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September 15, 2014

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Manmade cataclysm far worse than global warming

DEAR Wan Lixin,

Your article in Shanghai Daily (“Epic eruption changed the world, September 5) discussing the 1815 explosion of the Tambora volcano was a welcome reinforcement of the need for urgent, united actions to reduce ongoing human contributions to global warming and the long-term, ecologically disastrous effects certain to follow.

In a recent course from The Teaching Company, I studied the impact of the mid-second millennium BC eruption of the volcano of Santorini in the Aegean Sea.

Like Tambora, it blew away a good part of that island and its cumulative effects, including a tsunami that battered the neighboring island of Crete and a three-year reduction in both the length and warmth of summer, are thought to have contributed to the weakening of the ancient Minoan civilization.

We know as much as we do about its worldwide effects thanks to weather records kept in ancient China.

But I think there is an even more cataclysmic event that holds a warning more appropriately terrifying at this stage of human history, and that is the long-lasting winter — and mass extinctions — that followed the impact of the asteroid that hit Earth some 66 million years ago in what is now the Gulf of Mexico.

Discovered just over 30 years ago, we now believe this was the cause of the extraordinary disappearance of about 75 percent of the world’s species alive at the time, including, most famously, the dinosaurs.

Scientists have determined that the impact of this asteroid created such initial high temperatures — and a shock wave that traveled around the world — that all the forests in the world caught fire.

Together with the debris hurled into the atmosphere, the carbon dioxide from these vast fires created a multi-generation shroud over the Earth through which sunlight could not penetrate. Temperatures plummeted, food sources vanished, species perished.

You are quite right to be concerned about the unchecked consequences of human contributions to global warming. I am, also.

But, sir, an even greater threat is posed by the continued existence of nuclear weapons, for it would take the explosions of only a very small percentage of those bombs and missiles now in existence to create a nuclear winter exceeding that which followed that asteroid strike so long ago.

This would not only end humankind as we know it, but also take with us a great many, if not most, of today’s living creatures.

I sometimes almost despair as I watch our continued petty squabbles over territories and “rights.” We forget how easily our hot tempers can cause disastrous escalations in tensions and conflicts.

And, while we calm ourselves with the false assurance that “no reasonable leader would ever authorize the use of nuclear weapons,” angry people are not reasonable, nor are those fanatics who see terrorism and mass destruction as instruments to attain their dastardly goals.

How desperately I wish that our two countries could join in leading all nuclear-armed powers to begin the serious elimination of all nuclear weapons. Those evil devices do not make anyone safe; their continued existence threatens us all.

Thank you for your thoughtful article, and a “tip of my Irish hat” to all of you at Shanghai Daily for your sharing the results of your voluminous reading with the rest of us!

 

In friendship,

 




 

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