What was the first thing you remember researching, writing, and/or presenting?
For me it was a topic in 7th grade science class, and it talked about over fishing in the North Atlantic. That was the same year I read Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. So I know that my interest in ecology explicitly goes back at least 50 years. Probably before that because A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter was one of my favorite movies as a little girl. Later when I figured out that Stratton Porter was crucial for the development of field studies in ecology and animal behavior I became acutely aware of the influence a single person can have on others and indeed the whole world.
I will go into Gene Stratton Porter in more depth in another post. Today I am encouraging all of us to write about nature, water, what we understand about how land and water have interacted in and influenced our lives. Perhaps you might want to talk about your relationship with nature in your memoir.
At this point I am not sure about what we can do other than write about memories and current experience with water.
It will all have changed dramatically for our children and grandchildren.
I’m doing something a little bit different here today as I need to confess. I should have done more. I learned about the likelihood of the world cooling, heating, dramatically changing many decades ago along with all the people who took bio-anthropology classes with me at Purdue University many decades ago. Desertification. Changing rain patterns. Crop Failures. It wasn’t just Al Gore who learned about this things at whatever college he went to.
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
The top strata of the Atlantic Ocean are warmer, fresher waters that flow northward, churning the waters with the help of the deeper colder waters and more saline waters that flow southward. These flows of warm and cold water impact the temperatures of the lands surrounding them.
The Atlantic Meridional overturning circulation is only one of the major ocean currents in the world. Southern Ocean overturning circulation is the other major current. All the Earth’s waters make up a global thermohaline circulation. The Pacific is less salty as than the Atlantic as the Pacific get much more rain.
If one of these currents changes dramatically or stops there will be massive temperature changes with the cooling of Europe by as much as 15°F soon after the ocean changes. Storms will increase in magnitude and frequency. Bread baskets will see drought. Some say it could happen next year. Others say it will be in the 22nd Century. Is seems we have gone beyond stopping it.
Does your journal mention what social action you take part in? I believe this will be one of the topics your descendants will be interested in learning about. What did regular people do and how aware were we of what the corporate concerns were doing to our planet?
Perhaps there will not be so many mistakes next time, if indeed there is a societal reforming after climate changes, if they know what we did and where we failed.
The serious as well as the fun parts of our lives are needed in story if there is to be balance.
Leave a Reply