Global warming is here
As a kid growing up in Southwestern Pennsylvania, I can remember my parents talking about the Flood of 1936. Water covered the entire downtown section of Pittsburgh and flooding was widespread.
In 1950, we had the Big Snow. I was just a kid but I remember it well. In 1972, Hurricane Agnes produced widespread flooding to much of the area and once again water covered the point in downtown Pittsburgh. Back then we lived with some pretty horrific air pollution. Smog filled our valleys and was a danger to health. Turn on your phone or television today and the news is constant about weather disasters; pictures of tornadoes tearing through neighborhoods, fires chasing people from their home and, of course, more flooding here in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Are there really more of these events or is it that everyone has a camera phone and weather events are more easily captured these days?
I just finished a class at the University of Pittsburgh this spring on global climate change and the evidence is pretty strong that the planet is continuing to warm and perhaps man has a lot to do with this warming. Keep in mind that our earth has always experienced change in our global weather.
At one time, dinosaurs roamed the hills and valleys of our area and that another time the ice sheets extended as far south as Northern Pennsylvania.
The earth has these natural cycles of warming and cooling, which have existed forever and will no doubt continue long after we are gone. The problem is how much we are contributing to the current warming cycle and is there anything we can do to get back to just the natural cycle.
Recent sea level rises and melting of the glaciers are being aggravated by the increase in carbon dioxide levels around the globe. Drought, floods, fires, hurricanes fill the daily news and it seems to be getting worse. The professor at class showed evidence of these storms and weather events being caused by more heat in the atmosphere.
When you increase the heat through a warming earth with warmer oceans, you increase the fuel and energy for storm formation. We know that warm water is the fuel for hurricanes and last year seemed to offer some proof of what is happening. Increased heat in the atmosphere also adds fuel to our local storms that produce our flash flooding.
The real issue of the coming decades is what if anything we can or will do to move us from harm蘑菇视频 way. Then there are the complications of politics which seems to want to ignore the problem.
In the decades since I was a young lad living in a polluted city, we have done some things to bring change to the atmosphere and improve our air quality and this suggests if we have the will and can find some economic benefits, we can do something for future generations.
In recent years, many folks have migrated to warmer climates to be near the water or to climates that have more sun. With sea level rises expected to continue and droughts and floods also getting worse many will need to rethink their decisions.
Coastal cities will become more vulnerable to increased storms, more flooding and rising seas. Our class discussed lots of solutions, including carbon sequestration and, of course, alternative energy sources. It is interesting to note that a recent study on new electric generation sources shows that solar is producing 42 percent of our new energy followed by wind at 28 percent, gas at 25 percent, nuclear at 3 percent and coal and other at 2 percent. This is for new energy sources and it must be remembered that we still derive much our existing energy from traditional sources including coal.
Future energy sources also included lots of discussion on geothermal, waves, tides and bio fuels from plants and algae, and, of course, clean coal. A few days ago a program on NPR radio discussed the fact that a lot of the jobs in energy in Pennsylvania are coming from these new sources.
Stay tuned.