Climate change is not man made |12 May 2021
Ice caps are melting so fast that polar bears are losing their habitat
I have been requested to rewrite this article and explain further the climate change and sea level rise phenomenon which I mentioned in my last article and several readers missed the article.
It would appear there is still so much confusion and misunderstanding among the general public emanating from misinformation being spread out by so many people who have not taken the time to study the subject in depth and really understand why is climate change occurring and what is causing our sea level to rise.
Politicians use the subject to scare the living daylight out of us when they feel like it and even some religious leaders have jumped on the band wagon and are propagating misinformation on climate change as part of their religious activities.
The next generation is being confused and they are spreading misunderstanding among themselves, because grown-ups are giving them false information.
Some TV stations put kids on talk shows to talk about climate change when they barely understand why we have days and nights and why the dinosaurs became extinct.
Mankind did not start the process of climate change; this is a known fact so let us start on the right track. The dinosaurs and the woolly mammoth did not create climate change yet both species have disappeared from the surface of the Earth and they did not drive around in cars or burn fossil fuel or deforest their environment yet they vanished into extinction in a matter of a few million years in the timeline of the Universe. We as mankind have a limited period of time to live on Earth and our non-renewable lease with Landlord Mother Earth will expire in a few years and Landlord Mother Earth will find new tenants to populate the Earth again when the time is right. Time is not on our side and yet some people believe we are going to exist on Earth forever. Are our space exploration activities attempts by mankind to populate another planet when the Earth cannot support our life form? Good question eh?
So what is causing climate change and sea level rise?
Man has landed on the moon and collected samples of moon rock and probes have brought back soil samples from Mars and we are going back again for more information and samples. Satellites such as Hubble Extreme Deep Field (XDF) are probing the Universe and sending us data and beautiful photos of our Universe and Galaxies. Our understanding of what is causing climate change and sea level rise can now be firmly established and understood.
The answer is the Earth orbits the sun in an elliptical cycle and not in a circular cycle at an average distance of 149.60 million km (92.96 miles). If the orbit was a circular cycle there would be no climate change, only change of day and night. The Earth rotates on its axis at 23.5 degrees, once every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09053 seconds, called the sidereal period, and its circumference is roughly 40,075 kilometres. We have added an extra day every 4 years (Leap Year) to bring our Gregorian calendar to 365 days a year. Thus, the surface of the Earth at the equator moves at a speed of 460 metres per second or roughly 1,000 miles per hour. The high rotational speed does not make us feel dizzy because of the Earth is so huge in size that we do not feel the effects of the rotation.
At some point in time and we are talking about millions of years, the sun approaches the Earth like right now so the Earth heats up, the ice caps melt which cause sea level rise. Then some millions of years later the sun will be at the extreme end of the elliptical cycle so the Earth will freeze and that’s how the Dinosaurs died, life on Earth was frozen at the time then as the Earth got nearer to the sun again the Earth warmed up and a new life form evolved which we call mankind and other species of life forms such as animals, insects and plants also evolved. We have evidence of the Dinosaurs and of mankind but we have no knowledge of what kind of life forms occupied the Earth before the Dinosaurs and woolly mammoth and we certainly do not know what kind of life form will exist on Earth after mankind has become extinct millions of years from now. Burning fossil fuel, deforestation and driving a few millions cars around the Earth is making a hole in the ozone layer and exacerbating the onslaught of climate change and sea level rise but mankind cannot be blamed for creating climate change, cadit quaestio.
Our solar system moves at an average velocity of 450,000 miles per hour (720,000 kilometres per hour) and it takes 230 million years to make one complete orbit. It is a gravitationally bound system made up of the sun plus 8 planets including the Earth and data exists to show that between 1900 and 2016 the global average sea level on Earth rose 16 -21 cm (6.3 – 8.3 in.). There is also an accelerated rise of 7.5 cm (3.0 in.) from 1993 to 2017. Between 1993 and 2018 melting glaciers contributed 42% of sea level rise and the melting rate is accelerating leaving the polar bears without a home as the Earth continues to warm up.
What is SIDS doing about sea level rise?
The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) including Seychelles are well aware of our pending predicaments but what are we doing about it? Are we getting ready to address sea level rise? Have you seen any signs that we are doing anything about it? Who took the decision to build a solar farm at sea level knowing what we know about sea level rise. All our telephone exchanges are at sea level, all our banks are at sea level, our main electricity generator at Roche Caiman is at sea level, our government establishments, courts, etc. are at sea level except State House being slightly raised up, our airport is at sea level and now we plan to extend the airport at sea level? STC’s main food storage is at sea level.
We had fish dying on the runway of our International Airport on December 26, 2004 during the Indian Ocean tsunami which was triggered by a 9.2 earthquake and cost the region US $10 billion, are we so naïve as not to learn any lesson from the small tail end of a tsunami? In a real disaster we will have no communications, no electricity, no food, no transport, oh yes we will have some small boats but no fuel; we will have plenty of water we cannot drink because of contamination.
In Mauritius sea level has been rising by 3.8 mm per year from 1988 to 2014. The UNFCCC of Mauritius projects a sea level rise of 16 cm by 2050. The world population is currently 7.8 billion and it is projected to reach 10 billion by 2050 just at the time when the sea level rise is claiming back good agricultural land, so where is the food going to come from?
We need a Civil Defence Strategy
We do not have a Civil Defence Strategy; we do not have a published plan of how is the public going to be evacuated in the event of a disaster, where are people going to gather, where are the signs pointing people in the right direction etc. We have the police, the army, the coast guards and DRDM and they react to events. Civil Defence means you have a Plan of Action for different scenarios which you publish and the public is trained what to do in the event of different catastrophes. You do not wait until we have a disaster then react and try and save the lives of people, too late by then. In a disaster people do panic and more deaths result from the panic. In a media interview recently DRDM said they will warn people about a disaster using the text messaging system. Come on guys wake up! All our telephone exchanges carrying text messages are at sea level and they will not be working. SBC may not be working if their standby generator does not kick in, how many times does SBC practice changing over to the generator as a drill? I bet you not very often. Right now at SBC some channels on the set-top box do not work when it rains so what if we have a flood? Guess where is the new SBC being built? Yes you guessed it right, at sea level, can you believe this?
Satellite communication is essential
By now the President, Vice-President, ministers and all heads of essential services, the army, the police, the coast guards should all have satellite phones as back-ups. The Meteosat 8 of the Indian Ocean Data Coverage (IODC) positioned at 41.5° E in collaboration with EUMETCast can provide these urgently needed safeguards, why have we not done it when we know all other communication systems will be dead?
I know the priority right now is to survive Covid-19 but that does not stop us from putting together a small team to create a Civil Defence Agency with a strategic plan for our survival. Covid can kill a few of us but a disaster can kill all of us so what is more important? The Agency needs to prepare plans of action, evacuation priorities, publicise information, arrange practice drills, get the public involved, define what roles the other organisations such as the army, police, coast guards will play and who else can we call on for assistance when we are knee deep in trouble.
Putting up a few rocks armouring along our coast line is definitely not the answer, we need to be more prepared and pro-active. Let us wake up from this bad dream which will become realities.
Contributed by:
Barry Laine FCIM, FInst SMM, MCMI, MBSCH
Seychelles Civil Society
The Wishing Well
Anse Des Genets
Mahe, Seychelles
Email: barrylaine@hpcgroup.sc