One of the scenarios that Gore discusses in “An Inconvenient Truth” is the triggering of a massive cooling in the Northern Hemisphere as a consequence of the altering of the “Great Ocean Conveyor.” NASA scientists, among others, have looked closely at this “chilling possibility.”
The freezing of the North, the warming of the South, and the long-term devastating impacts these had is the underlying premise of one of my vacation reads: Mara and Dann by Doris Lessing. At the heart of the story are the adventures of a brother and sister seeking to escape the ravages of drought, crime, ignorance and war in almost all of “Ifrik.” It is a convincing look into the teeth of how drought kills the earth, the people on it, and the goodness in them.
I just finished the story and it was brought into immediate focus again by a front-page story in the “NY Times” this week: Lush Land Dries Up, Withering Kenya’s Hopes. There’s a series of photographs that brings this home. Like most disasters, it’s heartbreaking.
You don’t need to read a post-apocalyptic novel from a master storyteller, though, to tell you to pay attention. The evidence is everywhere that we’re cooking our climate system well past the danger point and we had better get on it – and now.