05/20/06
It’s time for us to wake up
OUTDOORS COLUMN BY RICK BROCKWAY
Our earth is like a giant alarm clock.
The time of awakening has arrived, but all we do is keep pressing the snooze button. By keeping our eyes closed, everything will just have to wait until we’re ready to get up.
Well, maybe it’s too late. The bell just continues to ring.
I’m not sure how many of you watched the documentary on television a few weeks ago about the polar bear and the shrinking ice cap. Whether it’s what we have named "global warming" or just the natural cycle of the earth, the great white bears are in trouble.
And so are we.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]Polar bears feed on seals as they constantly travel across the frozen Arctic ice. The trouble is that within about 50 years, there won’t be enough ice to sustain them. The polar bear is rapidly wandering into extinction.
A few years ago, my wife and I went to Alaska for our 10th anniversary. One of the places we visited was Portage Glacier on the Kenai Peninsula. It was a rainy, cloudy day, but we could see the large ice flow and the small chunks of ancient ice that float in the melting water. Now, 11 years later, viewing of Portage Glacier is a thing of the past. It has receded from sight.
It’s not just Alaska and the Arctic, either. Glaciers all over the world are melting away.
We visited Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana about three years ago. There, too, global warming is slowly melting away the ice-filled mountain passes. The white-capped peaks will be gone in a century or so.
I just read an article in the May issue of Men’s Journal magazine. The European Alps are facing the same threat.
"Between 1980 and 2000, the Alps shed 25 percent of their entire glacial cover; that followed a 50 percent decline since 1850."
If glaciers have receded more than half since the mid 1800s, the industrial revolution and the increased use of fossil fuels since haven’t helped. Let’s face it, the earth is constantly changing, but man is surely speeding up the process with its population explosion and ever-increasing industrialization.
The highest mountain in Africa is also losing its signature white crown. Ernest Hemingway wrote in his story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" of death and dying. The mountain is doing just that.
The mighty mountain’s glaciers are receding like those in the rest of the world. Kilimanjaro was originally mapped in 1912. Since then, only 20 percent of the icy top remains, and no new snow is accumulating. Global warming and the deforestation of the land at the mountain’s base are blamed for the rapid melt.
Much like acid rain, nothing is being done to slow the process.
Unrestricted manufacturing and industrialized growth in third world and other emerging countries add to the problem. Our own dependence on fossil fuels remains unchecked.
When I grew up, we had winter from late October until mid-April. This year, we didn’t even have enough snow to call it winter. I plowed the driveway twice and used my skis once.
It is a more complex problem than just the melting of snow and ice. As the earth’s ice melts, the oceans rise. It is expected that the oceans’ levels will rise three feet by the year 2100.
Since the majority of the earth’s population live in close proximity to water, there are going to be some changes in the future.
Aren’t there?
The bell tolls, the alarm still rings, and yet, nobody wants to reach over to shut it off.
Rick Brockway writes a weekly outdoors column for The Daily Star. E-mail him at robrockway@hotmail.com.
