D-Day, The Sixth of June

Coming so close to Memorial Day, the anniversary of D-Day tends to be over-shadowed. June 6th, 1944 was a pivotal day in the history of the world we now know, for Europe had been in the iron grip of a madman for 4 years, and now the Allies sought to dislodge the Nazis from The Continent. To that end, upwards of 150,000 men, supported by thousands of aircraft and hundreds of ships, set out to invade France in the area of Normandy, securing a wide beachhead, and putting ashore a sufficient force to drive the enemy back. It would be the largest amphibious assault operation in history, and when it was over that day, 10,000 Allied troops would be killed, wounded, go missing, or be captured.

Given the constant chatter about freedom, liberty, and tyranny that seems to suffuse the United States currently, it seems only fitting to revisit this moment in history, when true oppression was wrestled down and driven back by the determination and steel of men picked from every corner of America. They would fight and die under the most brutal conditions, many having never strayed far beyond the area surrounding their home town, now forced to endure boiling sun, mud, freezing temperatures, and the constant threat of death, on soil they had never seen, fighting for people they did not know. They fought an implacable enemy, one that had run roughshod over a large swath of the world, and was now paying the price for the arrogance and antipathy of their leaders.

The Nazi regime was totalitarian, seeking uniformity and racial purity, wishing to stamp their imprint on the whole world, one section at a time. It slaughtered innocents without thought or care, except toward how quickly and efficiently it could be done. Its leader, Adolf Hitler, was a raging egomaniac, surrounded by toadies and sycophants, bent on meting out punishment for the "injustice" of Germany's defeat in WWI and to satisfy his hatred of the Jews, whom he wrongly presumed were the cause of all his country's woes. WWII was his meat grinder, chewing up both Germans and their neighbors alike, remaking the world in his image, a stark and garish place of black uniforms, jackboots, and Aryan purity.

Into this maw of death the tens of thousands marched this day, hurling themselves onto the beaches of France, many cut down before they could take shot, or left to lie wounded as their comrades streamed past, to take the fight to the enemy. It was hot, brutal, messy work for Indiana farm boys, Brooklyn street toughs, Wyoming farm hands, and all the other various types of men that comprised the American contingent of the invasion force. Some men broke, some men found fortitude they did not know they had, and still others only wished to get the job done to go home, but on they came, through hellish mortar and machine gun fire, to storm the Atlantic Wall and pour inland.

If you go there now, the scars of that day, save for a few, are mainly washed away. There are the memorials scattered through towns and villages all along Normandy, as well as the great museums to the day, and, of course, the cemeteries, where the honored dead lie not far from where they met their end. It is peaceful there now, a tranquility restored through the sacrifice of so many in the desperate hours of that day and the weeks that passed.

Before we talk of freedom and liberty, let us pause to remember these men, who fought and died on a distant shore to bring that which we take for granted, to people who were starved for it. Let us not embellish our suffering in our country currently, with rhetoric best left for those who suffered under true oppression and tyranny. Let us remember that the fight for democracy and freedom is an on-going one, and that we do these men a disservice by playing to politics, for they died not just to free a continent, but to keep America free of those who would have eventually tried to oppress it. All we have and all we are, is due to this day, and the lives given that we might remain free.

The Heat Is On

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released the results of a recent poll of 1500 American adults, that says that only 57% of them think that the Earth is getting warmer, a 20-point dip from three years ago. Now, given there is a population 300 million-plus in this country, a sample size of 1500 does not imbue me with confidence that this is a realistic portrayal of American attitudes, even if they have solid statistical evidence that the sample is valid. That is not the issue, anyway.

If we cut past the hyperbole, the hype, and the political nitpicking, we can get to the heart of the matter: the Earth's average temperature is rising. I highlight "average," because the Earth is not a uniform body, the atmosphere is not a uniform covering (the composition and thickness varying from place to place), and the planet is not a closed system. If we go back as far as we have solid records for local temperatures, chart them, and compare the values over time, we see local variations, rises and falls, and overall, like the stock market, a continuous rise.

The planet is slowly getting warmer.

The mechanism by which this occurs has been known since the 1950's. Solar radiation bathes the Earth. Some is reflected back into space, some of it is absorbed by the upper layers of the atmosphere, and much of it penetrates to reach the surface, to be absorbed by land and water. That absorbed energy, mainly in the form of heat, is radiated back into the atmosphere, to worm its way back to space. Much of it escapes from the top of the atmosphere, but some of it is reabsorbed by certain molecules found there, which are greedy for heat energy. These molecules, the most well-known being carbon dioxide, trap the heat and re-radiate it back toward the surface of hold it in the atmosphere. In any event, the result is simple: a certain amount of these molecules holds/maintains a certain amount of heat; fewer molecules, less heat retained -- more molecules, more heat retained.

The amount of these greedy, heat-loving molecules is altered by global processes that we have an incomplete but general understanding of. For carbon dioxide, it is absorbed by plant life and converted into oxygen, or sinks into the deep ocean, or becomes locked up in rocks through many processes. It can also be released, through volcanism, large scale fires, deforestation, and of course, the burning of fossil fuels. The Earth's system for regulating the ecosphere is well-established, being as old as the planet itself. It evolved over millions of years, has survived global catastrophes and alterations, and operates on its own, subject only to the changes in the amounts of molecules in the atmosphere, the amount of solar radiation being intercepted, the amount of vegetation covering the surface, the albedo (shininess) of the surface, and myriad smaller-scale factors, which we are only now beginning to understand. While not a closed system, it is a system nonetheless, operating automatically, behind the scenes, as we go about our daily lives.

Therein lies the crux of the problem, for the system that is our ecosphere, a system governed by the large-scale effects of its constituents and the small-scale effects of the laws of physics and chemistry, is going about its business, day and night, unconcerned with our existence. Natural forces continue to shape and mold the world we live on, oblivious to our wants, desires, or preconceptions.

Belief is not required.

So the question should really be, are the actions of humanity having a measurable effect on the changes we are seeing in the global climate? And the answer must be: unequivocally. How much of an effect, and how quickly that effect is being felt, should be the object of the debate. The constant, fractious, and puerile arguments over "global warming" suffice only to waste time and effort that could be better spent determining a baseline for global climate change that would allow us to measure the significance of our impact, beyond the use of an average. We must study the Earth's systems in finer detail, to try and determine how the shifts in various factors shape the responses of the systems to our machinations. We must also find ways to mitigate our effects on the planet, for even if we determine that we are causing potentially catastrophic harm, it is better to have started to make attempts to reduce our impact on the ecosphere, than to wait until we are at the edge of the precipice.

Whatever choices we make from this moment on, the Earth will continue spinning through the cold void, sweeping through the tendrils of solar particles and waves of energy emitted by the Sun, and its systems will keep on acting and reacting to the changes that occur, a minuet of chemistry and physics. Should we fail to heed our own warnings, should we delay and deny, should we choose to put less than our best efforts into working with our home world -- as opposed to merely existing upon it, rapacious in our desire for resources -- then the Earth will not even shrug. It will simply continue on, carrying on its surface the burnt, collapsed, and abandoned remains of the only intelligent civilization that, so far as we know, ever existed.