With the fires in the western US, flooding in Germany and mudslides in Colorado, even those who have their doubts about climate change are being forced to acknowledge that something is happening. True, there will always be those deniers like Senator James Inhofe, who famously brought a snowball to the floor of Congress in February of 2015 to demonstrate that it still gets cold in the winter. One assumes he used the same logic to pronounce that since he had an easy commute home that night that traffic has been tamed.
Beyond that small set of individuals most believe that the planet is indeed warming. Nearly all active publishing climate scientists, a number hovering around 97%, support the strong scientific consensus that the Earth's temperature is going up and that this warming is mainly caused by human activities. Even those who take issue with that number acknowledge that it might "only" be around 80%. In the general population the number is closer to 60%, but if you remove the "who dun it: nature vs nurture?" argument, you start to see numbers nearing 90% of people who agree that global warming is indeed happening, and we will have to figure out some way to deal with it.
The big question is "what?" The aspirational goals of "cut emissions" and "remove CO2" and "develop alternative energy" all sound laudable, but they will take time if they happen at all. In the meantime we're left coping with the effects of stuff that doesn't happen fast, meaning a need for urgency isn't readily apparent. Additionally, many of the actions we can take on a personal level are cursed by the double whammy of being seemingly insignificant while also inconvenient. Yes, we can indeed save trees and reduce landfills by bringing our own reusable bags to the grocery store, but it's annoying. Added to all that is the hypocrisy of those who may articulate reasonable ideas, but do so at exclusive conferences reached by private jets.
Still, being unable to make obvious impacts in a short period of time should not stop us from trying to do anything. Witness the actions of Pontedilegno-Tonale, a ski resort in northern Italy. While its spectacular scenery, hiking and mountain biking trails help it draw tourists all year round, the place is built on winter sports. With 4 different ski areas, 41 slopes covering 100 kilometers, and 28 lifts, it attracts families and experts alike. And its location atop the Presena Glacier in the Alps means that it has the climate to operate those trails from autumn to spring.
That location also means that global warming is more than just an inconvenience, but a true threat to their very existence. The reason is simple: warmth and snow just don't go together, with the result being that since 1993 the glacier has lost one third of its volume. So as the cold season gets shorter and the summer gets hotter they decided they had to do something to protect the very ground on which the place is built, or more correctly, the very glacier. In your case if the sun is too strong you put on sunscreen; in their case, they put on tarps.
Big white ones, and lots of them. Starting with a trial run in 2008, they have added more covering each year to prevent the snow from melting. Workers unroll long strips, each 77 yards long by 5 yards wide down the slopes, then sew them together to keep warm breezes from drifting underneath, and weigh it all down with sandbags. It takes about 6 weeks to spool it out, the same to remove it come fall. When it started 13 years ago they covered about 30,000 square meters; they're now up to 100,000. And it seems to work: tests show that putting a topper over the snow and ice reduced melting by 60%.
As we're seeing with flooded subways from New York to China, and smoke clouds in the east from fires in the west, the effects are impacting more and more people, not just those living on exposed shore lines or frozen ground. Mark Twain famously said "If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death." Well, it seems to be going in the other direction, but unless we do something the end results may be the same.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford needs to do more. Period. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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