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Articles : EnvironmentA Global Warming Primer
Global climate change has become one of the most important issues of our times, vaulting from obscurity to overriding importance in a decade; it is difficult to ignore and harder still to avoid. One hundred thirty-four American cities, including New Orleans, Salt Lake City and Seattle recently voted to adhere to the greenhouse gas emission restraints set by the Kyoto Protocol on global warming – even though the Bush administration refused to ratify the treaty. In July’s G8 meeting, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair will propose an ambitious three-part plan to combat climate change. Last month, the North Carolina state legislature funded a study to determine the effect of global warming on that state’s economy and environment. The issue pops up again and again- in mainstream movies, on online automotive forums, in university classrooms, in the proceedings of international organizations. It holds deep implications for biodiversity, human geopolitics, public health, and the stability of global civilization itself.
However, what understanding the general public has of the issue has been filtered through the spin of corporate politics and an unreliable media. On June 1, 2005, a former government climate change scientist, Rick Piltz, revealed that official reports on climate change had been modified to appear as if research on the phenomenon was fraught with uncertainty. Tellingly, the redactor was ‘White House official’ Phillip A. Cooney, a non-scientist and former lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute.
Lobbying groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Cooler Heads Coalition, and many others relentlessly misdirect the issue. Capitalizing on the public’s poor understanding of the underlying science, they spread the misconception that global warming is of dubious importance and certainty. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
So, what is climate change? How do we effect it, and how will it affect us? How does it work and how do we know it is happening? This article will attempt to cut through the artificial uncertainty propagated by corporations and politicians, and through the opacity of science, to answer those questions.
The Basics
To begin, it’s important to cover the basics. Greenhouse gases are molecules whose structures can absorb lots of heat energy. Methane (natural gas), carbon dioxide, water vapor, and a few other gases are generally responsible for Earth’s global warming. To an extent, this is positive – it keeps energy from the sun in the atmosphere, instead of letting it all reflect back into space. Methane and water vapor are the most efficient greenhouse gases, but CO2 is most worrisome.
Carbon is stored in reservoirs- just like water. It can be in the atmosphere in the form of CO2, or “fixed” into biological material or geological formations like oil. The global carbon cycle consists of carbon shuttling between the biosphere and the atmosphere; plants take in CO2, turn it into carbon compounds like sugars, which are metabolized by many classes of organism and converted back into C02, which is excreted back into the atmosphere. Alternatively, that CO2 can be released when living material dies and decomposes.
Sometimes carbon gets locked up away from that active cycle, when it gets incorporated into minerals, ocean sediment, or in the form of buried organic material which is turned into oil. These reservoirs of inactive carbon are termed “sinks.” Oil is simply biomass converted into energy-rich long-chain hydrocarbons; when they’re oxidized (burned) they release CO2 and energy.
If human beings were not burning oil, that carbon would remain locked up. The climate system is “used to” having a certain amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the mix. It can – and will – adjust to higher or lower concentrations, but this takes time.
The composition of the atmosphere has a direct relationship to the climate – temperatures are dependent in part on the proportion of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. When we burn lots of fossil fuel over a relatively short period of time, that sudden dump of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere will raise temperatures. The thermodynamics of carbon dioxide leave no doubt that this will happen; greenhouse gas and warming are cause and effect.
Another significant cause of global warming is the conversion of forests and other long-term carbon sinks into farmland for agricultural production. Wide-scale deforestation without an accompanying reforestation releases vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the air – as that biomass is either burned or allowed to decompose (decomposition’s end product is CO2). Deforestation increases with agricultural production and human population; it has been especially severe since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, although it started with the beginnings of agriculture. Recent research suggests that warming caused by deforestation alone averted an ice age that should have begun roughly 5,000 years ago.
SimAtmosphere
So, to summarize thus far, we know that CO2 absorbs a lot of energy and retains it, and that a mix of gases that contains CO2 retains more heat longer than one that doesn’t. We also know that the more CO2, the more heat your atmosphere can hold. And we know that burning hydrocarbons releases CO2 into the atmosphere, and we even know by how much the CO2 concentration has risen.
Using supercomputers it’s possible to simulate how the atmosphere acts, and to model the effects of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The simulations are complex, and incorporate many of factors such as how much heat land and water reflect, the dynamics of air currents and atmosphere cycling, the effects of vegetation, and the like. There’s some leeway in the models, and not everything can be simulated accurately. However, especially now with an extensive body of research informing the modeling of variables, estimates are becoming very reliable – and backed up with real-world evidence.
Hard Core Proof
The simulations give a good idea of what we expect to see. Armed only with a simulation, a researcher has an informed hypothesis. The next step is testing that hypothesis. In the case of climate modeling, the best way to accomplish this is to go to Greenland and drill into the arctic ice to obtain a deep ice core. Polar ice is simply compressed and crystallized snow; each year’s snow forms layer in the core. These layers, like tree rings, can be counted, and it is possible to obtain ages and even seasons for a given core depth.
The cores have bubbles, originally the small spaces between snow crystals. These bubbles entomb a tiny volume of air within them, a pristine sample of the atmospheric composition at the time that snow fell. The proportions of gases in that bubble will tell you exactly what the atmosphere was like in that given year, for every year represented by the core. In this way, researchers have obtained continuous records of what the atmosphere was like for the past 50,000 years or so – including how much CO2 was present.
It is also possible to directly determine the temperatures for that past 50,000 years by analyzing ice cores to determine ratios of oxygen isotopes for a given year. The ratio of oxygen isotopes in the ice is a precise indicator of temperature. Other climate records have been obtained from very old lakes in Colorado and Utah.
The Climate Record
So, what knowledge can be extracted from those CO2 and temperature records? We can tell that temperatures now are higher than they have been at any time in the past 50,000 years. We can tell that concentrations of CO2 match that increase in temperature – high temperatures are accompanied by high CO2 concentrations. It appears that spike of CO2, accompanied by an increase in temperature, began around 150 years ago – matching very well to the beginning of the industrial revolution. Most importantly, the real-life records from the cores match the computer simulations extremely well. The rise in global average temperatures are exactly what the simulation predicted.
Overall global temperature has gained about .6 degrees Celsius, average, since the beginning of the 20th century. (1.1 degree Fahrenheit.) While this may sound insignificant, the height of the last ice age (when there was four miles of ice on top of Seattle) was only 10 degrees C or so colder than it is right now. That was 20,000 years ago, which means that we’ve warmed up about a degree C every 2,000 years – except in the last 100, in which we’ve gained an entire half a degree. Seven of the ten hottest years of the 20th century fell in the 1990’s.
With the simulation results verified experimentally, they can be used to make predictions for the future. It is estimated that Earth will gain at least two or three degrees in the next century, making for an increase of about 4 degrees C worldwide in 200 years. They’ve also been run to figure out what would have happened without greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, revealing that without human influence the climate would have actually cooled, not warmed.
Other triggering factors, such as changes in the amount of solar radiation hitting Earth or volcanic activity, have been ruled out by researcher Dr. Peter Stott, directly contradicting the research of Dr. William Soon and Dr. Sallie Baliunas. His research is generally regarded as definitive.
The Scientific Consensus
There has been a very, very effective disinformation campaign waged to convince the public that global warming is still debatable, that the science is shaky, and that there’s significant discord among climate researchers. Wander onto an average conservative political forum, mention global warming, and this “fact” is brought out faster than one can blink. Is there any grounding to it?
Why not go straight to the source- to climate specialists themselves? Nearly thirty atmospheric scientists, geographers, planetary scientists, and climatologists from the University of Colorado and the University of Denver were interviewed. They were asked whether they personally believed the evidence supported the theory of human-caused global warming, and whether they were aware of valid and significant opposition to the theory in the scientific communuity.
The answers were unanimous. Every researcher approached believed that humans were causing global warming and that the phenomenon was real, and none believed that there was valid opposition to the theory. One name, that of University of Alabama climatologist John Christy, was mentioned as a dissenter; it turns out, however, that he has recanted.
While this survey was hardly scientific or statistically sound, it did not need to be. Nearly twenty climate scientists were approached for their thoughts, and none of them personally doubted global warming or knew of a significant opposition group. The scientific community is interconnected and interactive; researchers communicate through journals and conferences, and as a rule keep firmly abreast of happenings in their field. Significant splits in opinion are accompanied by extended, vigorous debate in journals and conferences. It is inconceivable that twenty specialists, leaders in the field, would be unaware of a strong dissenting movement against global warming. The scientific community is now working on understanding effects and refining understanding, not establishing the theory’s veracity.
The Reality of Anthropogenic Climate Change
By now, it should be obvious that anthropogenic global warming is validated, solid science; furthermore, the theory is generally accepted by the scientific community. Opposition to the theory, and the urgent need for action that it implies, is based not on science but in a desire to maintain the economic status quo. Human activities such as fossil fuel use and deforestation have, and will continue to cause, a massive change in the Earth’s climate. Our species is now the predominant factor affecting our planet’s climate- and, by extension, the entire biosphere.
Charlie Lawton is a student, researcher, compulsive nomad and mountain bum. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Ecology and will begin graduate studies in microbial ecology and astrobiology in Fall 2005. He has participated in research into the ecological effects of climate change since 2003.
Thanks to Dr. Don Sullivan and Dr. Michael Kerwin for their information and advice.
Posted by Snark
Science geek/ research monkey, part-time nomad, mountain bum, amateur ninja, freelance beer reviewer, irreverent cynic, etc. "We never tire of each other, the mountain and I." - Lao Tzu "I’m quite happy surrounded by pagan anarchists worshiping at the alter of...
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Posted by anthony on Saturday, June 11th 2005
phew, at last. congrats snark on a job well done!
Yeah, right on, Snark.
well done, snark. way to stick with the process. thanks for the time spent, Anthony.
Finally! yay…
Good job, Chuck.
About time :)
That’s awesome. I now feel like I can speak intelligently on climate change.
Rather than just replying to people with wild gesticulations, shouting “But SCIENCE says it’s HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!”
Thanks for doing this up, great job.
dd
congrats man, a job very well done!!
Opposition to the theory, and the urgent need for action that it implies, is based not on science but in a desire to maintain the economic status quo.
Fucking right on.
Very nice. I’m engaged on another site in a few discussions with peope who deny global warming as well as the population crisis.
Snark, awesome. Congratulations.
Congratulations, Snark, really well done :-D
Thanks, guys….appreciate the comments.
“To an extent, this is positive…”
“There’s some leeway in the models, and not everything can be simulated accurately.”
The proponents of the status quo grab statements like this and use them to validate their denials. They completely ignore the science and continue to assert that things are just fine. When I see ‘them’ quote places like the Fraser Institute, alarm bells start ringing.
Let me add my name to the list of those who appreciate good work when they see it!!! Good job, Snark!
jesus…good job
Global warming: It’s worse than we thought
We’re all going to die. Maybe
by Bob Wallet
filched from http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/2005/05/23/global-warming.html
For many who were roasted by the searing heat on 15 May – and I for one left Silverstone with a toasted forehead and arms like salamis – global warming has already placed its clammy hand upon us. But just what are the signals? As telly boffin David Bellamy and intellectual observer George Monbiot went at it hammer and tongue on Channel 4 News, outside the general plebiscite were being roasted like hogs by temperatures not seen since last summer.
Confusion still persists though, as one group of scientists try to tell a doubting public that hot summer weather is uncharacteristic, whilst another group of scientists tell us that climatic effects are the result of waning ice ages, cows farting and too many clouds. How are the uninformed to cut through the fog of misinformation. We all remember the summer of ’76, except those who were born from 1977 onwards, obviously, but even they will have heard the anecdotes of ice cream sellers becoming millionaires, Jubblies melting before you could get them anywhere near your mouth, and the Wimbledon Men’s Singles title being won by desert nomad Ikhman Rafaiti of Libya.
I decided to take my frazzled limbs up to the Department of Climactic Change and Apocalyptic Studies at the University of Morecambe Lancaster. There I met Doctor Christian Cartwright, one of Britain’s leading global warming experts who sits very squarely in the “we’re all going to die” camp. I asked him what are the signs that global warming exists.
“Very simple,” he begins. “Mean annual temperatures around the world are 0.25 degrees warmer now than they were in 1793. And these are inland temperatures which take into account the fact that there are more cars and trains than there were in 1793. Also the days are longer by approximately 0.0074 per cent than in 1793.” Doctor Cartwright contradicts all expectations of what a global warming doomsayer should look like: he doesn’t wear wooly-pullies, hasn’t got a beard, doesn’t smoke a pipe and insists he never eats lentil soup. Does he live in a brick house, I ask? “Yes, although I will be moving into one made out of dung in September.”
I ask him what other evidence there is to support global warming and it’s at this point that Doctor Cartwright’s research explodes into all its gory detail. “I developed a sort of early warning system on computer. The software, codenamed BeachErosion, documents every example of global warming.” At the click of the mouse a terrifying list of catastrophic events rolls into place. I scan some of them:
* 14/05/03: Cliff face collapses at Broom near Skegness, north Wales. Four garden sheds lost. * 08/07/03: Temperature reaches 29 degrees Celsius, uncharacteristically hot for central Halifax in July. * 22/05/04: Millwall lose FA Cup final in Cardiff. * 20/09/04: Brian Clough dies. * 13/12/04: 37-year-old woman in Maidenhead becomes pregnant. * 25/12/04: West Bromwich Albion are bottom of the Barclaycard Premiership. * 06/04/05: Pirating of DVDs escalates in line with sea level rises in Cambodia. * 14/05/05: Carlisle United return to Division 3 after only one season.I ask Doctor Cartwright why his research seems to be biased towards footballing data. “It’s a very accurate litmus test. When peculiar things happen in football it’s usually climate related.” Unconvinced, I make my excuses and leave.
Over in Lowestoft, the doomsayers are gathering for their annual conference. This year the theme is Global Warming Death Misery Suffering Consequences: who is responsible? Armed with my press pass made from recycled materials I sit in on the main delegates presentation and listen to a roll call of the bastards who are killing us all. The names are frighteningly familiar:
* Owners of cars registered before 1999 * People who take cheap flights to never before heard of airports * Owners of terraced houses * Smokers * Drinkers * Smokers and drinkers * People who enjoy long hot baths * People who don’t enjoy long walks * Families with a television in every room * Householders who don’t recycle their used Volvos * Fans of Coronation Street * Anyone who bought Is This the Way to Amarillo?It sounded suspiciously to me like an attack on working class people. After the presentation I cornered Malcolm Whispy, leader of the Movement Against Car Ownership, and asked him why global warming wasn’t caused by people who live in big houses. “Because they have an attitude of deference which in itself contains a fundamental respect for things. They respect the Queen, authority, the rule of law and by natural extension, the environment. They can afford to buy proper plane tickets so that they can holiday somewhere that is already warm, like the Virgin Islands where my wife and I will be holidaying later this year. Don’t get me wrong, the lower classes are not being singled out for blame. They simply can’t afford to respect the planet. It’s a simple truth. Erdo non sequastum venii.”
Later in the day I shared a cup of tea with Libby Drizel, a self-styled extreme-climatologist. I say shared because she insisted on not wasting energy to create two cups of tea. I asked her how easy or difficult it was to be an extreme-climatologist. After handing the straw back to me she told me: “Quite easy once you get used to it. For example, I starting walking to this conference eight days ago. I’m sleeping in a tent made from recycled organic cotton, I limit my calorie intake to 1750 calories per day so that my carbon monoxide and methane production is less than one part in twenty five million, and I’ve now found a cello instructor who lives within 75 miles of where I live.” I have to ask her to repeat that last point. “Yes, I know,” she says wearily, “the cello isn’t made from wood harvested from sustainable woodland, but as soon as someone develops a cello made from hemp fibre I’ll be the first to own one.”
The port of Lowestoft is a charming place after dark. None of the street lights work and the silhouettes of boats in the harbour lit by natural light causes me to reflect on my own lifestyle. Every time I breath out another 126 people in the developing world die from dehydration because my breath adds to the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. I cough, and another 17,879 hectares of tropical woodland is reduced to ash, and god help the river deltas of Bangladesh if I fart. You see, that’s the problem. Every one us is a potential nuclear bomb, each man, woman and child is a cataclysmic meteorite the size of Missouri, from the baby in the cot to the geriatric in a walk-in bathtub, we are Death; the Destroyer of Worlds.
Unless, of course, you can afford to be the giver of life. According to the Centre of Earth Studies each person in the UK has a “carbon dioxide quotient”. For example, if you drive three 1977 Ford Escorts, holiday four times a year in Fuengirola and live at number 14 Shite Street, your quotient might be 9.4 urms (the measurement of environmental compromise and global warming acceleration). Statistics show that as the income level per household rises the urm level drops. A family of five living in Cambridge post code district CA12, the father an investment analyst with Deloitte and Touche, the mother a personnel director with Bank of Hamburg, will have an urm level of just 1.2.
The answer, says Dr Professor Sir Lord David Stanedge, Professor Emeritus of Sandringham College, Peebles, and an amateur expert on climate change, is urm trading: “If you decide not to own a car you’ll be allowed more cheap flight air miles. If you choose to live in sheltered accommodation with another family you’ll be able to have a long hot bath two times a week. That way everyone can continue to enjoy some quality of life and no-one will be forced to forego those little pleasures in life.” Stanedge’s idea was mooted at the conference earlier in the day and was cheered by a group of global warming polemicists from Highbury, north London.
I took a taxi back to my bed and breakfast and canvassed the opinion of Derek, a 59-year-old taxi driver who tells me he has driven taxis for sixty-eight years man and boy. “Ardest job in the world, mate,” he tells his rear view mirror. I float some environmentally-friendly ideas to him. Would you run your taxi on beetroot juice? “Can’t get it darn ere for love nor money, mate. And I’ve eard it’s abart eight quid a gallon, well I’d ave to put me rates up to the punters, wouldn’t I?” What about organically-grown polyester trousers and shirts? Fifteen times more energy efficient than artificial polyester. “Nah, her indoors wouldn’t go fer anyfin like that.” Does he know his urm quotient? “No idea, mate. You been darn to that climate change conference aven’t yer?” I tell him I have and he tells me an anecdotal story about one delegate he had in the back of his taxi the previous evening. “Goin on abart this and that and mean annual temperatures rising thirty eight degrees by the year 2016, an they’ll be growing coconuts and bananas in Darlington and Norf Yorkshire will be an island cut off by a bloated River Ooze, an he’s soundin all darn in the dumps abart it. And I says listen mate, if Norf Yorkshire is cut off by the Great Ooze and has bananas and coconuts and temperatures of 85 degrees in the shade I’ll be goin there for me holidays, won’t haf to bovver abart Corfyu and I can leave me car at ome and take a bleedin boat up there. So what yer so fu*ckin miserable abart?”
He had a point. He also accused me of trying to pay with a counterfeit tenner, but he turned out to be mistaken. Perhaps if I hold my breath, stop eating baked beans and build a boat with an engine run on mashed carrots, Armageddon might be put back one or two years. Or then again this whole climate change thing might just be another post-cold-war-research-fund-generating scam to keep Luddites happy and bearded wonders in a job. The last word should go to Alan Penistock, an environmentalist agitator who has written for numerous publications including the prestigious Climate Weekly. “The south coast is not flooding because of post-glacial bounce, water vapour is not a greenhouse gas, volcanic activity in the Antarctic is not releasing millions of tons of ash into the atmosphere and the earth is not rotating slower because of cosmic entropy. The problem is the presence of human beings; only when we are all gone will the planet begin to heal itself.” Perhaps Mister Penistock should set an example and do the right thing. Or failing that he should, in the words of Derek the taxi driver, “just shut the fu*ck up frightenin us all to def.”
I didn’t know where else to put this so I figured this would be as good as anywhere:
Stephen Schneider’s climate chage page
Schneider is a professor at Stanford who has an excellent introduction to the topic of global warming (click “climate change”) and a shitload of relevant links and references (too many perhaps), with everything well sourced for those who want more information.
Science 19 March 1982:
Vol. 215. no. 4539, pp. 1498 – 1501
DOI: 10.1126/science.215.4539.1498
Influence of Land-Surface Evapotranspiration on the Earth’s Climate
J. SHUKLA 1 and Y. MINTZ 2
1 Laboratory for Atmospheric Sciences, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
2 Laboratory for Atmospheric Sciences, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and Department of Meteorology, University of Maryland, College Park 20771
Calculations with a numerical model of the atmosphere show that the global fields of rainfall, temperature, and motion strongly depend on the land-surface evapotranspiration. This confirms the long-held idea that the surface vegetation, which produces the evapotranspiration, is an important factor in the earth’s climate.
Submitted on December 2, 1981
Snark,
Could you get the full article in PDF for me.
I’m not a paid subscriber. And this factor didn’t get much attention or explanation in your article.
Peace,
And as of yet, no one has offered satisfactory answers to his points as to how previous levels of CO2, vastly higher than today, managed to build on earth without man’s input, and then dissipate as well.
The bottom line is that we’ve had much higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere in the past.
Currently, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 378 parts per million (PPM).
During the Jurassic period, CO2 concentration was at 1800 PPM.
During the Cambrian, it was 7000 PPM.
And yet, despite CO2 concentrations 7 to 20 times current, there was no runaway greenhouse effect that threatened all life.
Indeed, the main cause of the mass extinction at the Cambrian/Ordovician boundary period appears to have been global cooling.
So, if the CO2 problem is the danger the environmentalists tell us it is, then we need to know why massively higher concentrations of CO2 in the Cambrian and Jurassic periods didn’t result in a runaway greenhouse effect then, but will now.
Sometimes no Peace
Carbon dioxide constant?
Mike Hashimoto is a breath of fresh air. (Referring to a Dallas editor skeptical of global warming.)
I did research on carbon dioxide infrared absorption about 10 years ago for Texas Instruments and Raytheon as a carbon dioxide detection project under contract to Carrier Corp.
The importance of carbon dioxide to global heat retention can be determined by examining the atmospheric infrared absorption data reported on by the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan more than 50 years ago.
Its data show that carbon dioxide absorbs 8 percent of the heat radiated by our planet, and that the absorption is complete in a path length of only 300 meters.
Thus the overall heat retention of carbon dioxide is 8 percent.
Since the heat absorption is complete for carbon dioxide in its absorption band, adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere does not increase its global heat retention effect.
Carbon dioxide gives us a constant warming effect over a wide range of concentration, which now is about 380 parts carbon dioxide to one million parts of air.
The point is that carbon dioxide’s “greenhouse effect” is constant and cannot increase with more carbon dioxide.
It has been constant for millions of years.
~ Sebastian Borrello