Where’s Your Global Warming Now?
If you’d like to get a better idea of what’s been happening in the Victoria area of southeastern Australia, go to the website of the Sydney Morning Herald at www.smh.com.au.
They’re one of my favorites because they are more unsparing than United States papers. Their images of the Iraq war, for instance, have been much more graphic. The same holds true for the recent bush fires (the back country in Australia is the bush). But I’m not talking about the warning they posted about their 35 pictures, that they wouldn’t be appropriate for some viewers, as much as I am about the Australian drought.
It would be tragic if the fate of one koala (millions of animals died) or the results of arson investigations (a handful of the hundreds of fires) obscured the way the Australian continent has been tortured by years of drought. This is only the latest and worst of the effects. And if empathy doesn’t grip you, perhaps the possibility of the American Southwest going the same way will.
One of the least disputable effects of global warming has been the expansion of the tropical heat zone, which extends northward and southward from the Equator. That in turn is pushing a drought belt in the next climatic zone northward and southward.
Is this the real reason for the wildfires? How does this compare with the prolonged drought in the Southwest? Does either have a chance of becoming the next Sahel, or Sahara?
A little analysis if you please, my colleagues in the national media. You may discover, as you go on, that koalas aren’t so cute after all.
If you’d like to help the Aussies, who are truly Down and Under, here’s a link:
https://www.redcross.org.au/Donations/onlineDonations.asp
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