Coming Storms

Headlines pile up announcing harsh cataclysmic Earth upheavals on a far too frequent occurrence. Saturday  it's California, a 5.1 earthquake, the first big multiple rumblings there for a while.  Above ground, California's been in the news this year : drought in the lower half triggering forest fires then came super rains which caused land slides. Extra heavy rains in Washington State last week caused a huge slide there which could top out with over 50 casualties. 

Coming east, it's hard to forget the last few summers of tornadoes up and down Tornado Alley. Weekly, if not daily, we all saw the televised news of human desolation resulting from these terrible twisters. Often wrapped in rain these twisters still didn't, to any degree, eliminate the harsh drought ruining anything growing green in the great plains of the west. The northern tier of states experienced one of the coldest, harshest winters in memory.

Sandy dominated weather events in eastern USA these past few years with visible destruction still apparent to the public. The Gulf and the Atlantic are still the giant generators of hurricanes both those weak and manageable and those devastating. 

The Earth, irregardless of public opinion, evolves climate from the elements she has to work with above the ground. While under the Earth's surface results of pushing and shoving by magma and mantel rock cause earthquakes and volcanoes to occur on a regular schedule. 

We, Homo Sapiens, have little chance to shape our Earth under its surface, but above, in the Earth's climate scientists feel Man's involvement with spewing pollutants skyward, most likely, are making huge negative impacts on the World's climate. Storms -snow, wind, rain - seem in the past decade to have intensified in severity proportionate to the accumulated detrimental effects of all particulates Man continues to release to the atmosphere. 

Up there in the atmosphere a crucial day will arrive, that day will be the day of no return. Beyond that day, no matter what we Homo Sapiens do, the climate will react to the accumulated elements which shapes it. All the prayers or sacrifices some zealots could conjure up will only give hollow hope to those who base all life on our Planet thinking Man deemed paramount.

I join with the scientist community in believing that the Earth has been a sphere circling our sun for billions of years evolving both land masses and climate on a continuous basis. For how many years has man walked this Earth leaving nothing but his footprints to show he existed ? Not until he harnessed the use of stored carbon to power an industrial revolution did his existence matter. As I understand, almost all of the impurities sent skyward which has affected our weather since 1900, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, are still floating in our atmosphere, still effecting our climate. What pollution we send up today just adds to all that has accumulated over the last hundred years. 

Blinded as we are with the past, unable to accept what we actually see, unwilling to peer into the future; Man, accumulatively or singularly, is a preservationist. He wants to preserve what he has, wants to preserve the status quo, and wants to, as the monkey does, "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil". But, the hand writing's on the wall and all of those living today are in for a rough ride in future years, I suggest, which is tough to swallow.

Ronald C. Downie