Once again I would highly suggest reading Hot, Flat, and Crowded because it is so jam-packed with facts and I cannot do it justice. Last week someone commented on my blog post wondering how global warming is so prevalent when places like Minnesota are seeing progressively colder winters. Luckily for him that is just what I finished reading in my book. It is important that these naïve people are shown that global warming isn’t just warming, but as Thomas Friedman calls it “Global Weirding.” He cites one of his friends John Holdren who states,
It is affecting a wide array of critically important climactic phenomena besides temperature, including precipitation, humidity, soil moisture, atmospheric circulation patterns, storms, snow and ice cover, and ocean currents and upwellings… A more accurate, albeit more cumbersome, title than ‘global warming’ is ‘global climactic disruption’ (Friedman 134).
Basically global warming isn’t just warming, but many other factors that can cause great harm. We all remember the destruction hurricane Katrina left in its path; can the U.S. take more frequent and stronger versions of that? That is just one example, however, Friedman takes a story from CNN.com about the weird weather in 2007,
Four monsoon depressions, double the normal number, caused heavy flooding in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh… England and Wales have experienced their wettest May-to-July period since record-keeping started in 1766… An unusual clod southern winter brought wind, blizzards and rare snowfall to various parts of South America, with temperatures reaching as low as 7 degrees blow zero Fahrenheit… in Argentina… South Africa had its first significant snowfall since 1981, as almost 10 inches… fell (Friedman 134).
So obviously it isn’t just warming that is affecting our planet, but rather many different factors. Furthermore you can tell something has gone wrong when places like South Africa gets almost a foot of snow. Some places will get warmer and places will get colder.
Later, Friedman argues that we need to do more to help maintain our biodiversity, …mindlessly degrading the natural world the way we have been is no different than a bird degrading its own nest, a fox degrading its own den… The scale of biodiversity loss happening today is having global impacts… we can’t keep doing that and assume that we will repair it (153).
I completely agree with what he says; I know it is easy to forget all the other living things in the world because we have all of our own problems, but we cannot ignore them. Species are rapidly becoming extinct because of our actions. If we want a clean Earth that is full of unique creatures than we need to start making some changes.
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5 comments:
Wow, I was right along with that student that believed that global warming was only just the earth...warming. I had no idea that some of those things were even occuring; the fact the South America was getting snow?! Great blog post, very informative.
Woah!
I never knew any of that information about global warming!! It's very interesting that there are so many facts on it but how does one know that they are all true? Is global warming a fact? or an just a theory?
If it's a fact, then you blog is chalk full of good information!
Not to be the annoying person who discounts all that you say, but South America is at the same latitude as the majority of Europe, as we learned in AP World, so their climates should be similar, we aren't surprised when we see snow in Europe, so why are we surprised when it falls in South Africa? Once again, all your facts showed how the world was indeed becoming weirder, but weirder in a colder sense. Anyways, the post was good, and it's unfortunate that your information is being called global warming when it is clearly global cooling. You still haven't made a true response to my critique from last week.
I agree with chris tha it's unfortunate that people keep calling is global warming when it's technically global climate change. Your post was informative and interesting! great job!
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