Finally, the general media is beginning to acknowledge the
existence of a problem with the Gulf Stream. But they and
the scientists who communicate with them are still bending
over backward to minimize public alarm.
Here is a typical approach, this one from CNN, based on
comments by a senior scientist at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution:
"For a dramatic climate change to take place, "A whole bunch
of pieces have to fit together. Certainly this is one of
them. We need to keep paying attention, and people are doing
that," he said.
"Woods Hole is conducting research that measures the path
and temperature of some parts of the Gulf Stream.
"Such a dramatic climate change would not take place in five
days, but rather several years, said Joyce."
This gives the impression that watching the catastrophe
unfold will somehow help. "We need to keep paying attention,
and people are doing that."
It is also true that pilots pay a lot of attention while
their planes are crashing, but they still crash. Paying
attention does not change the outcome, and it also does not
change nature.
In fact, whatever is going to happen to the Gulf Stream is
now inevitable. Paying attention really doesn't matter. The
die is already cast.
What is important now is not measuring its status, except
insofar as this might give us some early warning of oncoming
climate changes. What is important is not oceanography but
social science and social policy. We need to accept the
inevitable, address the situation with sufficient science to
understand it, and start planning for changes that are now
inevitable.
Quite frankly, there are so many fundamental areas of the
natural world failing at this time that I think that we are
in for something far more vast than we have even begun to
imagine.
As I write this, a gigantic dead zone has formed in the Gulf
of Mexico, one of 146 recorded worldwide so far this year.
They are caused primarily by nitrogen pollution from runoff.
For example, the amount of nitrogen from corn belt
fertilizer that runs off in the Mississippi has been
doubling every few years for decades, until, at present, the
anoxic area of the Gulf covers almost a third of its area.
Meanwhile, honeybees are dying all over the world, in their
billions upon billions, killed by mites that are taking
advantage of their environmentally stressed immune systems,
and by two pesticides, Aventis' Regent and Bayer's Gaucho.
We cannot live without living oceans, and we most certainly
will go extinct along with the honeybee.
However, there is much more. At the moment, a completely
unprecedented hurricane is striking El Salvador, the first
Pacific hurricane ever to do so, and temperatures are
reaching 124F in parts of India in May, in a heat wave
beyond anything known so early in the summer. In Australia,
the drought is becoming a matter of desperation, as many
communities see the end of their water coming, but the end
of the drought is nowhere in sight.
Over all of Asia, a gigantic cloud of pollution hangs just
below the stratosphere, and at times reaches all the way
across the Indian Ocean to Africa and far out over the
Pacific. This cloud is the largest single feature in the
atmosphere.
The arctic is melting far faster than anyone ever
anticipated, and the danger that methane will soon begin
outgassing from melting permafrost is not simply a concern,
it is an inevitable fact of nature.
A vast worldwide cataclysm is unfolding, in other words, and
it will inevitably bring a decline in human population.
Whether or not it will be accompanied by events such as
those depicted in Superstorm and the Day After Tomorrow
remains to be seen, but the scientists involved in
researching the state of the Gulf Stream apparently do not
realize the power of what they are dealing with, or are
afraid to call unwanted attention to themselves by admitting
the truth.
And the truth is quite clear: such storms have taken place
in the past, and nobody understands why.
(This journal entry remains unfinished as of July, 2005. The
deterioration of the climate is proceeding in precisely the
way I have feared and predicted, and I will complete it in
the near future.)
