Mother Earth. That poor old woman has had it rough lately. Poisons in her water and air, species being wiped out by the burning of forests for farmland and development or hunted to extinction. Right now she is a sick woman with her temperature rising every year. As we know, when a body temperature gets too high and not kept in check, death occurs. And it will not her death, it will be our own. Along with 90 percent of all life on our little blue marble out in space.
We all know glaciers are melting at an alarming rate making the sea levels just a tiny bit higher each and every year. One sixteenth of an inch per year can mean over a six inch rise in less than a century. Depending on who you believe or which study you look at, the rise of melt water at both poles could speed up even faster as the Earth gets hotter. Some estimates have at the year 2100 sea levels rising over twelve inches up to eighteen.
With warming waters and a rise in ocean levels the world could be subjected to and buffeted by storms five times greater and larger than Hurricane Katrina. At least a lesson was learned during the aftermath of that storm and Rita that followed. Just throwing money at a problem will not fix what is wrong. I believe at last count there was still $500 million dollars of uncollected fraudulent claims.
What will happen in 100 years if the the worst of the computer simulations comes to pass and we have a two foot rise in ocean levels? Well for one we can say goodbye to many island nations in the Pacific. Much of the worlds coastlines do not rise above two feet until they are miles inland. And much of that land, especially in Third World country's river deltas is fertile farmland. The mass migration of people around the world moving away from the coastal areas will push an ever growing strain on the infrastructure world wide. With the warming waters, bigger, more of and even stronger typhoons and hurricanes will ravage land hundreds of miles inland further than the destruction we see today.
The world needs to move away from using fossil fuels to meet our energy needs. It has been proven that since the Industrial Age began, the Earth's average temperature has slowly risen to the fast rate it is climbing today. Sure, over the last 100,000 years the world's temperature has gone up and down in natural cycles. But the rise today is faster than it ever has been in the past according to ice core samples taken from both poles.
We need new energy ideas. Wind and solar powers are good starts but for it to truly meet the ever growing need for energy, people are going to have to give up their majestic views of the ocean and deserts. They will be replaced by solar panels and wind farms. We have to make a decision. Soon.