Climate Change And Denial

I'm not a scientist. In fact, I would say I have extremely limited schooling in the sciences. In fact, my science schooling never got beyond high school biology and an undergraduate minor in earth sciences. But that doesn't mean I don't try to comprehend what's going on with our climate. Apart from what I read in print and follow in the various electronic media, I make sure to observe the natural world.

A few years ago, my daughter, the science teacher/environmentalist, registered my backyard (with its natural pond and flora and fauna) as an official wildlife habitat. I take some pride in that and try to maintain its wildlife character as much as possible. Part of my responsibility, as I see it, is to note any changes and make certain that I interfere as little as possible. For three years, the habitat's environment flourished. Mallard ducks regularly used it as a mating stop over. For a brief period a giant blue heron dined on the frogs. Each spring I would notice the swelling of the frog egg sacs on the bottom of the pond. All sorts of unfamiliar birds flocked to the bird feeder as the seasons changed. A couple of adolescent foxes ranged around the area, keeping a keen eye on the area around the bird feeder. An occasional red-tailed hawk would swoop down and grab a chipmunk. But all of the above sightings have ceased. And despite my efforts to remain non-interfering, something has changed.

I built the pond's dam across what had been a shallow brook, which I didn't know at the time was runoff. Over the years I used packets of barley hay to reduce the amount of algae that accumulated and did my best to scoop out what I could of the leaves. But now, even the duck weed and other aquatic vegetation have gone. Except for the regular local birds continuing to come to the feeder, life seems to have gone out of the place. Something has changed.

I think this will be a tough winter for the animals and the vegetation. It has already been warmer than usual so that the grasses and garden plants will be burned once the frigid air covers them without having a blanket of snow. We've had occasional long dry periods in the summer months around here, but I can't remember having especially dry winters. And yet my pond's surface is lowering to mid-summer levels. The deer haven't been around as they usually are to ravage the evergreens. This winter will be tough not because we will have too much snow and high heating bills. It will be tough because we won't.

I'd like to suggest that all of the people who deny climate change as a human source problem and all those people who affirm it as such simply stop their prattle and have a look around. We are at the point now where, whatever the cause, we need to begin agreeing on how we are going to prepare for the consequences of what's already going on. No matter what supreme being, life force or anything else we believe or don't believe in, living species on this planet do become extinct. Part of the exceptional hubris of our being human is that we think we are other than all the rest of the biological species. In short, I guess we assume that we will think our way free of extinction. And here, again, I'm talking about extinction by natural causes, no matter the triggering machinations. The natural world is an action/reaction arena. It has neither an intelligent design nor an exalted conscience. It doesn't care about anything or anyone. It has no anthropomorphic characteristics, but it is morphic. And that's what we should be focusing on.

Because, no matter whether you believe dinosaurs existed shoulder to shoulder with humans, you can't deny that they existed. And they don't exist anymore. And lots of other species don't exist anymore. And that's the morphing part of nature. It's worth noting, by the way, that among the most persistently surviving species, the ones with the least developed intelligences have survived the longest. This morphing business doesn't happen over night. And once the sea levels begin to inch their way up the shore line, by the time we notice the nearness of their lapping at our foundations, it will be much too late to make other arrangements.

Our problem is that we are like the child in the game of hide and seek who believes that if she can't see you, you can't see her. Because we can't see the initial cyclical changes that are part of a developing pattern, we think they don't exist and therefore the pattern doesn't exist. For example, when I feel the heat from a bright sun as though it is burning my face in ways I have never felt it in my 73 years, is that something I should ignore as a transient experience signifying nothing special, or should I take note and ask other people if they have been having similar experiences and seeing other unfamiliar manifestations? Or maybe none of this matters. Maybe people like me are just a bunch of latter day Chicken Littles.

BTW—"Peeping through my keyhold I see within the range of only about 30 percent of the light that comes from the sun; the rest is infrared and some little ultraviolet, perfectly apparent to many animals, but invisible to me. A nightmare network of ganglia, charged and firing without my knowledge, cuts and splices what I see, editing it for my brain. Donald E. Carr points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brian: 'This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is." -- Annie Dillard