Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Mind-boggling twin typhoons

“If you want to see the sunshine, you have to weather the storm.”
--Frank Lane


By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY
-- Unbelievable but it was the first time in many years that I monitored on tenterhooks over BBC News and CNN (while I was in Brooklyn) the two super typhoons simultaneously lashing at my country in the Philippines and in the United States over the weekend.
I’m referring to the super howler “Ompong” or “Mangkhut” which killed 70 Filipinos (and was on its way to China) and the hurricane “Florence”, which flooded North Carolina and drowned more than 30 residents (death toll was expected to rise) almost at the same.
We also particularly noticed these past months that the weathers in the Philippines and the United States appeared to be synchronized.
It there were heavy rains in the Philippines, other parts of the US were also raining hard.
When humidity in the tropical Philippines was at fever-pitch, Americans here also felt like they were placed literally alongside the hell.
Were they “the signs of the times”?
When referring to abnormal weather condition, scientists often use the term "climate change" instead of global warming.
They theorized that as the Earth's average temperature climbs, winds and ocean currents move heat around the globe in ways that can cool some areas, warm others, and change the amount of rain and snow falling.
As a result, the climate changes differently in different areas, it was learned.

-o0o-

Was the abnormal weathers recently experienced in the US and in the Philippines simultaneously what the scientists call as the global warming?
It’s when glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are dying, and wildlife is scrambling to keep pace.
Experts in the subject matter believe “it's becoming clear” that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our modern lives.
Called greenhouse gases, their levels are higher now than in the last 650,000 years, scientists noted.
According to scientists, the "greenhouse effect" is the warming that happens when certain gases in Earth's atmosphere trap heat. These gases reportedly let in light but keep heat from escaping, like the glass walls of a greenhouse.
They added that first, sunlight shines onto the Earth's surface, where it is absorbed and then radiates back into the atmosphere as heat. In the atmosphere, “greenhouse” gases trap some of this heat, and the rest escapes into space. The more greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere, the more heat gets trapped.
It was learned further that scientists have known about the greenhouse effect since 1824, when Joseph Fourier calculated that the Earth would be much colder if it had no atmosphere.
This greenhouse effect is reportedly what keeps the Earth's climate livable. Without it, the Earth's surface would be an average of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit cooler.
It was reported that in 1895, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius discovered that humans could enhance the greenhouse effect by making carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. He kicked off 100 years of climate research that has given us a sophisticated understanding of global warming.

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