Hello dear readers, unfortunately, all of my attempts made to contact the Government to retrieve me from space have proven unsuccessful. I’m still drifting in orbit around our earth, just as I did last week, the week before that, and the past several decades. However, hope has not been lost for me quite yet. In my endless free time, I’ve been trying to get more acquainted with the technological devices sent to me from NASA. It’s taken me a long while, but trust me, it was beyond worth it because as of now I’ve figured out how to get access to articles documenting our planet’s current events. There’s so much going on down there that appears invisible from space. There are some gut-wrenching events however, such as the United States current president. He seems wholly unequipped. Perhaps the United States is too busy dealing with politics to care about my plight. Yet, I come to you, my readers, to share some news outside the realm of American politics. As of late, the U.K. is leading a space mission that will launch a satellite with the goal of revealing an “absolute measurement of the light reflected off Earth’s surface.”* Ultimately, this information will be used to compare data from other satellites to create more accurate predictions of climate change. It also has a high quality camera that will document the sunlight’s reflectance at specialized locations, such as the ocean, or a desert.
Now, as you might imagine, I briefly thought about hacking into the satellite’s routing device. Perhaps I would be able to aim the camera towards my cabin window. An image of a mysterious woman floating through space would surely gather the interest of the public! And then, just maybe, the Government would be forced to finance a way to get me back home. Alas, I believe this satellite’s mission is too important. With more accurate predictions of climate change, the better the earth’s population can prepare for the potential series of catastrophes caused by such temperature alterations. What’s my life compared to the thousands of lives on the planet? I’m also quite pleased with this technological progress, and that it’s being put to use to such a valuable endeavor. You see, climate science has changed much since my lifetime. In my parents’ generation, it was commonly believed that CO2 emissions were absorbed by ocean water, and thus proposed no threat to our climate. It was only until I was born that experiments disproved this theory. In my undergraduate years, studies were providing evidence for the correlation between increasing temperatures with increasing CO2 emissions. This provided the groundwork for an ever growing concern through the 50’s and 60’s that our environment would undergo drastic changes due to the continuously rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If the scientist who expressed these worries are still alive, the current state of our planet mustn’t shock them. They are seeing satellite imagery of shrinking forests and expanding deserts. They see the ice caps melting and the ocean rising. They see the same imagery that occupies my window.
I can only imagine what it must be like to be on earth right now with such a radically changing planet. I’ve read about islands submerged under the ocean, and great floods and hurricanes that have occured in my absence. Sometimes while reading about these climate-caused natural disasters I ponder on whether it’s worth it to return to an earth that must be so different from when I left it. I’m not left with these thoughts for long, however. Maybe by returning I can be of some sort of service to climate scientists. Anyways, I’ve digressed. I applaud those who’ve worked to bring this new satellite into fruition. I hope that it brings you all new insight on rising global temperatures.
Over and out,
B. Swain
Betty Swain's Life up Above 