Summer has not officially begun, as it will on the day of the Solstice, although the meteorological summer obviously has. That is besides the point, as this piece of article is not about the seasons or the flow of time, but of the fact that there have now been three mini heatwaves in the north of France, the third being today.
This phenomena, far from being “normal,” is also an anomaly, especially in the northern regions, where it is generally supposed to be cloudy and cool (not to mention rainy) for the most part of the year.
It would be akin to saying that there is a heatwave in upstate New York, in places like Buffalo and Rochester. Or worse still, a heatwave in the north of Québec. Or Tromsø, for that matter.
The Earth’s atmosphere has always had a natural greenhouse effect, without which life would not have flourished without water in liquid form. However, the carbon tends to fall into the vast ocean, thus cooling the system, so to speak. The excess cooling is periodically offset by volcanic activity, although longterm volcanic activity can and do exist, belching the much needed carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere.
Yet, the industrial age1 has caused caused the modern era humans to spew more than a hundred times more carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere than the natural volcanoes, mostly with fossil fuel usage.
And that is the chief reason for anthropogenic climate change.
Other greenhouse industrial gases such as methane have not even been mentioned, for which livestock bovine2 are mostly responsible at present. In its essence, methane occurs naturally in nature, but there is a sort of a homeostasis for all greenhouse gases. The same goes for nitrogen and oxygen. But that homeostasis is being disrupted by human industrial activities.
The Earth’s atmosphere is an oxidizing one, with some 20% oxygen. The gas that gives life, can also take life away. The more the climate warms up, the more forest fires, therefore more desertification there will be. Desertification also results from bovine breeding and captivity,3 as well as from deliberate deforestation and farming for palm oil.
Free radicals are oxygen particles. Oxygen gives life, but it also ages living beings and rusts iron. That is the way of this natural world. It is a process of the continuous renewal of life on this planet. A fact that needs accepting.
But, hopefully, there is still time to wake up and do something about anthropogenic climate change.
Text and commentary © The Anthropoïd Poët 2025.