ACTION

The 4th of March of 2007 I started to write these sentences : "Please, take 3 minutes to read this : 29 degrees at the Spanish Mediterranean coast, 16 degrees at 20:00h in Toulouse, 6 degrees in Kharkov, biking in short-sleeve T shirt, Pyrenees looking as in end June, Swiss sky resorts shut down, people sunbathing at the beach and looking for shadow in Spain, bears with insomnia in Russia, ice sheets breaking up in Antarctic, flowers blooming two-months in advance in Holland, citizens saving water in Belgium... "

However I never ended it up. Since then, I didn't write anymore in this blog. The first reason was the end of my PhD, a very hard period, and then I took few months off to travel. Almost a year later, I'm back. I think I'm pretty the same person, I have suffered a few slight changes in my personality and point of view about political and social issues. How has changed the climate change issue in all this time ? Now, living in the very heart of winter 2008 in the North Hemisphere, how different is it compared to 2007 ? Unfortunately I could start this article as I did with that of 2007. Today a friend of mine who is skying in the Swiss Alps have phoned me. Snow at almost 2000 m is melting. She lost her motivation. The snow layer is very thin and of bad quality. The weather is "unusually" warm. I'm three days in my apartment, I'm wearing short sleeve, I got a slight sunburn from the after lunch sun session, yesterday some folks were swimming in Biarritz...

Some people still ask what is climate change. I think there is still hope with them. They just need objective information. But what is sad is that today there are still some few irresponsibles (luckily everyday less numerous) brave enough to claim that our atmosphere can absorb unlimited amount of greenhouse gases. They piss me off. The time moves on and we are wasting so many time with a stupid debate, whether climate change is created by anthropogenic sources or is natural. In any case is an evidence that a climate change is going on. Humans may adapt to the new environmental conditions as they have always done during million of years along the human evolution. The problem is that these changes are happening a such a speed that we won't be able to adapt ourselves to the new environment ! What will happen then ? We certainly cannot answer that question with 100% precision, but imagine a scenario where long extreme droughts will be followed by devastating flooding among many others extreme climate events. For sure nothing good will happen. Following the moral precautionary principle and with the overwhelming scientific consensus, our only way is react NOW !