Friday, December 5, 2014

Global Warming and Tlaloc, the God of Lightning


Tlaloc---Aztec God of Lightning 

Who makes the lightning?

 In Athens in 600 BC it was thought the god Zeus hurled lightning bolts at the earth.  Move to Rome 500 years later and Jupiter had the job of making lightning.  When the Spanish Conquistadors reached the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (modern Mexico City), they found huge statues of an Aztec god of rain and lighting called Tlaloc.    Almost every religion and cultural tradition associated lightning with the gods----Norse mythology had Thor, Finnish mythology had Ukko, and Hindus still venerate Indra.  Even the great monotheistic religions get in the act----for instance the Prophet Muhammad ascribed the origin of lightning to an angel, saying:

"It is one of God's angels in charge of the clouds.  He carries in his hand a skewer of fire by which he pricks the clouds to drive them to where God has ordered them.  They say to him, "What is this sound that we hear?"  He said:  "It [the thunder] is his voice"


Soon it will be Global Climate Change that will be creating the lightning.  Lightning is created when warm air masses collide with cold air masses in the atmosphere.  Lightning occurs particularly frequently in tropical ares where large rapidly rising cumulus clouds are generated, and flashes of lightning seen in the far distance are sometimes called "heat lightning."   Global Warming will bring more heat, and more heat will also bring more lightning.  Based on likely models of the amount of atmospheric warming produced by the growing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, the amount of lightning around the planet may go up by about 50%.   Only a very small percentage of lightning bolts actually strike the earth, but the number of lightning strikes will likely increase as well.

Since it is estimated that there are about 1.4 billion lightning discharges each year, global warming is going to be responsible for about 700 million extra bolts of lightning each year----and thats a heck of a lot more lightning then Tlaloc is making these days.





           Global Warming will soon produce an additional 700,000,000 lightning bolts each year

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