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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us August 29, 2005 Case In Point: Global Warming We’re having a heat wave By Chris Honoré Tidings Correspondent Perhaps the best way to come at the issue of global warming is to begin with a concluding statement by Elizabeth Kolbert in her remarkable three-part series, “The Climate of Man,” which appeared last spring in the New Yorker magazine. She writes: “No matter what we do at this point, global temperatures will continue to rise in the coming decades, owing to the gigatons of extra CO2 already circulating in the atmosphere. With more than six billion people on the planet, the risks are obvious. A disruption in monsoon patterns, a shift in ocean currents, a major drought — any of these could easily produce streams of refugees numbering in the millions.” And then Kolbert asks the hard question: “As the effects of global warming become more and more apparent, will we react by finally fashioning a global response? Or will we retreat into ever narrower and more destructive forms of self-interest? It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.” Of course, the statement and interrogatories are predicated on science which, according to Kolbert, establishes that global warming is now an indisputable fact. According to ice-core samples, in the 1780s, which is judged to be the beginning of the industrial revolution, there were 280 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere. That is the same ppm as two thousand years before, in the era of Julius Caesar, and two thousand years before that in the time of Stonehenge. By the mid 1970s that level had reached 330 ppm and by the 1990s it was 360 ppm. Kolbert states that according to current estimates by the mid-21st century the level of CO2 will approach 500 ppm, nearly double pre-industrial levels. The last time the earth was that warm was during the Eocene period when crocodiles inhabited Colorado and sea levels were nearly 300 feet higher. Kolbert also states that the carbonization of the atmosphere is irreversible. Carbon dioxide is a persistent gas which lasts for about a century. While levels can be raised relatively quickly, it cannot be dissipated at the same rate. And with every added increment of CO2 in the atmosphere, the earth’s temperatures will rise. Kolbert buttresses her thesis by emphasizing that in legitimate scientific circles it is all but impossible to find evidence of disagreement over the fundamentals of global warming. Unless you are asking the current administration, which has stated that before it creates policy on global warming it wants to make sure that it does so based on sound science. As well, it has gone on the record as stating that because the science is incomplete, it cannot determine what constitutes a dangerous level of warming. Even when the EPA, in mid 2002, produced a 263-page report to the U.N. that stated that continued growth in greenhouse gas emissions is likely to lead to annual warming over the United States of as much as several degrees Celsius, the White House dismissed the results, preferring to carry on the debate of causation. To some, this is the equivalent of standing on the deck of a sinking Titanic while insisting on discussing whether icebergs have the ability to sink ocean liners. The administration pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 which had as its purpose the stabilization of greenhouse emissions. This was tantamount to turning the Protocol into a three-legged chair. America accounts for 34 percent of all CO2 emissions. Nations such as China and India — while not party to the reduced emissions mandate of Kyoto (emerging industrialized nations were exempt) — will never agree to any reductions as long as the United States is not on board. In fact, China, which sees America as a major economic competitor, is currently in the process of building over 560 new coal-fired plants. In the opinion of some scientists, for the United States to walk away from the Kyoto Protocol was reprehensible. In the alternative, our representatives could have committed to either making substantive changes or, at the very least, engaged member nations in dialogue over the Protocol’s framework. We chose not to. Kolbert makes the point, referencing Paul Crutzen, a Dutch chemist, that we are no longer living in the Holocene period, which is that era after the last glaciation. We are now in the Anthropocene, a new age defined by man’s ability to alter the planet on a geologic scale. Kolbert also uses the term, “dangerous anthropogenic interference, or “D.A.I.” This means that man is capable of producing climate change significant enough to destroy entire ecosystems or world food supplies. The Bush administration continues to carry on a debate of causation and a policy of business as usual. At a recent meeting of the Group of Eight in Scotland, meant to address issues surrounding Africa and global warming, Tony Blair of England acknowledged that there were deep differences between the United States and other nations regarding slowing and perhaps reversing greenhouse emissions. President Bush blocked efforts by Blair to reach agreement on specific targets for reducing emissions, consistent with Bush’s opposition to mandatory limits on emissions claiming such limitations would damage America’s economy. However, what is implicit in this discussion is the assumption that when we arrive at some conclusion, if we need to act, we can turn around events already set in motion. Our ingenuity, our technological abilities (solar, wind, hybrid cars, cleaner fuels), will halt the current trends. This is a popularly held opinion. We still have time and we can invent our way out of this predicament, the same way we have defeated epidemics, lighted the world and created vast networks of global communication. Meanwhile we pass energy legislation that does not address dependence on oil (be it foreign or domestic) as an energy source, fails to mention global warming or fuel-economy standards, and we continue to spend billions of dollars on roads and infrastructure to accommodate cars. Witness the recent highway bill. However, the problem of global warming has been reframed in the extreme representing a sea change of monumental importance. We cannot, at least in the next century or more, alter what is occurring in our atmosphere. Even if a post Kyoto Protocol of dramatic emissions reductions was agreed upon and then implemented today, it would not alter the present reality. Hence, if world leaders were to call for a Manhattan Project on global warming, the central question to be addressed would not be how we are going to reverse present CO2 levels, but how we are going to adapt to a planet that is warming at an alarming rate with concomitant and unpredictable climatological changes still ahead. Our destination is already set. Now it’s all about the journey. Greenhouse effect, no effect By Dr. Aaron Corbet Guest contributor There is no clear evidence that we can expect “global warming” as a trend, even in the short term. To claim that any such effect can be adduced to a “greenhouse effect” is preposterous. Back in the early ’60s Edward Lorenz, in an attempt to quantify the difficulties in predicting weather, produced the first model of “chaos” (more accurately, “deterministic nonperiodic flow, with exponential divergence of trajectories”) yet known. His was an extremely simple three variable model of heat convection. Like many such simplifications, this captured the essence of the problem. And was a bombshell in the scientific community. Without regard to huge differences in time scales, here are some of the variables upon which weather, including mean surface temperature of the earth, depend: ocean salinity; long- and short-term solar activity; particulate suspension in the stratosphere and atmosphere; volcanic activity more generally; Earth’s core radioactive furnace output; convective heat transfer in the mantle; Earth’s magnetosphere; meteoric bombardment and other planetary or stellar debris; amounts of free oxygen, nitrogen, ozone and water in the atmosphere; and probably factors beyond the solar system. Anyone wishing to captivate you with his particular computer modeling is a charlatan. On the other hand, there is excellent, voluminous experimental data on the Earth’s temperature. Surely the most popularly known example is a graph showing Earth’s mean surface T since 1800, about the start of the industrial revolution. This time course is extremely erratic, but shows a net shift in T over 200 years of +1 degree C. A little closer examination shows that there was a net shift downward of 1 degree C, up through about 1970, after which it rose to the current level. Now what do you suppose that’s about? But quick! Let’s look at atmospheric CO2 levels, which do show a smooth exponential increase ever since the 1800s. Drawn on an (in)appropriate scale, this can be positively scary! But as it happens, CO2 comprises only about 0.03 percent of the earth’s atmosphere, and any attempt to correlate this with the T record is absurd. It is in fact a tribute to the stubborness and cunning of life that plants can manage to survive on this essential nutrient. One could argue that we need more CO2. Those working with data will recount how there has been an exactly concomitant decrease in the T of the stratosphere, how local effects far outweigh the behavior of net T, and how the Antarctic ice shield has been increasing remarkably over the last few decades. This has resulted in the calving of ice floes at the edges, as famously pictured and hysterically remarked by most environmentalists. If you want to get mad about environmental atrocities, get mad about the Forest Service, for whom there is also ample solid data. Aaron Corbet is a biophysicist, at present focusing on nonlinear dynamics, or "chaos theory," and far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics. His background includes experimental research in various fields such as metallurgy, psychology, rheology, photosynthesis, and forest ecology. He is a “lifelong environmentalist,” who has long been active with local social issues. 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