Earth in crisis

The change is on

Humanity continues to observe that everything changes, adapts and dies in the world around us.
This endless process that dates back several billion years, we have no idea how it will evolve, its definition is to be unpredictable. You have to accept to live in ignorance, to live without fundamental certainties.
Ignorance is the engine of humanity. Ignoring the future makes a man more curious and inventive.
Bossuet said: "We complain of our ignorance, but it is what makes most of the good of the world: do not foresee that we undertake."
Man builds his life on an absolute chance, and it is exactly that which makes control of movement and freedom of its future.
"Ignorance is the engine of humanity is what drives humans to move forward. This advances the story." Claude Vaillancourt Land that we are blind...
Because of its ignorance, the man went so master of his actions. The adventure of man is at a turning point that will now give way to a new form of life, more powerful and better suited to the future, ever more complex.

The "macro body" Earth is feverish panic and all of humanity, every flood, storm, tsunami, hurricane and other earthquake pushed the anguish of men.
The effects of global warming as announced, may well be felt sooner than expected.
The projections are alarming: a warming of 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius is indeed expected by the end of this century will be the largest increase in temperature would have affected the Earth from about 10 000 years.
Between the ice age experienced by our planet 20,000 years ago and the hottest time it knew there 7000 years, there were only 7°. If the Earth's temperature increases in a century of 5.8 degrees Celsius as announced, the living world will have to adapt very quickly as it never had to do and some species will not survive. The first consequences of this warming are already visible. Indeed we see every day that glaciers are retreating, as floods are more devastating, as hurricanes are becoming more deadly, the return periods of droughts more frequently, the Arctic sea ice drops to high speed, in short that the Earth is in crisis...

Image: The stunning Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia (Argentina).

A major volcanism could exacerbate the crisis

All volcanic eruptions affect the climate of the local to regional and some of them, particularly important, releasing dust into the stratosphere and altering the global climate for several months.
Volcanic activity releases CO2 and sulfuric acid in the form of droplets. Releases of ash can reach millions of tons and up to several kilometers high leading to a cooling climate. In 1450 BC. the volcanic eruption of Santorini in the Aegean Sea will be suspended for such quantities of dust, and during the summer following in Europe and the Middle East, the sky is cloudy and the temperature drops about 0.5°C.
Recently, the eruption of Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 led to projections of up to 35 km altitude. Two months after the explosion, more than 40% of a tropical belt between 30°N and 20°S was covered by aerosols, resulting in lower average global temperature between 0.1 and 1°C.
The Indonesian volcano Krakatoa (1883), Augun (1963, Mount St. Helens (1980) United States and the Mexican volcano El Chichon (1982) had the same effect.

Volcanism implies a drop in temperatures in the short term but has been a powerful factor in warming during the Late Cretaceous, there are about 80 million years.
The temperature was 6°C higher than it is today, it was the hottest period of the Earth's history marked by a major volcanic activity.
A major period of volcanism may well start at any time and cause a crisis in temperature, up or down, more pronounced than that triggered by human activity, for 50 years.
We are ignorant about the colossal forces of nature, if that happened, the only way would be to adapt because we are prisoners of our spacecraft for long.

Image: Eruption of Krakatoa in 1997, volcanic dust in the atmosphere projected affect Earth's climate for several years with a fall in mean temperatures of 0.25°C.
In August 1883, the Krakatoa exploded, spraying dust up over 70 km in the atmosphere.

Populations at risk

A study published in the journal "Environment and Urbanization" in April 2007, identifies populations most at risk incurring due to the increased sea levels and increased intensity of cyclones, as a result of the change climate.
Research shows that 634 million people, or one tenth of the world population, are located in coastal areas to 10 meters or less above sea level, about 75% in Asia.
The ten countries with the largest number of people living in this area are China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Egypt, the United States, Thailand and the Philippines.
The ten countries with the proportion of people living in this area is the highest, are Bahamas (88%), Surinam (76%), the Netherlands (74%), Vietnam (55%), the Guyana (55%), Bangladesh (46%), Djibouti (41%), Belize (40%), Egypt (38%) and Gambia (38%). The authors of this study are Gordon McGranahan, International Institute for Environment and Development (UK), Deborah Balk, the City University of New York and Bridget Anderson of Columbia University.
The key findings of the study show that many cities around the world with more than 5 million people, are partly in the danger zone of 0-10 feet above the water.

- On average, 14% of people in developed countries live in the area of 0-10 meters.
- 21% of urban populations of least developed nations are in the area of 0-10 meters. The poorest countries are most vulnerable to rising waters.
Between 1994 and 2004, there were 1,562 flood disasters and 98% of two million people affected by these disasters were in Asia.
Between 1990 and 2000, populations in areas of 0-10 m from Bangladesh and China had a growth rate double the rest of population.

NB: The ten countries with the largest number of people living in this area are:
China (143,888,000); India (63,188,000) Bangladesh (62,524,000) Vietnam (43,051,000) Indonesia (41,610,000 ) Japan (30,477,000) Egypt (25,655,000) United States (22,859,000) Thailand (16468000) and the Philippines (13,329,000).
Publication by Sage journals

Image: Rainfall triggering floods, landslides and mud landslides that kill and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people. In July 2007, there were more than 4 000 houses destroyed, 386 000 people evacuated and dozens of deaths in the provinces of Yunnan, Chongqing, Shandong and Xinjiang.

hurricanes

The study, published in September 2007 in the journal "Science" by U.S. researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the number and duration of hurricanes is globally stable for 35 years globally.
However, the number and proportion of hurricanes in categories 4 and 5 (the maximum on the Saffir-Simpson scale reference) almost doubled since 1970.
This phenomenon has been observed particularly in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest Pacific and Indian Oceans.
The temperature in the tropics of the five ocean basins where hurricanes form, has increased 0.5 degrees Celsius from 1970 to 2004.
But one of the prerequisites for the formation of a cyclone is the temperature of surface water must be at least 26.5°C on at least 60 m deep.
It is still difficult to assess the real impact of global warming because the force and the number of cyclones vary naturally every 20-30 years. "

Hervé Le Treut, director of research at CNRS stated on September 1, 2007 Agence France Presse that the occurrence of hurricanes like Katrina may be the consequence of global warming.
According to climatologist Kerry Emmanuel, who published a study in August 2007 in the journal "Nature", the hurricanes that hit the Atlantic and Pacific have worsened, both in duration and intensity by about 50% since the 1970s, but it is careful not to link this trend to global warming, especially because the series is far too short.
The simulation models are conflicting, some finding such a decrease in 2020 the total number of cyclones (90 per year) in the world.

Image: Hurricane Katrina seen from the International Space Station (ISS). This is the first hurricane observed in the South Atlantic Ocean near Brazil (March 26, 2004).
Source Wikimedia Commons.

Conclusion

It seems that some figures denounced the large part of humanity in this global warming, others show that the temperature of the planet suffers the ups and downs over time and this is natural.
Since the end of the last ice age 18,000 years ago, the climate is mild and relatively stable. We are therefore in this period where it reigns on average 15 degrees Celsius on the planet.
Nevertheless there is a dangerously rapid rise in temperature and in conjunction with the nature rages more violently, that the living world is struggling to adapt to these climatic fluctuations by abandoning the lower species.
It is as if the Earth was in crisis. Our "macro body" suffers a little "fever".

Just as in warm-blooded animals, the fever is a defense against internal aggression that causes it to activate certain immune mechanisms to regain its equilibrium. Just hope that these mechanisms do not fight the man as if it were an infectious agent abroad.
Mankind now has to prove that it is wise constitute a clean and alien from the planet Earth.
The imbalance that we see are maybe small events compared to the major events that nature can make us live.
We have no idea of the great disasters that the Earth has undergone during its history and one of them could very well happen again.
Maybe we witnessing the end of a stable world?