The Animals Know It’s Happening
I saw this story this morning, and as if to nudge me to blog about it, a reader sent the link in. The Washington Post has a story on global warming that’s worth reading. It’s nothing new, just more of the bleak picture of what we’re doing to the earth.
Now, I know there are doubters out there. And I know scientists occasionally get things wrong. And I also admit that this is not my area of expertise. But one of the things interesting about the story is that it hits upon biological changes to the warmer conditions. (Again, this is nothing new, we’ve been watching this happen for some time).
Fish and wildlife are following the retreating ice caps northward. Polar bears are losing the floes they need for hunting. Seals, unable to find stable ice, are hauling up on islands to give birth. Robins and barn owls and hornets, previously unknown so far north, are arriving in Arctic villages.
[...]
In this month’s issue of the journal Science, a team of U.S. and Canadian researchers said the Bering Sea was warming so much it was experiencing “a change from arctic to subarctic conditions.” Gray whales are heading north and walruses are starving, adrift on ice floes in water too deep for feeding. Warmer-water fish such as pollock and salmon are coming in, the researchers reported.
We’re seeing it in the die off of amphibians, in the expansion of species to higher elevations, in the earlier arrival of migrating birds returning to their nesting areas, and a thousand other places. One example taken by itself means nothing. But thousands of cases of organisms responding to their warming environment helps make a compelling case to what’s happening.
Hey Jay. I hope you’re doing well. Thanks for sharing the info about global warming. That and the other ways we are destroying this earth disturb me. But, there are some good things happening among us churched folks, even specifically the Churches of Christ. Check out the following article, “Evangelicals embrace ‘creation care’ of God’s green earth,” which mentions Scott Freeman, a minister at the Northside Church of Christ in Waco…
http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/living/religion/14125790.htm
Thanks for the link Mitch. When talking about environmental problems, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s difficult to sound cheerful.
Like you, I’m very glad that Christians are starting to have some convictions on these issues. I do think we are but a small ripple in a large sea of apathy… To be honest, it’s something I just can’t understand.
Concern for the environment should be the perfect compliment to throwing off the chains of materialism. Yet in the culture you and I grew up in, people somehow seem to leave their faith at home when visiting the car lot to buy a hummer.
You show me a literal six-day creationist, and that should be the very essence of a person that’s fiercely conservationist. Yet somehow, I and the rest of the world view those as totally contradictory as Christians have dropped the ball.
Enough ranting. Like you, I’m seeing ever so small but very positive steps. And while the rest of the world at our little Christian college bows to the alter of conspicuous consumption, there are now lots of people who connect the issue to their faith. And this is a change from the past, and a change for the better.