Carbon Footprint (Part 3)

Our local weather this week may serve as a real example to "Climate Change." Even if we don't consider the more devastating ultimate effect, climate change as it unfolds today is a term which is self explanatory - the changing of climate as we knew it. Climate is closely related to weather as well as seasons - the latter referring to the regular annual cycle of weather changes which characterizes any locality. In general, we have three general zones of seasons: tropical (for areas near the equator), polar (areas around the north and south poles), and temperate (the band between the equator and the north and south poles).

Polar climate is cold, of course, and is permanently frigid the nearer you are to the pole. It's opposite in the equator, where we are, where it's hot and sunny, but also wet and humid. Across the globe, near the equator, you can find many of the world's deserts. In countries near or surrounded by bodies of water, we can have nice, sunny, and windy, tropical weather or we can have torrential rains in certain times of the year. While traditionally we say we have a dry and wet season in the Philippines, we often joke, too, that what we have are wet, and not-so-wet seasons. In Southeast Asia, tropical storms abound, and we're used to them.

What is actually peculiar and worrisome is the definite change in weather patterns in the last few years. Annual seasons were usually relatively accurately repetitive - the wet season follows the dry season on specific months of the year, almost to the day. Even nomads in ancient times, or the lumad's in Mindanao, measure the years by the cyclical changes in seasons. We Filipinos are so much affiliated with the North American culture that eveybody knows the seasons in temperate countries: summer comes after spring, then comes autumn (or fall), followed by winter. Whether you're in SE Asia where you have "amihan/habagat" (northeast/southwest monsoons), or in temperate countries with their "four seasons," they come like clockwork, expected and taken for granted as "the times of our lives."

Not anymore. The last few years have been characterized by surprises rather than patterns. And grave destruction in many parts of the world. Half of the disasters stemmed from the fact that we were not prepared because weather occurences came unexpected, ranging from severe cold fronts and storms to extreme heat waves spanning across the globe. I was in Incheon, South Korea in April of 2011 and they were grumbling that it was supposed to be the first day of spring already and yet, it was very cold we were still wearing thermals. I also remember my good friend, Colin Brader, in UK who was complaining last year of very cold weather when it was already beyond winter, and later on, on a heat wave so widespread people were shedding off their clothes in public. Well, not all their clothes, of course.

It's the same thing everywhere, people are saying the weather now is not the same as they were before. It is very noticeable because the weather is supposed to be one of those "regular" cyclical occurences in one's life, and if you have been around for half a century, a slight change will stand out. The weather now spikes to extremes, from the very cold to the very hot, and not in usual times that they should have. Worse, storms now brew erratically across the world, and in places they were not supposed to. Typhoon Pablo was one good example, striking parts of Davao which never experienced typhoons before. The calamity was aggravated by the fact that the people there were not ready in any way.

Today, we may experience another typhoon which may be similar, if not stronger, than the one which devastated us in 1990, Typhoon "Ruping." What's different about "Yolanda" is that it immediately followed another typhoon, "Wilma," which already saturated the soil cover making the area more susceptible to landslides and flashfloods. The fact that two typhoons follow each other along a path across the Visayas is another surprise in itself, as we generally know (in the past) that storms pass less often here, and even lesser in Mindanao. We need to realize, this changes in climate is real, will not go away, but will rather continue to get worse, because of the activities that we humans do, especially in the last century.

That's why a good understanding of climate change, global warming, and carbon foorprint, is crucial. Not really on the scholarly side of it, but just on the basics, and why we may need to change our ways, and more importantly, change our thinking paradigms. (to be continued)