Dear Editor,
It is distressing to me that despite accessibility to the Internet, the issues of global warming and climate change have evoked so little serious response from Guyanese to date.
One SN letter-writer recently referred to a report that the concerns of global warming were at odds with the fact that the earth’s temperature actually fell last year. While this may be so, the overall report should not be looked at in isolation without regard to other facts. For instance, the average world temperature for January 2007 was the highest ever recorded. Major lakes in Africa, Canada and the USA fell to their lowest levels ever. Ice loss in the Arctic went up by 140% in the past 10 years, with Greenland losing 100 billion tons of ice last year alone. Australia experienced the worst drought in 100 years. England experienced the hottest April in 348 years of record keeping.
And look at heat-related reports just for this year: High temperature records in the USA have been broken over 1,000 times in January alone. A BBC report says a “deadly heat wave” in the UK may be imminent. In Finland, the average temperature for January was almost five degrees Celsius higher than the past 30 years. Norway experienced an average temperature that was eight degrees Celsius above normal, and the authoritative body in that country has just recently said that “If Norway’s average temperature this year equals that in 2007, the ice cap in the Arctic will all melt away….”‘
It would seem, however, that our current concern should not be about the effects of global warming as about the extremities of climate change. Winds in Antarctica in 2007 were “wilder and stronger than ever before.” A world record was set in East Africa for the most rain in 72 hours. There were record rains in China, England and Wales. In June Iran experienced its first cyclone. New York City experienced tornadoes for the first time in August last and Brazil recorded its first ever hurricane. All this, and more, happened last year.
Yet the weather seems to be getting even worse this year. There were tornadoes in Wisconsin in the middle of winter and record snowfalls in the US Midwest. California experienced a record number of storms with 100 mph winds, and rains that were 60% higher than the previous record. Minneapolis recorded the lowest ever US temperature of minus 40 degrees Celsius. “Rare and deadly storms” (the worst in 80 years) and 68 tornadoes resulted in the deaths of more than 50 people in the USA early February. Iran had one of the coldest winters ever, there was snow in Baghdad for the first time ever, and Afghanistan recorded 300 dead in the first snows seen in this generation. England had the wettest January since record keeping began. China experienced record-breaking snowfalls. Bolivia declared a flooding disaster, while Brazil had perhaps its very first tornado that caused considerable damage to buildings and cars.
I don’t think Guyana can any longer remain in its below-sea-level cocoon and think that it will be exempted from the weather extremes we are witnessing around the world. A quote from USA Today should be instructive: “If the world’s scientists are right, the onslaught of droughts, flooding, intensive storms and heat waves last year is but a curtain raiser on our future. Even if no single event can reliably be attributed to global warming, the trends as cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are clear – and clearly accelerating.”
If this seems prophet-of-doom thinking to some, then perhaps we need to ask why Norway, one of the world’s most highly progressive and environmentally aware countries, has set up a vast seed bank (called by some “a doomsday vault”) in the Arctic in case of global disaster.
We in Guyana need to start discussions immediately not on whether or not global warming exists, but on what we will do to mitigate the effects of the seemingly inevitable climate change. In the immediate future, we need to consider the location and design of emergency shelters and at the same time set up a think-tank to examine the feasibility of relocating the capital.
Because this is a matter of national urgency, we cannot wait on the findings of any government investigative committee. This concerns us all. As one commentator observed, if neither governments, nor most businesses are taking effective measures to avoid global climate change catastrophe, then people at the grassroots level need to take action to help sustain life on earth.
Collectively we must therefore convince the government this is a matter of the gravest national importance. Individually we should start thinking what other action we can take. It is at our peril if we continue to vacillate while the country is under imminent threat.
Yours faithfully,
Clairmont Lye
