Did You Ever Think About It Like This...

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24 Hours of Reality

     Next Week, The Climate Reality Project will host "24 Hours of Reality: 24 Reasons for Hope". It is a marathon 24 Hour program to raise awareness, educate and inform people about what we face with the Climate Crisis, Climate Change and the effects of Global Warming.

     No matter where you stand on this issue, I recommend tuning in next week to get some good information and clear up some misconceptions that re floating around out there. The Earth is getting warmer. The Ice Caps are melting. Climate Change is real. It is happening now. And we are contributing. Find out how next week. Click the Link Below:

        24 Hours of Reality: 24 Reasons for Hope

In Remembrance

     Last Summer, driving back from Toronto, via Erie, Pa and Ohio, I happened to pass a sign for the Flight 93 Memorial. I had wanted to visit the site, but I just never did. The memories of that fateful sunny day in 2001 still haunt my dreams. We were driving back from Toronto and taking a very big circle route so I could get my sister-in-law and her boyfriend to as many states as I could before they went back to Germany. Unbeknownst to me, I decided to take a different route back to Maryland that day, which took us past Stoystown, PA. We had visited the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero in New York City a few weeks before with my wife's parents when they had come to visit, and the memories and feelings were still fresh in my mind. But then again, when concerning that day, aren't they always?

     We drove through the rollings hills and up the winding mountain roads to the site, and I felt uncomfortable, anxious. I felt like I did on that beautiful Tuesday morning back in 2001 when everything was shattered. I couldn't help thinking about the people, the ones who did not make it home that day. The ones in the Twin Towers. The ones at the Pentagon. And of course, the brave men and women of Flight 93 who, once they learned of the terrible events unfolding outside of their airplane, took it upon themselves to make a stand.

     What struck me about the United 93 site was how quiet and peaceful it was. The beauty of rural, mountainous Pennsylvania. How could this be the site of a terrorist attack? Or did I have it wrong? It was a reminder that there are many of us will do whatever we must to ensure the safety and of our country and the lives of innocent people. I thought back on the events of that day and it seemed so surreal. Far off, yet crystal clear. Had it really happened?

     I was looking for something specific along the wall where the names of the 40 passengers and crew were etched. Something that I had seen at the memorial in New York. A horrible and heart-breaking reminder that what took place on Tuesday September 11th, 2001 that showed the brutality of that day.

     There were five unborn children on the planes in New York City. And one on Flight 93. I do not know if there were any on the flight that hit the Pentagon. When I saw the names in New York a few weeks before I took this picture in Stoystown, I was crushed. Finding another innocent victim like this made me more angry then I think I have ever been. Is the world really this harsh and awful of a place?

     So many lives were lost senselessly that day. When I think back on what happened of 9-11-2001, I now immediately think of the children that never got a chance to play in the sun. Or swim in the ocean. Or have a rainbow loom. Or kiss a boy. Or ride a bike. And how that may be the most terrible tragedy of all.

Mountaintop Alpine Glaciers

     As you drive north thru Italy toward the Rechen Pass and the Austrian border, the mountains get bigger, taller, more imposing. Evergreen forests cover both sides of the valleys as you wind your way up, broken only by emerald green pastures and winter-time ski slopes. The closer you get to Austria and the higher the elevation, the sparser the vegetation gets. Each mountain is topped with gray-brown rock set above the stark line where the trees abruptly end. In between there are gray-tan rock fields, cascading down toward the tree line. You can see the different eco-systems change with the naked eye as the elevation quickly changes.



     There are only a few of the higher peaks that have snow on them this late in the Summer. With the trained eye, you can see where the older glaciers used to be on some of the mountains without snow. A few decades ago, many of the higher peaks had snow and glaciers year round, but that number has dwindled to what remains in the present day. The atmosphere is warming, there is no doubt. All you have to do is compare pictures from fifty years ago with today to see that mountains like Kilimanjaro, the peaks in Glacier National Park and here in the Tirol region of southwestern Austria and Northern Italy.

     These are the photos I took yesterday, just south of the town of Rechen, Italy. I am working to find the peak names, so give me some time. Once I figure them out, i will be able to do a comparison of then and now. You can see the mountains without snow have some sort of vegetation almost to the peak, while others look strangely bare between the rock fields and the bare granite of the mountain tops. I couldn't help but wonder if those mountains once had year round snow and soon would grow lichens and small grasses as the climate warms and the snows continue to melt.

This is all pure speculation on my part. I don't know very much about this area. But after talking to a few locals in the city of Meran and Dorf Tirol where we stayed, the mountains used to have snow. Now they don't, except for the higher peaks, where a few still have glaciers.

As the Earth warms and sea levels continue to rise, these glaciers will continue to melt. Since 1% of the worlds water is drinkable, and most of that can be found in the Polar Caps, underground aquifers and glacial melt, the disappearance of these glaciers poses a threat to the fresh water supply in all areas. Peaks like the one above could soon look like the one below, and water shortages could become prevalent.

   

Quotes

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