The secret of the trees

By Ernesto Tejedor, Miguel Ángel Esteban, Nabil Halaihel Kassab

"The forests, those silent spectators of our lives, who accompany us throughout the generations. The sun, the rain and the wind mould our mountains (...). Year after year, the seasons come and go and the trees remain there, silent witnesses to the passing of time. Their trunks hide an exceptional secret for those who know how to look for it (...)".

 

That the climate is changing is undoubted.

Indeed, the media will pick up on anything that is disastrous.

But it's not as cold as it used to be.

Nature is very stubborn, it has its laws, we can overcome it up to a certain threshold.

One's feelings about the weather are subjective.

For a while it was said that Antarctica was thawing, today it is known that Antarctic ice is increasing.

Human activities are changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

It rains half as much as it used to.

That we can defeat nature the day we follow its laws.

There have always been climate-related disasters, in all fluctuations.

The increase of greenhouse gases modifying the climate is out of the question.

All models give us hypotheses.

The most likely, and most logical, cyclically, is a tendency to go to a colder period.

The human perspective is of course short.

Cold, it was certainly colder than it is now.

There is no way of knowing how the climate will evolve in the future; other factors can and will intervene that we cannot count on at certain times.

 

"Man is capable of diverting rivers, taking land from the sea, transforming landscapes, but can he transform the climate through his intense exploitation of natural resources? Is climate change man-made?
The answer to this question requires comparing our climates with those of the past. Trees can help us in this task.