The Earth has a fever!
Image by tandokuno-gurl.
Guest post from Colin Price, a professor in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science at Tel Aviv University.
Global warming is here and is real. The Earth has a fever! When we get a fever our body temperature rise by 1–2 degrees, and we feel pretty rotten. We stay at home, don’t want to talk to anyone, we are cranky, and we behave strangely. That fever is relative to our average body temperature of 37C (you will have to translate Celsius to Fahrenheit if you wish). Well, the Earth has a similar fever of 1 C at the moment, relative to its average temperature of 15 C. And similar to our bodies that start acting strange when we have a fever, the Earth is also starting to show signs of irritability, strange behaviour, which we are noticing through changes in the weather and climate.
The facts are that the temperatures observed today and during the last few decades are the highest they have been for at least 1000 years if not longer (we don’t have accurate data further than that). Furthermore, the concentration of greenhouse gases that are known to absorb heat emitted from the Earth’s surface are now the highest we have seen in at least 600 thousand years, and likely longer (we have no data going back further in time). If you don’t trust the temperature data, take a look outside. 95% of all mountain glaciers around the world are melting and receding. The Greenland ice sheet is dramatically losing mass (ice) due to melting, while the summer Arctic sea ice is continuously shrinking every year.
Okay, so things are getting warmer. But perhaps it is a natural cycle of the Earth? Perhaps, but lets look at the data again. Over the history of the Earth the population of humans on the planet was always below 500 million, until suddenly at the start of the Industrial Revolution around 1800, the population start increasing dramatically, to the present number of more than 6 billion people. Within 200 years the population shot up, and it continues today. Why did it increase so dramatically? Better standards of living, technology, medicine, agriculture, etc. resulted in longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, possibilities to feed many people from a single farm, etc. It just so happens that as the population of the globe started shooting up, so did the concentrations of some gases in the atmosphere that we call greenhouse–gases. These gases are primarily CO2, CH4, N2O and more recently CFCs and O3. All these gases are produced by our burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas), agricultural practices and industrial practices around the world. When we look back over the last 1000 years, we notice that the concentration of these greenhouse gases were very stable in the atmosphere, but they ALL shot up starting around 1800 and continue to increase rapidly today. 99% of all climate scientists will agree that the increase in these gases over the last 200 years in the atmosphere is due to anthropogenic activities on our planet.
Well, that still does not mean the warming we are observing is caused by the increasing greenhouse gases. But it can explain the warming. There is NO other way of explaining the present global warming of the Earth. Some scientists suggest the sun is responsible for the warming, others claim cosmic rays that change the amount of clouds, while others still deny the reliability of the data. However, we can use computer models to simulate the past and present climate to better understand the connections between the sun, greenhouse gases and the climate. All climate models manage to reproduce the present day warming only when they include the increasing trends of greenhouse gases into their models. Without the increasing greenhouse gases the models cannot reproduce the present day warming. Well, the models may not be good enough, or they may be missing something. Maybe. However, these same models manage to simulate the present day climate fairly well, and also manage to simulate past ice ages fairly well. So they strengthen the argument of cause–and–effect.
These climate models are also the crystal ball that allow us climate researchers to look into the future. Here we are less certain of what may happen in the next decades. All models predict warmer temperatures, increased sea level and changes in rainfall patters (some places drier with others wetter). The possibilities of future changes in the climate may results in many changes in our lives, although looking into the future is somewhat speculative. Some models predict increases in heat waves, droughts, forest fires in some regions of the globe, while in other regions we can expect increases in the frequency of flash floods and intense storms. Will hurricanes increase in intensity and number in a warmer world? Will malaria spread in third world countries? Will water scarcity result in regional conflicts in the future? What about mass evacuations of populations due to sea level rise?
Can something be done to stop the global warming? Well, if it really is caused by the increasing greenhouse gases, then the answer is YES. It is simply a matter of money, and who is going to pay. Nobody wants to decrease their own standard of living, but solving the problem of global warming means decreasing our standard of living. Whether it is paying more for gasoline to drive our cars, paying more for clean electricity, or paying more taxes so governments can invest in alternative renewable energy sources, we will all have to pay in the end. The only long term solution is to dramatically reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, primarily CO2, but also CH4 and N2O. Wind energy, hydroelectric power, solar energy, geothermal, biomass and even nuclear energy are possible solutions that will dramatically reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. These sources of energy produce only a small fraction of the worlds energy needs today.
What we scientists are worried about now are surprises. It is much easier to melt the Greenland ice sheet than it is to rebuild it. The ice and snow around the planet have a cooling effect due to their white color that reflects large amounts of solar radiation back to space. Without this ice and snow, additional radiation will be absorbed at the surface and the Earth will warm even more. The thawing of the high latitude permafrost (frozen ground) may result in huge emissions of CH4 that will also accelerate the warming.
A few more degrees warming, and the Earth will need to be put in intensive care!
Colin Price
Professor
Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science
Tel Aviv University
NEW! Find related content with Sphere
Short list of Global Warming Naysayers:
Claude Allègre
Bruce Anderson
Ron Bailey
Sallie Baliunas
Tim Ball
Robert Balling
Joe Barton
Glenn Beck
Bruno Behrend
David Bellamy
Tom Bethell
Roy Blunt
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen
Robert M. Carter
Alan Caruba
Ian Castles
George V. Chilingar
John Christy
Ian Clark
Philip Cooney
Michael Crichton
John Lawrence Daly
David Douglass
Myron Ebell
Michael Fumento
William M. Gray
Lester Hogan
Sherwood B. Idso
Andrey Illarionov
Jim Inhofe
Zbigniew Jaworowski
Penn Jillette
Herman Kahn
William Kininmonth
Theodor Landscheidt
Nigel Lawson
David Legates
Marcel Leroux
Rush Limbaugh
Richard Lindzen
Bjorn Lomborg
Phil Longman
Ross McKitrick
Stephen McIntyre
Patrick Michaels
Steven Milloy
Forrest Mims
Kary Mullis
Jane Orient
Trey Parker
Benny Peiser
Melanie Phillips
Arthur B. Robinson
James R. Schlesinger
Frederick Seitz
Julian Lincoln Simon
Fred Singer
Fred L. Smith
Willie Soon
Thomas Sowell
Roy Spencer
Mary Starrett
Matt Stone
John Stossel
Philip Stott
Brian Sussman
Jan Veizer
What is it that these people are naysaying? That global warming is happening? That it is a problem? That it is due (at least in part) to increasing greenhouse gases? That it is caused (at least in part) to human activity?
Here is one of many examples of organized naysayers:
The Natural Resources Stewardship Project:
http://www.nrsp.com/background.html
From the organization’s website:
First Year Initiatives
First Priority Project:
“Understanding Climate Change” A proactive grassroots campaign to counter the Kyoto Protocol and other greenhouse gas reduction schemes while promoting sensible climate change policy.Second Priority Project:
“The Science Audit Centre” The establishment of an independent and highly credible auditing mechanism to properly review scientific studies before they are employed as a basis of national and international environmental policy decisions.What is that they are naysaying?
Hi Bruce! It’s my impression that they’re naysaying all sorts of things. Every imaginable objection to the reality of global warming is out there … that it isn’t getting warmer, period … that it’s getting cooler instead of warmer … that, okay, it’s getting warmer but it’s a natural change, not caused by humans … okay, it’s getting warmer, but maybe that’s a good thing … okay, humans are causing it, but we shouldn’t try to do anything about it because it’ll wreck our economy, etc. etc. You also hear crazy things about global warming. I’m hearing people use the word “hoax” to describe it.
It seems hard for some people to accept the simple fact of the situation. Earth is getting warmer, and humans beings are playing a primary role in that warming.