Press Officer Rick Purnell writes ….

Life on the Edge…

A popular returning speaker Roger Hamilton, talked to Teignmouth Probus Club about how the availability of water governed life as we know it, showing North Africa as an example.  Not so long ago, all of North Africa was verdant forest, teaming wildlife, supported by ancient petroglyphs of lion and giraffe and many abandoned human settlements. About 6000 years ago, there was a shift in the magnetic pole and the earth’s axis changed. This seriously affected weather patterns and in Africa, the regular seasonal rain fall shifted more southerly with less and less rainfall creating baron wastelands becoming the deserts of the Sahara. A slow but expanding vast areas of baroness. A desert is where there is less than 10 inches of rain in a 12 month period. Closer to home, there are areas in Spain now having less than 10 inches of rain and parts of East Anglia very close to this. Climate drives mass migration of all life including humans.

A third of Africa is desert with little standing water. We have the image of vast expanses of sand but 80% is rocky outcrops and mountainous, not sandy at all. However, deserts create vast windstorms which can whip up the sand sufficient to completely bury whole human settlements, carry sand and minerals across continents dumping fertilising dust in the Amazon Forrest and sometimes red sand on our cars here in England.

The effect of climate change over recent times was illustrated by Lake Chad’s decline. In 1870’s the surface area covered 28,000 Km2, in the 1950’s measured at 22.772 Km2 and today down to 1200 Km2 and declining.  

A superb photo-show illustrated how difficult it was for life to exist on the edge of waterless expanses and how ‘life’ has migrated in the past and that it will continue in the future to avoid extinction.

The vote of thanks was given by member Chris Inch.