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Global Climate Change

 

"Few scientists now doubt that climate change will be among the most pervasive environmental threats of the coming century."

-International Federation of Red Cross-

 

Global climate change is perhaps the most serious threat that is now facing humanity and the Earth.  For this reason, peak oil can be seen as a blessing in disguise. It is a wake-up call that we can no longer go on burning fossil fuels if we are to survive as a species and as members of Earth's community.

Times magazine reported in April 2006 that, “The debate over whether Earth is warming up is over." They write, “Global warming, even most skeptics have concluded, is the real deal, and human activity has been causing it.”   The Earth’s global average temperatures have risen 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit in less than a thirty-year period from 1970-1998.  Before the Industrial Revolution there was an estimated 280 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the air.  By 2000, atmospheric CO2 concentration had risen 32 percent to 370 ppm.  Even more dramatic is the fact that from 1960 to 2000, the atmospheric concentrations increased by 54 ppm whereas from 1760 to 1960 they had risen by 36 ppm.  

 

Graph depicting the rise in CO2 levels from 1958 to 2004. (Graph from <http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2486/24861401.jpg>)

 

The consequences of global climate change are extremely unpredictable at best.  James Lovelock, in his new book “Revenge of Gaia,” has suggested that we have already passed the point of no return and that we will be lucky if just a small number of humans are even able to survive into the next century.  The more CO2 the humans release into the environment, the greater likelihood we are threatening the fate of living systems on the Earth.  The possibility of catastrophe should be enough to make us rethink our proliferate use of fossil-fuels and the industrial infrastructure as a whole. 

The most extensive modeling to date suggests that the Earth will warm by anywhere between 2 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the next century.    The effects of this global warming, however, will effect different regions of world quite differently. 

 

MEASURABLE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Though the consequences of global climate change are hard to predict, we are already starting to see the initial effects.  They are disturbing to say the least.

• The Greenland icesheet melted at the rate of 53 cubic miles in 2005 compared to 22 cubic miles in 1996.  If the Greenland icesheet melted entirely, it would raise the global sea level by a full 20 feet.  This would inundate all coastal areas, large swathes Florida and practically all of Bangladesh.

 

• Global temperature records for the past 150 years indicate that 19 of the 20 hottest years have occurred in the past twenty five years.  NASA scientists have reported that 2005 was one of the hottest years for the past 100 years.

 

• Britain’s National Oceanography Center reported that part of the Gulf Stream has slowed 30 percent since 1957.

 

 

Rising global temperatures.
(From <http://www.newscientist.com>)

 

FEEDBACK LOOPS

A lot of the debate over the effects of global climate change concerns the notion of feedback.  A “positive” feedback loop is one that amplifies the effects.  In other words the cause of a particular event leads to more of the same.  A “negative” feedback loop is one that does just the opposite—the cause of particular event leads to a dampening, or reduction.  In the global climate system there are many feedback loops that are both positive and negative.  Polar ice, for instance, reflects about 90 percent of the sunlight that hits it, absorbing only 10 percent of heat.  Ocean water, on the other hand, reflects only 10 percent of sunlight and absorbs close to 90 percent of the heat that hits it.  As the polar ice caps melt due to rising global temperature, we lose the reflective ice and get oceanic water in its place, which absorbs more heat and therefore causes global temperatures to rise. This in turn causes polar ice caps to melt at an increased rate.  This is an example of a positive feedback loop in the climate system where the changes brought about by climate change cause even more changes.  Another example of a positive feedback loop is described in the Time magazine article:

"A similar feedback loop is melting permafrost, usually defined as land that has been continuously frozen for two years or more.  There’s a lot of earthly real estate that qualifies, and much of it has been frozen much longer than two years—since the end of the last ice age, or at least 8,000 years ago.  Sealed inside that cryonic time capsule are layers of partially decayed organic matter, rich in carbon.  In high-altitude regions of Alaska, Canada and Siberia, the soil is warming and decomposing, releasing gases that will turn into methane and CO2.  That, in turn, could lead to more warming and permafrost thaw, says research scientists David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo.  And how much carbon is socked away in Arctic soils?  Lawrence puts the figure at 200 gigatons.  The total human carbon output is only 7 gigatons a year."

An example of a negative feedback loop is cloud cover.  As global temperatures increase, water evaporation increases which leads to increasing levels of cloud cover which reflects more sunlight.  In effect, this would lead to a massive cooling effect of the world, inhibiting the warming effects.  The problem is that climatologists don’t know how the multitude of both positive and negative feedback loops will interact.  However, there is a large consensus among researchers that feedback will be predominantly positive.  That is, climactic change is going to escalate over the decades ahead and has the potential to change so rapidly that a majority of the Earth’s ecosystems and the species that depend on them simply are no longer able to survive. 

 

GULF STREAM

Among the many potential devastating effects that global climate change could bring would be a shutdown of the Gulf Stream.  The Gulf Stream is a huge current of northerly moving warm water from the tropics to Western Europe, which keeps temperatures mild and hospitable.    Without it, much of Western Europe could experience a drastic drop in temperatures. 

What usually keeps the Gulf Stream running is that warm water is lighter than cold water, so it floats on the surface.  As it reaches Europe and releases its heat, the current grows denser and sinks, flowing back to the south and crossing under the northbound Gulf Stream until it reaches the tropics and starts to warm again.  The cycle works splendidly, provided the water remains salty enough.  But if it becomes diluted by freshwater, the salt concentration drops, and the water gets lighter, idling on top and stalling the current.  Last December, researchers associated with Britain’s National Oceanography Center reported that one component of the system that drives the Gulf Stream has slowed about 30% since 1957.

 

Graph depicting effect of human activity on the global average temperature.
(From <http://www.newscientist.com>)

 

GLOBAL WARMING AND AGRICULTURE

The effects of global warming on agriculture are also troubling.  The New York Times reports that,

 

'As fast as global warming is transforming the oceans and the ice caps, it’s having an even more immediate effect on land.  People, animals and plants living in dry mountainous regions like the western U.S. make it through summer thanks to snowpack that collects on peaks all winter and slowly melts off in warm months.  Lately the early arrival of spring and the unusually blistering summers have caused the snowpack to melt too early, so that by the time it’s needed, it’s largely gone.  Climatologist Philip Mote of the University of Washington has compared decades of snowpack levels in Washington, Oregon and California and found that they are a fraction of what they were in the 1940s, and some snowpacks have vanished entirely."

James Howard Kunstler warns that, 

“We also don’t know what the response of crop plants will be to significantly increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.  Wheat, rice, and soybeans tend to accommodate higher levels of CO2.  They photosynthesize more carbohydrates.  Corn and sugarcane are not so happy with increased CO2.  However, excessive heat could easily vitiate any theoretical benefit of increased CO2."

“Falling water tables will also make grain production problematic, especially in areas of the United States currently dependent on ‘fossil’ water from the Ogallala aquifer, including parts of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico.  The Ogallala has been depleting at an accelerating rate for decades, with annual use way outpacing replenishment.  Thirty-three percent of all crops produced in the United States are grown on irrigated acres.  More severe heat waves will strain peak irrigation demands and aggravate competition between urban areas and farms.  Also, increased heat and evaporation on irrigated lands will intensify the accumulation of salts in the soil—an age-old hazard of societies that depend on irrigation over a long period of time.”

“Warmer conditions are favorable for the proliferation of insect pests and plant diseases.  Longer growing seasons will enable insects such as grasshoppers to complete a greater number of reproductive cycles during the spring, summer and autumn.  Larvae of other bugs will winter over more comfortably.  Any upset of an established ecologic balance is an invitation to previously unwelcome organisms.  Even during the most stable past decades, parts of the United States suffered from boll weevil, locust, and gypsy moth infestations.  Climate change will likely increase both the intensity and diversity of invading agricultural pests and diseases.  A very long list of new plant diseases is just lately emerging, from barely stripe rust to eastern filbert blight to silver surf (potatoes) and verticillium wilt (strawberries), which could make farming very difficult and disappointing in the future, whatever way it is practiced.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the World Watch Institute (www.worldwatch.org)

Kunstler predicts that “Climate change is going to combine with the termination of oil-and-gas based farming to very negatively affect the world’s food supply.  A lot of people will go hungry in the decades ahead and many of them will die.” Clearly, global climate change presents a huge and perhaps insurmountable catastrophe in the making with our proliferate use of fossil fuels.  Our only solution is to immediately reduce or get rid of carbon-emitting fossil fuels entirely, and to rebuild natural ecosystems that can buffer regions from the effects. 

Climatologists predict that we will need a 90 percent reduction of CO2 outputs within the next ten to twenty years in order to prevent wholesale destruction of our environment and thus of humanity itself. This, of course, is no small task.

 

Here at OPOA, we are looking toward sustainable, carbon-free alternatives to the insanity of modern industrial society. Please visit the Climate Solutions page (coming soon) to find out more information how we can reduce the threat of global climate change.

 

 

 

WE NEED YOU!

Here at OPOA we are trying to transform crisis into opportunity. If you think that the mission and material that OPOA provides is useful and much needed during this coming time of crisis, we ask that you give what you can to support a truly grassroots movement to protect and defend the Earth and humanity during the coming times.  With two full-time staff members, practically all funds are used exclusively to further our mission to help prepare the Ohio area for the coming times and to distribute free information about how individuals and communities can prepare for the coming times.  Without your kind donations and support we wouldn’t be able to survive!  To donate or find out more about how you can get involved please follow this link. Voice your opinions, solutions, inventions, suggestions, insights, strategies, and analyses at www.RelocalizationWiki.org.