The Science of Climate Change - Just to Irritate Julie

Blog Critics Magazine, an online magazine of, you guessed it, blog critics featured an article recently about climate change. The article featured a synopsis of an article from Scientific America on the current state of climate. A few of the highlights in the Blog Critics post (see link below to access the full post) are:

Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have been stable for 10,000 years — until they began growing rapidly about the time the Western world industrialized.
11 of the past 12 years are the warmest since reliable records began around 1850. That’s a pretty short time frame, geologically speaking, but the probability of that happening by chance are very small.
Measurements from ice cores and tree rings provide a longer time line, showing that the current climate is warmer than it has been for at least 1,300 years.
The oceans have been measured rising an average of 3.1 millimeters a year. Over 50 years, that would mean a total increase of 155mm, or about 6 inches. The process is expected to accelerate, however, for a total rise in the 21st Century of maybe 40 centimeters (400mm, or about 16 inches) and possibly as much as 60 centimeters (about two feet).
With rising sea levels comes inundation of low-lying coastal areas, a higher water table, increased flooding, erosion, salinization of coastal waterways and wetlands, and greater danger from storms. An EPA study of the effects of various levels of sea rise suggests (while admitting it is an underestimate) that even a 6-inch increase would cost the United States alone something like $100 billion if we wanted to protect developed coastal areas and prevent inland flooding. That cost would be spread over 100 years, so the annual cost isn’t too bad and assumes coastal development all but ceases, and that sea levels stop rising. The costs rise fairly rapidly with additional increases in sea levels.
Analysis of isotopes in atmospheric gas can identify the origin of the gas. It turns out most of it comes from burning fossil fuels.
The troposphere (the lower atmosphere) is warming while the stratosphere is cooling — exactly what you would expect if the cause was increased emissions of greenhouse gases and depletion of stratospheric ozone. If warming was primarily caused by solar activity, both layers of the atmosphere would warm up.

Of course, there could be a myriad of factors contributing to the climate changes we seem to be experiencing, not the least of which might be the cyclical nature of climate itself. Nevertheless, and Al Gore’s posturing on the topic aside, it makes sense to me that we human beings are having a measurable and not all that healthy impact upon the world’s ecosystem. The question for me is this: Is it too late for us to anything about what we have done?

An article in the Washington Post raises the possibility that we are too far down the road already, stating:

Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend.

From the BBC, we find this note:

To stabilise climate change altogether, emissions of CO2 would have to be reduced by around 70% globally - the Kyoto Protocol doesn’t propose reductions of anything near this level.

One of the main problems with carbon dioxide is the length of time it remains in the atmosphere as it can take around 100 years for it to disperse (even after some of it is absorbed by vegetation). Therefore, even if we stopped CO2 emissions immediately, the effects of what we’ve already done would still influence our weather for years to come.

And again, from the Washington Post (via the Miami Herald), we have the following quotes:

As Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . . . recently told the U.N. General Assembly: “The inertia of the system that we have is such that climate change would continue for decades and centuries even if we were to stabilize the concentration of gases that are causing this problem today, which means that adaptation is inevitable.”

Even if we all started driving electric cars tomorrow — and even if we convinced the governments of China, India, Brazil, South Africa and all of the developing world that their people shouldn’t drive cars at all, or even have electricity — the world would keep getting warmer.

Debating how to halt climate change is necessary. Figuring out how to live with it, unfortunately, is urgent.

All of this reminds of a book that was required reading in my Church and Community class at Drew Theological Seminary. Even in 1989, Gaia: An Atlas of Planet Management was a scary read. I have since learned that there is a new edition of the book, about which amazon.com says:

[Gaia: The Atlas of Planet Management] was regarded as the most groundbreaking survey of the state of our planet when it was first published in 1984. After over twenty years in print, it has become the bible of the environmental movement and the definitive guide to a planet in critical transition. Regularly featured among the top ten books on the environment, the Atlas has been read by millions of people and translated into more than a dozen languages. This enlarged edition brings the classic reference up-to-date. Thoroughly revised with the latest figures and analysis, fresh full-color and easy-to-read graphics, an expanded format, and a wealth of current environmental and political topics that have arisen during the previous two decades, The New Atlas of Planet Management will equip a further generation of readers with information to face the challenges of the new millennium.

In case you’re interested, here are the links to both books on Amazon.