Climate Changing Faster, Stronger
by Glen Hiemstra on 22/10/08 at 2:24 pm | 
According to an article currently up at CNN, the global climate is changing faster, stronger, sooner. This news is not surprising. The Snow and Ice Data Center, which tracks the Arctic situation among other responsibilities, reported in the end of summer 2008 survey of the extent of Arctic Ice after the summer melt period that the ice had declined to the second greatest extent in their records, topped only by 2007. Moreover, the ice, while covering a bit larger area, was at the same time thinner, meaning the total mass of ice was the lowest in their record keeping.
The urgency of responding to climate change is not diminishing, but the political will to respond may take a hit from the global financial crisis. If so, it will be unfortunate because beneath the financial crisis we find the critical factors of climate change and fossil fuel use and these will continue. In fact, the financial crisis is likely to make the situation worse in terms of climate, because lower demand for fossil fuels will temporarily decrease prices and thus decrease a sense of urgency in developing the next energy era. All of this could add up to greater problems in the medium to long term.
Agreeing with that point of view is an excellent article by Johann Hari, columnist for The Independent in the UK. His piece, “Don’t kill the planet in the name of saving the economy” is blunt and to the point. Given current trends, a global temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit will be “locked in.”
That condemns Bangladesh and the islands of the South Pacific to drowning.
But, if we turn our attention away from global warming to other issues deemed more important, then trends will likely get worse, leading to greater termperature leaps. Another degree Celsius and Siberian peat bogs melt and release methane, causing temperatures to move toward 4 or 5 degrees Celsius higher (7-9 degrees Fahrenheit).
The good news is that measures to tackle global warming and next energy needs are also the ones that will help revive the economy. No time to back off now.
Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet TV show host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.
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Glen Hiemstra
Oct 23rd, 2008
Jason, what you say makes sense. There is apparently a lot of discussion about solar activity now, with global warming skeptics saying that any recent warming is due to solar activity. Meanwhile those who assume human activity is at least partly causal are trying to figure out how solar activity relates, what it will mean that sunspot acivity is very low right now, and so on. Even if you are not “right” about the missing variable(s), and most warming is in fact related to CO2 and other green house gases, the amount in the pipeline so-to-speak is so much that we’ll be trying to adjust regardless of any efforts to slow it down.
Jason Eckhart
Oct 23rd, 2008
I am a forecaster by profession. When an algorithmn predicts something will happen 30 years from now and reality says it is already happening, it means my algorithmn is so far off the mark I have no choice but to start all over. Given the high value assigned to man-made CO2 in current global warming algorithmns, this result tells us WE ARE MISSING SOME VITAL PIECE OF THE SYSTEM and that piece cannot be man-made CO2, which we are already accounting for. The most likely source of the error is an undervaluing of solar activity. If I’m right, we need to focus on surviving what is inevitable.