Climate Changing Faster, Stronger

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.

Future of Permafrost – bigger issue than ice

From Science Daily we learn of a new study published in the Journal of BioScience, Sep. 2008, on potential impacts of thawing arctic permafrost. Over millennia, according to the study authors, northern latitude permafrost has sequestered a trillion tons of organic compounds. Warming in the Arctic, which melts the polar ice cap, also has the effect of melting the permafrost and releasing carbon dioxide. The new study doubles the estimated amount of carbon stored, and likewise increases the amount estimated to be released into the atmosphere as the permafrost warms. In fact the estimate now is that leakage from northern permafrost may be the equivalent of half of all other carbon released by land use in this century on Earth.

It is this phenomenon that leads some scientists to be concerned about a run-away climate change scenario, in which temperatures could spiral more rapidly that can be dealt with. One possible counter balance will be the encroachment of carbon absorbing trees into the tundra, but this process is quite slow in relative terms.

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.

Future of Arctic Ice – New Data

Among the interesting policy positions of the new Vice President nominee designate of the Republican Party, Sarah Palin, is that global warming, if it exists, is not related to human activity, and that polar bears are in no danger in the Arctic and thus do not need endangered species designation. As a futurist speaker, I hear these same positions echoed after each of my talks in which I mention global warming, if I include that topic. One or more people will come up to me after the speech and ask if I am aware that the whole idea of global warming is a plot on the part of some who want more government control, or that other planets are warming just as much, or that melting arctic ice is just a natural cycle, or more recently that whatever warming had been happening came to an end a decade ago according to data from NOAA (though one can search the NOAA site for hours and not find reference to such data).

Two stories caught my attention yesterday that add to this discussion. First, apparently as the 2008 summer Artic melt seasons nears its end, for the first time in 125,000 years the ice has retreated sufficiently on all boundaries that an ice-free passage is open an all sides.

Compare these photos:

Second, the ice has retreated so far from the coast line in some areas, more than 400 miles, that polar bears have been observed, as their immediate ice flow disintegrates, beginning a swim of 400 miles toward the retreating sea ice rather than 60 miles south toward Alaska. They do this according to instinct, as the ice is their summer home and hunting platform. Bears generally have not been known to survive swims of more than 100 miles, so these particular bears are probably swimming to their deaths.

The end of August report on the extent of Arctic sea ice will be available soon, and so far the year 2008 is shaping up to be a least the 2nd worst year in record keeping history, after 2007.

The prospect of a national office holder who ignores scientific data is of concern, though this would not be new.

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.

Ice continues to diminish

Afer a long and icy winter in many parts of the world, especially in the U.S., and now that we are in mid-summer, what is happening with ice caps? Both the north and south poles are considered important as indicators of the future direction of the planet as related to global warming, since heat accumulates at a faster rate at the poles. Here is some recent news.

Current satellite images show the Wilkens ice sheet in the Antarctic nearing a full detachment from an island to which it has been connected. The images are similar to recent partial collapses of the Larsen A and Larsen B ice shelves. Most interesting, the current collapse is happening in the Anarctic winter, which makes it unsual.

Commenting on the phenomenon at the European Space Agency web site, Prof. David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said: "Wilkins Ice Shelf is the most recent in a long, and growing, list of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula that are responding to the rapid warming that has occurred in this area over the last fifty years."

He went on to say,

Current events are showing that we were being too conservative, when we made the prediction in the early 1990s that Wilkins Ice Shelf would be lost within thirty years - the truth is it is going more quickly than we guessed."

At the other end of the planet, the North Pole, the summer melt is underway, and the most recent data from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center is that the melt level at this time is similar to that of 2007, when the greatest melt recorded took place. This has caused estimates of when the Artic might be ice free to be moved from 2040 to as early as 2012.

These developments are not really so surprising, given trends of recent years.

Here is Seattle this week a confernce will convene of climate change skeptics, who will argue that either the observed ice pack melting is not really happening, or, if it is, it is of no consquence. My thinking is that it is smarter to behave as though it matters, and do what we can to slow accumulation of green house gases, just as we buy insurance against personal accidents. It would be smart, as any insurance agent will tell you, to purchase this insurance sooner rather than later.

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.

Peak Oil and Global Warming – the Cross Matrix

There are three convergent items that all raise the question of the link between global warming and future fossil fuel use. Recent testimony to Congress from oil executives once again included assurances that there is sufficient oil to last for decades, and that no matter what, oil, coal and gas will still comprise the vast majority of energy supplies in use.

This has been a generally accepted view for two reasons, first the fact that oil reserve estimates have generally grown sufficiently that there is always a "40-year" supply on the books. However, the European branch of the OilDrum (which publishes a variety of credible challenges to this assumption) this week pointed to a most intriguing advertisement (PDF) placed in national publications by Shell Oil. This "advertisement" is one of a series of "conversations" about the future of energy. But intriguing is not really the right word, rather the appropriate description is "disturbing." In it Jeremy Leggett, a UK expert on peak oil and climate, puts it this way:

Renewable and efficient energy technology will have to replace fossil fuels far faster than most people currently anticipate.

It is interesting to speculate why Shell is publishing this at this time, but one possibility is that they are preparing the field for the future. You can watch a video of Jeremy at YouTube.

Second, Dr. James Hanson, NASA climate specialist took note of the expectation that we'll just look for more expensive and dirtier fossil fuels to keep the global engine running, an article of faith for many as noted. Hanson, speaking to the Guardian in the UK, argued that recent science is asking if the accepted global target for maximum CO2 in the atmosphere is in fact too high. He put it this way:

"If you leave us at 450ppm for long enough it will probably melt all the ice - that's a sea rise of 75 metres. What we have found is that the target we have all been aiming for is a disaster - a guaranteed disaster," Hansen told the Guardian.

Hanson is now beginning to advocate that we quickly phase out fossil fuels for transportation.

Finally, we turn to Al Gore again. He recently spoke to the 2008 TED conference, and the video of his short program was just posted by them. He takes on some of the standard challenges to global warming science - such as it being a simple natural cycle, or the result of sun cycles - but mostly he communicates a sense of urgency worth thinking about.

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.