Well said. I think actually our lines of thought are not all that different.
Anecdotally, on the east coast we have observed a similar shift in the seasons - cooler, longer springs, and warmer, later autumns.
We east-coasters are keeping our eye on the potential for ocean warming to allow formation of tropical storms (including hurricanes) of greater intensity due to rising ocean temperatures.
Here is a good website link that explains what is happening:
https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warmin...te-change.html
Essentially they are saying that the world's oceans are absorbing much of the excess heat energy and that the phenomenon is more pronounced in the North Atlantic. The rising ocean temperatures allow storms to become more intense, causing greater damage when they make landfall. To further complicate this, the increases in population in coastal cities are increasing the financial cost of the hurricanes. As well, storm surge is exacerbated by (slightly) rising ocean levels. Although the frequency of storms is not expected to increase, the intensity is, which when combined with the other factors, increases their effects on our society. It's not simplistic in the least, and then to correctly interpret the data you also have to consider the variability of storm activity from year to year and the fact that technology to collect the amount of data needed was not available a hundred years ago - which meant that they had to use computer modeling to help interpret what data they did have from long ago.
Very complicated, not easy to explain, and enough 'gray area' and lack of understanding by the masses to allow the extremists on either side to sow doubt and slant the argument in their direction.
As an aside, one of the factors that struck me about the polar bear situation is that ice has a threshold for existence: 0°C. So, hypothetically, if the average polar temperature started at -100°C and steadily rose 0.1°C per year, there could be a 1000 year period where, to the casual observer, nothing has changed. Then, once the 'change of state' threshold is reached, it could disappear (hypothetically) very quickly. The casual observer would likely not understand that this isn't something that just happened... it was happening for centuries. Now if the trend was for the amount of temperature increase to likewise increase, it could happen even more quickly.
So therefore, if ocean temperatures continue to rise, it is easily believable that the threshold of ice existing year-round at the poles could be unsustainable, perhaps with ice building up over the winter months but completely melting in the summer months. I'm not sure if any of us truly understand what effect that would have on the polar bear population, nor all the other species who have adapted to living in ice conditions over several thousands of years. The bears are just one species, but each species affects other species, and so on.
In a sense we decide, based on the needs of human society, which extinctions we can live with and when we can't. Would we be affected negatively if polar bears disappeared from the earth (that's 'if'... I want to be clear)? Maybe not, as we don't appear to depend on their survival for our food supply or some other environmental benefit, but it's still a loss (at the very least, from a scientific or ecological point of view).
Looking at it in a different light, if humans disappeared from the planet for whatever reason, the planet would continue to survive - things would change, some life forms would adapt, some would thrive, some might not do as well. From the viewpoint of other species, many wouldn't be affected negatively, and many more would possibly thrive without human activity affecting their living situation.
It's a strange philosophical viewpoint, for sure, but it illustrates that it's all about perspective - people care about stuff that affects people... other stuff, not so much. And so it goes on...
(Sorry for the ramble... just adding my 2¢.)
Prev
Linear Mode
