Climate Change Accelerating Faster Than Experts Thought
By Frances Beinecke
A year ago, I traveled by ship through the Arctic Ocean, seeing the effects of global warming first hand. Now I have come to Winnipeg for a meeting of the Aspen Commission on Arctic Climate Change.
As I listen to scientists discuss their findings, I am astonished at how rapidly the Earth's climate is being altered--faster even then researchers thought 12 months ago. And I am struck once again by how urgent it is that America commit to curbing global warming.
The Arctic is melting at this moment, while our nation debates and delays. And while it may seem that the top of the globe is far from us, the monumental and potentially catastrophic changes happening there will make themselves known in communities up and down our coasts unless we embrace clean energy solutions right now.
A small but vocal group of naysayers has been encouraging Americans to ignore the opportunities embedded in clean energy and instead look backwards to the 19th century method of burning rocks for energy. We don't need to innovate, they say; we can take care of global warming by doing more of the same.
They ignore the grave consequences of that path at our peril.
Here are just a few of the recent scientific findings of what is happening to the Earth. These impacts will only increase if we go backward, not forward into the future.
--A June report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other federal agencies found that climate change is interfering with America's water supply and agriculture right now.
--A recent report released by researchers at MIT, concluded that earlier estimates of temperature increases were too conservative. Previously, scientists forecasted a 4 degree rise by the end of the century; now it looks more like 9 degrees--a rise sufficient enough to cause major disruptions in the way we live.
--A study by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program found that global warming pollution will likely cause the United States and Canada to rare extreme events--intense downpours, higher storm surges, and excessive heat--will become commonplace.
How can we prevent more drastic impacts from pounding America?
We can start by passing the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a bill before the Senate that will get America moving down a path to climate solutions, technological innovation, and economic growth.
We can also put systems in place to protect the Arctic--the ground zero of global warming. The changes happening in the Arctic don't just threaten the environment; they also hurt the 1 million people who live above the Arctic Circle--people whom Alaska Governor Sarah Palin seems to discount when she ignores the consequences of sticking with our energy status quo.
Here at the Commission on Arctic Climate Change, we are trying to create a conservation and governance structure for the North. As a result of global warming, some 28,000 square miles of summer sea ice vanishes in the Arctic each year, taking with it the principle physical barrier to intensive industrial development that protected this remote region for thousands of years.
The rest of the world's oceans are in a state of collapse. We have a chance in the Arctic to preserve the last undeveloped ocean in the world, and to figure out the best way to manage its natural resources over the long term.
While the American Clean Energy and Security Act won't address the Arctic specifically, its efforts to curb global warming will slow the degradation of this remarkable ecosystem.
And as our lawmakers debate the various elements of the bill, I hope they will be mindful of one thing: the changes to our climate are accelerating, not slowing. If we don't act soon, we will incur terrible costs.
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Where's my people that say animals die that's what they/we do? If they are not fit to survive they die, this includes humans. The Ice caps are melting that dosent show cooling. Maybe however it's nothing done by man kind, but just the earth warming up from the most recent ice age and moving into a "dinosaur" age. Either way we need to get rid of pollution it kills people. If we help nature too that's great.
Is man so arrogant that he believes his actions or inaction can change the climate of the earth in a geologically short period of time? On the pro side of this we have the panic stricken side that says our pollution, i.e. carbon emissions, etc., is causing global climate change . On the con side we have the skeptics and naysayers. Who do you believe? Somewhere along the line Global Warming was changed to Global Climate Change because the evidence did not support global warming . What does that tell us?
Does my car contribute to the global climate change? Sure it does. Will my not driving it contribute too? Absolutely. But exactly how much am I contributing with my “carbon foot print”? Is it too big? Too small? There must be balance. Getting rid of all greenhouse gases is not the answer. Greenhouse gases are produced in other ways along with particulates that are thrown out into the atmosphere. These methods include but are not limited to Volcanic Eruptions, Forest Fires, Geothermal Gases, etc. How many tons of greenhouse gases do these produce each year? How much has this changed in the last 50 years? 100 years? 500 years? Geologic seconds are measured in human generations. How arrogant are we?
I did some searches on the web (remember the source) that show volcano's are constantly erupting around the globe. Forest fires started by lighting occur globally. These two events put millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year. Have any of our “so called” climate change experts taken into account what fighting forest fires does to global climate change? A fire started by man should be fought, but if lighting starts a fire it should be allowed to burn out regardless of the effect it has on climate change or on humans. Why? It was going on long before man was here. In fact the best way to combat global climate change is to exterminate man. The Earth does not need us, we need it.
TCH
The Catholic Heretic
"These two events put millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year."
And these events impact the climate.
Human industry is dumping billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere at an astonishing rate... so much that if trends continue as they are then within three years we will have dumped as much carbon into the atmosphere as there was when the Industrial Revolution started.
The amount of carbon that took millions of years to accumulate we have added over the past two hundred odd years.
In fact the father of the Gaia theory that catalyzed the environmental movement (not wholly of course) would like agree with you on all points.
Except possibly that man should not respond to a natural even if he can have a positive effect.
With all we have accomplished I should like to think we could muster the effort and innovation to at least try to make a difference.
We skeptics look at the information on temperatures, trends, and other facts (including the fact that ice melts above 32 degrees F) and conclude that the hysteria is just that: hysteria. The planet's temperature has been above freezing and the glaciers melting since the end of the last ice age.
We look at "average" temperatures and are reminded of what our statistics instructors told us in school: You can drown trying to walk through a lake an average of three feet deep. Averages are, quite often, meaningless.
We look at the fact that weather patterns have always been highly variable; hence the time-worn phrase, "Changeable as the weather." The Dust Bowl era of the '30s came WELL BEFORE the atmosphere had the carbon levels of today, meaning simply that the intellectually honest among us must question the cause-and-effect relationship between climate change and carbon.
We look at specious claims including those of scientific "consensus" around this issue. Nothing could be further from the truth. The only consensus around this issue is POLITICAL. Serious scientists without a political motivation (independent thinkers who look at the data and are led by it) are still debating.
We look at Washington, which says cap-and-trade legislation would bring $80 BILLION a year into the nation's coffers. THAT, my friends, is their motivation.
And, we look at the absolutely irrefutable logic that says IF this is a problem, it is a GLOBAL issue the U.S. cannot fix alone.
More examples of honest, thoughtful questions are available at http://halt-global-warming.blogspot.com and other sites.
"Minds are like parachutes: they function best when they are open."
Here is one example. The people of the this Alaskan village lived on this island for 400 HUNDRED YEARS and ahve had to relocate because of CLIMATE CHANGE melting the sea ice which protected the land, now the Arctic storms pound and erode, causing homes to fall into the ocean as well as permafrost melting. They had to move the entire village.
http://www.shishmarefrelocation.com /
There are other villages that have experienced the same and people all over the Arctic have and are experience damage and destruction to their homes and property because the permafrost underneath is melting.
These are just a few examples of what is happening.
You are behind the times. Even IPCC scientists are being forced to admit that AGW is a hoax. Per Richard Courtney:
"The Earth has now been experiencing global cooling for a decade. The Southern Hemisphere started to cool about 20 years ago and this cooling spread to include the Northern Hemisphere about 10 years ago.
"And there is no clear evidence in the data of recent decades for the existence of anthropogenic (that is, man-made) global warming (AGW) induced by increases to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations or anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide. The emissions and the concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased (the atmospheric concentration has increased by ~5%) over the last decade while the global temperature has fallen.
"The recent global cooling has now been happening for so long that the cooling is even admitted by the pro-AGW-propoganda web site which calls itself RealClimate.org."
It's certain that the climate is going to change and it's just as certain that mankind cannot do anything to affect it, so stop promoting the greatest money -grab of all time: the American Clean Energy and Security Act.
First of all, citing a coal industry person (Richard Courtney) is a pretty silly appeal to authority, secondly I can find no reference on RealClimate.org of their admitting that global cooling is real.
AS I stated in the first comment on this thread, the entire pseudo-proof of CO2 causing global warming is based on Nintendo science , computer models.
But take heart, there is real quantitative science taking place as you read this comment. Check out the work (after years of failing to be funded by the NAS) being done at the CERN in Switzerland.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1180849
It is tragic that this legislation ("ACES") won't help mitigate global warming hardly at all. Any global carbon diet strategy would be dependent upon clean coal :
"The vast majority of new power stations in China and India will be coal-fired; not "may be coal-fired"; will be. So developing carbon capture and storage technology is not optional, it is literally of the essence." --"Breaking the Climate Deadlock," Tony Blair, June 26, 2008
But, Vaclav Smil, an energy expert at the University of Manitoba, has estimated that capturing and burying just 10 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted over a year from coal-fire plants at current rates would require moving volumes of compressed carbon d ioxide greater than the total annual flow of oil worldwide -- a massive undertaking requiring decades and trillions of dollars. "Beware of the scale," he stressed."
The world's emissions of the main planet-warming gas carbon dioxide will rise over 50 percent to more than 42 billion tonnes per year from 2005 to 2030 as China leads a rise in burning coal, the U.S. government forecast on Wednesday. China's coal demand will rise 3.2 percent annually from 2005 to 2030, the Energy Information Administration said in its International Energy Outlook 2008. --Reuters, 26 June 2008
"I'm going to tell you something I probably shouldn't: we may not be able to stop global warming. We need to begin curbing global greenhouse emissions right now, but more than a decade after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, the world has utterly failed to do so. Unless the geopolitics of global warming change soon, the Hail Mary pass of geoengineering might become our best shot." --Bryan Walsh, Time Magazine, 17 March 2008
"The alternative (to geoengineering) is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself but in the hot state." --Dr James Lovelock, August 2008