En Mechanix
Illustrated, de 1953, leemos un artículo sobre la bomba atómica y su influencia en el cambio climático. Es muy interesante, desde el punto de vista de la
preocupación científica como desde la posibilidad de implementar el artículo en
una clase de inglés. Parece que la preocupación por el cambio climático no es
algo nuevo. Al final definimos a-bomb
THERE’S little
doubt about our changing climate. The fierce winters of yesterday are
disappearing, tornadoes and hurricanes are becoming more vicious and weather
trends aren’t trends” any more. They can’t be depended upon. Just about
anything can happen—and does.
If you are one of the many who wonder if the
A-bomb is responsible for our queer weather, you can forget it. It isn’t so.
What is the answer? It’s simply that we are riding on the tail end of a glacial
age and our climate is shifting.
Let’s take a
very simple proof.
Realize that not
too long ago, before electric refrigeration, most of our large cities depended
upon ice for their iceboxes. We don’t miss the ice today because we have
refrigerators, but we would if we had to depend upon those very same lakes.
They just don’t ice-over any more. Present-day New Yorkers who have never seen
the Hudson River covered with ice find it hard to believe that once there was a
regular ferry service over the ice to Staten Island. Many a five-year-old in
“wintery” New England has yet to use a sled or throw a real snowball.
 |
| Nube formada por el bombardeo de Nagasaki, el 9 de agosto de 1945, se elevó a más de 18 kms. del centro de la ciudad |
Our winters are
milder and we are apt to overlook a comfortably warm winter season. But let
there be a “day of the great blizzard” and everybody will remember it.
Unpleasant weather leaves the greatest impression. Let winds and floods and
storms increase and we immediately ask for a Congressional investigation to
probe the possible effects of atomic radiation on weather.
If you are
still upset, however, and feel you must worry about the distant future of
mankind, forget the weather effects of atomic bombs and wonder what would
happen if the ice reservoirs of Greenland and all the polar regions let go in
one fast melting spree.
The level of our oceans would rise about 200 feet. All our coastal cities would
be wiped out and civilization would have to retreat to the highlands. As a
matter of fact the polar icecaps are already receding at the rate of some
500 feet a year, causing climatic changes and raising the level of the sea
about an inch during the last century. This is a sign of things to come.
The glaciers and
ice reservoirs began their retreat about 20,000 years ago and by 5,000 B. C.
the weather had become much milder. Green forests spread into the northlands
where they exist today. After the twelfth century however, the weather cycle
swung low and the climate became more severe. Winters became longer and the
glaciers reached their maximum during this “Little Ice Age” from 1650 to 1850.
Since 1850 the
glaciers have been retreating under a climate of shorter winters and warmer
summers. Despite the fact that our snowiest winter was but five years ago, you
may discount that as being no more than a break in the cycle; the trend toward
warmer climate persists. Whether it will fluctuate, become stronger or weaker,
is all within the fancy of time. Certainly none of us will live to see such
drastic changes as the melting of the icecaps.
A tornado has no
part in the machinery of climate. Rather it is the accidental loose nut that
flies off the machine or the backfire of an otherwise normal storm cycle. A
tornado is like a whirlpool where two tides meet. You can get the effect of one
by rolling a pencil between your two palms. Each hand represents a different
air mass; the pencil which turns rapidly but moves slowly up or down each hand
acts just like the long funnel of a twisting tornado. Try it and see.
When a warm
moist air mass meets a cold front head-on, the motion of the two different
kinds of air (like the two hands), causes friction and extreme low pressures.
Once a low pressure area funnels into a definite pattern, it will spiral
earthward as a tornado “cloud” or funnel. The waterspout is just a tornado over
the water and although most people think the waterspout contains water being
sucked up from the sea, it is merely a cloud being formed by condensation
within whirling air. The sea water sucked upward in a waterspout seldom rises
more than two or three feet and when the spout disappears, tons of sea water do
not fall back into the sea, but the fresh water forming the cloud just
disappears back into the atmosphere again… (De Mechanix Illustrated, September 1953. Article by Eric Sloane.)
 |
| Mujeres manifiestan por la paz en Nueva York durante la crisis de los misiles cubanos |
Atomic
bomb: es una bomba cuya potencia se deriva de la fisión
nuclear de átomos de material fisionable con la consiguiente conversión de
parte de su masa en energía. El término se registró por primera vez en 1910. También se llama A-bomb,
o fission bomb.
Las armas nucleares se han usado dos veces en la
guerra, ambas veces por los Estados Unidos contra Japón cerca del final de la
Segunda Guerra Mundial. El 6 de agosto de 1945, la Fuerza Aérea de los Estados
Unidos detonó una bomba de fisión de uranio apodada "Little Boy" en
la ciudad japonesa de Hiroshima. Tres días después, el 9 de agosto, Estados
Unidos detonó una bomba de fisión de tipo implosión de plutonio apodada
"Fat Man" sobre la ciudad japonesa de Nagasaki. Estos bombardeos
causaron la muerte de aproximadamente 200.000 civiles y personal militar. La
ética de estos bombardeos y su papel en la rendición de Japón son temas de
debate.
Desde los bombardeos atómicos de Hiroshima y
Nagasaki, las armas nucleares han sido detonadas más de dos mil veces para pruebas
y demostraciones. Sólo unas pocas naciones poseen tales armas o se sospecha que
las buscan. Los únicos países que se sabe que detonaron armas nucleares, y
reconocen poseerlas, son los Estados Unidos, la Unión Soviética (sucedida como
potencia nuclear por Rusia), el Reino Unido, Francia, China, India. , Pakistán
y Corea del Norte. Se cree que Israel posee armas nucleares, sin embargo, en
una política de ambigüedad deliberada, no reconoce tenerlas. Alemania, Italia,
Turquía, Bélgica y los Países Bajos son estados que comparten armas nucleares. Sudáfrica es el único país que ha desarrollado
de forma independiente y luego renunció y desmanteló sus armas nucleares.
Artículos
relacionados
Esto es parte del archivo Las Revistas del Abuelo. Suscribíte para recibir el artículo
completo
No comments:
Post a Comment