I’m a self-confessed climate change denier. I’ve written on the subject several times in the local newspaper.
But a November 2 article in the Washington Post has caused me to reassess. The article was titled “Arctic Ocean Getting Warm---Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.” It’s not too long, so I quote it here:
“The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the [Norwegian] Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
“Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
“Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones…well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish were found…while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.”
Based on the Washington Post article, it seems likely the sea levels will rise and costal cities will become uninhabitable. Or maybe the entire planet. Scary stuff.
Oh, wait a moment! The Washington Post article was published November 2, 1922.
Yes, the climate is changing. It has been doing so for millennia. It likely was hotter when our planet hosted the dinosaurs. After that there were ice ages. It was warm enough for the Romans to grow wine grapes in England---then came the post-Renaissance mini-ice age.
The point is that climate is cyclical. As are apocalyptic predictions. For example: A couple of decades ago an extended drought caused a dramatic drop in Lake Tahoe’s water level. “Experts” predicted it would take the surface level a century to return to its normal elevation. But it achieved its normal elevation in a single snow season.
The sky is not falling. Take a chill.
