For several years, global warming activists have been at odds with arch-conservatives, insisting that the world was getting warmer due to human industry, while arch-conservatives (recently acknowledging the indisputable warming trend) insisted it was just part of a natural cycle.
For both sides, the following find is a doozy.
Oceans rise at record rate as industrial age gathers momentum.
To sum up: The past 150 years have seen rising levels of the ocean due to methane and carbon dioxide which were unheard of for at least 100,000 years… and more like 650,000. If this is part of a “natural warming trend”, then it’s a killer one. Human civilization has only been around for about 11,000 years, and we only really got ahold of the tools of the industrial revolution 150 years ago.
I’ve just changed my opinion from “undecided” on global warming (as to whether humans are the cause, or if it’s part of a normal fluctuation) to “there’s no doubt humans are responsible for drastically rising ocean levels”. Sure, some people are going to say I’m guilty of pride because I think humans can affect an earth so vast.
I guess I’m proud, then. Or something. But still slightly ashamed, as I unabashedly use the Internet, in my fuel-heated home, guzzling electricity generated by a coal-burning power plant.
What’s the long-term solution to curbing our carbon dioxide and methane emissions? Carbon dioxide levels today are 27% higher than at any time in the last half-million years on this planet. We’re not in danger of choking ourselves in our own emissions (like in the farcical Spaceballs of some years back), but we’re in very real danger of flooding many of our coastal cities within our grandchildren’s lifetime.
Hurricanes and tornados, fueled by the additional trapped heat, will continue to grow in both frequency and intensity. Droughts will intensify, as will deluges. The Arctic permafrost is melting, and Antarctica’s sea ice shelves will mostly disappear within the next 50 years.
On the bright side, (I guess), it looks like many Arctic properties will open up. Greenland will be fertile and temperate again for the first time in a thousand years. Those ancient Viking settlements, once iced-over and barren, may become tourist attractions in a verdant farming community.
This time-span, though, is a blink of an eye in geological timelines. The carbon dioxide and methane levels won’t self-correct for thousands of years, as they get absorbed back into the earth and ocean through various means.
Unfortunately, the damage is done. Even if we dramatically reduce our emissions, we’ll continue to produce emissions thousands of times higher than any natural process has created in the last 100,000 years. We’ve already dramatically increased the greenhouse gas levels.
Knowing that there’s very little we can do on the emissions-forming side of the issue, what is to be done?
I’m thinking it’s a good time to look into northern Canadian real-estate.
Coastline Erosion
That research team from Rutgers also came out with an effect statement. A USA Today article quoted the team as claiming 240 feet of Jersey shore erosion by 2100. That’s pretty alarming if you consider the magnitude of such a change in such a relatively short amount of time. It would put the boardwalk and all beachside resorts of Ocean City, MD underwater.
Matt, I’m with you. It’s obvious that humans are the cause. I’m not sure what to do about it though because I’m not in the know.
Hold On Now
I will readily admit that humanity has affected the environment with the Industrial Revolution of the past 150-200 years. But I am not ready to grant you that we have any freaking clue what the net effects of those causes will be.
Hurricanes are at an all-time worst because of global warming? How do we know, since we’ve only been tracking them for a little over 100 years? The Earth is getting warmer? Nope. CITIES are getting warmer, but outlying areas, where there aren’t as many recording stations, are the same temperature or even cooler. The polar ice is melting? No no no. The ice shelf is melting, but the interior Antarctic ice is thickening fater than we’ve ever recorded it.
I am 100% for protecting the environment…within reason. However, if we are to be so arrogant as to claim to want to proect the environment, we need to do a much better job of understanding the environment. The notion of nature as this pristine, unchanging thing is totally wrong. There is no status quo in nature, it’s constantly evolving as species attempt to survive.
We need to understand a few things about the environment. First, we’re striving to survive just like all the other animals. We have the right to exist, at the expense of other animals. Second, we think in far too short terms for environmental concerns. We could totally wipe out every species the exists in the rain forest, turn it into a huge parking lot, and nature wouldn’t mind. If we left that parking lot alone for 1000 years, you couldn’t find it in all the new species and growth that would be there. We’re a mere speck on the timeline of Earth, and if we bomb outselves into oblivion, she’ll start back again. Life is ever-changing and undeniable, no matter what we do.
Finally, if we want to save the environment, we need to do a better job of understanding it. Wind Farms For Clean Energy! Birds chopped up bu the thousands. Hydrogen Power For All! How do we get hydrogen separated without fossil fuels? No DDT, it’s bad. Actually it’s pretty safe and more people die because we can’t use it (malaria, etc).
Don’t buy the hype, but get to the facts. Sea levels were rising at 1mm per year before we started, now it’s 2mm per year. Why? We assume it’s the industrial revolution, but are we sure? Is it the carbon monoxide? Do we know for sure?
No. And until we do, all we’re doing is going on a witch hunt.
My $.02 Weed
The study
There’s no witch hunt to the study. The study stated (in effect) that there’s nothing we can do to stop the global warming. Damage is done, Kyoto treaty is worthless, greenhouse emissions will continue to increase, etc. The question isn’t how to try to limit the damage, really.
I agree that the world will arrive at some new equilibrium at some unknown point in time. That equilibrium, however, may not include humankind. Or maybe it includes an unliveable tropic area. Or beachfront resorts on the shores of Death Sea (formerly Death Valley). Who knows?
I’m really not one of those environmentalist whackos who think animals are more important than people. My concern is for the welfare of my children and grandchildren, and in some vague sense the population as a whole. We’ll adapt, as we always have, but it sure seems likely that Hudson Bay may become a year-long, bustling seaport in the near future.
Unfortunately, I’m about 200 or 300 years too early to be buying arctic real estate. Alas, no way to make a buck on global warming that I can see.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
But is there “Global” Warming?
But my problem with this whole thing is that we think we can predict what will happen. We’re not nearly advanced as we think we are when it comes to understanding complex systems like nature. We make heavy-handed gestures to “help” nature that have unforseen and worse consequences. Look at how we’ve tried to help Yellowstone and the animal populations there.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the amtmosphere is really rather small, so a large increase of a small percentage is not that much.
And there are areas of the Earth that are cooling. Not warming. But you don’t hear about them because it doesn’t further the cause.
Check this out. Maybe all the ice melting in the shelves will be frozen here.
My point is we don’t know, so why say the sky is falling? Maybe we need to do this to motivate the masses to care for the environment, which we need to do. But the people of this board seem to want to know the truth, and the truth is we really have no clue whatsoever as to the effects global warming will do to the Earth. It’s just that Global Warming is the cause celebrite and the media makes it look like certain doom is coming.
We are effecting the environment. That is absolutely true. The consequences of our actions are beyong our ability to predict accurately. This doesn’t let us off the hook to better our environmental actions. When my dad can tell me the Susquehanna River was clear when he was a kid and it’s muddied now, I can figure out something’s wrong. But finding the right answer to fix that problem, which cleans the river while allowing the workers in all the industrial areas that dump into the river to keep their jobs, now there’s some science that may reap some benefits.
My $.02 Weed
These People Think So
These people think there’s global warming…
Saturday, December 3, 2005 at noon Outside of Governor’s residence, 1006 Summit Ave., St. Paul
As part of a national and international day of protest coinciding with the United Nations Conference on Climate Change being held in Montreal, the Climate Crisis Coalition of the Twin Cities is organizing a picket and rally in front of the Governor’s residence at 1006 Summit Ave., in St. Paul. In addition to the picket in St. Paul, events will be held in over 25 states and 31 countries.
Demands at the picket include U.S. ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, support for clean, safe energy alternatives and no more wars for oil. Participants will ask Governor Pawlenty to do more to deeply reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases in the state and that he urge President Bush to agree to very deep reductions in U.S. emissions.
Scientists largely agree that deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, which include carbon dioxide from tailpipes and coal-fired power plants, will be necessary to prevent melting of the ice caps, rises in sea level, and increasing severity of weather.
Saturday’s picket at the Governor’s residence is co-sponsored locally by Citizens for Global Solutions-MN, Iraq Peace Action Coalition, the Anti-War Committee, Pax Christi-TC, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-MN, the Environmental Action Team of First Congregational Church, and Alliant Action.
Making a buck
1. Short indices of the stock markets in countries that adopt and implement Kyoto. Their economies are headed for the toilet.
2. Buy coastal real estate in temperate areas (like San Diego). Might want to get some more hype going around surging oceans first–to properly depress the values–then get in cheap. After all, melting ice (Artic) does not raise the level of the liquid it is floating in. Of course, you do have to believe that ice that isn’t floating (Antartica) won’t be melting. Either way, at 2mm a year you’ll enjoy an ever-shorter walk to the ocean till you’re dead, and then it won’t really matter any more.
Culture of Fear
Read Michael Crighton’s “State Of Fear”. He debunks a lot of global warming’s assumptions in that book.
He also hypothesizes that governments use fear as a tool to control the masses. once the Cold War ended, the gov’t lost one of the best fear tools it had, so now it uses global warming and crime as the new fear tools.
Everyone complains about crime, but you’re actually safer now than you’ve ever been. Media reporting of crimes is at an all-time high, but the actual percentage of crimes is low.
Prey on our fears and prejudices to keep us in line.
My $.02 Weed
I agree that crime is
I agree that crime is overblown, however I would put forth that is not because the media wants to keep us in line, but because it wants to keep its ratings high. Lets face it, a multiple stabbing makes better copy than someone baking a gigantic cookie for the local Fair.
Also, if our government is using global warming as a fear tool, I’d expect them to be a lot less dismissive of its existence. This current government, anyway. Come to think of it, even during the golden years of Clinton (mwa ha ha, open powder room strike match), there wasn’t too much hype placed on it.
That makes sense, that Crichton wrote that book… I remember a good passage in Jurassic Park when Ian Malcolm talks about how we couldn’t destroy the earth even if we tried, all we’d do is destroy ourselves.
However, it is for this reason -namely, not destroying our own selves – that I think global warming and related issues ARE important to keep an eye on. Nature has proven quite capable of restoring balance when one species wastes/outgrows its resources, and she does so with ruthless efficiency. She will do the same to us if pressed, and humanity will undergo a massive culling while Nature heals her wounds.
There has not yet been a species that has realized its mistake and corrected itself without forcing Mother Nature to step in. It would be something along the lines of the deer deciding to ration their grazing and their breeding to ensure that there would be enough grass for everyone next year.
But it is possible that we could become that species that does Nature’s balancing work for her and in a much less painful way. Unlikely, but possible. We’re smart enough for it, at least. But are we wise enough?
Other thoughts from the teeming electrical storm of Arthur’s brain:
Trees are pretty. Rocks are heavy.
Except small rocks, which are light. Because they’re small.
The Government?
I wasn’t under the impression that the U.S. government had been preaching the dangers of global warming? I thought it was the government that has been pushing back over the years, skeptical of reports?
Especially the current administration. All it wants to do is relax constraints on industry.
Yeah Yeah Yeah
Y’all are right, the current government isn’t harsh on global warming. However, the media and science is big on it because a) it sells and b) it feeds money into scientific study.
I think the point I wanted to make is that people feed misinformation or unproven information to us to prey on our insecurities in order to further their agendas. Crime is a big one for that. Global warming is a big one too. And the economy, which all in all is pretty good.
I agree with everything Rowan said. We need to be nice to the environment. However, we don’t need wild doom and gloom predictions to scare us into doing that.
Or maybe we do, I don’t know. But I personally like to know the truth.
Everyone has an agenda. My $.02 Weed