Dog days
By Dale Goodner | 14th August 2008
We are in the midst of that toasty torrid time of year… commonly called the dog days of summer! A time dominated by the doggone heat. You can feel so dog tired that you’re sicker than a dog. Things seem to be going to the dogs, so you just don’t feel like putting on the dog. Since heat impacts all of us, we all have a dog in this hunt, so to speak… “Dog Days” has traditionally applied to the hottest, most sultry spell of the year here in the northern hemisphere, generally it refers to August and part of July. Although this period is named for ‘man’s best friend,’ it has little to do with dogs, but a lot to do with the heavens. Sirius, the so-called Dog Star, is the brightest star in the sky, next to the sun. In July and August, it actually rises and sets with the sun.
The Romans believed it provided heat as well as light, and hence, during this time always heralded the approach of a hot, unpleasant period associated with an evil time “when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies” (Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, 1813).
We have a long history of connecting inappropriate dots, and often confuse coincidence with cause. Long ago when a volcano erupted for no obvious reason, a sacrifice might have been offered to the Volcano God (perhaps a human sacrifice). If the eruption stopped (which most of them do), it worked! That behavior was then likely to be repeated. The ancient Romans sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the dog days to appease the rage of the dog star, believing that that huge star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather. But even though Sirius is far larger and hotter than our sun, it is nearly nine light years away, negating any influence, to say the least.
Actually the warm dog days coincide with Earth’s tilted axis as it revolves around the sun. When North America is tilted toward the sun during daylight, it receives more direct rays coincidence of the dog star spending that short time, during the warm period, traveling with the sun, has nothing to do with causing the heat wave.
But sometimes coincidence does betray cause. Back in the early nineteenth century, atmospheric CO2 (a well known greenhouse gas) began to increase significantly and continues today on a steep upward curve. Average temperature coincidentally follows basically the same upward curve. Heat is trapped by greenhouse gas in much the same way greenhouse glass traps heat. The more CO2, the greater the effect on global temperature. The impact of combustion-produced carbon dioxide on climate is sometimes called the “Callendar effect,” named for engineer and inventor, Guy Stewart Callendar, who was one of the first to propose this association back in 1938.
We can call global warming a “natural cycle,” we can even blame the dogstar, Sirius, but overwhelming evidence shows, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’ The cause of current global warming is the rapid buildup of atmospheric, human-generated, greenhouse gasses. Our population has more than quadrupled in the past couple of centuries. One result has been widespread deforestation, which releases carbon. Even more significant has been the release of immense amounts of stored carbon from the burning of coal and oil. Just within the past two centuries we’ve increased total atmospheric carbon by an incredible 35 percent. The resulting greenhouse effect is relentlessly pushing average temperatures up, particularly in the arctic. And each day we are adding another 16 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere.
This is well beyond mere dog days. We are looking at warm “dog” centuries to come. It’s hard to predict what this will mean to our grandchildren and great grandchildren. On one thing there is agreement among scientists. We have impacted the atmosphere on a more rapid scale than has ever been known.
We’re in trouble. What to expect:
* Weather patterns are changing. Drought cells will be more problematic. Storms will be more severe and more frequent.
* Ice is disappearing. Already the impact is obvious. Mountain glaciers are retreating all over the world. There’s been a 40 percent decline in late summer Arctic sea ice.
* Glacier National Park was named for 150 glaciers nestled into its high cliffs and jagged peaks. Today… we’re down to 35. Within a mere 3decades, Glacier National Park will be ‘Glacier-less’ National Park.
* Sea level is rising… The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts sea level will rise in the range of 4 inches to 3 feet over the next century. Just a few inches of sea level rise can advance shoreline hundreds of feet inland.
* IPCC is a group of more than 2,000 scientists appointed by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization. They concluded in their 2001 report that climate can be expected to rise between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees F. by the end of the 21st century. Bottom line is that if the temperature rises only 2.5 degrees F. we might be able to live with it… as long as biological systems can continue to function. If it rises 10.4 degrees, this will cause major problems. This amount of increase took 13,000 years after the last ice age. Today it’s happening in less than a hundred years. Biotic systems need a lot more time to adapt.
Weaning ourselves off of oil will be a major and necessary challenge. Our political leadership has thus far lacked the will to lead in this crucial area. But the good news is people are finally starting to see through a smokescreen of disinformation in the mainstream media.
You can now find good information on Global Warming. Sometimes it’s in very unexpected places. Among the gossip tabloids at the grocery store checkout I happened to notice, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Global Warming,” by Michael Tennesen. Not sure whether this was a guide to warming the globe, or a fix-it guide, I bought it. Besides, it only cost the equivalent of a half gallon of gas. It actually does a decent job informing the reader (presumably not a complete idiot) about the complexities of global warming.
Fortunately we in the United States lost our first place standing last year as the world’s biggest carbon polluter. Unfortunately China now holds the new record. It wasn’t due to heroic efforts to reduce our carbon footprint. China is just growing leaps and bounds and is now winning this bad-news “dog-fight.” This just reiterates the importance of international cooperation in dealing with this common enemy of environmental degradation.
Let’s hope the dog star can become our lucky star. After all, to err is human. To forgive, canine. Maybe it’s time that Sirius get serious and herald in a period of greenhouse gas reduction, and restoration of this… the best of all possible worlds.