It was bound to happen. The two old physicists had been working on this model for years, decades. Syukuro Manabe, age 90, and Kalus Hasselman, age 89, were finally recognized for their work on developing models on climate change. The Nobel prize went to them and to a third physicist, Giorgio Parisi, a full generation younger, who with his spin glass models showed the import of climate change.
Manabe began his work in the 1960s and Hasselman a decade later, right around the time of the first Earth Day. They must have felt like voices crying in the wilderness as did many of us who were concerned about the future of the planet.
A recent survey stated that climate change – or catastrophe – was the number one issue young people were most concerned about. And for good reason. When was the last time you heard a bullfrog or saw a toad in your yard?
Prayer for the Day
Straining our ears, we hear nothing for the pond is silent
As we try to describe the sounds that once were there;
Peering into the water below the bridge, we see nothing,
As we struggle to explain the existence of salamanders.
Forgive us, O Lord, for we did not listen to those who warned us,
Help us recover what once was in the rivers and ponds.
In the name of him, who walked by rivers and streams,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Amphibians are dying out like crazy, and frogs and salamanders may be extinct by the end of the twenty-first century. Imagine an animal that begins its life in the water but ends it on land….
Annalee Newitz, science writer
…and the cries of the birds and the uproar of the monkeys became more and more remote, and the world became eternally sad.
Gabriel Marcia Marquez, Colombian writer (1927-2014)
Four things on earth are small, yet they are exceedingly wise:
The ants are a people without strength, yet they provide their food in the summer;
The badgers are a people without power, yet they make their home in the rocks;
The locusts have no king, yet al of them match in rank;
The spider can be grasped in the hand, yet they are found in kings’ palaces.
Proverbs 30: 24-28