8th April 2011
For one reason and another we didn’t publish a Newsletter last week. But it’s been “situation normal” around the world. In fact it has now reached the point that it is becoming, if it isn’t already, hard to see the greater reality. What is really going on! No sooner does one focus upon yet another disastrous situation than another, and even worse, erupts upon the world scene. The danger is that one becomes inured to what is happening and eventually becomes somewhat blasé as to the world situation.
For example we have had a number of earthquakes over the past few months. Some have been absolutely devastating such as the one that almost levelled the entire city of Christchurch in the south island of New Zealand killing several hundreds of people in the process. Then came the one which practically wiped out the coastal part of Japan to the north east with the consequent massive tsunami and after shocks. The emergency is still not over yet as there is concern regarding the leakage of radioactivity into the environment. The news of yet another lethal and powerful earthquake measuring 6.8 was barely reported in the media. The BBC World Service briefly mentioned it and there was a brief report in the London newspaper The Independent on the 26th March. There may have been further reports but we are not aware of them.
Where was this particular earthquake? In the north east of Burma, the first reports spoke of 70 people killed with more expected when news from more remote areas is received. These reports also mentioned several hundred homes destroyed, also 14 Buddhist monasteries and 9 government buildings. A hospital and a bridge, both essentials in the area, were also damaged. The quake was felt hundreds of miles away in Bangkok and in Hanoi.
The wars taking place through the north part of Africa and especially the action being taken with the approval of the UN to prevent Colonel Gadaffi bombing his citizens with the loss of life and the wrecking of the lives of thousands of people has also affected the reporting of what is happening in the Ivory Coast. An election last year saw Alassane Outtara recognised internally as the winner. However, Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent who lost the election refuses to leave office. So far this has brought the nation to the edge of civil war. The fighting and the fear of all-out war has caused one million citizens to leave their homes. The report also speaks of more than 460 people killed in the conflict.
The Israeli/Hamas conflict hasn’t gone away and neither has the constant blood-letting of Afghanistan and Iraq where British and American youth are being slaughtered daily. For what purpose? No discernible viable purpose at all! It is said that one great purpose is to eradicate the Taliban. A BBC News report the other day included an interview with one of the Afghan citizens he said “look around you, the Taliban has not gone away from Afghanistan, it is still here! it is everywhere!” He wasn’t joking! And yet we have the example of a powerful Russian army which after several fruitless years left Afghanistan in ignominy. We need to wake up!
CLIMATE CHANGE - A SCARY SITUATION DEVELOPING!
The Independent – 4th April – Glaciers melting at fastest rate in 350 years, study finds. Some mountain glaciers are melting up to 100 times faster than at any time in the past 350 years. The findings, based on a new ice loss calculation technique developed by studying the glaciers of Patagonia in South America, have worrying implications for crop irrigation and water supplies around the world. …. Scientists behind the discovery claim their findings show that the rate of melting at the start of the 20th century was much slower than previously calculated, but that over the past 30 years it has been significantly faster than suspected…..It is the first time the historic volume of water lost from melting glaciers has been calculated so accurately so far back in time. …. The figures show the contribution to sea level rise is increasing, though still at a low level, but what alarmed the team most was that the rate of loss has sped up rapidly since 1980. Professor Glasser, who carried out the study with the University of Exeter and Stockholm University said “The glaciers have lost a lot less ice up until 30 years ago than had been thought. The real killer is that the rate of loss has gone up 100 times above the long-term average. It’s scary.”
Our comment: Why do glaciers melt? We might simply ask “in the middle of winter if I bring a lump of ice into the house why does it melt?” Well, actually, it won’t if the inside of the house is just as cold as outside! But if we light a fire in the kitchen our lump of ice will begin to melt and very soon there will be no ice but just a pool of water! Essentially the conclusion has to be “the ice melted because a human being caused the air inside the house to warm up.” And there is your answer.
The Times – 6th April – Britain could catch a cold if melted Arctic ice surges into the Atlantic. A massive pool of melted ice detected in the Arctic Ocean could cause average temperatures in Britain to fall, scientists have warned. The pool has grown by about a fifth, or more than 7,500 cubic km, in the past decade. Changing wind patterns could flush the water south into the North Atlantic, where it would interrupt the flow of water from the Tropics towards Europe, known as the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation. The Gulf Stream which is part of the circulation, raises average European temperatures by 5-10C. A study by 17 institutes from ten European countries – including the Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the University of East Anglia – found that the effects of the melted ice could be “abrupt” … The Atlantic circulation reacts to sudden changes in the salinity of sea water. If the pool of largely fresh water from the Arctic entered the Atlantic, it would dilute the salt water and alter its density, reducing the rate at which water near the surface sank and was carried back along the sea floor towards the Tropics.
Our comment: In these pages we warned of this possibility several years ago – it is no longer a “possibility” but a “probability!”
The Independent – 17th February – British floods ‘were the result of climate change.’ The catastrophic floods of autumn 2000, which saw river levels reach 400 – year highs and left 10,000 homes underwater across England and Wales, were most likely the result of global warming. It is the first time scientists have been able to plot with any confidence the link between the extreme weather with man-made greenhouse gases. Researchers from Oxford University and the Met. Office aided by thousands of volunteers online believe 20th century industrial emissions made the natural disaster almost twice as likely. …. The research,
published in Nature, reveals there was a two-in-three chance that the odds of flooding that year were increased by global warming by a factor of two or more.
Our comment: Why do so many people refuse to believe that man’s activities on Earth are very much to blame for the climate change that is taking place. You cannot dump the amount of chemicals into the air around us which then drift to the upper atmosphere without there being a reaction. We will mention yet again the example and the experience the planet had over the question of the effect of CFCs which then caused severe damage to the ozone layer. It wasn’t until the use of CFCs was banned internationally that eventually the ozone layer began to recover.
CRIME
The Daily Mail – 31st March – Dealer is caught with £50,000 of cocaine, crystal meth, cannabis and ecstasy … and judge frees him! Colin McD…. Was found with the stash of class A drugs including cocaine, ecstasy, three bin bags of cannabis and deadly crystal meth when police raided his home. But Judge Stephen H … provoked fury by giving the 34 year old a 12 month suspended sentence, allowing him to walk free from court. The soft sentencing came just 24 hours after new guidelines recommended drug dealers could escape jail even if they were selling heroin.
Our comment: the bible has a lot to say about judging and right judgment. In Job chapter 31:11 it speaks of a heinous crime….an iniquity to be punished by the judges. In Leviticus 19:15 tells us “You shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: you shall not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: (giving them preferential treatment simply because of who they are!) but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbour.” Constantly in today’s world we are finding very light sentences being given by judges which by no means fit the crime. Yet the bible constantly instructs judges to judge rightly.
POLLUTION
The Independent – 24th March – Hundreds of shards reveal the threat to wildlife from debris floating in our seas. Environmentalists examined the stomach of a juvenile turtle found off the coast of Argentina. The bellyful of debris that they found is symptomatic of the increasing threat to the sea turtles from a human addiction to plastic. Sea turtles often mistake plastic items for jellyfish or other food. …. Humans currently produce 260 million tons of plastic a year. In the sea the plastics do not biodegrade but are broken into smaller pieces which are consumed by marine life at the bottom of the food chain. …. An examination of gastrointestinal obstruction in a green turtle found off Florida discovered that, over the course of a month, the animal’s faeces had contained 74 foreign objects, including “four types of latex balloons, different types of hard plastic, a piece of carpet-like material and two 2-4 mm tar balls.”
Our comment: We are yet to reap the results of the worldwide dumping of rubbish of all kinds into the environment – it isn’t just the oceans which provide us with so much food, but also the land where enormous quantities of rubbish are dumped every day. Our home, is becoming the great rubbish dump in the sky.
