Thank God, It's Finally Snowing...
There’s nothing like a 50 degree day in the middle of a Wisconsin winter to remind a person of their mortality. Now, granted, I don’t necessarily enjoy the cold, the snow, or the ice, however, being as I live in the Midwest, I realize that bitter cold is something that should be a part of my winter. And so, I find it odd that a warm day in December doesn’t seem to bother anyone else. On days like that, I generally walk around in a daze, desperately trying to ignore what I believe to be true, with a certain well-known R.E.M. song stuck in my head.
How can we be so ignorant as to not see what is happening? Why do we continue driving around in our SUVs and weakening the laws regarding clean air? Is it really only money and status that we are all concerned about? What about our health, the health of our children, the health of our planet?
It's certain that our little planet is slowly getting warmer and warmer. Check out this graph from the EPA:
Notice something of a trend here? The ten warmest years of the 20th Century have all occured in the last fifteen years, 1998 being the warmest on record. Global surface temperatures have increased by 0.5-1.0 degrees since the 19th Century, which doesn't seem like a lot, but has made a difference already. Snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere and floating ice in the Arctic Ocean are decreasing. Sea level has increased 4-8 inches in the past century. Globally, precipitation over land has increased by about 1%.
Scientists expect that in the next fifty years, temperatures could increase up to 4.5 degrees. At the rate we're going, can you imagine how much more it will increase in the fifty years after that?? And in the country that contributes to this phenomenon more than any other on the planet, NOTHING is being done.
It gives me a headache just thinking about all of this. So I'm going to end this real fast here.
Do some of your own research into this, and start thinking about what you can do to help keep this from happening. The main key is something we learned in grade school: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle. And quit buying SUVs, for God's sake... we don't live in the mountains, you don't NEED them!
How can we be so ignorant as to not see what is happening? Why do we continue driving around in our SUVs and weakening the laws regarding clean air? Is it really only money and status that we are all concerned about? What about our health, the health of our children, the health of our planet?
It's certain that our little planet is slowly getting warmer and warmer. Check out this graph from the EPA:
Notice something of a trend here? The ten warmest years of the 20th Century have all occured in the last fifteen years, 1998 being the warmest on record. Global surface temperatures have increased by 0.5-1.0 degrees since the 19th Century, which doesn't seem like a lot, but has made a difference already. Snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere and floating ice in the Arctic Ocean are decreasing. Sea level has increased 4-8 inches in the past century. Globally, precipitation over land has increased by about 1%.
Scientists expect that in the next fifty years, temperatures could increase up to 4.5 degrees. At the rate we're going, can you imagine how much more it will increase in the fifty years after that?? And in the country that contributes to this phenomenon more than any other on the planet, NOTHING is being done.
It gives me a headache just thinking about all of this. So I'm going to end this real fast here.
Do some of your own research into this, and start thinking about what you can do to help keep this from happening. The main key is something we learned in grade school: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle. And quit buying SUVs, for God's sake... we don't live in the mountains, you don't NEED them!
