What Part of 'Global Warming' Don't We Get?

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/27034/

 

What Part of 'Global Warming' Don't We Get?

 

By Bill McKibben, Prairie Writers Circle. Posted October 25, 2005.

 

 

 

It's time for the denial to end, but Washington is governed by a

bipartisan consensus that somehow the laws of physics and chemistry

don't apply to us.

 

Forget about the hurricanes. Put them out of your mind. We'll never

know for sure that any particular hurricane is caused by global

warming, so just don't think about them. Instead, concentrate on the

other evidence for climate change that's appeared recently:

 

* In August, Russian researchers reported that an area of tundra

larger than France and Germany combined was rapidly turning into bog

as the permafrost melted.

 

* In early September, British researchers reported that warmer

temperatures were causing the soil to heat up and dramatically

increasing rates of decay. The temperate forests and fields of the

United Kingdom are becoming, in essence, semitropical.

 

* In mid-September, researchers reported that arctic sea ice had

shrunk by 20 percent. " The feeling is we are reaching a tipping point

or threshold beyond which sea ice will not recover, " one scientist

told reporters.

 

* And in late September, European researchers reported on the

biological effects of 2003's record heat wave, the one that killed

15,000 people in France alone. In Italy, they said, corn yields

dropped by about 36 percent. Oak and pine also grew more slowly, the

study found. In fact, overall there was 30 percent less plant growth

that year.

 

 

 

What do numbers like these -- all from the best peer-reviewed journals

-- show us? That global warming is not some distant problem waiting to

appear, some hypothetical trouble we should start preparing for. They

show us that the world is already changing with deadly speed. Every

time we burn coal and gas and oil, we send carbon dioxide into the

atmosphere, and now that carbon dioxide is trapping enough heat to

create a new planet.

 

And what's really scary is that each of these developments will in

turn trigger more global warming. They're what scientists call

feedback loops. For instance, as the Siberian permafrost melts it

releases huge quantities of methane -- at some spots last winter the

gas was bubbling up so fast that the bogs didn't freeze in even the

coldest weather. And methane is an even more potent greenhouse gas

than carbon dioxide.

 

Meanwhile, as British soils heat and decay speeds up, that decay

releases carbon -- enough to offset all the energy-saving changes that

Britain has made since 1990. Meanwhile the reductions in plant growth

that the Europeans found during the hot summer of 2003 mean fewer

trees and plants to soak up the carbon from the atmosphere.

 

And up north? White sea ice reflects the sun's rays back to space;

when it melts to blue water that heat is now absorbed, increasing

warming yet again.

 

So far human beings have increased the planet's temperature about 1

degree Fahrenheit. Unless we do everything possible, as quickly as

possible, to shift away from fossil fuels, scientists say we will warm

the planet another 5 degrees before the century's end. So imagine all

those numbers multiplied by five.

 

It's about time for denial to come to an end. We're no longer talking

about theory, about computer models of what might happen. We're

talking about what is happening, all around the world, with almost

unimaginable speed. Other countries have at least begun to try to deal

with the problem, implementing small first steps like the Kyoto

Protocol. But here in the United States, there's only a scattering of

state and local measures. Washington is governed by a bipartisan

consensus that somehow the laws of physics and chemistry don't apply

to us.

 

But they do. I said I wasn't going to talk about the hurricanes, but I

lied. In early August a paper by a Massachusetts Institute of

Technology researcher in the journal Nature showed that hurricanes

were 50 percent stronger and lasted 60 percent longer than a

generation ago. In early September a Georgia Tech team showed that the

number of category 4 and 5 storms had doubled. You've seen the results

on every TV screen and magazine cover.

 

Exactly how much more do we need to know? Exactly when are we going to

roll up our sleeves and get to work?

 

Bill McKibben is the author of " The End of Nature " and " Enough:

Staying Human in an Engineered Age. " He wrote this essay for the Land

Institute's Prairie Writers Circle, Salina, Kan.

[Guest guest]

- another POV:

 

Earth: Hot or Not?

 

 

 

Arctic sea ice has shrunk 30% since 1978, and could disappear altogether

within a hundred years. NASA scientist Dr. Waleed Abdalati explains,

" The most recent estimates suggest that the last time we had an ice-free

arctic was millions of years ago. " So when it comes to the skills you'll

need in the future, add " a decent breast stroke. "

 

In the short term, this could actually be good news for fish lovers,

since the warmer arctic waters may wind up increasing the populations of

cod near the North Pole. And, as an added bonus, at the rate the planet

is going, if you like your cod boiled... Well, pretty soon, you'll be in

for a real treat.

 

The warmer temperatures are, however, bad for polar bears, who may find

their habitats threatened. And the rising waters have already proved a

disaster in Santa's workshop. Sadly, he chose to build in a coastal area

of the North Pole and to hire workers who were only two feet high.

 

This, by the way, is the most important report to come out of the

National Snow and Ice Data Center since their watershed 1978 report,

" Don't Eat The Yellow Snow "

 

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