During the 1970's, people started to speculate that the earth and its atmosphere are gradually increasing in temperature and causing the world's climate to change dramatically. This theory has been given the term "Global Warming" and has caused a lot of debate among scientists, politicians, and others over whether or not there is enough information to support it. The problem is that the weather fluctuates and goes through natural cycles, making it difficult to know whether a warm up within the past decade is merely a normal rise before another fall or if it is part of a much bigger change in the world's overall climate. It would be easier to answer that question if there were weather measurements taken throughout the whole of history, but measuring the weather is still a fairly recent development. There are ways to fill in some of the holes in the chart by looking at nature, but it is still not enough to come to a definite conclusion.
Even though the earth's climate is still a great mystery, what we do know as we study history is that hurricanes have tended to follow regular patterns of increases and declines. The following segment on the subject from the USA Today Weather Book seemed to answer some questions:
By the early 1990's, some people were saying that global warming was responsible for an increasing number of hurricanes. But at the same time these ideas were attracting attention, the number of Atlantic Basin hurricanes was in a 30-year decline. Most hurricane researchers and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) don't see any links between global warming and hurricanes.
The argument that global warming could increase the number and strength of hurricanes is based on the idea that the oceans would be warmer. It's true that warm water is an essential ingredient for hurricanes. Also, a hurricane's theoretical strength depends on the contrast in temperature between the warm ocean and the cold stratospheric air at the storm's top. The greater the contrast, the stronger a hurricane can grow. But global warming could change other ingredients, such as the speed and direction of upper-air winds, in ways that could work against hurricanes.
Those of us who study these storms don't buy" warming as the cause of an increase, Gray says. "All we can say now is we can't say much" about how global warming would affect hurricanes. Adds Goldenberg: "The type of slow, gradual, small changes that would be expected from global warming are very different from the kinds of changes we're seeing."
Another article with the same Dr. Gray had more to say about the natural fluctuations that hurricanes seem to follow:
According to hurricane expert Dr. William Gray at Colorado State University, we should see an increase in storm activity over the next 20 years. The storms are expected to cause 5 to 10 times the amount of damage on the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts than previously experienced, due to the massive increase in population and development along these coastlines.
The hurricane activity of the next 20 years should resemble the period that began in the late 1920s and lasted through the 1940s. The increase is due to higher salinity content in the Atlantic Ocean, which alters its currents and increases average ocean temperatures, fueling more storms. Gray emphasizes that this is a cyclical trend and has nothing to do with global warming (CNN, April 22, 2000).
I honestly do not know whether or not global warming is an actual danger and something that we need to spend our time and energy worrying about. Whether it is or not, we should still try our best to take good care of the world that God created and do what we can to not destroy it. However, taking care of that world should not consume us to the point that we begin to fear, and thus worship, nature instead of the One who created it.
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