What Would You Do About Climate Change?

Someone asked me that question on my Newsvine column the other day, and all I could answer was ....  "something" However, it did caused me to do a little research and pull my thoughts together as to why I have no answer his question. 

I think we need to get a majority of the people that are being affected by the changes (which is everybody), to agree that there are changes. Then, I think what we should do is ...... something!

The affects the changes are having on the earth are very complex, making the question of what we should do about them very complex.

The melting of the polar caps is not making the ocean levels rise (ie; an ice cube in a glass displaces more water frozen than it does when melted), but it is not just the polar caps that are melting, the ice glaciers, caps and ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica plus the Himalayas, the Rockies and the Andes that are also melting, causing sea levels to rise. It is also changing the salinity of the oceans, which in addition to having an affect on sea life, is having an affect on the oceans currents, for instance the Gulf Stream, which brings moderate temperatures to the northern hemispheres.

The Gulf Stream has already slowed down, causing colder temperatures in the north, if (when, actually) the GS stops completely, the Northern Hemisphere will get very cold, as in very, very cold. (that's where all that talk of a new ice age comes from).

Studies are indicating that main affect the melting of the Polar Caps is having, is the change the caps are having on the pressure they exert on the earths plates. As the caps melt the pressure is lessened, causing earthquakes to be more frequent, and to occur in places they have never occurred in the past (like Kansas). It is also causing the same phenomenon with volcanoes (ie; the recent Eyjafjallajokull eruption in Iceland.)

Climate change is also causing more widespread and more severe drought than in the past, like in China, Russia, Africa, South America, and the United States. Drought affects water supply and it affects food supply, which causes mass migrations, which in turn causes food and water supply shortages in other places due to increased population of those places.

So, what do I think we should do about the problem? As I said, first we have to recognize we have a problem, only then will any solutions have any meaning. And I certainly don't know what those solutions will be, those answers will have to come from folks like the boys and girls that met in the tiny atoll nation of Kiribati last week.