HURRICANE IVAN was one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record. We remain grateful that Jamaica was spared a more direct hit as the eye passed offshore to the south of the island. But even as the hurricane headed for the US coast along the Gulf of Mexico last week, a group of scientists testified before Congress that global warming could produce stronger and more destructive hurricanes in the future.
Hurricanes are creatures of warm ocean water and humid air. Global warming will increase the temperature of ocean water, generating hurricanes with stronger winds, heavier rains and larger storm surges, is the thinking. Not everyone agrees. Ten dissenting scientists sent a letter to the congressional committee arguing that there is no clear scientific evidence of a link between severe weather like hurricanes, blizzards and heat waves and global warning.
Over the last several hurricane seasons, which extend from June to November, the warmer months of the year, we have seen more and stronger systems developing. With two more months to go, the US itself has already been affected by four hurricanes this year. The precautionary principle is gathering strength in the environmental movement. Essentially, the principle rejects the notion that airtight proof of harm must first be obtained before reasonable precaution to pre-empt harm is taken. The Europeans are way ahead of the Americans in taking on board the precautionary principle in public policy. A temperature increase of even one degree is likely to cause hurricane intensities to increase, the scientists have said.
The United States is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane which trap heat in the atmosphere leading to global warming. But even as we face the risk of more intense hurricanes, other scientists, including some of our own, are warning that the protection offered by coral reefs against hurricane damage is being catastrophically eroded away. Indeed, some of the coastal damage wreaked by Ivan has already been attributed to the decline of the buffer coral reefs.
A World Resources Institute study released last week has estimated that about two-thirds of the coral reefs in the Caribbean are threatened from human-generated pressures like pollution and overfishing. That study, which is to be presented also at an environmental forum here in Jamaica this week, did not include coral bleaching from global warming.
The aftermath of Hurricane Ivan is a particularly good time to consider how human action and inaction is affecting the environment and aggravating natural events which have the potential of unleashing disaster upon us. This is not an abstract matter for scientists. It is of immediate practical concern to all of us. Common sense and the survival instinct should lead us to do whatever can be done within reason to lessen threats from the environment.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
