| The Climate Is Indeed Changing… |
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But now it’s a growing list of business, religious and political leaders who are warming to solutions – and agreeing that it’s time to find practical solutions to address the problem of global warming.
“There’s no time
to wait because tomorrow is now. We are living in a carbon-constrained world
where the amount of CO2 must be reduced...
But industry cannot get there alone. We need to work in concert with the
government and environmental groups to promote and reward leadership.”
— Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE,
Ecomagination Launch, May 9, 2005
“We accept
that the science on global warming is overwhelming... There should be mandatory
carbon constraints.”
— John W. Rowe, Exelon Chairman and CEO,
Business Week, August 16, 2004
“When you have
energy companies like Shell and British Petroleum…saying there is a problem with
excess carbon dioxide emissions, I think we ought to listen.”
— Former Secretary of State James Baker, March 3, 2005
“I
think God is going to ask us what
we did with the earth he created.”
— The Rev. Rich Cizik, vice president of
governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, New York
Times, March 10, 2005
To find out more about the importance of the Climate Stewardship Act and the threat of global warming, visit www.undoit.org and http://www.climatecrisis.net/
New York Times editorial
February 4, 2007
Should Congress require any further reason to move aggressively to limit greenhouse gas emissions, it need only read Friday’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s authoritative voice on global warming.
A distillation of the best peer-reviewed science, the report expresses more than 90 percent certainty that man-made emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have caused the steady rise in atmospheric temperatures, with the destruction of tropical rain forests playing a lesser but important role.
The report warns that if society keeps to its current course, emissions will increase to twice their preindustrial levels by the end of this century, causing temperatures to rise 3.5 to 8 degrees. The consequences will include rising seas, more powerful hurricanes, disappearing coral reefs and more intensive droughts in subtropical countries.
The report also offers hope, suggesting that what humans have caused, humans can mitigate; that even though the world is committed to centuries of further warming, the process can be slowed and the worst effects averted by swift and decisive action to limit and reverse emissions.
This is the fourth in a series of studies that began in 1990. The first left open the possibility that the warming that began with the onset of the Industrial Revolution and increased in the 1950s was "largely due to natural variability." The second and third reports detected a bigger human role, and this one lays the whole problem at humanity’s doorstep.
A later paper will address specific remedies. But many climate experts believe the world must embark on a swift and sustained shift in the way energy is produced and used — away from fuels like oil and coal, and toward cleaner alternatives.
That is the objective of the many global warming bills now circulating in Washington. The best of these would put a price on carbon through a mandatory cap on emissions from sources like power plants and cars, thus making coal and oil relatively more expensive while driving the market toward cleaner sources of energy.
As we have learned over the years, talk is cheap in Washington, while meaningful action is almost certain to be expensive. President Bush has brandished those very real costs of moving to a new energy-delivery system again and again to argue against mandatory caps on emissions and to make the case for his own cost-free (and demonstrably inadequate) program of voluntary reductions. Yet what the panel is telling us is that the costs of doing nothing, especially to future generations, will be far greater than the price of acting now.
This is not a report compiled by a bunch of activists or alarmists. It is a consensus document, the inherently conservative product of three years of study and debate among mainstream scientists from 150 countries with often competing agendas. And in its modesty, it is alarming enough.
by Jon Traudt
September 19, 2007
The National Academy of Sciences says that global warming could lead to "large, abrupt and unwelcome" changes in the climate. The scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say that dramatic effort must begin with this generation and that if strong steps are not taken soon, the opportunity to redress global warming may be lost. Climate science is an incredibly complex field, but think of human-induced atmospheric change hitting a critical mass point at which various chain reactions are triggered that cannot be undone by mankind.
In Global warming: It's happening, Kevin E. Trenberth reported that the consensus on the accumulated global warming due to mankind's actions appears to be only about 1 degree F. so far. However, as the following information suggests, we may have begun to trigger abrupt and extreme climate changes.
In chapter 12 of their book Natural Capitalism, Amory and Hunter Lovins said, "If high-latitude tundras get much warmer, ice-like compounds called methane hydrates trapped beneath the permafrost and on the Arctic ocean floor could thaw and start releasing enormous amounts of methane—more than ten times what is now in the atmosphere". NOTE: The tundras have already begun melting.
In the October 1998 issue, The Economist concluded, "Climate change is a legitimate worry. Although still riddled with uncertainties, the science of climate change is becoming firmer: put too much carbon in the atmosphere and you might end up cooking the earth, with possibly catastrophic results". Could we possibly be in the process of triggering abrupt and extreme climate change that mankind cannot reverse and may not survive?
Scientists have found evidence that rapid and catastrophic global warming occurred long ago due to massive releases of methane into the atmosphere. Mankind's release of greenhouse gasses has already warmed the arctic regions enough to thaw some of the massive amounts of frozen methane in the permafrost and on the ocean floor. Will mankind be intelligent and caring enough to avoid triggering a chain reaction of positive feedback mechanisms that could quickly result in catastrophic global warming.
The United States emits more than 1,800 million metric tons of carbon equivalent each year, more than 6 tons per person (See "Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States, 1998" from the U.S. Energy Information Administration). The accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as a result of such extravagant energy use, may, by warming the Earth, release enough methane to rapidly accelerate global warming.
1. As arctic regions continue to get warmer, huge areas of permafrost have been thawing, allowing thick layers of long-frozen plant material to decay and release both methane and carbon dioxide. Methane is more than 21 times as effective as carbon dioxide in trapping heat in our atmosphere. (See The Greenhouse Effect, Greenhouse Gases, and Global Warming, a report published by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies).
2. Methane is also released from gas hydrate deposits on the sea floor when the local water temperature rises a few degrees above freezing. (For details, see page 76 of the November 1999 issue of Scientific American).
3. The solubility of carbon dioxide in water decreases as temperature rises. Thus, as oceans warm, their ability to continue absorbing massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere decreases. The average temperature of the earth's oceans has increased about 1 degree C. during the last 25 years.
4. Open water in polar regions absorb more solar heat than ice or snow do. The Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean Project, or SHEBA, an international expedition to the Arctic, has documented changes in the ice pack consistent with changes expected as a result of global warming. The ship, CCGS Des Groseilliers, is located in the black area in the middle of the satellite image below, which shows much of the ice is covered by dark melt ponds.
| 5. Preliminary findings from SHEBA show that the Arctic ice sheet is
about five percent smaller, and one meter thinner, than in the 1970s.
Some melting of ice is due to dark dust from human activities that
settles on the ice and increases absorption of heat from the sun.
Scientists believe that the on-going disappearance of the ice pack could accelerate global warming because ocean water absorbs more incoming solar radiation than does the ice. NOTE: Thawing in the arctic regions is partially due to the soot, released during the burning of coal and diesel fuel, that settles on the ice and increases absorption of heat from the sun. Arctic and Antarctic regions have warmed about four time more than regions near the equator. |
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6. CO2 from the thawing peat bogs is being released into the atmosphere at an accelerating rate.
7. Global warming has increased the frequency and severity of drought in many regions. Droughts reduce the accumulation of plant biomass, which sequesters a large portion of the earth's store of labile carbon. The loss of vegetation caused by drought thus results in a net release of carbon from the biosphere into the atmosphere
8. Global warming is causing stratification of the world's oceans, which is preventing the up-welling of colder, nutrient-rich waters on which the phytoplankton depend to fix atmospheric carbon dioxide. But as their numbers decline, they absorb less CO2, creating a vicious climatic feedback loop.
Global warming may be to blame for slowing currents in the Atlantic Ocean but the likely result will be a much colder Western Europe, no longer warmed by north flowing tropical waters. More of the warmth is staying in the mid-Atlantic ocean, where hurricanes begin and grow. Scientists estimate that the recent 1° F. increase in mid-Atlantic surface temperature has enabled the peak destructiveness of hurricanes to increase about 50%.
Typical economic analysis applied to global warming may be biased because they neglect climate thresholds, according to Penn State researchers.
"Economic models of climate change typically assume that changes occur gradually and reversibly," says Dr. Klaus Keller, assistant professor of geoscience, Penn State. "However, some environmental effects are not smooth and show a threshold response. For a long time nothing or very little happens and then suddenly a large change occurs."
Keller and William E. Easterling, professor of geography and director of the Penn State Institutes of the Environment, analyze two potential threshold responses to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions – a widespread bleaching of corals and a collapse of oceanic circulation systems. These events could happen suddenly and predictions about whether and when they would happen are uncertain.
These potential climate thresholds call into question the results of previous economic analysis of climate change policies, Keller told attendees today (Feb. 18) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C.
"Economic analyses typically neglect that greenhouse gas emissions might trigger climate thresholds with potentially significant ecological and economic impacts," says Keller. "Analyses neglecting the potential fro negative impacts of greenhouse gas emissions are biased toward too high greenhouse gas emissions. We need more realistic representations of the potential environmental threshold responses in economic analyses."
The uncertainty about the climate thresholds and the potential for an abrupt response pose special challenges to the design of climate policies. One key question is whether the current observation system would deliver an actionable early warning signal about possible ocean circulation changes.
"Think about the situation where you are in a canoe on a river with a waterfall, says Keller. "You may want to know the location of the waterfall early enough to be able to avoid going over the waterfall. The situation for climate thresholds is similar. One may want to see early warning signals before it is too late to avoid the threshold response."
Key questions are how confident we have to be in an early warning signal before we consider it sufficient to take action, and how to design and implement an observation system that could deliver an actionable warning signal.
"Observation systems that would yield actionable early warning signal about climate thresholds have the potential to improve climate policies considerably. Implementing such observation systems could very well be a highly profitable investment for future generations."
"There is no known precedent of natural forces that could have given rise to the temperatures of the last decade".
Director of the University of Arizona’s Institute for the Study of Planet Earth. February 23, 2000by Jonathan Overpeck
A new analysis by government scientists indicates that the Earth’s climate is warming at an unprecedented rate, suggesting that the future impact of global warming may be more severe and sudden than predicted.
Such a steep warming rate was not expected to occur until well into the 21st century, said Tom Karl, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climatologist who led the study. Such a trend probably would be a continuation of the recent three-year string of steamy summers-mild winters seen by much of the nation and perhaps eventually would mean increased flooding of low-lying areas.
"The next few years are going to be interesting", Karl said. "It could the beginning of a new increase in temperatures".
Historical and geological records how that Earth warms and cools in fits and starts, not at a constant rate. During the 1900s, most warming occurred between 1910 and 1940 and then after 1970. On average, though, warming throughout the century occurred at a rate of just over one-degree per century.
In contrast, warming since 1976 occurred at a rate of nearly four degrees per century. The increase in warming, Karl said, could be evidence for a "change point" — a period during which Earth’s climate begins warming at a faster rate.
The analysis, published in the March 1st, 2000 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, already is generating much interest, and some disagreement, among climatologists.
The current debate is not over whether the climate is warming. Most scientists agree that Earth has warmed significantly since the 1880s, when temperatures were first routinely recorded.
Earlier this year, a blue-ribbon panel of climate experts commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences quashed most lingering doubts by calling global warming over the past 100 years "undoubtedly real".
Questions now center on how quickly the Earth is warming, what the effects of that warming might be and whether the warming is caused largely by human or natural causes. The answers are crucial, scientists said, for developing effective environmental policies.
The global warming issue began receiving renewed attention in 1997, which was the hottest year on record— until 1998.
"In 1998, each month we were breaking the previous year’s all-time global high temperature record", Karl said. The two-year string of warm months prompted Karl and colleagues Richard Knight and Bruce Baker to analyze the Earth’s warming rate.
The hot spell continued into 1999, which was the fifth-warmest year on record despite the occurrence of a cooling La Nina event.
Karl said he could not be certain that the warm years of 1997, 1998 and 1999 were evidence of an increased warming trend. But a statistical analysis suggests that there was only a 5 percent — or one in 20 — chance that such temperatures would not be part of a warming trends he said.
A number of other climatologists agree that the extreme warming of the late 1990s is an ominous sign.
"That rate is not only unprecedented in the instrumental records (since 1880) but unprecedented in the last 1,000 years at least", said Jonathan Overpeck, director of the University of Arizona’s Institute for the Study of Planet Earth and an expert in paleoclimatic records. "There is no known precedent of natural forces that could have given rise to the temperatures of the last decade".
Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said he found the new analysis interesting but questioned whether recent warm years should be attributed to a large shift in human-induced global warming. The period between May 1997 and August 1998, he said, included El Nino events known to cause warming.
"Those months were unusual", he said, "but they weren’t unusual due to human influences".
Karl disagreed, saying that temperatures were far higher than could be explained by an El Nino event. He said 1999 was the fifth hottest year on record, despite being a cool La Nina year.
At a side event June 11, 2002 at the Sixteenth Session of the Subsidiary Bodies to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change released a publication summarizing climate change efforts in the United States. The publication, “Climate Change Activities in the United States,” focuses in particular on efforts:
In Congress, where twice as many climate change proposals were introduced in the past year as in the previous four years combined;
At the state level, where governments are enacting mandatory carbon controls and other programs to reduce emissions; and
In the business community, where a growing number of corporations are setting greenhouse gas targets and achieving significant emission reductions.
The full report is now available online: http://www.pewclimate.org/projects/us_activities2.CFM
While these activities reflect growing support for stronger climate change action in the United States, the report notes they represent only a start toward the sustained, comprehensive effort needed to significantly reduce U.S. emissions. An overview of the kinds of measures that could help launch such an effort is provided in another Pew publication, “The U.S. Domestic Response to Climate Change: Key Elements of a Prospective Program.” http://www.pewclimate.org/policy/index_dom.CFM
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"It was
not until we saw the picture of the earth, from the moon, that we
realized how small and how helpless this planet is
— something that we must hold in
our arms and care for." — Margaret Mead |
Concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) extracted from ice cores drilled in Greenland and Antarctica have typically ranged from near 190 parts per million by volume (ppmv) during the ice ages to near 280 ppmv during the warmer “interglacial” periods, like the present one that began around 10,000 years ago. Concentrations did not rise much above 280 ppmv until the Industrial Revolution. By 1958, when systematic atmospheric measurements began, they had reached 315 ppmv. They are currently ~370 ppmv and rising at a rate of 1.5 ppmv per year (slightly higher than the rate during the early years of the 43-year record). Human activities are responsible for the increase. The primary source, fossil fuel burning, has released roughly twice as much CO2 as would be required to account for the observed increase. Tropical deforestation also has contributed to CO2 releases during the past few decades. The oceans and land biosphere have taken up the excess CO2.
Like CO2, methane (CH4) is more abundant in Earth’s atmosphere now than at any time during the 400,000-year ice core record, which dates back over a number of glacial/interglacial cycles. Concentrations increased rather smoothly by about 1 percent per year from 1978 until about 1990. The rate of increase slowed and became more erratic during the 1990s. About two-thirds of the current CH4 emissions are released by human activities, such as rice growing, the raising of cattle, coal mining, use of land-fills, and natural gas handling, all of which have increased over the past 50 years.
Global warming is already reducing our quality of life. Are you willing to help prevent further climate changes? If so, you can lead by setting a good example for others to follow.
Using energy efficient methods and products that are already available can make a big difference in stopping this threat. Greater use of renewable energy systems and energy efficiency could help to minimize global warming, ensuring better health for Americans as well as creating millions of new jobs and a competitive edge for the U.S. economy. For assistance in making your home more efficient, comfortable and safe, go to: www.energystar.gov and Energy Efficient Homes
