THE NEXT ADDED 100 MILLION AMERICANS: PART 7

By Frosty Wooldridge, www.newswithviews.com

January 8, 2007

THE NEXT ADDED 100 MILLION AMERICANS

Part 8: B-Global warming via tipping points

By Frosty Wooldridge

You may argue, rant and become indignant about whether or not global warming manifests across the globe, but it won’t do you any good if what the scientists tell us, is, in fact, true.

However, if you think the next added 100 million Americans as well as the next 2.1 billion people added to the planet by 2040 aren’t having an effect on, or there is no such thing as global warming, forget the second part of this portion and wait until next week for “Part 8” on food production in America.

In this section, we discuss “tipping points” as they relate to global warming. What is a tipping point? Last weekend, the San Diego Chargers fell behind three touchdowns and a field goal late in the third quarter. They didn’t stand a chance of winning. But a pass here, a run there, and a touchdown, then an interception led to a tipping point where their momentum smashed their opponents and by the end of the fourth quarter, the Chargers made a last minute score that won the game.

Things ran smoothly with the planet in 1900, but then the internal combustion engine arrived on the scene. Nothing much happened with 76 million Americans and 1.6 billion humans around the planet. They burned whale oil, coal and wood. But today, with billions of cars and 6.5 billion humans burning billions of gallons of gas, fuel oil, natural gas, wood and coal, these become the factors in the “tipping point” of planetary imbalances.

History shows that scientific advances suffered scurrilous opposition by people who might benefit. The pope persecuted Galileo for saying the earth revolved around the sun. Church leaders denounced Harvey for claiming blood circulated through the body instead of standing still. Newspapers branded Louis Pasteur a quack for his germ theory. Everyone ‘knew’ the Wright brothers couldn’t get that new fangled flying machine into the air.

This week, I presented my program, “THE COMING POPULATION CRISIS IN AMERICA: AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT,” to a fine group of gentlemen in Denver, Colorado. No one blinked during the 30 minute program. They asked if the DVD video was available. I told them it would be ready on my web site by November 30, 2006. However, at the end, two men walked up and told me never to speak about global warming because they didn’t want to hear about it because it was patently untrue. I felt the same gut reaction as Galileo, Pasteur, Lindbergh and Harvey probably suffered.

Again, distinguished science adviser at Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the United Kingdom, John Schellnhuber cited a study whereby Americans fall into “interpretive communities” that share similar world views. On one end of the spectrum, you’ve got naysayers who, “Perceive climate change as nonexistent. They are predominantly white, male, politically conservative, holding pro-individualism, pro-hierarchism, anti-environmental, carrying highly religious paradigms and rely on radio as their main news source.”

On the other side, you’ve got the alarmists. In the middle, you see measured and reasoned researchers. Me? I’m an educator and messenger. You can use this information and go to the web sites provided, or you can blow it off. To a large degree, our media, which corporations control, brings you bloody killing stories from Iraq, but squashes news about 80 degree days in November in Colorado or dead zones reaching thousands of square miles in our oceans. As I’ve said in the past, it’s Mark Twain’s famous statement about ‘silent-assertion’ being the shabbiest of all lies—perpetrated by politicians and the media.

To give you an example, the media reports the latest mass killings in Iraq or Jennifer Anniston’s latest heartbreak, but it won’t tell you about the ozone hole expanding over Antarctica. It’s another one of the tipping points.

“We hear about the connection between ozone depletion, skin cancers and cataracts, but little about the fact that increased ultraviolet radiation will destroy oxygen producing phytoplankton (80% of our oxygen comes from them). Without them turning sunlight into organic life, none of us would be or will be here.”

Phytoplanktons create counter weights to another tipping point which is the Antarctic Circumpolar Current which circulates 34 billion gallons of water around Antarctica every second.

“When phytoplanktons die, they sink, taking the oxygen load with them to the bottom of the ocean. Global warming slows the nutrient upwelling, affecting the phytoplankton populations in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans,” Schellnhuber said. “As the oceans affect the atmosphere, the land affects the oceans. Warming will shrink the Sahara by increasing rainfall. A greener Sahara will emit less airborne desert dust to seed the oceans and feed the plankton, which in turn suppresses hurricane formations to fertilize the carbon dioxide eating trees of the Amazon. Hardly a neighborhood on earth will look the same if Africa tips.”

In nature’s dance, everything plays its part, whether water, land, air or fire. The more we offset the natural cycles, the greater our price. Nature rearranges herself with ruthless dexterity when we create imbalances. For example: Katrina!

“The source of Tibet’s thunderstorms is the Asian monsoon, which drives moisture up the Himalayas,” Schellnhuber said. “A warming climate could either weaken or strengthen the monsoon. Either effect is potentially catastrophic for more than half the world’s population adapted to and reliant on the monsoon. This is another tipping point.”

What we’re doing to our planet home is described by Garrett Hardin as the paradox of the “Tragedy of the Commons.” As to the use of the land, i.e., our planetary resources, if an altruist and a cheater go one-on-one, the cheater wins consistently, but in the end, everyone loses. You might call the many facets or “tipping points” of global warming as the growing common denominators of the “Tragedy of the Commons.”

“In the end, this recent melting may be caused by the Antarctic Oscillation a kind of on/off switch affecting pressure gradients in the Southern Hemisphere,” Julia Whitty reported. “The cooler stratosphere caused by the ozone hole produces weather changes at ground level now threatening to turn Antarctica’s icescape into a continent swallowing seascape. In less than 200 years, armed with fossil fuel burning, humans donned the acrobat’s tights, wrested hold of the spinning plates and initiated their own wobbly circus. Nature, impassive and potent, waits to reward or punish us.”

The final “tipping points” affecting our planet consist of our destroying the Amazon rainforests which cascade into changing the North Atlantic current, melting the Greenland ice sheet, destroying the ozone layer, disrupting the Circumpolar Current, changing precipitation on the Tibetan Plateau, affecting Asian monsoons, increasing methane clathrates, changing salinity valves, offsetting El Nino, and liquefying the West Antarctic ice sheet.

What can change our fate? Who or what is the antidote to global warming? What is the 13th tipping point back toward planetary balance?

You! You and your actions! Your actions combined with everyone as knowledgeable as you! Everything you do, counts! Gandhi marched for freedom. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of his “dream” for equality. Susan B. Anthony marched for suffrage for women. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. Go to (http://www.stopglobalwarming.org) for more ideas on how you can take action. You possess every gift of all your heroes. Common citizens with uncommon determination change the course of history. The next president of the United States might be another Teddy Roosevelt, Lincoln, Jefferson or Madison.

We’ve all got a stake in the outcome. Let’s get busy!

“The 13th tipping point is humanity changing back to a balanced interaction with earth that will allow our planet home to support all life in perpetuity.” Sandra Lynn

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