Tuesday, August 20, 2019

A Letter to the Future

Iceland's Okjökull glacier once capped the Ok Volcano, but was declared dead in 2014.  This past weekend, a plaque was placed on Ok that included a letter to the future.

Source: Forbes/Boyer/Cymene Howe
Talk about a great way to remind people that indeed we do know what is happening, but we also know what needs to be done.  Really, we have known this for some time, but the "cracks" in the climate system are really starting to open up now and people are seeing it with their own two eyes. 

We could use a few more of these letters.  Here's one for the Wasatch Mountains. 


2 comments:

  1. I think most people who have lived for a long time in alpine areas and/or in northerly latitudes in North America have recognized the real warming with their own eyes for a long time, at least several decades. Back in the 1980s and even early 1990s, before global warming became overloaded with politics and "R" vs "D" factionalism, it was common to hear antecdotal stories from regular folks who worked daily in the outdoors for years about how "it used to be colder", and often snowier too. The cliche about walking to school uphill both ways in deep snow comes to mind. Nobody was afraid to state what they experienced in their own lifetime for fear of being labeled a "liberal". I think there are a lot of people who clearly see the change in climate now, but because of imposed politics may deny their very own experience.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It was refreshing to recently meet an elderly heavy equipment operator/contractor who has worked in the Upper Arkansas River area of central Colorado since the 70s. He told me that to him, it is quite obvious that at least the local climate has already warmed a lot because the depth of hard-frozen ground is shallower, and the melting of frozen ground is earlier now, very noticeably, compared to the late 70s and 80s when he began doing this type of work. Not a raving leftist ideologue, more like a redneck, but not afraid to tell the truth about his experience, regardless of R/D politics.

    ReplyDelete