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Global Warming Seen Worse Than Predicted
CHICAGO - The climate is heating up far faster than scientists had predicted, spurred by sharp increases in greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries like China and India, a top climate scientist said on Saturday.
A general view shows chimneys from a cement plant in Baokang, Hubei province January 6, 2008.
"The consequence of that is we are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we've considered seriously," Chris Field, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.
Field said "the actual trajectory of climate change is more serious" than any of the climate predictions in the IPCC's fourth assessment report called "Climate Change 2007."
He said recent climate studies suggested the continued warming of the planet from greenhouse gas emissions could touch off large, destructive wildfires in tropical rain forests and melt permafrost in the Arctic tundra, releasing billions of tons of greenhouse gasses that could raise global temperatures even more.
"There is a real risk that human-caused climate change will accelerate the release of carbon dioxide from forest and tundra ecosystems, which have been storing a lot of carbon for thousands of years," Field, of Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science, said in a statement.
He pointed to recent studies showing the fourth assessment report underestimated the potential severity of global warming over the next 100 years.
"We now have data showing that from 2000 to 2007, greenhouse gas emissions increased far more rapidly than we expected, primarily because developing countries, like China and India, saw a huge surge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal," Field said.
He said that trend was likely to continue if more countries turned to coal and other carbon-intensive fuels to meet their energy needs. If so, he said the impact of climate change would be "more serious and diverse" than the IPCC's most recent predictions.
Editing by Peter Cooney
54 Comments so far
Show Allhttp://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/alley2000/alley2000.html
Seems we have been a lot warmer in the recent past.
The empahsis needs to be on conservation. There are no "ifs" with that, and no arguement.
In the recent past, we didn't have a few billion people living on coastlines, with a global economy relying on non-stop shipping of goods. What will happen when those billions are forced to migrate (or die) because of coastal flooding, and the world's commercial ports are underwater? Good-bye, whatever life you have chosen to live.
It amazes me how you can take data and see the exact opposite of what I see.
The point of this article, and the plot, are to show that very substanial and dramatic climate changes can occur in very short spans of time. In this case within 30 years back around 11k years ago.
The data show a very sharp fall in temperatures and then a very sharp rise.
I would think this should cause one to actually worry. It means that some kind of trigger can tip the earth's climate, either warm or cold, VERY fast! Species, including our own, can adapt better to slow changes than to fast ones.
If you are instead looking at the data right up next to the modern period (within the last couple hundred years on that plot) I'd need to see a different plot. This graph, as shown, just doesn't show us that data very well at all. Indeed, it would appear that the point marked "medieval warming" is actually cooler than the years preceding and following it!! I do not blame the authors for this, they were more interested in the very dramatic changes occuring back at the end of the last ice age.
jbentham
what an excellent moment for the US to plunge into the manufacture of solar power equipment, and a well-subsidized program nationally to ensure that we all get off the grid as swiftly as possible!
jeremybentham:
Where does this subsidy money come from?
Well let's see... right off the top of my head I can think of $10+ Billion a month going down the toilet in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or is that too obvious?
I think the seizure of funds from war profiteers, oil profiteers, and financial system people should be added to the mix.
Siggy - How much do you get paid to troll progressive sites and spew disinfo?
Walk in peace.
Warming or not we can't go wrong by doing the following.
First and foremost the obvious solution everyone loves must be implemented on a scale similar to a world war fight, I.E. massive tree planting to serve as a powerful carbon sink.
Second, to feed the world we must switch to tree based crops (incredible yields per acre of highly nutritious protein, good fat, B vitamins and minerals in the case of nuts,
” pure water” and vitamins from fruits, (see Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture published in 1928!) Crops can also be planted beneath the trees (vegetables etc.)
Trees also require much less energy input and people can do other work in between caring for them. Trees have the additional advantage of attracting and stabilizing water rather than depleting it. And we all know trees clean the air, create additional habitat for animals, provide firewood, fibre for clothing and housing.
Third, we must use dollars wasted on Carbon sequestration
(See http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/07/carbon_sequestration.php) on Solar energy.
Of course solar energy is very Democratic and won’t belong exclusively to Exxon etc who must look deep into the future for ethical profit making ventures. See recent comments from the Rockefeller family.
Right now Fox News and columnists like George Will say climate change alarm is baloney, and you can drive over to the diner using $2/gal gas and get an early bird salmon and salad special for 12 bucks. Americans are becoming numb to the "debate", and they are hammered with the stimulus package being called liberal pork.
We won't reach a political consensus until California agriculture really does dry up and southwest water resources are rationed, the cost of fish skyrockets, several more rounds of killer heat waves, cyclonic storms and year round tornadoes, and the HadCRUT and GISS temperature charts go flying again. Will it be too late?
URGENCY OF BUSH POLICY REVERSALS
Never before had Americans experienced such dangerous manipulation of scientific data, as was used by the Bush administration, to derail vital environmental reforms, conservation, family planning, etc. The resulting long term environmental, social, and economic damage are beyond measure--and can only worsen if not reversed. They were exposed by whistle blowers, and were documented by virtually all scientific and environmental organizations not affiliated with that administration. Their gravity eclipsed the Monica Lewinski scandal which led to an impeachment, and posed greater dangers than Watergate which terminated a presidency.
The legislators who had defaulted their duties by not opposing these abuses should be denied re-election; although this does not excuse the apathetic and unlearned voters who tolerated their inaction.
Sadly, the new stimulus package includes numerous meaningless items while minimizing the vital environmental reforms such as renewable energy. The new presidents's first priority must be to promptly reverse the disastrous Bush policies, and pursue rational reform measures based on legitimate science--as he had pledged.
If he fails to do so, he should be unseated
The Union of Concerned Scientists has documented the misinformation and lies from the Bush administration. Go to:
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/
Click on "Abuses to Science". There is an A-Z list of the attacks on science by the previous administration. I hope things will be more open under the new administration.
Sigurdur, according to that link things warmed up even more suddenly than is happening now, but a more general cooling trend prevailed in a "step-wise" fashion?
The problem as I see it with this argument (and the warming-came-before-CO2-increases argument) is that no one explains the relative rates of ozone knock-out during the periods they cite. As far as we know, barring huge solar storms or super-nova radiation from Lord knows where, there was not during those periods any long-lasting comparable threat to our atmosphere's ozone as exists today.
A blogger acquaintance cited the article below when I asked about accurate available figures for hydrochloric acid released into the atmosphere by shuttle launches (they're hard to find for us so far)...
"The Greening of Rocket Propulsion"
http://whttww.aiaa.org/aerospace/images/articleimages/pdf/AA_July05_SIE.pdf
Ozone depletion results in dead picophytoplankton which results in less carbon dioxide processed by the oceans which results, eventually, in more heat. Checked the above "Aerospace America" article out yesterday at the library and, if I recall correctly, their numbers on rockets vs other causes of increased-heat implied rockets contribute only a tiny fraction of the problem. But, I have to take the source into consideration. It seems as though it might be useful to have two contrasting estimates of: degrees increased per hundred tons of CO2 vs degrees increased per hundred tons of hydrochloric acid (I'd guess very, very small fractions of a degree each). If the case is actually other than what the article relates...I'd guess it should deserve some attention, as, in theory, it's a contributing source that would be easier to address.
Seems to me that India nad China have been pretty good markets for coal from my region in Western Canada, and from Australia.
(What's 'at you say? Bush fires due to climate what? What? Irrigation projects on the prairies on hold? Because there's no what from the Rockies?))
Galinwainright:
What disinfo have I spewed? Did you look at the link? I don't know how much more credible it can be being it is a NOAA link that shows historical temp records.
Why can't the arguement be changed to conservation? There is credible scientific debate over climate, and that is all and good. What can you say that is negative about conservation?
And get paid?....LOL. Yeah.......sure....ya betcha. When you feel the need to pay me I will gladly accept a cashiers check.
circle road:
There are more papers about warming over a 30 year period centuries ago. And they are in NOAA's archives.
The point I am trying to make is that climate does things all on its' own as the result of forces that are being correlated as more is learned. The solar wind, while discounted 30 years ago, seems to have a huge impact on our climate. We can't change that, nor sunspot cycles etc.
What we can change is how we live. Conservation should be at the top of everyone's mind. The earth itself has finite resources. The sun provides us with climate which we should be taking advantage off. The wind blows every day, the sun shines every day. When either of those two things stop, as a planet all life will perish. But while they are here, we should take advantage of the energy. That is only common sense and who can argue with that?
As far as the SW USA. That area has been arid for centuries. The demand for water has risen to 100% of the resource. That is just fact. The population growth there has resulted in water being pumped 100's of miles to the population centers. At some point there will prob be out migration as the avail of new water supplies will not merit invenstment as they are too far away.
The other thing that could happen is 100% recycling of the water being used. The recycling has started, however; I do not see it meeting future water needs as presented now.
Segurdur (sp?), your conservation points are totally valid. I believe solar knock out of ozone probably was a huge factor and perhaps even super-nova radiation (though the latter would I presume be relatively quick and not so frequent). The question is if in the past the most radical heat increases were due to, say, a super-nova blast (against ozone)...how comensurate is what we are doing now and how SUSTAINED will the impact be? Saying there have been natural cycles is fine, but even though they were prior to the industrial rev...it still seems useful to work with hypothesized specific natural causes (especially in the case of ozone).
The IPCC has always been seen as a conservative consensus, so I'm really not surprised by this article at all.
bbr-001 said that the deniers won't admit to any change until extreme conditions like multiple heat-waves and the total destruction of California's agricultural reasons. With respect I think bbr-001 is underestimating the capacity of the religious-creationist factions to talk up the bull in favour of the evidence.
The reason I say this is simple. If you ask a climate change denier what evidence would finally convince them they are wrong I doubt very much they would give you a specific answer. YOu will get silience. The possibility of actually being wrong simply is something they cannot contemplate, so they have no ready answers that they can summon to tell you under what conditions of evidence would allow them to concede the argument.
The converse is usually very evident. I can list a whole series of data plots that will develop over the next decade that, if they did not turn out the way I expect, would convince me that the climate scientists are pretty much barking up the wrong tree and need to go back and have a serious re-think about the flaws in their models/predictions. I can be pretty specific. I can also promise, on my heart of hearts, that my tune would at the very least, begin to change (if not change entirely). I know with confidence that I would change my mind in such a radical way because I have done so in the past about other previously cherished theories (or even beliefs) I have held that simply did not survive the bright light of evidence.
Few climate change deniers I have encountered apply anything like an evidenced view to this area.
That's my main challenge to anyone who denies climate change. write down the data that would eventually convince you. Try three time periods, over the next year, the next 5 years, the next decade.
I suspect most would retort either that:
A). There IS not a single set of data that would ever convince them.
(basically indistinguishable from a faith-based point of view)
B). That the whole scientific establishment is so hopelessly corrupt and filled with people who lie about the data that none of the data can ever be trusted.
(which is a pretty poor attempt to justify position 'A')
I am afraid that no matter how strong the evidence gets you will always have such people. I have met a few people who insist that smoking doesn't cause cancer or heart disease, for example. I have argued with them and pointed them to the positive wealth of data that exists which proves, almost as closely as it is scientifically possible to prove anything, this link. Ulitmately these people revert to either argument A or argument B.
My intellectual curiosity finds it interesting that in both cases a kind of addiction is at work. In the one case, a direct physical addiction to nicotine and in the other a psychological addiction to a carbon-fueled lifestyle.
My inference from your comment is its pretty hopeless, as many of these people make a lot of noise and have a lot of political clout. I have a friend who does an Al Gore imitation while doo-dee-dooing the old Twilight Zone jingle, and the energy/conservation initiatives in the stimulus plan are just Pelosi Pork to him.
I also have a very religious friend who simply believes God is in charge, and the mere suggestion that we puny humans can influence the environment (His creation) is sacrilege.
Even worse is a high school 'physics' teacher that my brother-in-law tells me about who is a climate change denier. He also believes in Intelligent design...which is consistent with the climate change denial.
When confronted with facts, like those from the MET office, he embarks on a diatribe about how it's all a conspiracy to increase our taxes and increase the size of government.
When confronted with other facts about how well-funded those few are who deny climate and the very REAL scientific suppression of the Bush administration...and asked to resolve that disconnect with his 'conspriacy' unusual anger and threats ensue...apparently you are now part of that mysterious conspiracy and his position (which is, in fact, faith in opposition to the evidence) remains unassailable.
I tell you. I am so damm glad I live in Europe now. At least I do not have to deal with such people nearly so often.
the circle road:
I am not familiar with the effect of hcl en mass on the ozone layer. I do know that the effect of florocarbons was very detremental to it. I will have to do more research before I could make any kind of opinion. I thank you for providing a new task for me.
I would not be surprised at all if HCl had an effect. Clorine in the CFC's is precisely the problem. it acts as a catylist where the clorine atom breaks up the O3 molecule (ozone) but then exscapes itself to further break up more ozone. The point about CFC's is that, while wholly inert on the ground, they would get into the upper atmosphere where UV light from the sun was stronger and would break the CFC molecule apart, releasing the clorine atom. I cannot see why a similar situation wouldn't happen with HCl if that compound got into the upper atmosphere.
Then the question would be two fold:
1). Does the SRB from the shuttle (or other solid rock craft) produce HCL?
2). Assuming 1 is true, just how much is produced in comparison to the release of CFC's?
I am curious as to what you discover!
physicscitizen:
IF you talk to someone who thinks the climate doesn't change, you might as well stop talking as that person doesn't observe very well. I suspect that you are referring to people who question the drivers of climate change. Am I correct in that assumption?
correct.
Although I have certainly spoken to people who will insist that the climate does change, but that somehow, despite the current data, we are headed for a cooling trend. They are essentially predicting an outcome completely at odds with what nearly all climate scientists are saying and certainly at odds with all predictions of the climate models I've seen.
I would include them in the denier category as well.
Oh I should further point out that there are factors which CAN occur that blow most climate models apart. The big one, which is also acknowledged by climate scientists, would be a really big caldera-style volanic eruption. There was a really huge one called "Tambora" I think sometime in the past (180k year ago?) that might well have triggered the last ice-age.
If something even 1/10 that size were to go off again then, hey! The climate models would certainly be wrong...but the scientist already know this. Pinatubo demonstrated to them the size of the effect and they can model this too. What they cannot predict is WHEN you will get a big volcanic eruption.
P H Y S I C S C I T I Z E N
I believe you were thinking of Toba Caldera, between 70k and 75k yo. Some scientists believe that ALL of humankind was reduced to a few thousand beings in total, from this titanic cataclysm -- which explains why there is so much less DNA variation than expected otherwise.
Tambora erupted in 1815.
Namaste
Thanks! Yes that was precisely the one I was imperfectly remembering!
Cheers!
The circle road:
You may find this interesting reading.
http://www.wsl.ch/staff/jan.esper/publications/Raspopov_2008_PPP.pdf
Just had a look at this paper.
Not sure what you are supposed to take away from it. There is no mention of how these results relate to temperature or even any real prediction of what this might mean for global climate, the authors are pretty conservative with their claims.
They seem to be claiming to see an approximately 200-year periodic solar cycle. They are basing this on what seems to amount to a frequency analysis of several different forms of data.
Though that in itself is interesting there are several points to be made.
1). Is this cycle confirmed by other groups studying the same or different data?
2). Assuming 1 is true and we accept that this is a long-term variablity of the sun, then just how much does it really effect climate?
I am sceptical of this paper's claims because of the appearance of the data in the earlier plots compared to the later plots. There is no obvious such cycle in the raw data. This implies that either their filtering technique introduces a cycle (but I'm going to assume they are competent and this is not the case) or, more likely, this effect is so small as to have had only very small effects on things like the tree-ring data.
Anyway, my reading was rather quick. Do they make any predictions about future temperatures in this paper? Anything we can sink our teeth into in order to confirm or refute their claims in the future? If not then it's certainly no case either for or against climate change.
physicscitizen:
Climatically, we are cooling. There has been a warming since the Little Ice age, but looking at the climatic trend of the Halocene period, of which we are in, we are still cooling.
Anyone worth their salt knows this.
Only partly correct.
We would be cooling were it not for greenhouse gasses. This is the whole point.
The natural cycle is certainly a cooling trend. That's what 'interglacial' means when you get to the end of one...which, normally, we certainly would be....
However, what the climate scientists predict at the moment is that the current WARMING trend, which has been going on since about 1945 will conintue if we continue to do nothing about the level of greenhouse gasses that we are dumping into the atmosphere. (see this graph of average global temperatures from the UK's Met office http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/fact2.html )
So I'm not sure what you mean by the statement "Climatically, we are cooling."
That statement flies directly in the face of this simple fact. You cannot account for this warming as coming from the sun or the 11-year sunspot cycle.
Current climate models do not predict any sort of cooling trend.
Please see this site http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/fact5.html
Indeed, even the 'low' emissions model (which is NOT what the world currently is doing by the way) shows an inevitable warming of the earth.
This is one example of where the data of the future can definately prove me wrong and I would be happy to accept this. If, over the next 5 years, we see a significant drop in global temperatures it's pretty clear that the climate models are NOT predicting this (barring a volcanic eruption...see my previous post). If that happens I will have serious doubts, if that trend were to continue I would expect the climate community to take a very serious look at what they are claiming and to back off. If they do not, despite the data, then I will certainly join the people who discredit their community.
However, they have not been wrong so far as they have been warning us of this exact problem since the early 1990's. (Just because the Press has only recently cottoned on to this doesn't make it 'new'.) Indeed, there were climate predictions from then too, and guess what, they have been pretty good at predicting the general trend of global temperatures over the last 10 years.
By the way, one of the tricks that I've seen done to make the current warming trend look less worse is to take as the zero-point the average global temperature INCLUDING the years since 1945...of course, as the warming continues eventually doing this will make all the rest of temperatures seem uncommonly cool...and this is a very bad way to represent the data. The better way would be to choose as the baseline either the coldest or the hottest global temperature on record and then plot the curve....either of those (as does the plot I cited above) would show the last 55 years for what they are...a pretty steady warming trend of global temperatures.
A trend that is predicted to continue if the models include increases in greenhouse gass emmissions into the air based on human sources of release.
What has been concerning me is that the climate scientists are trying to present an exact prediction. What we rally need is a range of predictions and a probability distribution. To make policy on the scientists "best estimate" would be like designing a building only to withstand the "best estimate" of the expected earthquake shaking, or other loads - such a building would have a 50% chance collapsing! Instead, critical structures are designed for maximum credible earthquakes or storms - events with one in thousands of years chance of happening - but for which there would be great loss of life if they did happen.
My concern is that there is insufficient attention being given to climate scenarios that are remote in probability but very dire in consequences. If I was a policymaker it would be the the "end-of-humanity" scenarios that I would be interested in - not some piffling rise in sea levels or such.
---USAn---
I'm not so sure they are making exact predictions, at least none I've read. And every time new data comes out, the story is always that it's far worse than the scientists' worst-case scenarios were.
Can you convince a caucus of polar bears of this fact?
- Insurgent
Your salt is worth considerably more than your commentary.
I presume you mean the Holocene, covering roughly the last 11-12K yrs.
See, e.g. (somewhere in your References to Ignore pile), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 26 Sep 2006. Temperatures are higher now than in at least the last 12K yrs, and indeed are within 1 deg C of their maximum over the last million years.
There is no need, as above, to ridicule the notion that you are a paid shill of the fossil fuel industry. I concede them that level of sense.
It seems to me the proper phrase to use is not 'global warming' but 'climate disruption', which encompasses shifts in weather patterns including unusual temperature, wind, humidity, and precipitation patterns -not just up or down. Even if temperatures rise overall worldwide, local areas can experience other problems. 'Disruption' implies all of this, and also that it's not normal pattern changes', and that it affects our lives.
Yes I agree. Climate disruption is a much better term.
Pan
The Local chamber of commerce urges people to dismiss this as a hoax .
They recommend all passengers on the Titanic keep shopping.
Tune in to your favorite Hate Media in Isolation from reality and watch your favorite Pundit sell you down the river and enjoy.
Lets face it mankind has a defective gene.
Lets prepare to welcome the new species soon to arrive.
But we still have time to do some more damage so do not dispair, perhaps a Holy War or a Cruise to watch a species become extinct before your very eyes,while singing your favorite Hymms.
Ahhh the age of reason is upon us ,Stay the course the cliff is just ahead.
Hmmm....and what would lead your local chamber of commerce to believe that they are, in fact, experts on the Earth's climate?
Perhaps we should ask them for financial advice as well?
Do they know the origin of mass? Perhaps your chamber of commerce can tell me at what mass to find the Higgs boson. This would help me immensely in my own research.
Please do ask them!
(What would be more telling would be their reaction if they got it all wrong.)
physicscitizen:
The purpose of my link to the paper was not to prove nor disprove anything, only to show that there are other variables that are starting to be understood in climate that are of interest.
When you are talking about such a short time frame, ref 1945, this is weather as climate spans 100's of years.
I posted the link to climate from NOAA's site. It shows the temps in the past to present time. A spike in temps over such a short time does not quantify as climate. Look at how little change the Medeval warm period showed.
The link from the met stops at 2004 I believe. If it had showed current data there would be a precipitous drop as climate year 2008 was .32 above the near average I believe.
This link provides some info on dramatic temp changes in the past. Reasons for the changes are not known, but evidence of these 30 year changes are here
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/document/
Look at the MET graph more carefully.
It stops in 2007.
The La Nina event has merely slowed the warming trend, it has not stopped.
Your points on conservation I am entirely in agreement with. It is certainly true that we are using up our resources too quickly.
You must add to this a concerted push to make birth control widely available though, otherwise NO amount of conservation will have any lasting impact.
phys:
Enlarge the graph by clicking on it. You will see the spike of medevial warming is underlined.
phys:
I do have a fear of a 30 year temp change that is dramatic. There is evidence of it in the past, both cooling and warming. That type of short term change would provide so much confusion that one can only imagine the economic disruption that would be the result of either of those things happening.
Anyways, I am not here to argue that we are cooling nor warming climatically.
I am here to argue for conservation. That arguement is beyond reproach and achieves what I would desire in all of this. The conservation would take care of co2 if it is a large climate driver, while preserving the earths resources, which are finite.
I look at this through my childrens eyes. There has to be something left for them, and their children etc.
The only conspiracy in this is in that teachers mind.
Send him this link. It might help him understand.
http://totheword.blogspot.com/2004/09/biblical-stewardship-of-earth.html
Might work. Who knows.
There are equally a number of end-timers who read the exact opposite in scripture.
That is a real problem with scripture, and particularly those who use it. You can justify anything you want. My father, who was the only white student in a black college in 1968, reports that many church services he attended were filled with biblical justifications for segregation. I understand the institution of slavery was also so justified....as is a plethora of abuses against women.
My point is that I do not know which parts of the bible this particular individual chooses to believe, but they are likely the parts which align with his own desires.
Might be worth a shot though.
First of all, I push the boiler room of climate deniers aside. Exxon/Mobil funds that effort.
- - -
Now, I am with Chris Field.
--Historically, big lurches to runaway heat increases have consistently been seen in core samples.
--Several methods by which this runaway climate change might happen have been noted. Sudden heat kills forests, which then burn and release carbon dioxide. Sudden heat releases vast quantities of methane from the Arctic.
--We can measure the carbon dioxide and the methane. They are both rising.
--We can predict that our world is plunging into an era of burning coal and wood as oil substitutes, and that we are expending enormous amounts of oil extracting the oil from hard-to-tap reserves.
Sorry, Exxon/Mobil.
The good news is that we can build warm buildings, electric cars (or, better yet, non-auto transit) and renewable electric generation systems. We can also inhibit global warming. If we want to.
Hi fellow dreamers
I live in British Columbia Canada. In BC we are in the process of losing 80% of our pine forests. What used to be a beautiful green landscape is now becoming a brown desert. This is being caused by the Mountain Pine Beetle. This Beetle has always been around, but historically it was kept in check by cold winters. It takes about 5 days of -30 degree temperatures to kill the beetle. This commonly occurred when I was younger, but never does today. I am not a scientist, but it is easy to see that things are changing very rapidly. The further north you go, the more dramatic the changes. What will happen when there are no forests to convert CO2 to oxygen? I am afraid.
I think you would have to be a fool to think human activity is not contributing climate change, but even if we were not absolutely certain that this were the case, we would be even greater fools to just go on pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Unfortunately I have come to believe that that is exactly what we will do.
I often swim in Hawaii, where I grew up. Its obvious sea levels are rising. The reefs that protected inland swimming areas just don't do their job anymore, more waves get inland to disrupt the beach (as a swimmer, you notice that).
On one beach, ironwood trees near the beach have become so exposed at the root they are falling into the ocean. People say its due to a boat ramp nearby. But these trees are 80 years old, if they're a day.
Of course, many people say this warming trend just happens to coincide with a century in which CO2 levels rose 50% due to human activity. Yup, its just a coincidence.... all I can say is such people should never investigate a crime.
The tropics on fire: scientist's grim vision of global warming
Ian Sample, science correspondent
The Guardian, Monday 16 February 2009 Article
Tropical forests may dry out and become vulnerable to devastating wildfires as global warming accelerates over the coming decades, a senior scientist has warned.
Soaring greenhouse gas emissions, driven by a surge in coal use in countries such as China and India, are threatening temperature rises that will turn damp and humid forests into parched tinderboxes, said Dr Chris Field, co-chair of the UN's Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Higher temperatures could see wildfires raging through the tropics and a large scale melting of the Arctic tundra, releasing billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere that will accelerate warming even further, he said.
Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institute, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago at the weekend that the IPCC's last report on climate change in 2007 had substantially underestimated the severity of global warming over the rest of the century.
The report concluded that the Earth's temperature is likely to rise between 1.1C and 6.4C by 2100, depending on future global carbon emissions. "We now have data showing that from 2000 to 2007, greenhouse gas emissions increased far more rapidly than we expected, primarily because developing countries, like China and India, saw a huge upsurge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal," Field said. The next report, which Field will oversee, is due in 2014 and will now include future scenarios where global warming is far more serious than previous reports have suggested, he said.
Field said that if the tropics became dry enough for fires to break out, tropical forests would pass a "tipping point" from absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to releasing it.
"Tropical forests are essentially inflammable. You couldn't get a fire to burn there if you tried. But if they dry out just a little, the result can be very large and destructive wildfires. It is increasingly clear that as you produce a warmer world, lots of forested areas that had been acting as carbon sinks could be converted to carbon sources," he said. The result could lead to runaway warming.
Field's warning was echoed by French scientists, who said the IPCC's estimate that sea levels would rise around 40cm by 2100 was likely to be a best case scenario.
Former US vice-president Al Gore, who spoke at the meeting on Friday night, called for a globally coordinated stimulus to tackle climate change. "We've now reached the stage where continuing on our present course will threaten the entirety of human civilisation," he said.