I discovered the brilliant, abrasive speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison at the probably-too-young age of 14. One collection included a glib environmental tale of the Earth striking back against those who would despoil the planet. Among other woes, an earthquake swallowed Barbra Streisand at her Malibu home. The story ended: "Now, isn't that a nice story. And fuck you, too."
What would Ellison say to last week's spate of climate- and fossil-fuel-related disasters? "Dear Planet, if you're going to shake, quake, and rattle to show us that you're p!ssed, can you please aim better?"
Reuters has reported that a chunk of ice has broken off the Hualcan glacier near Carhuaz, Peru, plunging into a lake and creating a 23 meter high tsunami that left three people missing and feared dead. (Update per DWG, with a substantive diary: one person has died.) Another 50 people have been injured by the tsunami. The ice was roughly 200 meters by 500 meters, or about 10 American football fields.
The governor of the Ancash region attributed the collapse of the glacier to climate change: "Because of global warming the glaciers are going to detach and fall on these overflowing lakes. This is what happened today." The World Bank reports that seventy percent of the world’s tropical glaciers are in the high Andes Cordillera of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Of the 18 currently existing mountain glaciers in Peru, 22 percent of the surface has been lost over the past 27 to 35 years. Since 1970, glaciers in the Andes have lost 20 percent of their volume. Before this week, pundits predicted that the impact of climate change in Peru would be felt, indirectly, on the freshwater supply of Peru's coastal cities; the volume of the lost glacier surface of Peru is equivalent to 10 years of water supply for Lima.
Climate change just got a lot more direct in the high country of Peru.
Can you blame the planet for getting mad?
Last week a coal-laden tanker ran aground on one of the planet's showiest spots, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. An incredibly complex salvage operation has moved the ship off the reef with only four tons of oil spilling, leaving only footprints toxic hull paint to kill coral and a gash in the living reef two miles wide.
The mines of Appalachia have claimed 29 direct victims, thanks to an owner who regards safety regulations as silly as global warming, while a volcano under a glacier in Iceland erupted, opening up a 2 kilometer long fissure and causing the evacuation of hundreds of people.. I don't wish anyone to be swallowed by the earth in a 2 kilometer long fissure, but if anyone deserves it....
Bookended by those disasters but overlooked in the media, an Exxon Mobil pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico spilled 18,000 gallons of crude oil into the Delta National Wildlife Refuge at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The remote refuge, an important nursery for freshwater and saltwater fish, is home to a wide variety of raptors (including American kestrels, northern harriers, red-tailed hawks, and turkey vultures), songbirds, deer, blue crabs, and shrimp. An area of 16 square miles, one-fifth the refuge, is affected by the spill. The Fish & Wildlife Service urges people not to assist wildlife doused by the spill. Crabby critters might fight back!
Ellison might write something flippant about our greed for fossil fuel and the havoc we are wreaking upon the earth, but it's hard to be snarky about climate change when people are dying.