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01/05/2005
Tadpoles
The arrival of a new year typically prompts reflections on the
events of the past year, which in this case ended with tragedy on
a monumental scale. Amidst all the death and destruction there
are remarkable tales of survival, one of which I heard on the
radio this morning. Station WOR in New York had an interview
with a woman in nearby Livingston, New Jersey. She, her
husband and their children were in Phuket, Thailand and she was
sitting by the hotel’s pool when she saw the first of three huge
waves coming. The last was the biggest wave and she found
herself washed up in a tree. Her husband was washed through a
glass door in the hotel and one child was banged around in their
hotel room.
Looking down from the tree, she saw the rushing water pick up
another of her children, about to be carried out to sea. The
husband heard his wife’s screams and ran out, cutting his feet on
the broken glass, and somehow managed to grab the child from
the water. The lucky family is back here in New Jersey and the
woman had nothing but kind words about how wonderful the
Thai people were to them. The tsunami disaster is so large and
so distant, yet so close to home.
What was the major scientific story of 2004? The editors and
staff of Discover magazine chose an environmental topic and on
the cover of the January 2005 issue they pose the question, “Is
there any way to turn down the heat?” In the associated article,
“Turning Point” by Robert Kunzig, the year 2004 is cited as the
year in which the evidence of global warming became so
overwhelming that we now have face whether or not we can do
anything about it. Numerous small pieces of evidence, together
with the demolishing of some arguments against or even favoring
global warming as a good thing, combine to provide strong
reasons for trying to control it.
One of the small bits of evidence is the lowly southern green
stinkbug! Not the stinkbug itself, but rather its newfound habitat
in England. This stinkbug has flourished in the milder climes of
Europe and would often appear in shipments of foodstuffs from
Italy to England. However, the bugs found the summers in
England too cool for their tastes and never reproduced. Now,
suddenly, stinkbugs are being found in gardens in the London
vicinity. This bit of evidence certainly doesn’t in itself warrant
any conclusion about global warming. On the other hand, when
combined with other similar findings on expanded ranges of
other animals and plants, earlier planting seasons, the hottest
20th century and a host of other changes, global warming cannot
be ignored.
Some have argued that global warming could be a good thing in
that it might help prevent another Ice Age. That argument seems
to have been dealt a body blow last year by some European
researchers who extracted a two-mile deep ice core from a spot
in Antarctica. Their conclusion from their analyses of the
climate history in the core is that it will be about 15,000 years
before we have to worry about an Ice Age. If worst case global
warming scenarios come true, places like South Florida will have
long since disappeared thanks to melting of ice sheets in
Antarctica.
Global warming has been suggested as one of the possible causes
of an alarming decline in the world’s population of frogs. My
wife loves frogs, has sculpted them and one of her Christmas
presents was a tiny frog sculpture. The December 17 2004 issue
of Science reports that some 500 herpetologists took part in a
global assessment of amphibians and their predictions do not
bode well for the future. Perhaps half of the known 5700 species
of amphibians could be gone by the end of this century.
Mention of frogs reminds me of the rebroadcast I watched on
PBS of the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony honoring
Wangari Maathi, the African woman who won the award for
planting trees! This may not seem something to warrant a Nobel
Peace Prize unless it be noted that through her efforts some 30
million trees have been planted in Africa, primarily by poor
women, in the so-called Green Belt initiative. Women in rural
Africa apparently do the work of growing the crops, carrying the
water, gathering the firewood, etc. Deforestation resulted in
water sources drying up and the women having to walk farther
for wood and water.
About thirty years ago, Maathi reasoned that, to reclaim the food
and water resources from the expanding desert and other eroded
land resulting from the clearing of jungle habitat, a good first
step would be to plant trees. A champion of women’s rights, she
also thought that women could do the planting and be rewarded
for their efforts. This Green Belt approach spread over Africa
and other parts of the world.
Acknowledging the unusual awarding of the Peace Prize
specifically for an environmental activity, the chairman of the
Norwegian Nobel Committee took pains to point out the role of
the environment in conflicts all over the world. The distribution
and availability of oil and water underlie conflicts in the Middle
East; deforestation in the Philippines and the Chiapas region of
Mexico underlie conflicts in those regions; the spread of desert
forced contacts between conflicting groups in Darfur. There are
many causes of conflict but inequities in distribution of essential
resources, especially food and water, are virtually bound to cause
conflict.
Returning to the frog, its numbers are declining all over the
world. Whether due to global warming or pollution by toxic
chemicals or some other causes, it may be likened to the canary
in the coalmine warning of impending danger to our own
existence. I was touched by Maathi’s concluding remarks in her
Nobel address (the Nobel Web site Nobelprize.org contains the
full text):
“As I conclude I reflect on my childhood experience when I
would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my
mother. I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing
among the arrowroot leaves I tried in vain to pick up the strands
of frogs’ eggs, believing they were beads. But every time I put
my little fingers under them they would break. Later, I saw
thousands of tadpoles: black, energetic and wriggling through the
clear water against the background of the brown earth. This is
the world I inherited from my parents.
Today, over 50 years later, the stream has dried up, women walk
long distances for water, which is not always clean, and children
will never know what they have lost. The challenge is to restore
the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of
beauty and wonder.”
Since last we met, I’ve added another year to my official age,
now 77. However, I still remember playing in a stream and
watching tadpoles wriggling in clear water. Let’s hope we meet
the challenge.
Allen F. Bortrum
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