EDITORIAL
Hounded Hurriyat
The axiom is well known.
It is time-tested, too. It says: those who rule by the
gun are felled by the gun. Those who strum around on the
power of sundry guns held on different shoulders, would
have to suffer the scare of the same guns hounding them.
None would know it better than the All Party Hurriyat
Conference, which till very recently was propped into the
very seventh heaven by the terrorists as the 'only' and
'true' representative of the Kashmiris. It is now being
forced by the very same 'supporters' into a virtual hell.
And as all hell-borne beings do, they are crying at the
top of their voices. Crying for the security agencies to
secure them from the people who till the other day they
took as the saviours not only of their schemes and selves
but also the souls of the men and women of the whole
Kashmir, possibly Jammu too. Every response by the
security, here was an 'atrocity'; every death of a
militant at the hands of the security forces a 'custodial
killing'. Bundhs would be organized to 'protest' against
them, to denigrate the work of the security agencies.
This indeed has been an easy excuse to call for bundhs,
hartals and protests.
Then they decided not to
support a 'bandh' and all hell has broken loose for them.
Yesterday's representatives' are 'bought puppets'. Their
voice is 'inconsequential'. The leaders have been asked
to render accounts of the monies they have been
receiving. They have been threatened with dire
consequences unless they 'return' the monies they have
received. Bitter fights in the Hurriyat conclaves have
already been reported between the leaders. One leader has
actually had the 'janbaaz sipahis of hurriyat'
calling on him with guns for a knocking. And they have
done the ovious: criticized the State Government for not
providing them full security! Probably, they would like
to have the most secure, Z-category for their pains
against the State and the country. They certainly donot
like the downgrading their security has been some time
back. And now if the Government does not want to have its
image of a democratic, secular, responsive Government
'blunted' it may well have to deploy security to protect
the hounded leaders from the marauders who are out to get
them. What a fall for the people who till the other day
vowed to get the security agencies out of the Valley, if
not the whole State!
The question here is not
whether the hounded Hurriyat people should have the
security cover restored to protect them from their
supporters-opponents in the terrorist ranks. The question
is whether the Hurriyat and those in the unholy whom they
have damaged with their reputation, have learned any
lessons from this whole development. Sometime back when
sections of the 'indigenous' militants rose against their
mercenary masters they were heavily suppressed, by the
same foreigners, whom they eulogized as mehmans
'coming to help'. The mehmans had virtually forced
the mezbans out, when they not only made Hizbul
Mujahideen retract from their peace-initiatives, but even
got their leadership changed. Now the 'guests' are
tossing another kind of 'hosts' aside, with resounding
gunshots. For the last ten years these gunshots have been
deciding the fate, honour, politics and aspirations of
the luckless Kashmiris. Was the leadership, which served
as the willing apology of the gun-totting killers, too
naive to see who the virtual controllers of this game of
gun and gunshots were? Would any new light dawn there now
that the guns are making their logical back-calls on
these very leaders? And what of people? Who would protect
them against these intruders, against whom the 'leaders'
with Government and personal security are not safe? Would
anybody there, answer?
Drugs, diamonds,
contraband
It has been known for long
that the high terrorism in Kashmir, and Afghanistan too,
has lived on the horrendous drug trade. The drug mafia,
in fact has been active in Pakistan since that last
'crusader' Zia ruled the roost there. After the fall of
the Najeebullah regime the drug trade became the
'official' currency source for the new regime. It also
became a predominant factor in the Pakistan politics or
upheavals, whatever you call it. The role of smuggling in
the sustenance of the terrorism in Punjab had been well
established. The last ten years of terrorism in Kashmir
have seen a spurt in the transport and transit of white,
black and brown gold through Kashmir into the country and
out of it as well. It is no secret that much of the
finances the terrorists come from the drug money. Even in
the Jammu region the early infiltrations of terrorist
along the Jammu-Kathua border came with the connivance of
the smugglers who operated there. Analysts believe that
much of this traffic passed in, the gouse of smugglers,
who were known to be active there.
Well, that is not
something very singular to these terrorist outfits.
Terrorists and unlawful activists, how so righteous they
may act, have at all places indulged in smuggling, drug
trade and other unlawful activities to finance their
crusades. Nobody ever has reasoned that their very planks
become meaningless when they soil their hands with the
dreadful things. The association of that master terrorist
outfit IRA in northern Britain with drugs, smuggling and
even the South American drug cartels has been well
documented. So the association of the other outfits all
over the world. In that backdrop the involvement of the
Al Qaeda network with the smuggling, sale and hoarding of
illegal diamonds from the African mines of Sierra Leone,
which are under the control of RUF rebels, should not
come as a great surprise. But it is definitely a surprise
that people who are well aware of this ganging up, how
would abhor any connection with these heinous trades are
shutting out their eyes to the nefarious nexus. They also
refuse to see the logic of its implications. And, the big
lie it gives to the 'cause'. That is one great failing no
reasoning man or woman can be excused for.
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Let
pluralistic spirit flower in Kashmir
By J L
Kaul Jalali
You may
destroy a symbol, but you cannot kill the
spirit. In May, 1995, the six hundred
year old famous shrine of the Sufi saint
of Kashmir Sheikh Nooruddin Noorani was
razed to the ground. He has been symbol
of secularism in Kashmir and desecration
of his shrine caused grief to millions of
people in Jammu and Kashmir. The incident
followed a two month long stand-off
between militants led by the Afghan
warlord Mast Gul and the security force
at the site of the shrine at
Chrar-e-Sharief, twenty miles to
south-west of Srinagar. The shrine was
burnt, but the spirit continued to live.
The shrine has been rebuilt and the new
Complex was thrown open to public on the
seventh of this month. Sufi spirit
pervades almost all branches of life in
Kashmir and a brief reference to its
evolution can elucidate this fact.
During
ancient times Kashmir is said to have
been a big lake. Kashyap Rishi was
instrumental in draining the waters of
the lake and it was after his name that
the valley came to be known as Kashyap
Mar, the present day Kashmir. Mostly
owing to its salubrious climate and
bountiful nature, it was frequented by
sages and savants of high standing from
the plains and with the passage of time
they started settling down in the valley
itself despite its climatic rigours.
Because of this the place got its second
name as Rishi Bhumi and the fourth
Buddhist Council so important i n the
annals of Buddhism was convened in
Kashmir. Located at a central place,
Kashmir became a melting pot of various
cultures and civilisation giving rise to
a more tolerant and pluralistic ethos. It
was this ethos developed so early in
Kashmir that Islam had to contend with
when it came to the valley during the
fourteenth century A.D. Kashmiris
welcomed with open arms the Muslim
savants, the most prominent of them being
Mir Syed All Hamdani from Persia
popularly known as Shah-E-Hamdon in
Kashmir. Subsequently many scholars and
exponents from all the main six Sufi
orders visited Kashmir at one time or the
other leading to a free inter-action with
local thinking.
These
inter-exchanges led to a synthesis in
Kashmir during fifteenth century A. D.
not only at cultural and other levels,
but it penetrated deeper into the psyche
of the people. It involved
inter-exchanges at religious
philosophical level too. This gave rise
to a new Order in Kashmir in which Sufi
got replaced by the ancient Indian word
of Rishi meaning a sage. The new Order
was known as Rishi Order, a peculiarity
of Kashmir common to all the residents of
the valley. The first exponents of this
local order were Sheikh Noorud Din
Noorani, a Sufi from the soil popularly
known as Nund Reush and Lal Ded, a
Kashmiri Sharite Hindu celebrity. With an
ascetic bent of mind, Nund Reush was
given to deep contemplation in caves,
woods and unfrequented places. The saint
expresses his communion with God attained
with divine love and extreme devotion in
this Wakha :-
Sari
Travit Rotuk Me Chayi
Me Chayi Chaandan lusum Doh
Janas Manz Yali Rotuk Me Chayi
Me Che Ta Paanas Ditum Chho
Meaning
Leaving
every one I held you
Searching you I passed the whole day
When I caught you in my own soul
I gave up the difference between I and
You
The same thought reverbates in this
ecstatic
Wakha of Yogeshwari Lal Ded :-
Pot
Zuni Vochith Mot Bolanoum
Dag Lalanavam Dayisanzi Prahe
Lali Lali Karaan Laala Vuzanovum
Milith Tas Manz Shrochyom Dahe
Meaning
At the
early dawn I sang to my mad one (meaning
mind) and soothed him with the love of
God trying to realise I am my own self
which I realised was the same as the
Supreme self I awakened my love and
became one with Him.
This is
not to suggest that these Rishis of
Kashmir were far removed from the
realities of actual life. The saying by
Nund Reush that ''Aan Poshi Teli Yeli Van
Poshi'' meaning that the foodstuffs will
last so long as the forests last, sums up
the environmental dilemma faced by the
whole of minkind over five centuries
later now. They rebelled against the
religious excesses and exploitation of
their times and tried to uplife the whole
society, particularly its down trodden
sections. The mystic songs of these two
great local exponents of Rishi Order
continue to form a part of the total
consciousness in Kashmir and stir the
souls to the deepest depths.
The
efforts of these exponents resulted in a
harmonious society and led the people to
share their joys and sorrows, enjoy the
nature alike, love the same types of
music and have almost the same types of
life styles. This harmonious co-existance
is also reflected in places of worship
and reverence. In Srinagar
Ziarat-e-Maqdoom Sahib, Hari Parbat and
Madin Sahib portray this eloquently. This
closeness is a feature of such places
throughout the State. Mostly in Kashmir
valley even annual fairs at many of these
places were also held on the same day by
the two main communities.
The
originators of the local Sufi Rishi Order
were followed by a long line of Sufi
saints apart from their main disciples.
Despite increase in materialistic
tendencies and other diversionary
factors, the process continues to this
day. Sufism in Kashmir continues to bear
deep influence of local ethos and spirit
which basically forms part of the total
Indian ethos. This is evident from the
fact that the followers of Sufi saints
Bata Maloo Sahib in Srinagar and Reshi
Moul Sahib in Anantnag in South Kashmir
do not cook or eat meat during their weak
long Urs celebrations.
Despite
terrorism prevalent in Kashmir, these
Sufi saints continue to attract strong
reverence in the valley. This was
highlighted in March, 1994 when a
fundamentalist terrorist outfit in
Kashmir wanted to prevent the people at
Aishmuqam in South Kashmir to celebrate
the Urs of Reshi Moul Sahib. Inspite of
the death of an innocent villager
following the firing sponsored by this
outfit, the residents of the place went
ahead with the celebrations forcing the
militants to flee the area.
Because of
cross-border terrorism Kashmir continues
to be at cross-roads for about a decade
now, but the pluralistic spirit of
Kashmir broadly termed as ''Kashmiriyat''
has always proved too strong to be
subdued. There appears to be no reason
why this spirit should not ultimately
prevail this time too.
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Religious
fanaticism
By H D Shourie
Religious
fanaticism, fundamentalism and bigotry
are now taking a very severe toll in the
world. Humanity faces the danger of
further grievous depredations, which may
lead to grave danger to civilization,
built over many centuries. Amidst the
array of religions and religious beliefs
of Christianity, Judaism, Islam,
Zorastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism,
Sikhism, Taoism and others, intolerance
among some religions is arising,
evidencing itself in extremism and
terrorism; even within one religion
sometimes religious divisions and
dissensions are manifesting themselves.
Divinity,
God, the Supreme Almighty, visualised in
each religion in divine form, and His
words and revelations recorded in the
different sacred scriptures, instead of
leading man to love, compassion and
altruism, are unfortunately becoming
focus of causation of intolerance and
hatred. Revelations and words of Divinity
recorded in holy books, Bible, Koran,
Vedas, Upanishads, Granth, Torah and
other scriptures, are increasingly
gathering momentum of diversity and
alienation. Differences are often being
magnified by extremists among
priests, clergy, mullahs and monks,
leading to germination of hatred and
violence. The disquieting over-all
picture is that difference and
intolerance are now more in evidence than
ever before.
For
overcoming this unfortunate tendency of
sinking further into quagmire of
religious differences, bigotry and
fanaticism, the proper remedy is that
humanity should be exposed, to the
maximum extent, and on wide-spread basis,
to the reality and totality of existence
in which man has emerged, in which
humanity has taken shape, in which the
concepts of Divinity and God have
manifested into human consciousness and
evolved into such all-encompassing
diversities. Such exposure of man to the
totality of Universe, and the beginning
of man can help to place religion in
proper perspective and lead to
introspection about the damage that is
being done by man through fanaticism and
fundamentalism.
These
ideas of self-importance of religious
beliefs need to be put on the canvas of
totality; only then there will be
possibility of recognition by man that
lie is not at the fulcrum of
existence, that man’s religion and
religious beliefs are not the hallmark of
entire existence. Let recognition arise
in humans that they are mere specks in
the Universe, striding about in
self-importance on this tiny fragment of
firmament, the earth.
The facts
briefly presented below are findings of
decades of intensive scientific studies,
in the fields of astrophysics,
astronomy, seismology, biology, botany as
well as sciences connected with
evolution, ascent of man, development of
mind, and vast progress in areas of
information technology, biotechnology,
and all else. People should get
acquainted with these facts so that they,
put religions, religious beliefs and
religious edicts in proper perspective,
and give due recognition to different
places of worship including Churches,
Synagogues, Mosques, Temples, Gurudwaras,
and also put in proper place the priests
and exponents of different religions.
It is now
incontrovertibly established that
Universe came into existence 15 billion
(million million) years ago, through an
explosion of nucleus of superdense and
intensely hot matter which caused
enormous burst of energy creating space
itself which has since been expanding.
This episode was a major cosmic event,
given the appellation Big Bang. Science
has not been able to find answer to the
question how this originated; it is,
however, not enough, in terms of
scientific analysis, to assert that some
supernatural power, Providence, God,
created the Universe. From the moment of
creation the Universe has been
continuously expanding, scattering
galaxies and stars all over and
everywhere in space and these have since
been receding. Size of expanded and
continuously expanding Universe is not
conceivable. A very rough approximation
of size and distance can be formed from
the fact that biggest telescopes have
indicated that galaxies can be viewed
Dresertly unto 13 million light years
distance and that it takes four billion
years for the light to travel from the
nearest galaxy to the earth, light
travelling at speed of 1,86,000 miles
per second. It is impossible to form
an idea of the number of stars and
galaxies that exist In the Universe.
Let us see
how earth came into existence. It was
formed 4-1/2 billion years ago through
gravitational pull of a star which passed
near another star, our sun. The
gravitational pull culled out molten
cluster which over the aeons congealed,
creating the earth and its surrounding
planets. Gravitational pull by the sun
pulled out some matter from the earth
which became the moon. It is impossible
to conceive, In the totality of Universe,
how many such formations, like that of
earth and its planets, may have been
created in the vast space of Universe.
Over long aeons the molten matter of our
earth cooled, forming valleys and
mountains, and as some more ages passed,
combination and retroaction of atoms
brought about formation of water which
filled the valleys, creating seas
and eventually leading to creation of
continents.
Rotation
of earth on its axis led to the creation
of day and night, and its rotation round
the sun brought about seasons.
Combination of water, seasons, seas and
earth led to interaction of molecules and
evolution of amoeba and microbes bringing
about creation of life which developed
into numerous forms, on land and in the
seas. With further passing of many aeons
life assumed numerous forms, of
vegetables, trees and animals, and in due
course various types of birds and animals
came into existence; primates emerged
from apes and further developed into
variations of humans, inhabiting
different continents. Mind continued to
further develop and with passage of more
ages humans invented sciences and
technologies, and the present-day
civilization.
This is a
very tiny glimpse of how Universe was
created, how earth was formed, how life
got created on earth, how human beings
emerged, how continents got inhabited,
and- how mind developed and led to the
growth of civilization and the evolution
of present-day sciences and technologies.
These
facts need to be borne in mind when
talking of religions and religious
beliefs. Mind of man, in the process of
evolution, evolved the concepts of
Divinity and God as the creator. Then
emerged different religions and their
symbols, and different forms of
Providence, the creator; these multiplied
all over, practically in every country
and region, as they progressed through
decades and centuries of history.
When the
creation of man came about through
processes of evolution, on this tiny
speck, the earth, in the vastness of
Universe, it is necessary for people to
ask whether there is any justification
for causation of differences and clashes
among the people on basis of their
religions and their beliefs, of
fundamentalism and fanaticism and through
the processes of these extreme aspects of
religious beliefs, to indulge in
activities which can cause privations and
deprivations to other human beings who
follow different religions. People have
to wake up to these facts of reality and
not mix these with their religiosity and
bigotry. The main criterion in any
religion should be gratitude to nature in
which Universe, earth, life, and man have
emerged, as well as love and compassion
for all other humans which too have
evolved on the earth, whatever forms
their religious beliefs have adopted.
Taking
account of all these facts based on
incontrovertible scientific findings man
has to put before himself the totality of
picture of creation of Universe, creation
of earth and of life, evolution of man,
and the evolution of religions and
religious beliefs, and then ask whether
it is desirable and worthwhile to build
such manifestations in religions which
should cause dissensions among different
communities and people, and lead to
senseless unrest, violence, terrorism,
alienation and hatred. All right-thinking
people need to examine this totality and
then see what contribution they can make
to remove the ugliness of fanaticism and
fundamentalism from religions.
(The author is Director, Common Cause)
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What's
happening to our climate ?
By Anjani Verma
The 707 jet,
westbound from Shannon, Ireland, to Boston, USA,
rode 11,000 meters above the cloudless North
Atlantic. Far ahead a sharp edge of white broke
the dark expanse of sea. As we draw closer, it
became a lacy border stretching north and south
from horizon to horizon. What lay below, I
realized suddenly, was not cloud but ice. Beneath
us the cold Labrador Current, covered almost
solidly with floe ice, met the much warmer Gulf
stream at this sharply drawn frontier off the
shores of Newfound- land.
Here, in full
view, were three principal keys to world climate:
ice and snow bouncing it back; and varying
temperatures of the sea surface.These three
forces, scientists say, may be the dominant ones
controlling our ever-changing weather.
That the
earth’s climate changes, and even now may be
changing quite rapidly, is widely recognized. The
question facing worried experts are; Is the world
as a whole cooling off, and perhaps heading into
another onset of ice? Or are we instead
irreversibly warming the atmosphere of our planet
with our industry, care and land clearing
practices? What sort of weather will our children
and our grandchildren know ? On the answers may
rest the fate of nations and of millions of
people.
"These are
among the biggest questions about the early yet
to be answered," says marine geologist John
lmbrie. "To- day, for the first time, We
have the tools satellites, bog computers as well
as the data to attack them."
What is going on
with the climate? Since 1940, there has been a
distinct drop, about a third of a degree, in
average global temperature. That seems small, but
it has caused significant chan- ges.
England’s annual growing season, for
example, shrank by nine or ten days between 1950
and 1966. In the, northern tier of the US
Midwest, summer frosts again occasionally damage
crops. Sea ice has returned to Iceland’s
coasts after more than 40 years of virtual
absence. Glaciers in Alaska and Scandinavia have
slowed their recession; some in Switzerland have
begun advancing again. Yet, oddly in the eastern
United States, Western Soviet Union, and much of
Europe, the winters of 1973 through 1975 were the
warmest in decades.
A steady buildup
of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere
from the burning of coal and oil has occurred
since the Industrial Revolution began. Higher
levels of this colourless, odourless gas may rent
to warm up the planet by the so-called greenhouse
effect, holding in the infrared radiation heat
that would otherwise escape into space. Some
scientists, however, believe particles thrown up
by man have an opposite effect- that they cool
off the earth by reflecting incoming sunlight.
There are countless other theories.
During the past
thousand million years, less than a quarter of
earth’s age, there have been at least four
epochs of Ice covering major portions of the
globe. We are still living in the fourth one. For
most of those thousand million years,
climatologists estimate, average global
temperature stood close to 22 degrees, and even
the poles were ice free. But today the world
temperature averages only about 15 degrees; ice
lies three kilometres thick on Antarctica and
Greenland and covers most of the Antarctica and
Arctic Ocean year round.
Ice sheets covered
much of the global’s land area 600 million
years ago. little is known of that dim period,
and virtually nothing of earlier ones. But in the
long warm spells that followed, which were
interrupted inexplicably every 250 million year
or so by bitter cold and invasions of ice, warm
shallow seas and lush swamps covered much of the
land.
Then, about 50
million years ago, our planet began again to cool
off. Eventually the ice came back. And except for
fairly short periods of thaw every 100,000 years
or so-lasting an average of scarcely 10,000 years
each-ice has ruled world climate ever since. It
has been a mere 6,000 years since the last great
ice sheet disappeared from the Canadian mainland.
What caused those
extraordinary stretches of cold? Are there indeed
cy- cles, some sort of cosmic pulse, beating
every 250 rniltion years? Science simply does not
yet know.
Ware-For Now. That
climate has changed, and continues to change, is
obvious even in the brief span of man’s
written history a mere instant in geo- logical
terms. Human civilization as we know it has risen
almost entirely in the 10,000 years since the
great ice sheets last melted back, to leave only
those on Antarctica and Greenland.
The warnest
weather in this whole interglacial period came
hard on the heels of the ice. Beginning about
8.000 years ago, average temperature in the
Northern Hemisphere ranged half a degree to
one degree higher even than today’s. Across
the fertile crescent from the Nile Valley to
the Persian Gulf, man learnt in that warm
time to farm, to live in communities, to write,
to travel by water, craft, to tame animals.
Between about 3000
BC and 2200 BC, much drier conditions befell the
ancient world, and the atonce lush regions of
North Africa and Arabia turned to desert. Cooler,
wetter times returned after 200 BC only to be
succeeded by 51 the warm and Rome knew 51 their
golden ages between 500 BC and AD 400. But
droughts returned; forests and grass vanished
from Lebanon and Galilee.
It turned colour
and wetter again. The Baltic Sea froze over
solidly in the winter of 1422-23, and from then
until the mid- 1800s occurred what is called the
Little Ice Age.
The climatic trend
changed once again around the mid-nineteenth
century.The northern temperate zone grew markedly
warmer; indeed, the century from 1875 to 1975. is
now regarded by some as one of the warmest in
4,000 years. In this time the In- dustrial Age
boomed, and world population more that doubled.
Farming and fishing expanded to keep up with food
needs; Canada’s wheat line moved 150
kilometres north. But this period of climate,
which our grandfathers and fathers came to regard
as normal, is now recognized by scientists to
have been abnormally warm and beneficent. What
will happen to our food output if there is a
return to the more truly nor- mal, cooler
climate? Are we now at the end of a cycle?
Energy in, Energy
Out. "We can’s predict statistically
whether a climate change is likely in the near
future," says J. Murray Mitchell, Jr., of
the national Oceanic and Atmospheres
Administration," "until we know why
climate varies what the major forces are and how
they change, if indeed they do change."
Basically, this
planet’s long-term weather results from the
flow of energy over different parts of the
spinning sphere. The Atmospheric heat engine, or
was the machine, is driven by sunlight- radiant
energy. In turn, the earth lends energy back into
space. Some is directly reflected from clouds,
snow and ice cover, the sea and light-coloured
land. Other energy re-radiates as inferred
waves-heat. Energy in and energy out must match
over the long run, or the planet would grow
steadily hotter or colder, and eventually the
oceans would either boil or freeze.
In the 1920s,
Yugoslavian astronomer Milution
Milankovitch’s measurements of solar
radiation received by the earth revealed changes
caused by the shape of the earth’s orbit
around the sun, its tilt, and the precession of
its axis, which wobbles slightly, like a
child’s top showing down. Milankovitch
calculated several climatic cycles, including one
of roughly 95,000 years close to the magic
100,000 years pulse of the ice age in which we
still live. (Recently, this theory received
significant support when a team of British and
American scientists identified periodic changes
in the earth’s or- bit around the sum as the
"fundamental cause" of the ice ages.)
Trying to measure
the vast swirls of the determine from them what
has happened, or may happen, presents weathermen
with problems of mathematics and datahandling
that are almost incompetent hensible to a layman.
Nevertheless, aided by electronic computers,
today’s scientists ate trying and, atleast
concerning ways of telling what the actual
climate was. Among them:
Ancient soil
layers wind blown dust from arctic or desert
plains, for example, versus rich gumbo laid down
in swamps reveal climatic changes. And fossil
pollen, found in peat beds and lake- bottom
sediments, shows what sorts of trees and plants
grew where and when.
Growth rings of
trees can indicate weather of a region year by
year for centuries.
Moraines and till
the glacial debris heaped and smeared across the
land- scape date the passage of ice.
Samples drilled
from ice caps and glaciers show annual snow
depths as well as (by variations in types of
oxygen atoms) the air temperature at which the
snow fell.
Tiny shells and
skeletons of myriad sea creatures, preserved in
layers in long, tubular, deep-sea core drilling,
indicate changes of sea-surface temperature, and
are probably our most important key to changes in
climate.
Using these and
other methods, scientists have compiled a growing
list of "grand theories" about climate.
The oceans warm, and evaporation in- creases.
Snow mount, ice caps build and flow, and the
planet cools. Volcanoes trigger ice ages, or the
stress from ice on the earth’s crust sets
off vol- canoes. The earth’ orbit
wobbles’ inner churnings move continents,
thus blocking and changing the circulation of the
atmosphere and the seas.
Whatever the real
answer, all scientists agree that a new factor
has en- tered the game of climate change, a
"wild card" never there before- man
himself. "if nature is indeed trying to pull
us into another ice age," says Murray
Mitchell of the current cooling trend,
"we’re possibly warming up the world an
equal amount with our carbon dioxide. I’d
like to know which way it will go, for my
grandchildren’s sake." Another noted
American climate re- searcher, Professor Reid
Bryson, calls the overall effect of man’s
activities-his smoke, dust, jet exhaust, smog-the
human volcano. "We are indeed a factor in
the climate equation," he says. "We may
even be decisive."
Vinayak Syndicate
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