“You know that, the warming increases the warming. By that I mean as forests and shrubbery become drier and more likely to be fuel for forest fires. Forest fires not only destroy the carbon dioxide consuming plants and trees but they release carbon into the air from the trees that burn, so they further increase the problems of warming. So one thing increases the actions of other things.
“ The destruction of forests to find more agricultural land, to find more wood for
building and for paper production accounts for about 20% of the CO2 increase in the
atmosphere. 20% of the world’s CO2 is attributable to deforestation. So it’s not just our
cars and trucks that are the problem.”
” You have probably been keeping up with the reports from California showing that wildfires should increase, water will be reduced, and crop lands will be lost because of the lack of water.
”Those wildfires are really scary. When I was growing up in Malibou Lake we seemed to have a fire about every seven years. Then the time between the fires kept reducing and the fires became more severe. For the last 20 years I’ve followed the fires in California and other places and they seem to be much more frequent and much more disastrous than in the past. And think of the fresh water they use to fight the fires. It is a double ecological negative, destroying trees and homes and using water.
POLAR ICE CAPS
“Let’s go from hot to cold. Every year we see that the polar ice caps are melting
faster than we expected and oceans are rising faster than the United Nations had projected just a few years ago. The Greenland ice sheet is losing 180 billion tons of ice a year. Arctic sea ice has shrunk almost 3% per decade since 1980.
“Snow cover in most areas has reduced about 7% in the Northern Hemisphere in the latter half of the 20th century. At the same time the freezing dates of the ground and rivers is about six days later per century, while the thawing dates are six days earlier per century. This translates to about a one day per decade change in freezing. (23)
"Another factor, just recently investigated, is that as the ice melts and land is exposed, the land absorbs more heat which contributes to more global warming. While the globe has warmed about 0.8 degrees, about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit, the polar regions have heated more than the lower latitudes. University of Michigan research shows that since 1978 there has been a 14% reduction of heat reflected back into space--from 3.75 to 3.3 watts per square meter of snow covered area. This 14% reduction in reflected heat becomes a 14% increase in warming from that area.
“This ice melting, particularly ice that was over the land, along with the warming of
the oceans may make the ocean level rise by a meter in the next 75 years. Ocean
temperatures have been increasing 50% faster than had been predicted just 5 years ago.
“Predictions often miss the mark, even if they’re on the right track. For example,
one prediction was that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. The truth is
they will disappear but it probably won’t be as early as 2035. This earlier prediction was jumped on by the skeptics as soon as the date was revised. This is a problem for science in that all of the variables can never be known. So science deals with probabilities, while skeptics jump on every new occasional misstep but they seldom do any research themselves.
“But back to the Himalayas. As they disappear the people in southwest China and
other areas will be wanting for water. The Swiss-based United Nations World Glacier
Monitoring Service has been monitoring more than 200 glaciers since 1950. They have
found that they are reducing significantly-- far faster than before. The temperatures in
the Himalayas are expected to rise 5 or 6° over the next century. The global warming is
increased in the Himalayas by black soot falling on the snow and making it more heat absorbent. The soot comes from the cooking fires of the nearby people as well as the burning of kerosene, diesel oil, and coal. The point is that the glaciers are melting, and more important they will affect the rivers that they feed and the farms that the rivers
feed. This will severely affect how the people who depend on this food will feed themselves.
THE OCEANS
“Ocean scientists find large areas of water, both lakes and oceans, with less than
the normal amount of oxygen because it has been starved out with the absorption of
carbon dioxide by that water. This has the dual result of interfering with the fish food
chain and with the release of nitrous oxide which is another greenhouse gas that will
increase alarmingly and will lead to less food being produced and quite probably to more human cancers. Another factor that we talked about earlier, is the rising sea level due to the increased warmth of the ocean which increases its volume. Then add the water from the melting glaciers and ice caps throughout the world and you get a significant
expansion of the existing ocean water.
“Some areas are already experiencing problems from the rising water. China’s
rise in sea level over the last several decades has averaged 2.6 millimeters a year while
the global average for the rise in sea level has been 1.7 millimeters. But last year the
average rise was 8 millimeters, and in Hainan it was 113 millimeters. Elsewhere in China the ocean temperature went up to 28.5°Celsius, the second highest temperature on record and the sea level went up 180 millimeters. So obviously not every part of the world
experiences the same rise in sea level simultaneously. Predictions are that some coastal areas could face rises of over a meter per decade. This of course will result in some loss of farmland and the salinization of other land. The rise in water level will undoubtedly force people from their homes. The first to be forced from their homes by rising seas were some people in the islands near New Guinea. That was in 2010.
“Seventy percent of the world’s population live on coastal plains and 11 of the world’s 15 largest cities are on coasts or estuaries. Researchers at Oxford University have said that a 2 meter rise in sea level is now almost unstoppable. Even if we were able to hold warming to 2° Celsius this century, the sea level would rise from 1/2 to 1 1/2
meters. (24)
“Sea levels have been rising 80% faster than they were predicted to rise in 2001. In the 2001 UN report it was estimated that the sea level rise would be between 9 and 88 cm. The newer report has narrowed the estimates to between 28 and 58 cm. however if the ice sheets continue to melt as temperature rises, it could rise another meter. (25)
“As in other areas of life, predictions can go either way. How many divorced
people thought that it would happen to them on their wedding day? How many people thought they would lose their houses when the economy was going well in the early part of this century
“But that’s not the end of the problems for the oceans. A number of studies from universities and other scientific groups have shown huge increases in the acidity of water of the oceans. As you probably know carbon dioxide and water form carbonic acid. A recent series of studies between Hawaii and Alaska have shown huge increases in
carbonic acid since 1991. These changes occurred down to about 1/2 mile of ocean depth. The ocean seems to be absorbing about 30% of the man-made carbon dioxide. The problem is that even if we stopped our production of carbon dioxide the effects in the ocean would probably last at least 1000 years. The acidity of the oceans affects the food chain and the ability of shellfish to make their shells. By about 2050 the acidity of the ocean will have doubled from the level of the pre-Industrial Revolution days.
CHANGING WEATHER PATTERNS
“As has been clarified before, climate and weather mean two different things. Climate is the overall general level of sun, cold, and precipitation. It can be rated for the whole world, for a nation, or even for a city. The weather is the more fleeting short-term fluctuations in heat and c
old, rain and snow. Weather is happening today or it happened within the last year or so. Climate has been happening over a very long period of time. The fact that at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver the weather was unseasonably warm does not prove that global warming exists. At the same time the unseasonably cold weather along the eastern seaboard with snow in Florida, did not prove that global warming did not exist. That was all weather. The world’s climate was still warming.”
”With nearly 100% of the experts agreeing that the world is warming and that it will have dire consequences for us all, why are those without scientific knowledge allowed to push their unscientific opinions on the rest of us. I guess we go back to inductive logic and hoping that the facts will make people think. Why is it that the leaders of the world and the scientists involved are saying that there is a huge problem, but the business interests are pushing their political buttons to make so many people doubt the hard evidence?”
”It seems that the lack of education in the world coupled with our instinct to deny that anything bad will happen, or that things could change tomorrow, holds us back from recognizing the threat. I would hope that common sense will eventually get people to realize that global warming is happening and has been happening for over 100 years.”
”But Wreck, common sense is quite uncommon, but even when it’s there it is no good without some effective education. We need some science to go with that common sense. Remember common sense tells us that the world is flat. Common sense tells us that the heavy object will fall faster than a light object, as Aristotle assumed. But Galileo disproved this. So common sense was wrong again. Common sense tells us that the sky is blue. But science explains why it is colorless but it appears blue because of the way
light rays are bent. Common sense tells us that the planets and the other stars are merely specks in the heavens. But astronomers have proven that most of those specs are far bigger than our world. So much for common sense. What we need is enough education to be able to comprehend what is happening in our world.
“You may have heard of Lord Stern of Brentford, the world’s leading climate
change economist. He concluded that, even if each country formally adopted the tightest
targets in the ranges they had proposed before the Copenhagen Conference, the
temperature would still rise more than 2 degrees Celsius. The world’s leading economies had agreed to limit the increase to 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-Industrial Revolution levels to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Lord Stern said the world needed to
cut emissions from 47 billion tons of CO2, the predicted figure for 2010, to 44 billion tons by 2025. Lord Stern said that there was a gap of up to 5 billion tons between the cuts that the most ambitious targets would deliver and what was needed to reach 44 billion tons by 2025. As we know, it hasn’t been done.
“Prior to the Copenhagen Conference our country was offering a 4% drop in CO2
levels. Meanwhile the EU was offering 20% and was willing to go to 30% if other
countries would also make similar sacrifices. Meanwhile China was dragging its feet for the same reason that the US was. Cuts in energy are bad for business. Today the average Chinese is emitting 6.3 tons of CO2 on the average while the European rate is at 5.5 tons. Of course our American citizens are more than twice as bad as the Chinese citizens and nearly 3 times as bad as the Europeans, since we emit 17.6 tons per person.
“It’s a shame that the world seems to follow us when we popularize a rock star, a movie idol, or even a disease. But we can’t follow the world when it is doing a better job than we are.”
“What do you mean ‘popularizes a disease?”
“Well, when Americans find that they are suffering an inordinate amount of depression, their symptoms are readily treated with a pill from one of the big pharmaceutical companies. If you can sell the pill in the U.S., why not in Japan, Italy, the UK and Indonesia?
“I’m not sure that today’s people are more depressed than those who suffered through the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl or a divorce or death. The mind and body have usually been able to cope, given enough time. Of course with ‘happy pills’, both legal and illegal, being available –we are impatient and want relief instantly.”
CONFUSING THE ISSUES
“Some years ago the governor of Virginia and his attorney general, two
conservative lawyers without academic training in science, determined that the evidence for global warming was ‘unreliable, unverifiable, and doctored’ science and that believing in global warming would result in the loss of jobs. They were strongly countered by the professors at the University of Virginia in the Environmental Science Department and those of the Virginia Climatology Office.
“If we are looking at the rules of logic you would see that keeping jobs and
recognizing climate change are two quite different areas. While it may be true that
climate change recognition might someday reduce the mining of coal in the area, it might
also increase the jobs in green science. So the use of this scare tactic as a political
technique was used to throw off the reality of another kind of very real threat.”
” I can’t get over the fact that with the threat that we have, that people haven’t taken
the time to investigate it on their own rather than listening to business interests that are
trying to cloud the evidence, not with facts, but with doubting and with political
techniques that have nothing to do with the issue. If they are sincerely interested in disproving global warming, they need to work to try to disprove that: the world’s climate has risen about 1°C in the last 125 years and that the world’s greenhouse gases began increasing about 1850 along with the Industrial Revolution. Most of the warming in the
last 50 years has been because of an increase in greenhouse gases. And if that’s not
enough, with the increasing rate of emissions, our future climate will change even more rapidly with more heat, more rains, and stronger hurricanes. Beginning in this century we certainly saw more serious snows and rain storms. Europe had several record- breaking floods and there were hurricanes and typhoons that were extremely strong. We could surmise that these were due to the effects of global warming, but we can’t prove it. Maybe those skeptics could put the money into research and see if the research backs up their opinions. But of course there’s a difference in researching to find out what is true
and researching to find evidence that backs up your business interests.”
”If it weren’t so tragic it would be hilarious the way some of the ‘denier’ politicians like to use the word conspiracy. But what have climate scientists to gain from publishing their academic work? On the other hand what have the oil companies and coal companies to gain by keeping the legislators from imposing taxes on their operations? I have even heard that Al Gore is part of the conspiracy because he is making money on green energy projects. But he could’ve just as easily invested in oil stocks!