Like many, I find the news feed (pretty much the whole spectrum) far too biased, sensationalist, dumbed down, and depressing. There’s a positive story for every negative one, it just never makes the headline. With the advent of false narratives and misinformation, important subjects are being overlooked or obscured. My focus revolves around writing thriller with elements of the environment and natural resources, particularly water, the later I have spent my whole life working with. Water is fraught with myths, mysteries, and politics, most of which can make wonderful literature, particularly thrillers. I invite you to read, share, and comment (respectfully please).
Today’s Post: Positives & Negatives deals with Albedo. The term is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as: The amount of light reflected from a surface. Or, why it makes more sense to rent a white car when traveling to Arizona than a black one during the summer.
POSITIVE:
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC or North Atlantic Current) has in recent years been the subject of increasing concern. The current acts as a conveyor belt bringing warm water from the equatorial region to the North Atlantic. Its role in distributing heat, nutrients, and salt that are essential to marine life and regulating northern hemisphere temperatures. With increased freshwater flows entering the ocean from ice melt, salinity differentials have threatened the current, slowing it down. If it were to collapse, Western Europe and North America would see catastrophic impacts including far colder and longer winters in Europe disrupting agriculture and food security and increased sea level rise in North America, coastal damage, and extreme precipitation swings from rainfall events to drought.
Experts of predicted the AMOC is at a tipping point but a new study, conducted by the University of Bern, Switzerland, has concluded that the current could be far more resilient than originally thought. Scientists studied the transition from the last ice age and found that the current weakened less acutely than previously assumed. While not an “all-clear” moment, it does give some optimism that nature is more resilient to man than originally feared.
NEGATIVE:
Back to Albedo and that hot black rental car. With a loss of sea ice in the Arctic region, darker ocean surfaces absorb more solar radiation resulting in the compounding of effects and an amplified warming cycle. The result is a polar amplification of warming of the Arctic.
To some, this means new open ice-free trade routes, but to the more serious, it is a clear and present danger. Permafrost covers about a quarter of the land mass in the Northern hemisphere and entraps about half of all carbon stored in our planet’s soil. It has long served as the carbon sink of the planet. But, once thawed, carbon dioxide and methane are released intensifying and accelerating the warming of our planet.
The Arctic is warming at a rate of two to three times the rate of the Earth as a whole. If all permafrost were to thaw, it would release four times the amount of carbon and greenhouse gases emitted by humans since the Industrial Revolution. Game Over. The solution, tackle climate change. Circular, right? Banning the words in books, pretending it’s a hoax, or simply throwing up your arms isn’t going to make the issue go away. Science and nature don’t bend to politics. They are immutable and unforgiving.
By the way, Albedo is the name of a new thriller novel I just completed and sent to my agent. What could possibly go wrong?