The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
Because Australia is considered a continent, Greenland is considered the largest island in the world. It is three times the size of Texas, and most of it is north of the Arctic Circle, although on a globe it looks much bigger than it actually is.
The New York Times journalist Jon Gertner has just written a book called The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland’s Buried Past and Our Perilous Future. He notes that 80% of Greenland is covered with ice, some of it two miles thick.
Nevertheless, 300 billion tons of that ice is melting each year, and the total is increasing annually. The northern tip of Greenland is only 400 miles from the North Pole. The daily temperature at that location in February of last year was an average of 45 degrees higher than normal for the whole month. That is simply astounding.
Temperatures in the polar regions of both the North and South Poles are rising much faster than anywhere else on earth. For the whole of Greenland, the average summer temperatures are now 7 to 9 degrees higher than normal.
However, Greenland is not about to become a hot new tourist destination. It is still an usually cold and inhospitable place. By taking core samples from deep in the glaciers, scientists have discovered that at various points in the distant past there were similar periods of rapid thawing with similar ecological results.
We know that the axis of the earth has periodically shifted over the four and a half billion years of our history as a planet. Thus parts of the land now in the temperate zone were either in the tropics or the polar zones.
John Gertner writes that climatologists speculate that if all the ice on Greenland were to melt, the level of the oceans would rise 25 feet. And that would result only from the complete thaw of Greenland. If much of the ice now on or near the Arctic and Antarctic Circles were also to melt, sea level would rise by hundreds of feet.
Climate change deniers are surely correct to point out that much of what is currently occurring has nothing to do with human activities, but is yet another example of the inescapable march of nature. Still, there is a growing awareness among leaders around the world that the so-called Anthropocene Age in which we are now living is caused more by humanity than by nature. We are causing climates to change.
All of Greenland will not become green for many centuries, if ever. In the meantime, it behooves the human race to do all we can to prevent a climatic catastrophe. Not to do so would be to negate the scientific description we have ascribed to ourselves with no discernible shortage of pride: Homo sapiens – “humans of wisdom.”
There will always be climate change deniers. But two local meteorological indices in June of 2019 lead me to think it is becoming harder to deny. On one day in early June Beaufort, SC was the hottest place in the nation, at 103 degrees. Two weeks later Bluffton, SC was the wettest place in the nation, with 7.68 inches of rain. Those two communities are both within 25 miles of Hilton Head Island, SC, considered by many of its residents to be heaven on earth. Will it be less heavenly more quickly?
Something is happening. None of us will live long enough fully to realize what it is. But for the sake of succeeding generations of Homo sapiens, we should all keep an ever-vigilant eye on the weather. It certainly seems to be changing.
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.