Global Warming is a Reality but Not One Without Remedy

Penelope V. Kern
March 2003

While war rages in Iraq, anti-war protests rock cities throughout the world, and humans over the globe bustle through their daily lives, the Earth silently grows warmer. And to most of us, it’s imperceptible.

But to scientists studying the effects of climate change, it’s anything but imperceptible. In fact, global temperatures have risen more sharply in the last 20 years than at any other time in the last century, according to the National Academy of Science’s National Research Council, a panel of atmospheric scientists assembled to study global warming and its possible ramifications for the future of the planet. The panel stated in its 2000 report that global warming is “undoubtedly real,” and well underway with possibly dire environmental consequences. And although the panel stopped short of blaming global warming on human activity, it seems that may just be the case.

The International Panel on Climate Change, a panel of more than 2,500 atmospheric scientists sponsored by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization, reached a near-unanimous conclusion that global warming was at least partially a result of human activity. The IPCC blamed the burning of fossil fuels, which releases carbon dioxide, methane and a host of other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, with creating a “blanket” that traps heat near the Earth’s surface, precipitating catastrophic changes on a global scale.

A Bleak Forecast

The IPCC predicted that by the year 2100, there will be an increase of between two and 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit in global temperatures, which will spawn the expansion of ever-warming oceans, the melting of polar ice caps and glaciers and the thawing of permafrost on a massive scale. According to the panel there will be a sharp increase in coastal flooding and entire island nations will disappear underneath rising ocean levels, leaving thousands homeless.

Countless plant and animal species, unable to adapt to the rapidly changing temperatures, will become extinct, but because of the expanding tropical climate, diseases like malaria and yellow fever will spread. The severity and frequency of storms, droughts, windstorms and heat waves will result. Natural resource industries such as forestry, agriculture and fishing will be heavily impacted. And because the salinity of oceans will decrease from the dilution of melting polar ice caps, many marine species will perish.

Because of the loss of glaciers, the amount of water that currently feeds rivers and valleys below the mountaintops, such as right here in the Cascades, will diminish, which will impact water resources used for hydroelectric power production, crop production – and municipal water supplies. And the loss of hydroelectric power will possibly be replaced with the burning of yet more fossil fuels, which will, in turn, feed the oversupply of greenhouse gases.

But what is it looking like right now? What is the current evidence of global warming?

Glaciers -- Canaries in the Coal Mines

Scientists have long predicted that the first signs of climate change will appear in the delicate high-altitude glaciers in the tropical mountain ranges, such as in South America’s Andes Mountain Range and in the mountains of Central Africa. That, thus far, is exactly what is happening.

Among plenty of other ice caps atop mountains in the region, Peru’s Quelccaya ice cap has diminished by more than 20 percent since the early 1960s. One of the main glaciers flowing out of that ice cap, Qori Kalis, has been shrinking 32 times faster in the last three years than it had in the period between 1963 and 1978.

And the famous snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania, are rapidly receding, along with the massive ice field at its crest, which has melted by over a third, according to Lonnie Thompson, a professor of geological sciences, as told to Environmental News Network. Since the Kilimanjaro glacier was first mapped in 1912, almost 82 percent of it has melted.

“These glaciers are very much like the canaries once used in the coal mines,” Thompson said in an interview to ENN. “They’re an indicator of the massive changes taking place and a response to changes in climate in the tropics.”

Glaciers in Alaska have also been thinning, according to a four-decade study conducted by the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and published in the journal Nature. The team of glaciologists measured the volume changes of 67 Alaskan glaciers over forty years and found that the glaciers had been thinning from the mid-1950s to the mid-1990s, but that from the mid-1990s until now, the rate of thinning had doubled. And that, according to Anthony Arendt, one of the authors of the study, was definitive evidence of rising global temperatures.

Greener Tundra, Clearer Skies, Warmer Days

In a 2001 study by the Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, based in Fort Wainwright, Alaska, researchers found that tundra shrub abundance had increased dramatically over the last 50 years throughout 320 square kilometers of Arctic landscape by comparing old and new photos taken of the same area. The increase in shrubbery was exactly what the authors of the study were expecting to find as a result over rising Arctic temperatures. They also found that the tree line was moving north, signaling increasing average temperatures over an extended amount of time.

An interesting twist on the discovery of the increased Arctic vegetation is that when Arctic tundra is subjected to summer temperatures elevated by 3.6 percent Fahrenheit, carbon dioxide emissions from the plants would accelerate anywhere from 26 percent to 326 percent, depending on snowfall levels. And that increase in carbon dioxide, would, in turn, contribute further to global warming.

The same chicken-and-egg scenario plays itself out with cloud formation, as well. Clouds function as sunlight reflectors, shielding the Earth from an overabundance of solar warmth, and they also function as a blanket, sealing in warmth. Anthony Del Genio of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies found that when atmospheric temperature was higher in a given area, clouds tended to be thinner and less efficient at reflecting solar heat. So the warmer the global climate becomes, according to Del Genio, the thinner clouds will be, and thus less efficient at reflecting solar heat.

“We concluded that over more than half the world, when the temperatures were warmer, the low-level clouds reflect less sunlight, exacerbating global warming,” Del Genio said in an interview to ENN. “Thus, the minimum amount of warming predicted by scientists should be increased by at least one degree Fahrenheit as a result of the new findings.” But what about humans? How do we contribute to global warming, and what can we do about it?

Hold The Carbon, But Pass The Protocol

For starters, the number-one greenhouse gas (meaning a gas that traps solar heat in the Earth’s atmosphere) is carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide emissions from human activity are the largest source of greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. And of all the humans on the planet, Americans lead the pack in terms of per capita production of carbon dioxide, at a whopping 21 tons per person, per year – way above the per capita production of any other industrialized country. So we, in particular, need to curtail our activities that necessitate the burning of fossil fuels. But what activities are those?

Answer: Any activity that incorporates the burning of fossil fuels, which are coal, oil, and natural gas. Oil is used primarily to produce electricity, oil is used to run engines that power vehicles, and natural gas is primarily used for heating.

Thus, as individuals, we can switch to fuel-efficient vehicles, install energy-efficient lighting and appliances, and heat our homes without being wasteful. Slowing down when we drive counts, too, as does carpooling, using public transit and cycling. And don’t forget recycling, because it saves around 75 percent of the energy used to produce virgin materials, and that, in turn, cuts down drastically on carbon dioxide emissions.

As a country, the United States is the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions (although China is projected to surpass the United States by 2025, because of its bustling coal-based economy.) And in the last decade, we haven’t gotten any better – we’ve increased our carbon dioxide emissions by about 11 percent. Pretty shameful in light of the fact that our nation withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol!

Fortunately, some corporations are seeing financial opportunity in the face of global warming, so they’ve been inspired to invest in the development of more fuel-efficient products, such as hybrid cars and more energy-efficient appliances. And because companies want to decrease expenditures so their stocks will be more appealing to investors, they are looking for ways to cut their own fuel costs, and thus, consumption.

Don’t Forget The Methane -- Or The Beano

Methane is the second most harmful greenhouse gas, but the good news is that it only remains in the atmosphere 12 years, as opposed to carbon dioxide’s 50 to 200. (Together, they’re responsible for about 40 percent of the global warming dilemma.) Thus, if we reduce methane production, we can make a huge dent in a short amount of time, in terms of fighting the greenhouse effect.

How is methane produced? By fossil fuel production like natural gas production and coal mining, the breakdown of garbage buried in landfills, and by the flatulent and excretory byproducts of the digestive processes of ruminant livestock, or umm, when herds of cows break wind and poop. Methane is also naturally produced by wetlands and permafrost.

But how can we reduce methane? Individually, we can press for industry and government to find alternatives to fossil fuel, and in the meantime, we can strive to curtail our use of the fuels, and well, we can eat more fish. As for government and industry, the goal of capturing methane emissions from landfills and industry with the goal of selling it as a fuel or substituting it for other energy expenditures have been suggested.

As for the methane produced from the anaerobic breakdown from cow manure, the manure can be collected and placed in a specially-designed composter. As the methane is produced, it can be collected and used to generate electricity, according to atmospheric scientists studying ways to curtail methane in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Protect Biodiversity With Your Life

In a field study at the University of Minnesota, ecologists found that ecosystems with greater biodiversity exhibited a greater ability to absorb and store atmospheric carbon dioxide and nitrogen than ecosystems with less biodiversity. In other words, the more species a forest or natural area contains, the better it functions to fight the effects of global warming. The scientists conducting the experiment surmised that the enhanced carbon sequestration ability was probably due to the varied growing seasons of the plants comprising a complex ecosystem.

But human civilization is encroaching on natural areas and negatively impacting the survival of other species by polluting the environment, living in an unsustainable fashion, and simply, well, by over-spawning. (After all, aren’t we the world’s foremost invasive species?)

According to the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity, species, besides humans, of course, have been disappearing at 50 to 100 times the natural rate, and they predict the rate of extinction to rise dramatically. Currently, according to the convention, an estimated 34,000 plant and 5,200 animal species, including one-eighth of the world’s bird species, face extinction.

So what can we humans do to protect biodiversity? Support legislation and organizations whose mission is to promote the protection of natural areas and educate ourselves in terms of how we can lessen our impact on the natural world. And choose to procreate less, perhaps!

One Last Word on Warming

While tempers, bombs and oil wells flare in Iraq, our world silently grows warmer, but as you’ve read, the show isn’t over. By taking action, we Americans – the star producers of greenhouse gases – can make changes that will help slow the progress of global warming. And we can also encourage our government to create and pass legislation to do the same.

After all, it appears that our species may have been instrumental in creating what is very likely the biggest environmental problem facing us today, so it’s up to us to tackle it. Our future depends on it.