the
scientists see few signs that government leaders
anywhere are even prepared to take the simple
measures of stockpiling food or of introducing
the variables of climatic uncertainty into
economic projections of future food supplies.
The longer the planners delay, the more difficult
will they find it to cope with climatic change
once the results become grim reality.
FROM Newsweek -- April 28, 1975
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