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Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a story that may repeat itself in all mountainous areas dependent on glaciers for their water supply, the glaciers in Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range are melting so quickly (PDF) that the water they supply to the arid region is being threatened 20-30 years earlier than expected. Of the time needed for the region to adapt to the coming water shortages, previously thought to be decades, researchers now believe, 'those years don't exist.'"
This melt off should be an interesting opportunity for archaeology and paleontology. Will such treasures reach back 1000, 5000, 40,000 years?
The environment changes, the organisms change. The universe loves organisms, and she'll never stop springing them up in places you'd never think you'd find them.
More realistic version: The environment changes, the organisms die, or at least the ones unsuitable for the new environment die. Evolution is a process of death, either death as an early termination of an organism, or death as a failure to pass on genes. If you step back and look at the grand process of life, it has a beauty to it. The great Permian Triassic extinction brought the rise of the dinosaurs, and the extinction of the dinosaurs allowed a whole new set of species to appear, including our own.
But when you bring it down to your own life, a moral person cannot possibly take pleasure in the thought of the extinction of his children, of his grandchildren, let alone the extinction of his entire species. And that is really at the heart of the issue of global warming. The geological record gives good evidence that (a) the climate can get a great deal warmer than it is today and (b) that those periods of warming are associated with large scale extinctions. There is strong evidence that a warming world will have a profoundly different distribution of precipitation. Given that our current agricultural systems are dependent on our current precipitation patterns, it seems likely that changing precipitation patterns will result in a reduction in agricultural production. If there is less food in the world, then famine is likely to result. The systems we have developed where most of us can live in cities while others far away grow our food will be put under stress. A survey of history will clearly show what happens then. The disinterested intellectual systems of reason decay. Fear grows with material shortages, and with it grows superstition. Humans start to lose track of objective reality, they start to make decisions based on illusion and superstition. As they lose track of reality, humans become increasingly unable to implement the necessary changes to survive in a changing world.
If you want to get an idea of what I am talking about, read about the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages, especially in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Read about the major mass extinctions, and then ponder the question whether humans would have been able to rise above the environmental pressures that destroyed more than 90% of species in the time of the dinosaurs. And even if we weren't to go extinct, consider what it would look like of 90% of us were to die. Not just 90% of those in some far away desert, but 90% of the people in your own country. Consider what such a world would look like. It won't happen tomorrow. It won't happen next year, nor even in a decade. If you live another 30 years, you will see enough to see the shape of things to come. But you will still be able to consume comfortably for some time to come. It is your children who will have to deal with the consequences of your selfish consumption.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)