Violent Weather and Global Warming

July 15th 2005

It is said that if the earth was an apple, the thickness of our air envelope would correspond with the thickness of an apple’s skin. The need for pressurized airplane cabins illustrates the weakness of gravity to hold gas and evaporated water just a few miles up from the surface.

It is logical to ask if, “From the rarified margin of the air envelope, are we losing to outer space the water we drink and the air we breathe?” The answer is “Yes”. We have been doing so since the planet was formed. And in fact, in a few billion or million years we could expect a completely dry and desolate planet.

But luckily, for now, ocean currents “slosh” about, and breezes whiz around all influenced mostly by the tilted spin and seasons of the earth and the constant pull by gravity on both water and air. Movement is inescapable as warmer rising air and water, the low pressure areas, are being filled by cooler neighboring higher pressures. Irregular land masses above and below sea level impede and expedite the flow of ocean and air currents to insure a tangled flux for our climate.

Earth is called a water planet. As with a growing street mob, we must expect that global warming will cause additional water particles to crowd each others motions with growing force. Sure enough we have record numbers and sizes of tornados, hurricanes, droughts, and flooding. Maybe, with the pollution we create, we need an increasingly dynamic mixture of unstable water and atmosphere to clean the air so as not to choke to death on our own gas.

By Allen Wilson
Freelance Writer and Educator

Keywords and Misspellings: Apolo gobal globle waming