Discover How Man is Changing the Climate

In recent years man has been trying to take the unpredictability out of the weather. The weather follows laws, but these laws are complicated. Early in this century, British meteorologist Lewis Fry Richardson tried to use mathematical formulas based on the laws of heat and motion to predict the weather. His equations were so long, however, that usually the weather arrived before he finished his calculations. Scientists today use computers. With satellites, balloons, rockets, and so forth, they watch the atmosphere closely, feed information about it into computers, and thus try to foretell the weather. Their short-term forecasts are often quite successful, but the mechanisms for long-term weather patterns still elude them.

Man has also tried to change the weather by seeding clouds to produce rain, dissipating fog at airports, trying to moderate typhoons, reducing lightning strikes and suppressing hail. So far results have been indifferent, and perhaps that is just as well. Can you imagine the lawsuits resulting from flooding caused by man-induced rainstorms?

More problematical is man's unintentional changing of the weather. For many years, carbon dioxide from his industries seems to have been heating up the atmosphere, while his fluorocarbons and nitric oxides may be destroying the ozone layer, which protects us from dangerous ultraviolet radiation. What the long-term results of this will be no one can say.

Man-induced, too, is the smog that suffocates many cities. Worrisome is the acid rain-caused by man's pollutants-which kills fishes and destroys buildings. Even the prolonged drought that brought devastating famine to North Africa in 1972 happened, according to one source, because of a "long process of climatic change, ecological rape and political mismanagement."

The Weather as a Friend

In spite of man's abuse, however, the weather is still his good friend. It is a marvelous system for moderating the temperature and watering the land. Remember, the rain that ruined your picnic was essential for growing food and providing drinking water. And the cyclone that brought it was a part of the great atmospheric convection system.

Even hurricanes and tornadoes undoubtedly play their part, although this is imperfectly understood at present. And really, such events do not have to cost lives. The book Disaster! (prepared by the editors of the Encyclopædia Britannica) points out: "Much of the loss of life from tropical storms and tornadoes can be prevented." It explains that heeding early warnings and using plain common sense to find protection from the storm could prevent most fatalities. Regarding thunderstorms it says: "The average of more than one hundred persons killed in the United States each year, however, is down from an average of more than four hundred a year in the early decades of this century. Recent research indicates that the loss of life can be even further reduced." Undoubtedly, if man from the beginning had obeyed his Creator and continued to listen to his counsel, he would have experienced no fatalities at all due to such things.

Yes, the weather is a friend of mankind. Let us be grateful that, in spite of what humans have done to the earth, it works so well, and that because of our atmosphere, life is so comfortable on our planetary home.

Source:

The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery (Author)