Global Warming, Our Immediate Responsibility
January is a good month. It’s a month that is the human symbol of starting over. Out with the old, in with the new. This January was particularly exciting for us here in the US, as we ushered in a new era of progressive politics with almost a little too much pomp and circumstance. But underneath the excitement lies a particularly disconcerting truth. We still have a nation to fix.
- » See also: CARB Unveils DriveClean, a New Web Tool to Help Consumers Pick Green Cars
- » Get Gas 2.0 by RSS or sign up by email.
I like getting big things out of the way, so here it is. According to Susan Solomon, scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, once global warming sets in, it isn’t going away. The voice on NPR told me with such solemnity that I assumed that we had already lost the war with Global Warming. No matter how evenly I accelerated my car, it would no longer matter because the damage was done. Once I stopped hyperventilating I realized that there was more to the story, and the thoughtful voice informed me that the effects haven’t reached the point of no return yet. The oceans are currently padding the effects of global warming, holding it in check indefinitely. According to Solomon, the oceans will be able to hold off the siege of carbon dioxide for some time, but there are more immediate problems at hand.
According to Solomon’s study published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, not immediately curtailing our carbon emissions could create permanent dust-bowl conditions in the U.S. Southwest as well as the Mediterranean. I immediately thought of all the wonderful French wines I wouldn’t be able to try if that happened and subsequently panicked until I was informed that even this could take decades. I let out a nervous sigh of relief, knowing that this news just adds to the urgency of our battle for the atmosphere.
“We’re used to thinking about pollution problems as things that we can fix. Smog, we just cut back and everything will be better later. Or haze, you know, it’ll go away pretty quickly,” Solomon said of cleaning up our current mess. “People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years. What we’re showing here is that’s not right. It’s essentially an irreversible change.”
It’s still rather unsettling that we can’t get a better picture of what kind of time frame we’re working on here. Global warming isn’t exactly priority number one on everyone’s list, which is understandable considering our current economic meltdown. A Rasmussen Report as well as a Pew Research Center Pole taken around inauguration time showed a general cooling in global warming concern. Again, the current economic crisis calls for immediate attention, but how much longer will it be until global warming gets immediate attention?
Fortunately, we’re already beginning to see a drastic reversal of climate change policies as President Obama opened the door for states to regulate their own emissions (something California has been chomping at the bit to do). Of course I’m worried that global warming apathy will continue and lead to irreparable repercussions, but at the same time I’m optimistic. The Pew pole showed that in general, environmental issues are important to the American public, and that right now we’re just experiencing a lull. On the other hand the Rasmussen Report showed again that the American public is becoming increasingly divided along party lines, especially when dealing with the environment (21% of questioned Republicans believe that global warming is being induced by human activity).
President Obama has made it a priority of his to curtail global warming, and he hired an energy secretary who knows his science to prove it, but we can’t forget that our planet is our responsibility. No matter how many laws are enacted or how much reach the EPA is granted, it will still ultimately be up to us how far we allow global warming to go before it’s stomped out.
Sources:
The New York Times (There is a nice little graph here that shows how America’s concerns have changed over the years)
National Public Radio
Thanks to CarbonNYC for the picture (via Flickr creative commons).
And in case you missed it, our Fireside Chat for the week.
John,
Just circling back to this… Interesting that you would use a radical leftist web site to make your point. For your information, I’m not a member of the GOP, I am actually a registered Democrat, but I am also a conservative. Also, I blame Republicans and Democrats equally for out current lame responses to everything from “global-warming” to international terrorism.
Here’s the real issue, we will allow some pseudo-scientific proof to set the global policies, which will effect us until some singularity does a reboot of the entire world. You might recall that scientists once thought that all disease was caused by an imbalance in the bodily humours: blood, water, yellow bile and black bile.
I think that’s about where climatologists are right now. Would you fly on an airline that has a < 75% safe landing experience? Well, climatologists aren’t that accurate…
There are a few scenarios that have been brought forward by some leading scientists over the last 5 years.
One is called Global Dimming, this is cause by the amount of pollution in the atmosphere, wheather it be natural or man made, and we know that we are taking or making an effect on thisbecause if you remember back to 911, when all avaiation was stopped, areas over the un tited states rose by 1 degree within 24 hours, because of the clearer skies.
It has also been witnessed in place like austrailia where a tried and tested simple method of pan evaporation has been used for many decades now, which also proves that there is a cooling effect over certain parts of the planets surface because of the global dimming effect.
However,
Every year we are pumping an unatural amount of particulates into the atmosphere in a chain like manner to the equivalent of at least, 2500 billion tons and that’s only three continents, North America 900 billion, China 700 billion and Europe another 800 billion tons, this is bound to be making a difference and climbing, each year, China is just getting started with their industrial revolution.
The extra unatural pollution is really raking havoc with the weather pattern, we have been witnesing freak droughts on a regulat basis today, where there were once fertile vallies in certain african countries there are now arid wastelands incapable of growing crops, due to the pollution in the air, that pollution is taking longer to become saturated with moisture and moves further away from traditional areas before it has taken on enough liquid to form rain and fall under its own weight, its similar to when we try to make rain by adding aluminium to the air from an areoplane, you know the rain maker technique.
There have been naturally caused droughts caused by volcano activity, but also without that natural inbalance caused by us, what this all means certain parts of the world will get hotter and others cooler but on the whole its getting warmer, the glaciers in Greenland and the northern ice cap now no thicker than 1 meter overall are telling us this.
I forgot to say the grounded aircraft throughout the country saved enough fuel to run all the cars in the USA for a year.
The clearer skies over the country that day let through the sunlight and experts are saying without that pollution sheild the earth will warm up even faster, if we carry on adding the greenhouse gasses and cleaning up the pollution its gonna get a whole lot hotter.
Her is a group of individuals of all walks of life, perhaps we might get a beter picture of what is being said and thought id we watched the video, check it out
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2174195060267517042&hl=en
enjoy.