The Beginning of the End: Global Climatic Change Volume 1

By Oscar Rivera Luna

THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Global Climate Change
Volume I

The survival of humanity depends on species and climate.

                                                           

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: Jun 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781950955244

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Copyright © 2019 by Oscar Rivera Luna.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Printed in the United States of America.

Book Vine Press

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Inverness, IL 60010

Contents

Preface

Chapter I. From Valle Department to the Bay

Chapter II. Life on the Crystal Rivers, Flood Plains, Slopes and Mountains of the Wet Tropical Forest. The First Stage of a Dream

Chapter III. Gorgona and Gorgonilla, Forested Emeralds of the Pacific Reefs

Chapter IV. From San Juan River to the Bay of Utría, Mangrove Swamp, Coral Reefs, The Migration of Whales in Humboldt Current

Chapter V. Thus, was the Shaded Cofee Farm, but Technology and Violence Arrived

Chapter VI. The Development of Productive Forces and the Social Conflicts in the Geographical Valle

Chapter VII. The Central Massif, Superpáramo and Hidrografic Star

Chapter VIII. Watershed of the Caqueta River Mangroves of the Mira River The Story of Chana and Miguel

Chapter IX. Trip to Galapagos, Wildlife Sanctuary Diving to Abyssal Depths. Species Evolution. Darwin’s Apprentiship

Chapter X. Shuara Indians and Legends of the Llaganates, the Treasure of the Inca. At the Summit of the Andes. From the Coast to the Frigid Highlands

Chapter XI. The Highest Lake in the World, Desecration of the Graves of Tihuanaco Civilization. Salt-Flats the Dryest Desert in the World

Chapter XII. Between the Andes and the Ocean, the Antarctic

Chapter XIII. The Ozone Layer Disappears Over Antarctic. The Concert of Whales. Tierra Del Fuego and Pampa. Fossils of Megaraptor in Aluvial Deposits

Chapter XIV. The Large Port City. The River Mouth. Delta of the Paraná

Chapter XV. Great Swamp, Waterway, an Irrational Dream. Itaipú Dam, Iguazú Falls. Frosts in the Coffee Zone

Chapter XVI. The Dream about the Carnival at Rio and the Cruel Truth Escape of African Bees Imported by a Reckless Scientist

Chapter XVII. The Story of Rubber and Rubber-Tappers

Chapter XVIII. Depredation of the Forest of the Amazon. Fires, Piracy of Birds, Apes and Ornamental Fish, Lethal to the Global Climate. Fazendeiros. Garimpeiros, Gold Fever. Head Shrinkers

Chapter XIX. Trip on the Waterways of the Amazon. Pink Dolphins, the Future of the Amazon is the Future of Humanity

Chapter XX. The World of Cocaine. Raspachines, Producers and Consumers. The World of Gliophosphate Fusarium Oxisporium Fungus

Chapter XXI. In the Deepest Part of the Orinoco with the Yanomamí Indians. The Lost World of the Canaima. Trip to the Tepuys and Angel Falls

Chapter XXII. Páramos and Plains. Chicamocha Cañon. From the Swamps to the Lower Magdalena

Chapter XXIII. Guajira Desert, Santa Marta Snow Covered Mountain the Cannabis Sativa Conflict

Chapter XXIV. Magdalena River, Canal Del Dique, Lower Cauca Lake Ayapel

Chapter XXV. Macroprojects Against Nature will Affect the Tropical Rainforest, the Mangroves and Coral of Biogeographical Chocó. Low Atrato, Darien Mountains

Preface

A group of hungry fishermen cruised their sailboat along the rugged rocks of Malpelo Island, a submerged volcanic mountain that rises, indomitable, in the middle of the Colombian Pacific Ocean coast, inhabited by iguanas similar to the reptiles of the beginning of geological time. Over its splendid and rude morphology glide doves of the Holy Spirit, charranes from the Arctic, able to travel forty thousand kilometers a year, flying above sea, working diligently towards ecological equilibrium in different ecosystems round the globe. Seagulls stop by, in transit to the archipelago of Islas del Rey near the Pacific coasts of Panama. Snow-white yellow-footed boobies grow attractive plumage and build their nests with pebbles using their beaks like expert marine jewelers.

Frigate birds that can remain in the air like giant kites nest and rear their young in the cliffs. The water teems with hammerhead sharks, cruelly hunted for their tasty fins, presumably useful as a cure for cancer. Strange black lizards keep watch and orange crabs that feed on lichens and dry ferns roam over the labyrinths of the petrified mass and the eroded crags. Sinister-looking barracudas swim like arrows in the cold currents. Here, in these waters, marine spiders live and jellyfish bloom. The deviation and heating of the Humboldt Current, attributed by the scientific community to the Niño phenomenon, had also reduced the level of marine biodiversity. Stinging marine organisms, fire-colored limy seaweed and nucleuses of barnacles, flowering in yellow marine full-dress, grow around Malpelo. Blue-black angelfish with golden fins and elegant shapes live in the shallows, populated by alcinarias whose tentacles form little white flowers, and a multitude of anemones, lilac and fragile. At edge of the nearby cliffs manta rays take shelter, float and play, and spectacular pompanos cruise. Occasionally sluggish and confident inoffensive whale-sharks appear and turtles, harassed and decimated on the whole planet, arrive to rest in coral refuges.

After two weeks of unfruitful efforts the men cursed and uttered horrible blasphemies; after bitter discussions and against the advice of the captain, they decided to fish for and kill a dolphin for bait. They did not understand that the global climate change had distorted the normal cold temperature of the Humboldt Current. Two hours later, a school of four hundred dolphins swam by the boat; they jumped, dove and made torrential wakes and bubbles. The fishermen only had to increase speed behind the file of cetaceans and mercilessly harpoon their first quarry. The one they struck proved to be young, practically a child. When they hauled it aboard, it began to cry and squeal plaintively. When it saw the gutting knife, envisioning the innate cruelty of its captors, the animal blinked its eyelids and pleaded for mercy with its eyes drowned in tears. Then one of the hardened sailors stabbed its throat; the hot blood splattered on the faces of those that were closest, causing new curses and blasphemies.

The young dolphin was convulsed in its death throes. Right away a multitude of furious dolphins surrounded the boat with screams and pitiful cries, reproaching the heedless act of the fishermen, who understanding the senselessness of their cowardly efforts, weighed anchor and began the return to the dock, in the midst of an electric storm that was loosed with sudden fury, vowing to never again commit outrages on this intelligent species of the oceans.

Half an hour later, an obviously wet box of precious wood fell from the sky, crashed onto the bow of the fishing boat and spewed its contents, a pile of compressed straw, onto the deck. The smartest of the hungry fishermen began to search through the straw and to his astonishment found an old book with heavy cardboard binding and within it a number of pamphlets handwritten on yellowing sheets of paper, stained by the inexorable footprints of time. He gave it to the captain; a good man although stubborn, who had studied at a Jesuit college in the city. He found a forward, a hundred sheets of paper and the heavy text that he began to read aloud so that everyone could hear its contents: "When we began the trip we decided to keep a log and forty years after traveling round the world, enjoying its beauties and suffering its horrors, we thought it could become a book…The frustrated fishermen continued to listen:

"Never as today, in the four thousand eight hundred million years of the blue planet, did a species in a moment of the time, cause as much damage as Homo sapiens; a new and transient visitor to the galaxy, but a practiced meddler with the mechanisms of the biosphere and the interior of the ecosystems that regulate the climate.

"Although man advanced science to unknown limits, succeeded in the study of his own anatomy, quick satellite communications, developed productive forces creating surprising technologies, conquered cyberspace and made the first steps towards the universe and manipulation of the laws of heredity, produced at the same time such an unbalance, sadness and bitterness that he has begun to diminish all kinds of life in oceans, rain forests, woods, deserts, tundra, steppes and superb northern and southern grasslands.

Probably, inebriated by the power to decide on the management of the transformation of matter, interpret the mysteries of the atom, introduce himself into the chromosomes of cells and manipulate the genes at his whim, the human being has converted himself in the past few years into a real contradiction and a menace to the survival of the earth.

The most surprising thing about human intelligence, developed in a hundred million brain cells, is that it does not succeed in understanding that which is elementary. Neither the natural functions of flora and fauna species results in climatic equilibrium, nor the dependence on them and their regulatory functions, for he feels that he is lord and master to decimate them, reproduce them massively and exterminate them. Without ever understanding that the climate, the rain and the behavior of wind and water, depend upon the interaction and the synchronized activity of thousands of beings, visible and invisible to the human eye, capable of carrying out regulatory functions. Animals and vegetables come into living being, develop, pollinate, disperse seeds and embryos, fertilize soils, clean, enrich the ecosystems, breed and die. The decomposition of their matter is the vital breath of new forms of life. The stoma of animals and plants breathe, capture solar energy and magnetism in order to transform their molecules and produce new biochemical substances by phenomena such as photosynthesis and respiration, all contributing to global dialectics.

Man wants to conquer other galaxies, communicate with exotical life on the remote planets thousands of light-years from earth, decode the mystery of black holes hungry for matter, learn the complex secrets and interpret the laws of the infinite universe. While the orb, menaced by gaseous emissions, the contamination of water and the extinction of species, consumes itself on the bonfires of racial and religious hatred. He does not succeed in satiating the hunger of millions, much less in protecting fresh water and the vital atmosphere. Human beings have not solved the basic needs of their species, nor demonstrated enough reasoning to assume a responsible attitude towards the mysteries of life.

Bombarding the neutrons of atoms, the intelligent species obtained millions of disintegrations per second, concentrated its military power on nuclear bombs artifacts and warheads. And does not want to understand that the annual emission to the atmosphere, more than twelve thousand million tons of greenhouse gases, is fortifying bacteria resistant to penicillin and lethal mutating viruses, is increasing the hole in the ozone layer, the existence of which, is the subtle halo protecting our immunological systems.

We underestimate the importance of systems for the treatment of solid and liquid waste, industrial refuse and the final disposition of waste water. We Intelligent humans have contaminated rivers, lakes and seas in such a way that lentic, lotic, and migratory species lose their way. Dark sediments are deposited on coral reefs, in estuaries and mangrove swamps, asphyxiating the polyps, menacing nurseries and the beautiful food chains of the ocean. The species causes uncontrollable fires in woods and forests and traffics thoughtlessly in uncountable forms of aquatic and terrestrial life. Destroying biodiversity, our human race alters the biological equilibrium of the ecosystems. Aridity and desertification become acute. Now unpredictable rains cause floods. Hurricanes, washouts and tornados followed by long droughts, bring hunger and desolation to thousands of communities in the fragile territories struck by natural disasters. Vital species are extinguished in rivers, lakes and wetlands. Nobody can yet explain how deep underground dissuasive nuclear explosions can influence in the behavior of tectonic plates or if they can influence unpredictable seismic shocks, releasing the colossal energy freed by earthquakes and seaquakes causing tsunamis. Extreme temperatures; cold and warm will punish human beings.

Without yet solving the conflict of the garbage disposal and nuclear waste, the human being, in his belligerent paroxysm, went so far as to make plans to cross the barriers of the stratosphere and install nuclear missiles in space, aimed at earth, with atomic warheads capable of releasing trillions of curies, and baptized its delirium of bellicose grandeur with the pompous title The war of the Galaxies.

At the peak of his progress, man designs economic strategies whose global execution destroys the vital arteries of developing nations. Modifies constitutions, weakens government institutions in favor of private international interests. Prepares the ground for the cultural and ideological superstructure of our blue world in order to colonize, with the support of the law, the birthrights of nations, multiplying the poverty and suffering that are propagated about the earth like the medieval black plague.

We humans refuse to reduce the production and use of antipersonnel mines that mutilate children and wipe off their smiles forever. Conventional arms are fabricated on our planet whose value surpasses that of the yearly food consumption of three billion hungry human beings. We traffic in chemical and biological weapons, sowing pain and death in all nations. We break treaties of non-proliferation and use of nuclear weapons. While we talk of peace, civilization, living together, democracy, human rights and social harmony.

But definitely the most contradictory presumption and the height of stupidity, is ignorance of the limits of science, to try to modify the genetic identity of the species and the molecular composition of living beings at his whim, with an excessively egotistical and mercantile focus. Thus, a powerful monopoly of trans-genetic food and Frankenstein creatures will be created around the earth planet. Firms will possess the intellectual property of human being, animal and vegetable life in their germ-plasm banks. They would be able to modify the creation, alter natural selection and distort the laws designed by nature during millions of years of evolution. Transgenic manipulation will transform the relationships between natural kingdoms. Will distort biochemical signals, break up associations and interactions between millions of living beings and will bring about unprecedented chaos in all existing forms of life on earth. Furthermore, stress causing agents, stimulated by ill-conceived technologies, are weakening the immunological systems of vegetables and animals and will end up multiplying and propagating mutant viruses, resistant bacteria and germs, in hospitals and all the corners of the world. The human species will pay with interest for the anti-natural infringement and irrational disorder created in this insignificant particle of the universe.

During the 21st century earth will suffer the penalty of the global climate change and its sequels and vertiginous stress on fresh water; hunger and helplessness due to the proliferation of viral pandemics. Malnutrition will wipe out millions of people. We will witness the nightmare of people, helpless because of the proliferation of arms. Cold and lethal; the unlimited cruelty of the computerized war of the powerful good angels against the weak demons of evil, will unleash the second cold war, global armament, and the phantoms of suicidal terrorism. The menace of nuclear war will graze on the stunned conscience of humanity. Droughts and floods will bring famine and distressing death to millions of social outcasts, evicted by force from the banquet of life. When the tornados multiply and terrifying hurricanes wipe out coral paradises in seconds, glaciers weep without rest, enormous icebergs break loose from polar caps when on becoming more frequent. We will have damaged the regulatory mechanisms of the biosphere and the climate in all continents.

The terrifying forestalls storm fires take human lives. Dense smoke vaults formed by greenhouse gases covers the largest world cities. When whales, confused by the water contamination, get lost on their migratory routes. The sea levels increase and floods, the phytoplankton and zooplankton begin to die due to mud, fossil fuels and nuclear residues, albañal waters and micro plastic particles, finally disappear as if by magic. Then rivers, lakes, wetlands and fertile valleys are turned into salt lakes. Devastating tsunamis wipe clean and devour islands with the fury of waves. Billions of bees don’t will return to honey bees confused by the nicotinoids and other lethal insecticides in flowers. Species of the marvelous forest and marine biodiversity become extinct. The human intolerance grows in the nations, cities and streets, we could be near to the Beginning of the End of our intelligent specie.

The surprised fishermen continued listening to the tale:

Chapter I

From Valle Department to the Bay

Half a century ago a mulatto child, with black wavy hair called Hernando by the hand of mother and grandmother traveled from Valle Department to the coast to learn about the bay and the Pacific Ocean. The train crossed beautiful landscapes planted with legumes and cereals. Between bamboo thickets and low swampy zones inhabited by herons, screaming Andean lapwings and traveling birds. While a horde of country proletariats weeded green fields of spiky corn. In Guanabanal¹, a small town in the countryside where anonaceas abound, they ate pandebono² vallecaucano. In Yumbo³ several heavy-set women sold biscuits from straw baskets. Fresh La Cumbre was a picturesque hamlet hemmed in by flowering orchards; the country-women offered the travelers bunches of blue hydrangeas, red anthuriums and white lilies.

Arriving at Cisneros⁴, after going through several tunnels, real masterworks of precise engineering. The shrubby vegetation of the lower Dagua River, from whose bed ballast was extracted by shovel, had been transformed into mixed forest and full of life. Thus, they arrived at Córdoba⁵ station of the railroad bordered by the river with waters as clear as crystal, where thousands of sabaletas played, needle fish land yellow cichlids leapt. The railroad workers spent the night in the hamlet, attracted by the spell of the splendid underbrush and the warm tenderness of ardent mulatas and black women with African ancestors.

The port was then a small town built of wood, cut during the waning moon, with nine or ten buildings close to the blue-grey sea. The church, which attracted a multitude of faithful, rose on an enchanted hill, populated by chameleons and lizards. At its foot, on the home-built dock seven or eight ships of western flags came in daily, followed by a cloud of seagulls in a serene and diaphanous setting. It rained strongly without pause. Every day well-built and slender natives used black umbrellas to walk to the dock to load and unload the ships. The climate was damp and sultry, but moderate, because of the splendid and varied vegetation where the clouds drank water.

They were welcomed by a noisy rainstorm that formed torrents on the streets. There was a penetrating odor of rotten wood in the air. They arrived at a small house with planed and painted boards, sited a few meters from the sea. There lived a woman with a kindly look attracted from the nearby Cauca valley by bewitchment of the waves, accompanied by four young sons. Visitors were received affectionately while several neighboring children played, disguised as Indians using paper costumes, with annatto daubed on their faces, imitating the customs of redskin tribes, constantly heard about from their grandparents.

From the house the boy regarded the extensive mass of salt water with emotion. He imagined millions of fantastic beings in the depths of the ocean. He for the first time saw fishermen casting and recovering nets. The sea breeze refreshed him, he was curious about large shells continuously moved by small crustaceans. He admired the wading birds searching at the low tide and fell asleep until dawn. He awoke to the thunder and lightenin of a storm lost on the horizon. He left the little house furtively, crossed a thicket full of taro and vines with large halberd-like leaves, was bogged down in the soft mud of a small mangrove swamp, stepped on cool slime and smooth sand, heard the cries of the early-rising seagulls, enjoyed the sound of the waves and reached the edge of the sea.

The vessels lit up fleetingly on an unfathomable background, where the sea met the sky. Then he daydreamed about crossing the oceans without ever having seen them. Spoke to flying boobies, immersed himself in transparent waters, contemplated the dances of seahorses with wonder and sensed lilies and majestic flowers that adorn the coral reefs. He thought he was collecting snail shells. Boy knew that there were giant turtles with tortoiseshell carapaces capable of navigating thousands of miles over blue universes, to lay eggs on desolate beaches perpetrating the species with hatchlings that they would never know. The boy imagined undiscovered abysmal species with luminous eyes. Saw angelfish with golden ornaments, thought that he touched the stars on the reefs. He was amazed at flounders with colored filigrees and only one eye, imagined the existence of potent poisons in the magnificent structures of the evanescent jellyfish, dreamt of visiting fantastic uninhabited islands, free of human beings, where nature reaches its maximum splendor. The warm morning sun made him return to reality. He thought that all known life and imagined creatures, could have their origin in the sea.

Hernando soon became fond of his hostess; possessing a serene beauty, a permanent smile and elegant ways. Boy enjoyed the smell of wood, the rhythmic flight of the birds and the way of life of the natives, their warm reception and happy character. The boy watched the racy dances of the neighborhood; he penetrated the sensual melodies and enjoyed the catching rhythms. He heard the bursts of laughter of the people and took to their manner of being, open and sincere. He kept the experience and the moment in his heart as a precious and un-erasable reminder of his childhood and although he had to live far off, he returned to this spot until the end of his days.

Meanwhile, in Europe, North Africa and Southeast Asia, the deep wounds produced by the second imperialistic world war were scarcely beginning to heal. The world remained horrified by the Nazi atrocities, the holocaust of the frightful concentration camps, where the Jews were forced to make poison pills to bring about their own extermination. The explosion of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima⁶ and Nagasaki, the torpid destruction of the coral reef gardens of Micronesia, Polynesia, the Celebes, the Javanese, South China, Banda and Hawaii seas, by devastating dissuasive trials using hydrogen, enriched uranium and plutonium atomic artifacts.

North America conserved its territorial integrity, began the rebuilding of Germany and Japan, and then lived in a formidable industrial, economic and cultural postwar florescence. Other three of the participants in this story were beginning their lives in Europe and South America, and would meet, years later, in the paradise of the coastal forest of Pacific Colombia.

After two months the boy left the bay with infinite sadness. He cried inconsolably three days and nights. But he was consoled later, learning of the existence of other natural beauties and an incredible social richness in the valley of his birth.