The basic global warming/climate change progression is really very simple; it goes like this:
First, we burn fossil fuels.
Second carbon dioxide (CO2) is released into the atmosphere.
Third, the CO2 traps heat.
Fourth, Earth warms.
And, fifth, climate changes.
It’s not rocket science, just basic chemistry and physics, yet many elected officials and others can’t seem to grasp it.
The reality is new records are being set at each step of the global warming/climate change progression, and we are moving ever closer to irreversible change:
We are burning fossil fuels at record rates. A recent Forbes article, “World sets record for fossil fuel consumption” (June 8), states “While global coal consumption did decline by 1 percent in 2015, the world set new consumption records for petroleum and natural gas. … The net increase in fossil fuel consumption … was 2.6 times the overall increase in the consumption of renewables. As a result, despite the record increase in renewable consumption, global carbon dioxide emissions once again set a new all-time record high.”
The atmospheric CO2 concentration in the air is rapidly increasing. Measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, CO2 reached 400 ppm (parts per million) in 2013, the highest it has been in millions of years. This year, at its annual peak, it reached nearly 410 ppm. This is due in part to the exceptionally strong El Nino, but “… it is the emissions from human activities that are by far the main driver of the inexorable climb of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere,” according to Climate Central (May 16).
“We’re officially living in a new world” states The Guardian (June 16). “Carbon dioxide has been steadily rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution, setting a new high year after year.” Since most CO2 originates in the Northern Hemisphere, it has taken an extra three years, but Antarctica cleared 400 ppm on May 23, according to an announcement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: “… That’s the first time it’s passed that level in 4 million years.”
Carbon dioxide levels at the Mauna Loa observatory are poised to stay above 400 ppm year-round. They have risen from a pre-industrial level of 280 ppm and from 315 ppm just since the mid-20th century. Based on climate action pledges by United Nations member countries, atmospheric CO2 is projected to reach about 670 ppm by 2100, even in the unlikely event of full compliance.
This increasing atmospheric CO2 is trapping prodigious amounts of heat, now equivalent to five Hiroshima atomic-bomb detonations every second. Over 90 percent of this heat is accumulating in the oceans. Some of this heat was released to the atmosphere during the El Nino event we have experienced over the last temperature-record-setting year.
Earth is warming, and temperature records are being shattered. A Climate Central article in the May edition of Scientific American indicates a 99 percent chance 2016 will be the third year in a row to set a new high-temperature record. May 2016 was the 13th month in a row to set a new monthly high-temperature record, the longest stretch ever recorded according to the oceanic and atmospheric administration.
The Scientific American article illustrated that 2015, the current annual temperature record holder, peaked at just over 1.1 degrees Celsius above the 1881 to 1910 baseline, representing pre-industrial temperature, while 2016 peaked in March nearly 1.5 degrees Celsius above the baseline.
The Paris Climate Agreement reached by 195 countries last December agreed to limit warming this century to less than 2 degrees Celsius, with the added ambition of trying to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. With El Nino cooling off and the possibility of a strong, cooling La Nina following later this year, there is a chance of some temporary reprieve.
But as Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann stated in Scientific American, “The fact that we are beginning to cross key (temperature) thresholds at the monthly timescale is indeed an indication of how close we are getting to permanently exceeding those thresholds.”
Earth’s climate is changing, and it is at this point that everything gets not so simple. All of this heat flowing into the global climate system is changing everything.
Scientists don’t yet know how fast or catastrophic it will be, but the general outlines are clear: the sixth major extinction has started; sea levels are rising; small island nations, river deltas, and coastal cities face inundation; the oceans are heating and acidifying; corals are bleaching and dying; deserts are growing; fresh water supplies are declining; forests are burning; heat waves are intensifying; sea ice, glaciers, ice caps and permafrost are melting; and everything is accelerating.
Dr. Wallace Broecker, the grandfather of climate science, introduced the term “global warming” and first proposed the global ocean circulating system,
“The climate system is an angry beast, and we are poking it with sticks,” he said.
We’ve been warned!
William Gran, now retired, was an adjunct instructor on global warming and climate change at Greenfield Community College . He can be reached at whgran@gmail.com