Printed in The Humanist,
Nov-Dec, 2005
“Katrina and Rita in Context”
There has been something missing from the recent news coverage in the aftermath of
Hurricanes Katrina's and Rita. No one seems to be reporting on the real story ~ namely the
weather.
These most recent storms should encourage U.S. citizens to recognize that we are facing a
powerful entity that has only begun to barge into our American way. Look up into that
beautiful sky overhead and consider its substance, dynamics and might. Our atmosphere is
the product of more than four billion years of ongoing evolution ~ geological as well as
biological. It's a tenuous veil of gases that lays upon the surface of our earth, thin as
the finest silk upon your skin. This veil has a most interesting structure, one that's
worth thinking about.
Our atmosphere is composed almost totally of nitrogen and oxygen. Interwoven into this
medium is a gossamer thin admixture of everything else: thousands of different compounds
that can be grouped into almost two hundred distinct families. Combined, these compounds
make up less than one percent of our atmosphere's volume. Most of this volume is made up
of inert compounds and noble gases, so called because they don't react with their
surroundings very much, if at all. Within this matrix of nonreactive molecules is
another, yet thinner community of reactive compounds. By volume, these reactive
components total less than four hundred parts per million. This is where the action is.
These chemicals are always reacting with each other: they combine, split up, mutate,
affect neighboring molecules, change characteristics ~ and they do this at nonstop
hypervelocities. This is the scaffolding over which energy, moisture, and heat perform
their weather ballet.
What's new is that, over the past two hundred years or so, humanity has been injecting a
third category of ingredients: human-made and human-generated. By volume, this new genre
consists mainly of substances already present in the atmosphere, only now they are being
added to in unfathomable quantities ~ and they belong to the reactive families. Then there
are the "exotics": creations of science and industry that make up a small but usually
highly reactive percentage. Many of these compounds are totally new to our atmosphere.
All told, society has been injecting millions upon millions upon millions of tons of
these gases and particulates into our atmosphere at ever-increasing rates. So much so
that the very composition of our atmosphere ~ the weave of our atmospheric veil ~ has been
significantly and verifiably altered.
This is cause for concern because our atmosphere is in actuality a heat engine. Its
matrix of gaseous and particulate components are the valves and pistons. This engine is
powered by the sun’s energetic rays and the result is our weather: the global
distribution of energy, heat, and moisture. But each compound we've introduced interacts
with the sun’s energy according to its own unique thermo-hygroscopic-chemical profile.
Recent weather fluctuations are little more than a physical reflection of our
atmosphere's composition.
Remember all those environmentalists whining about pollution, global warming, and
all that? Well, it isn't mere delusion. Scientists have been discovering and recording
these changes since the end of World War II. For more than forty years now, satellites
have been visually recording the stains, rips, and acid burns that we continue to inflict
upon the veil of our atmosphere. The increasingly sophisticated information they gather continues to have ominous implications for the future as well as the present.
While the media discusses global changes in terms of global averages, keep this in mind:
there is no "average" patch of ground or water on this planet. Pollutants aren't added as
amorphous averages. They are injected into the fabric of our atmosphere as ribbons of
varying concentrations and volumes. It's true that today scientists have convincing
evidence that some global areas are experiencing a warming trend, while others are
experiencing a cooling trend. There is nothing reassuring about this.
Think about our atmosphere as the heat engine whose role it is to seek a globally
balanced distribution of energy, heat and moisture. This engine has evolved to a delicate
state of dynamic equilibrium. Remember, it is the profile of temperature gradients and
barometric differentials that provide the throttle behind this engine's drive to maintain
its equilibrium. Inject extremes and it will react in kind ~ it makes no difference to the
engine. It does, however, make a difference to humans and the biosphere as we know it.
Science has consistently shown that nature is always vastly more complex, interwoven, and
unpredictable than the human intellect is capable of imagining. Why won't we allow this
lesson to sink in? Why be surprised when weather continues to become more chaotic?
Admittedly, no one can accurately predict how weather will change. But who can deny that
it will continue to change, and at an accelerated rate? We can kid ourselves, but we
can't fool nature.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
{Note: A previous version of this article was printed in the
November/December 1995 issue of The
Humanist.}
