I'm not the only one who is pondering the extreme weather we've been having in the U.S. this summer. Pick up any newspaper or read pretty much any news magazine and there's discussion of the extreme heat waves we've been having in the continental U.S.
At my Colorado field site, the snow melted a month earlier than normal, and the marmots I study emerged earlier than ever. That is the ones that survived. You see, marmots hibernate, and to successfully hibernate, they need a good "blanket." Snow provides the "blanket," and there wasn't much snow last winter (it was an exceptionally warm and dry winter), so we had what probably could be described as extra mortality from a winter drought.
In addition, it hardly rained at all in May and June, and the vegetation is much less verdant than I've ever seen it. These tinder-dry forests and meadows exploded into firestorms in the Colorado Front Range, but locally we were lucky. And now it seems we've finally got some seasonal precipitation that should forestall a summer drought. And this is important because we know that summer droughts are really bad for marmots. Fingers crossed.
But this isn't what has me pondering the current weather. A month or so ago, at a dinner party with some friends in L.A., my dad asked a climatologist colleague of mine about warming trends and storms. The one thing he said was that as the Earth warms, we'll have more extreme events; it's a statistical inevitability, given that the entire range of temperatures is shifting to the right.
A statistical inevitability. So what does this really mean? It means that what we previously viewed as big storms will be dwarfed by even bigger storms, and what we previously viewed as extreme heat waves would be dwarfed by even hotter heat waves, and what we previously viewed as extreme droughts will be dwarfed by even more extreme droughts. The new normal (in the sense of average storm intensity, temperatures, and rainfall) will shift a little, but the new extremes will be even more extreme.
For marmots (and other animals and people), this probably isn't too good. Why? Because many organisms are adapted to a relatively narrow range of environmental parameters (temperature, rainfall, humidity, etc.), and we assume that not only has natural selection acted on the average parameters, but to some extent there may be some buffering built in to cope with even greater variation. Change those parameters a little, and perhaps there will be sufficient flexibility (or what we call "phenotypic plasticity," in biological jargon) to respond to the change. But change it a lot and you risk a big die-off, because animals (and plants) have not evolved to be sufficiently flexible to respond to the new extremes.
Thus, it isn't the incremental changes in temperature associated with global warming that will necessarily have the biggest immediate effects; rather, it's that statistical inevitability -- the even bigger extreme events -- that will cause massive die-offs.
Ponder this as you're relishing the declining temperatures from the waning heat wave. The new normal will be more extreme.
They paved a desert ecosystem for wind that supported the largest population of golden eagles in this nation, and the windmills have killed multi-thousands of these eagles. When they disturbed the soil [marvelous sequestration for those climate warming, heat trapping gases] they re-released all of those sequestered gases. When they chopped away the plant biodiversity, more heat trapping gases escaped into the atmosphere.
Do we kill the planet and all the reasons man breathes for dead fields of solar and wind, like California or do we incorporate the new energies where folks live, like on rooftops, buildings, parking lots and shopping centers. No, because it is cheaper and expedient to kill the Earth to help out the climate.
Ecosystems supply mankind with all his lifelines to life itself.
The people who are building these things in the desert don't care about energy, they just want to get their hands on cheap federal lands.
At what point do we start thinking about what it's going to take to just survive - as a species? If the mid latitudes are going to become too meteorologically unstable, the polar regions are going to get very, very crowded - so is this really the best time to be drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean? How many people will be able to live on the plant and animal species that are most likely to survive on the fringes of desertified continents surrounded by acidified oceans?
Fighting over first causes right now is like arguing whose fault it is for hitting the iceberg. If we don't start behaving like what we can do ISN'T going to be enough and start planning how we're going to survive this, then clearly we don't deserve to.
have you ever read 'end game' by derrick jensen or visited the deepgreenresistance.org website?
I also saw that DGR is going to be in Portland on the 27th, and I'll definitely be checking it out.
Thanks for the links.
"Global warming! Oh, come on!"
"Well, we do have all this carbon dioxide...."
"Carbon dioxide is NOT A POISON!"
"Well, no, but it is opaque to infra-red. Which means that it contributes to global warming."
"It's not a pollutant!"
"Well, that depends on what you mean. But it is opaque to infra-red. Which means that it contributes to global warming."
"It's a natural product!"
"Some of it is natural, some is man-made. We've burned something like a trillion tons of carbon in the last century. And the CO2 is up by like 40 % in that time. So, it contributes to global warming. Because it it opaque to infra-red."
"Without carbon dioxide, we wouldn't be here!"
"Well, yes, if there was no carbon dioxide, the earth would be frozen. And if it was, say, at the level of the year 1900, we would have a temperate climate. But as it is...."
"It's PLANT FOOD!"
"Well, yes, it's true that plants use it for respiration. But it is also opaque to infra red...."
Just a tiny bit. That's why the financial industries and their allies have to rely on scary "models."
Several scientists are concerned, Earth can no longer sequester these gases because we are destroying the natural sequestration of these gases or ecosystems and their plant and animal biodiversity. What sits on the Earth influences climate as science refers to cities as heat islands. When they plowed the Great Plains grassland ecosystem for agriculture, that climate heated up. Along the Mexico and USA border, both sharing the same plant community, same ecosystem, Mexico's side grew hotter when they introduced cattle to their side of the border. The cattle consumed some of the vegetation, leaving bare spots of soil exposed.
Many scientists are more concerned with land-use changes than climate change; however, "climate regulation and moderation" are listed by ecologists as a natural ecosystem function as well as the sequestration of these gases. It's all interconnected.
Remember 1988? After experiencing the 5 hottest summers ever recorded, huge wildfires in the west in 1987 due to a long hot drought, we had 1988 where 1/2 the crops failed due to heat and drought, hurricane Gilbert called a super storm at the time, storm frequency and intensity spiraled up that summer and there were the worst forest fires seen in a century..
And what happened afterward.
Well, I left the country in 1990 and when I came back I was stunned and wondered what had happened. The USA had become SUV, McMansion, Boxstore, Sprall land. Not a word to be found anywhere about climate change, resource depletion and degradation, peak oil,..save among scientist and a few environmental groups.
Climate change is gradual from a human perspective. And since we have passed the tipping point according to many, and have 5 years left to act according to some, what do you think will happen now that the ecosystem has sent its message again for the umpteenth time, depending on how much you were paying attention. As Ted Koppel said in 1988: "I'd love to be able to say to you that I think the American public can get energized over some perceived threat forty years down the road, but I don't believe it".
Remember 1988? After having the 5 hottest summers ever recorded and a long drought in 1987 which led to wildfires in the west, in 1988 we had record breaking heat combined with a drought that destroyed half the crops in the USA. Oh and lets not forget Hurricane Gilbert--called a superstorm at the time. Oh, and there were wildfires that were called the worst seen in a century.
The message from the ecosystem has been sent already--several times--and each time everyone became an ostrich promptly thereafter. I left the USA in 1990 to live abroad and when I came back I immediately wondered what the heck happened--the US had become SUV, McMansion and box store/sprall land and not a word about climate change, peak oil, overpopulation, overconsumption of resources could be found ANYWHERE outside the scientific community and the handful of environmental organizations trying to keep up the good fight.
Climate change is gradual from the human perspective. As is resource depletion. If recent memory is any indication, the ostrich will return.
There are many stakeholders with an interest in climate change: fossil fuel resource owners and energy producers; fossil fuel energy workers; politicians; energy consumers. When the motivations and incentives of each group are examined, one finds they are all comfortable with the status quo. While one can understand the self-centered motivations of most of these groups, the real problem is the motivation of the energy consumers. Most Americans don’t want to give up their SUVs, their McMansions, their long commutes to quiet neighborhoods, their energy intensive toys, etc, and they are willing to sacrifice the survivability of their progeny to continue their profligate lifestyle. That’s the real problem, and since the politicians realize that only too well, they will do nothing to lead on this issue. Especially since most of them are in the pockets of the energy industry and energy intensive industries to start with. That’s why I don’t see a resolution to this problem, short of a Civil War.
We may be beyond the tipping point already, but if not, I don’t see the will to make the drastic sacrifices that will allow us to dodge the bullet.
All the evidence I see tells me that many of the positive feedback loops are already in motion. Almost all the observations are beyond worst case predictions. The situation is somewhat analogous to pancreatic cancer. By the time the symptoms and diagnosis are conclusive for pancreatic cancer, it is usually too late. The latest time to take corrective action is when the precursors to pancreatic cancer appear, and the best time is before the precursors appear, when prevention is possible.
We are seeing the precursors to global warming presently. Because of the lags and latencies in the system, by the time the evidence becomes irrefutable, it will be too late. All the positive feedback loops will be self-reinforcing. On paper, if we essentially stopped fossil fuel use tomorrow, we might be in time, and I emphasize 'might'. Realistically, the trends are in the opposite direction. There are great pressures for us and the Russians to drill as much as possible, and I see no reversing direction. I see no way out.
The gravity of the climate change problem is being downplayed. We have a bunch of positive feedback loops, all going in the same direction, and reinforcing each other. The process is governed mathematically by nonlinear dynamics, whose basic thesis is that small changes at the boundary can result in very large changes in the interior. None of the models contain anywhere near the phenomena we already know, much less those that have yet to be found. Any of these additions to the models will make the projections far worse, and could be catastrophic.
These models are lagging behind what the computers can handle, what is known observationally, and what is known about how to describe these phenomena mathematically. I have the uneasy feeling that neither industry nor government nor the journal Editors nor even the researchers want the full extent of the situation to be known. Perhaps they feel it would lead to widespread panic and chaos, or widespread depression, or revolution, or whatever. Or, maybe the researchers have been attacked by the skeptics and deniers for so long that they have become ultra-conservative in what they say and publish. But, it’s clear as crystal to me that the future effects of climate change are being vastly understated.
I fully understand why most climate scientists are reluctant to become too vocal or political, owing to the considerable personal risk to themselves and their families for doing so, and the risk of being targeted by organizations like the Heartland Institute and the Koch Brothers and losing their jobs.
However, if the risk is truly as great as some say it is, then it must be done anyway.
And what will Europe become when the gulf stream changes ?
It is obvious things are changing & to those who continue to deny this FACT simply because they want to remain loyal to their political party are the true problem...They know better yet they continue to claim nothing is going on.
We are far past the time where most thinking people can still be fooled by right wing propaganda so I am quickly losing the patients I once had for those who claim to be skeptical...They are simply DENIERS denying something they know in their hearts is taking place!