Is Right Now Too Late to Reverse Climate Change?
It can be argued that the concept of global warming is an objective or uncertain condition. Many have disputed the science regarding global warming, and maintain that it is arguable that global warming is a reality that should be handled with any sort of urgency. Global surface temperature has increased slightly more than one degree Fahrenheit that is absolutely verifiable in the last century. It is nearly an unqualified certainty that this increase is a direct result of human activity. It has been established that this conclusion, “[has] been endorsed by at least 30 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.” (Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC) However, there are arguments to the contrary, such as solar variation, forcing and feedback, climate variability, and pre-human climate variations. A discussion is necessary to ascertain whether these are important or useful contentions.
Solar variation is defined as “changes in the amount of solar radiation emitted by the Sun.” The fundamental argument here is that humans have no effect on how the Sun affects the Earth, according to the science that is presently available. Some researchers, the renowned Peter Stott among them, have suggested that “the cooling effects of volcanic dust and sulfate aerosols have been underestimated.” (Climate Change and Solar Variability: What’s New Under the Sun?) However, even after a fourteen page report and extensive research, this group of scientists ultimately concluded that most of the warming since the Industrial Age is likely due to the undisputed anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gases. The researchers deduced that, “…overall, the role of solar activity in climate changes…remains unproven and most probably represents a second-order effect.” The inference from this report is that even after staunch opposition to the idea of human generated global warming, these scientists could not establish a case for natural solar variation.
Climate forcing and feedback are occurrences that are sometimes encompassed within the term “climate variability” and are another theory that some have used to explain global warming and dispute human involvement. Climate forcing is a well known and proven phenomenon that involves debatably “spontaneous” events such as changes in oceanic circulation, changes in the composition of the atmosphere, volcanic eruptions, and meteorite collisions. A climate feedback is the indirect change within a climate system in response to a forcing mechanism. Essentially, localized climates are forced to assimilate to naturally occurring events, and it is unpredictable whether these changes happen permanently. The problem with proving that climate forcing and feedback are causing a “natural” global warming is that all of the forcing mechanisms seem to be relating directly to human activity. For instance, human-generated greenhouse gases are causing polar ice to melt at a rapidly increasing rate. The amount of greenhouse gases that humans generate is proven, measured, and tracked constantly, and the link between greenhouse gases and global warming is undisputed. As the ice melts, land or open water takes its place, both of which are less reflective than ice. The less reflective land or water then absorbs more solar radiation than ice would, and causes more warming. This in turn causes more melting, and the cycle continues. It would be convenient and uncomplicated to determine that the original problem, climate forcing, is always a free-occurring event that has nothing to do with humans, and although that may be infrequently true, the evidence for most events is overwhelmingly contrary. Among the many documented and recently experienced consequences of global warming are an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events which include episodes of volcanic activity, atmospheric changes, and oceanic current variations. These events, unfortunately, cannot be explained as naturally occurring climate forcing in recent times because they continue to increase.
Some scientists have argued that since the Earth has undergone several warming and cooling periods in the past, humans essentially should not concern themselves with their effect on the planet. The recent Antarctic EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) ice core spans the past 800,000 years, and provided scientists with a wealth of information, including an indication that there were interglacial warm periods comparable to present temperatures. (A Note on the Relationship Between Ice Core Methane Concentrations and Insolation, Geophysical Research Letters) This should be encouraging, because these warm periods were obviously pre-human, and would be, save for the fact that they caused happenings such as the Permian-Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago. As an illustration and a defense for concern, attention should be called to the fact that during the mass extinction of the Permian-Triassic period, it is estimated that 96 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of terrestrial vertebrate species ceased to exist permanently.
The extremely obvious conclusion to this very important problem is that it would behoove the human race to work together to reverse global warming no matter what the cause, and also that it is overwhelmingly and unmistakably evident that the source of global warming is human life. None of the opposing scientific theories presented otherwise explain global warming, and most are self-serving, unreasonable, and sightless as far as reality and the future are concerned.
Polar ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, extreme weather events are happening more frequently, agricultural yields are changing…the list goes on endlessly, and humans continue to argue ineffectually about who is to blame. Furthermore, other shortly expected effects of global warming include mass species extinction, expansion of subtropical desert regions, increases in the ranges of disease vectors, and the acidification of the oceans. It seems that with these horrifying events on the horizon, humans should be banding together to educate each other and assimilate to a common viewpoint for the sake of survival. Instead, present-day educators are ridiculed and every effort is made to disprove their ideas, despite a wealth of evidence for their case. In addition, people have changed their living habits very little as far as returning ways of living before the Industrial Age, before the rapid decline of the climate began. Status and wealth continue to reign supreme, at a tremendous expense to the environment, and Americans continue to live like kings while the entire planet begs for mercy.
Even though there are environmentalists giving earnest speeches all over the world about what we can do “Right Now!” to reverse global warming, no one seems to be listening. My personal opinion is that the vast majority of people have immeasurably underestimated the importance and urgency of climate change, and that it is much too late to have any sort of chance to stop it “starting now.”
Originally published at http://jessicakenley.wordpress.com on October 14, 2019.
