Feeling The Heat

by Jim Motavalli

The reality of catastrophic climate change doesn't seem to be getting through to people, and it's not hard to understand why. Global warming is dismissed as speculation by the President and Congress, and cited--if at all--by the news media in confusing tit-for-tat exchanges full of scientific jargon. The small band of skeptics is given equal weight with the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, and their bantering about computer models, aerosols and ice cores just confuses the public.

The cold winter of 2002 to 2003 was fodder for the morning shock jocks. "Where's your global warming now?" they asked. Even if it does come, they're all for it, because it means they can enjoy pina coladas poolside in November.

But the scientists are telling us that climate change is not simply a global hot foot; it's subtler and far more dangerous than that. Instead, we've entered an era of profound climatic instability, with more severe storms and great variations in temperature and rainfall.

The essays in this book are reports from the climate front. As Ross Gelbspan notes in the Introduction, the science of global warming is no longer being seriously debated. It's real, and it's here. From China to New York, minor changes in what were fairly established weather patterns have already produced profound and permanent effects to local ecosystems. Fish species are disappearing, with ripples throughout the food chain. Birds and butterflies are moving, turning up in places they've never been seen before. Some plants are dying, others thriving as manmade climatic changes accelerate.

It's no great mystery what causes global warming: carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, cars and trucks, cooking fires and deforestation results in most of it. As Americans, we have a primary responsibility. The U.S. transportation system emits more carbon dioxide than any other nation's entire economy (with the sole exception of China), reports the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

We could reduce those emissions with a collective will, embodied in legislation like the Kyoto Treaty, but very little progress has been made. In only a few places--most notably, Europe--are people not only paying attention but also acting on their awareness. (And even the Europeans are missing their targets under the Kyoto Treaty.) Meanwhile, the ominous buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues.

This book grew out of a lengthy article package underwritten with the generous support of the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation and appearing in the October/November 2000 edition of E/The Environmental Magazine. We wanted to move beyond the scientific debate. The idea was to document--through the kind of in-depth, heavily sourced reporting the magazine is known for--the evidence for a changing climate.

We certainly found it. Our reporters traveled to India, China, Australia, Fiji, Antarctica, and the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbuda. In the U.S., we visited Alaska, coastal California, the Pacific Northwest, New Jersey and New York City.

This book represents a considerable expansion of that original reporting, and adds a chapter on threats and challenges in Europe. Taken together, it offers overwhelming evidence that global warming is underway, producing exactly the extreme weather events predicted by the vast majority of the world's scientific community.

In his 1997 book Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Business, S. Fred Singer wrote, "At most, we believe there will be a modest warming in the [21st century], generally beneficial for agriculture and human welfare. Available evidence suggests that none of the extreme fears about severe weather events, sea-level rise, and spread of diseases, is warranted."

But the "available evidence" suggests no such thing. The testimony in this book is reported from the field, through interviews not only with scientists but with ordinary working people whose lives and livelihoods have already been profoundly affected by the very events that Singer speculates are unlikely to occur.

Is the choking cloud of particulate matter over most of Asia "beneficial for agriculture and human welfare"? Does the loss of beaches and rising waves help the vital tourism industry in island paradises like Antigua and Fiji? Isn't the disappearing ice in Alaska, which is already decimating keystone species like the polar bear, a "severe weather event"?

If the evidence in this book isn't enough, consider these anecdotal news stories reported in 2002 and 2003:

April 22, 2002: Glaciers are disappearing in South America. Within the next 15 years, all of the continents small glaciers (80 percent of the total), will disappear, according to French glaciologist Bernard Francou. "The trend is so clear that you can't argue with the numbers," he says. (Grist Magazine);

November 9, 2002: Scientists are linking the loss of lobster populations in Long Island Sound to global warming. Dr. Alistair Dove of the State University of New York says that lobsters are dying from what the New York Times summarizes as the "stress of an environment that had become hostile to their ancient internal thermostats." According to Dr. Dove, "The correlation is very strong. Not proven, but strong. Climate is the killer here." (New York Times);

December 9, 2002: The Arctic reports record ice loss, according to scientists from the American Geophysical Union. Surface melt in Greenland was the highest in recorded history. Arctic sea ice also reached a record low (BBC);

December 11, 2002: 2002 will likely go down in history as the second warmest on record, exceeded only by 1998. "Studying [the] annual temperature data, one gets the unmistakable feeling that temperature is rising and that the rise is gaining momentum," says environmentalist Lester Brown (Earth Policy Institute);

January 9, 2003: Dr. Andrew Derocher of the University of Alberta, Canada says the polar bear could be driven to extinction by the loss of Arctic ice, which is melting at a rate of up to nine percent per decade. Arctic summers could be ice-free by mid-century (BBC);

February 14, 2003: In China, severe floods that used to occur once every 20 years now occur in nine out of every 10 years. The number of people devastated by hurricanes or cyclones has increased eightfold to 25 million a year over the past 30 years. The oceans currently absorb 50 times more carbon dioxide than is contained in the atmosphere (Guardian International);

February 26, 2003: Changes in forest productivity, the migration of tree species and potential increases in wildfires and disease could cause substantial changes to U.S. forests. The timber industry in the southern United States is particularly vulnerable (Pew Center on Global Climate Change);

April 9, 2003: The Great Lakes region, which holds the world's largest source of fresh water, could face baking heat, droughts, floods and other catastrophes as global warming raises its temperature over the next century, according to a two-year scientific analysis coordinated by the Union of Concerned Scientists (Environmental News Network);

May 28, 2003: Papua New Guinea is trying to convince two small communities of Polynesians, about 2,000 people, that they should leave their homes on sinking tropical atolls northeast of Bougainville Island. Crops are reportedly being affected by seawater inundation. The Takuu people, one of the groups affected, have a 3,000-year history and more than 1,000 songs. Eric Ani of Papua New Guinea's Disaster and Emergency Management Office says, "It probably is because of the effects of the greenhouse. There is talk of islands sinking everywhere in the world" (Agence France-Presse);

July 3, 2003: The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which usually produces technical reports and statistics, changed course to announce that the world's weather is going haywire. The WMO, which works with the weather services of 185 countries, documented record high and low temperatures, record rainfall and storms--and linked it to global warming. There were record temperatures in England and southern France, an unprecedented number of tornadoes in the U.S., and severe monsoon heat waves in India. According to the WMO, 2003 could be the hottest year ever recorded (The Independent).

In sum, the evidence is clear that global warming is no longer speculative. Whether it's politically convenient or not, it has arrived. Controlling it is emerging as the major challenge of our time.