Now I write this in response to a Gore piece in the NY Times Book section. It is a review of some book written by some non-scientists who envisions another extinction. But Gore in his inimitable style states:
The extra heat is also absorbed in the top layer of the seas, which makes ocean-based storms more destructive. Just before Hurricane Sandy, the area of the Atlantic immediately windward from New York City and New Jersey was up to nine degrees warmer than normal. And just before Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines, the area of the Pacific from which it drew its energy was about 5.4 degrees above average.
Hey, I have been yelling about Hurricanes and New York Harbor for years. It was in the early 1950s that I recall, having lived there, that for three years in a row the harbor came a mile or so inland. So nothing new here, it was just that those summer "cottages" became homes and the City allowed building where frankly there should not have been any. The same for many places on the Jersey Shore. Thus nothing new and people had seen it all before. It will happen again!
Now for the Philippines, I know that area well, It is subject to many Typhoons, the best was the classic Halsey Typhoon which hit late in 1944 just after the Battle of Leyte Gulf, where on the north side is Tacloban. You see when I wrote my book on that battle I interviewed thirty remaining crew members who sailed the much damaged vessel through that second disaster. In Tacloban they just built up to the shore line, in an area know for massive Typhoon impacts. This was State Island all over again.
Thus was this all Global Warming or just a repeat of what humans had seen and were forewarned about. I would consider the latter.
Finally he states:
Despite the evidence that humanity is driving mass extinctions, we have been woefully slow to adopt the necessary measures to solve this global environmental challenge. Our response to the mass extinction — as well as to the climate crisis — is still controlled by a hopelessly outdated view of our relationship to our environment.
I just finished reading a fantastic book on Paleobotany. I would strongly recommend it. The area is one of my night time readings for relaxation. It depicts over 400 Million years of plant evolution over some 5-6Billion years of what we currently know as history. Strange for us now to think that billions is not much after we watch out Federal budget, they spent almost ten billion on broadband in the Stimulus. Well back to Paleobotany. Frankly the extinctions allowed for new species. For almost all of that time we humans were not even capable of being assembled. But new species came and went, it is part of evolution.
Yet the author of the book, Extinction, interviewed in the Independent, focuses solely on animal "extinctions". Extinctions are quite complex. The "extinction" of the dinosaurs allowed the proliferation of the mammals. Yes, us eventually. So was that good or bad. The extinction of the conifers, yes there was such, led to angiosperms, and yet conifers survived. One could say that these extinctions are just part of evolution. Let things just go so far and then try again. Yet to have a real extinction one needs a truly catastrophic event that blocks sunlight or exhausts oxygen or water. Raising the temperature some 6F most likely will not do that. A big asteroid may, flooding Wall Street may not. They will just move across the river, now Bay, to stay dry.
So history has a short time frame and the long time frame. Perhaps understanding the long one will help. You see plants have learned a lot more than us, animals are recent arrivals. Plants use carbon dioxide, the spew oxygen, and it is to them we owe our existence.
I think I will climb over a snow mound and thank my Ginkgoes. Perhaps I will exhale some CO2.
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