The world heats up

[foolsbreath]

The world heats up

The effects of this increase are already appearing. Since the end of the last century temperatures have drifted up by 0.6 °C. The 1990s were the hottest decade on record. More and more storms –a byproduct of global warming– are raging around the world. Asian monsoons are becoming less predictable. Unusually extreme droughts and floods are wreaking havoc in China, East Africa, the Middle East, Europe, North America, New Zealand and the Indian subcontinent. Warmer, more CO2-laden waters are killing coral reefs, which protect coastlines and nurture fisheries. An area of Arctic ice the size of Texas has been lost over the past 20 years, with the ice over the Arctic ocean thinning since the late 1950s from 3.1 to 1.8 metres, while Antarctica’s Larsen Ice Shelf A has broken away from the continent.

The future threatens even worse. The surplus carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere will continue to wreak its effects for one to two centuries, while still more is added. Sea levels are already set to rise by 50 centimetres by 2100, and if the Western Antarctic ice mass slips into the sea, they could go up six metres. Grain yields are likely to decline dangerously in the South over the next 50 years due to climate-induced soil degradation, floods, droughts and increased pest infestations. Disease-carrying insects such as malarial mosquitoes are poised to spread into new regions. Many species and ecosystems will disappear, unable to adapt to the pace of change. Millions of “climate refugees” may soon be on the move.

Worst of all are possible runaway effects. Rising temperatures could easily destabilize ice-like methane hydrates on the sea floor or beneath the Arctic tundra, releasing billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful even than CO2. Rising temperatures could also cause forests to die off rapidly and peatlands to dry out, rapidly turning carbon reservoirs such as Amazon forests into massive carbon dioxide sources. Polar ice-melts, meanwhile, could accelerate warming by reducing the amount of energy reflected from the poles. They could also have a dramatic effect on ocean currents that transport heat around the globe. For example, the Gulf Stream could shut down, plunging Northern Europe into freezing cold at the same time other parts of the world heat up.

The rise in levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, in short, cannot continue. Adding as little as another 200 billion tonnes will result in a 2-3 °C rise in temperatures –a heat wave unprecedented in human history. Adding 300 or more would be catastrophic, especially in that it might trigger runaway heating effects that could make the planet uninhabitable. Yet more than 4,000 billion tonnes of carbon in fossil fuels is waiting to be recovered and burned, over three-quarters of it coal. It would seem that the vast bulk of this must be left in the ground.

Two approaches to global warming

During the early 1990s, the corporations most responsible for the mining and consumption of fossil fuels denied that the problem of industrial-caused global warming existed or that it was serious enough to require concerted political action. They had a great deal of influence. Climate negotiators from the US –whose CO2 emissions are roughly equal to those of 135 Southern countries, or three billion people, put together– continually received instructions from industry groups such as the Global Climate Coalition, who spent millions of dollars spreading scientific disinformation.

However, the events of the last few years have made it more difficult to deny that global warming has begun, and nearly impossible to pretend that consumption of remaining reserves of fossil fuels would not lead to disaster.

That leaves only two approaches to the crisis.

One approach is to reduce fossil fuel use dramatically and quickly. That means focusing first on reducing the “luxury” emissions of those who have already used up more than their fair share of global carbon sinks and stocks, while promoting energy conservation and energy efficiency, worldwide use of solar and other renewable energy sources, and ecological instead of industrial agriculture.

The second approach involves speculative programs to modify earth’s biosphere and crust to allow them to absorb more CO2. Promising to make it «safer» for richer nations and groups to continue rapid, high-level consumption of fossil fuels for as long as possible, this approach enjoys great favour among fossil-fuel producing and consuming industries and many officials in the US and some other Northern governments. The US Department of Energy, for instance, is currently exploring grandiose schemes for intensively “manipulating” terrestrial and ocean ecosystems and the earth’s crust so that they can store three to six times more carbon than at present, in order to make possible “continued large-scale use of fossil fuels”. This general approach –and the appeal to tree plantations in particular– is supported by a wide range of technocrats, brokers, consultants, think tanks, multilateral agencies, forestry companies and even a few non-government organizations (NGOs).

The two approaches are sometimes seen as complementary ways of checking the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. Yet they could not be more different both in their politics and in their probable effectiveness in abating global warming.

Taken from a briefing paper presented by the world rainforest movement