Global Warming 9781420500493, 142050049X

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Global Warming

Debra A. Miller

Global Warming by Debra A. Miller

© 2009 Gale, Cengage Learning ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyrighted material.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Miller, Debra A. Global warming / by Debra A. Miller. p. cm. — (Hot topics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4205-0049-3 (hardcover) 1. Global warming. I. Title. QC981.8.G56M56 2009 363.738'74—dc22 2008025678

Lucent Books 27500 Drake Rd. Farmington Hills, MI 48331

ISBN-13: 978-1-4205-0049-3 ISBN-10: 1-4205-0049-X

Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 12 11 10 09 08

FOREWORD

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INTRODUCTION Global Warming: A Planetary Emergency

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CHAPTER ONE The Science of Global Warming

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CHAPTER TWO Predicting the Future

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CHAPTER THREE Threats Posed by Global Warming

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CHAPTER FOUR Solutions for Global Warming

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CHAPTER FIVE Preparing for a Warmer Future

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NOTES

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

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ORGANIZATIONS TO CONTACT

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FOR MORE INFORMATION

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INDEX

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PICTURE CREDITS

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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oung people today are bombarded with information. Aside from traditional sources such as newspapers, television, and the radio, they are inundated with a nearly continuous stream of data from electronic media. They send and receive e-mails and instant messages, read and write online “blogs,” participate in chat rooms and forums, and surf the Web for hours. This trend is likely to continue. As Patricia Senn Breivik, the former dean of university libraries at Wayne State University in Detroit, has stated, “Information overload will only increase in the future. By 2020, for example, the available body of information is expected to double every 73 days! How will these students find the information they need in this coming tidal wave of information?” Ironically, this overabundance of information can actually impede efforts to understand complex issues. Whether the topic is abortion, the death penalty, gay rights, or obesity, the deluge of fact and opinion that floods the print and electronic media is overwhelming. The news media report the results of polls and studies that contradict one another. Cable news shows, talk radio programs, and newspaper editorials promote narrow viewpoints and omit facts that challenge their own political biases. The World Wide Web is an electronic minefield where legitimate scholars compete with the postings of ordinary citizens who may or may not be well-informed or capable of reasoned argument. At times, strongly worded testimonials and opinion pieces both in print and electronic media are presented as factual accounts. Conflicting quotes and statistics can confuse even the most diligent researchers. A good example of this is the question of whether or not the death penalty deters crime. For instance, one study found that murders decreased by nearly one-third when the death penalty was reinstated in New York in 1995. Death 4

FOREWORD penalty supporters cite this finding to support their argument that the existence of the death penalty deters criminals from committing murder. However, another study found that states without the death penalty have murder rates below the national average. This study is cited by opponents of capital punishment, who reject the claim that the death penalty deters murder. Students need context and clear, informed discussion if they are to think critically and make informed decisions. The Hot Topics series is designed to help young people wade through the glut of fact, opinion, and rhetoric so that they can think critically about controversial issues. Only by reading and thinking critically will they be able to formulate a viewpoint that is not simply the parroted views of others. Each volume of the series focuses on one of today’s most pressing social issues and provides a balanced overview of the topic. Carefully crafted narrative, fully documented primary and secondary source quotes, informative sidebars, and study questions all provide excellent starting points for research and discussion. Full-color photographs and charts enhance all volumes in the series. With its many useful features, the Hot Topics series is a valuable resource for young people struggling to understand the pressing issues of the modern era.

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GLOBAL WARMING: A PLANETARY EMERGENCY

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lobal warming (also called climate change) refers to rising global temperatures caused by high levels of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. At least some of these greenhouse gasses are produced by burning fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas, and coal. In recent years, global warming has become the world’s most urgent environmental issue. Many commentators attribute the rising public awareness about this issue to the efforts of former American vice president and 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore, who since his defeat in the presidential race has waged a worldwide publicity campaign about the dangers of global warming. Gore’s campaign began with speeches and a slide show of compelling photos, graphs, and time lines, but in 2006, Gore unveiled a documentary and book on the topic, both named An Inconvenient Truth. The documentary was critically acclaimed and won two 2006 Academy Awards for best documentary and best original song. In the film, Gore uses humor, science, and personal stories to show how human activities that produce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the cause of the rise in Earth’s temperatures. Warmer temperatures, Gore warns, are melting the polar ice caps and leading to dramatic climate changes such as rising sea levels that could engulf some of the world’s major coastal cities. The film claims global warming may already be producing frightening weather, including stronger hurricanes, flooding, and torrential rains for some parts of the world, and record heat and drought in other areas. These climate changes, 6

GLOBAL WARMING: A PLANETARY EMERGENCY Gore says, could in turn result in numerous other problems— everything from new mosquito-borne disease pandemics to the loss of animal species, such as the polar bear, that cannot adapt quickly enough to the rapid temperature increases. Later in 2006, Gore won an international award—the Nobel Peace Prize—for his efforts. He shared the award with scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations (UN) organization set up to investigate and report on the causes, effects, and solutions to climate change. In his acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, 2007, Gore said, “We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency, a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential.” He urged the public and policy makers to act now to prevent what could become catastrophic disasters in the future, explaining, “We have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst, though not all, of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.”1 Former vice president Al Gore (center) receives the Nobel Peace Price for his work on climate change on December 10, 2007.

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GLOBAL WARMING The other recipient of the Nobel Prize, the IPCC, was honored because of a series of scientific reports it has issued over the past two decades, which the Nobel committee said had created a broad consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming. The IPCC’s latest report, “Climate Change 2007: Mitigation of Climate Change,” warned that unless governments act quickly to reduce global emissions, greenhouse gases could rise by 25 to 90 percent over year 2000 levels by the year 2030. The report urged governments to slow and reverse these emissions trends and stabilize the level of greenhouse gases remaining in the atmosphere at around 445–490 At the U.S. embassy in Hamburg, Germany, environmental activists from the group Greenpeace voice their disapproval of the Bush administration’s nonsupport of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001.

GLOBAL WARMING: A PLANETARY EMERGENCY parts per million (ppm)—a level that would hold average global temperature increases to 3.6 to 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit (2 to 2.4 degrees Celsius). This IPCC goal, however, would require governments to reduce emissions dramatically over today’s levels. In fact, experts say countries such as the United States would need to reduce emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050, and Gore urges the country to take the lead with a 90 percent reduction in the United States. Such significant emissions reductions, however, will be a daunting challenge given the United States’ history of virtually ignoring global warming. President George W. Bush, for example, began his administration by abruptly reversing a campaign promise to regulate U.S. carbon dioxide emissions and by withdrawing the United States from ongoing negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty negotiated in 1997 that set targets for emissions reductions by developed nations. Instead, Bush advocated an approach based on what he called “greenhouse gas intensity,” a way of measuring greenhouse emissions according to economic output. Under this approach, companies are urged to produce more products while generating the same or fewer greenhouse emissions. Critics say this plan masks the true levels of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, because it allows the administration to report reductions in “greenhouse gas intensity” when in reality the United States is increasing its total emissions year after year. The Bush administration also opposed the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2005—a bill introduced by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman to limit the total greenhouse gases emitted by U.S. electricity generation, transportation, industrial, and commercial sectors to the amounts emitted in 2000. And the Bush administration resisted efforts to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act and to strengthen vehicle mileage standards. Finally, administration representatives in 2007 blocked progress on negotiating a global treaty with mandatory caps on emissions, instead pushing for separate talks to discuss voluntary emission cutbacks. Elections in November 2008 will produce a new American president, but until then no one knows what future course the U.S. government will take.

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GLOBAL WARMING Addressing global warming, therefore, will require not only public awareness, but also tremendous political will. Yet according to many commentators and experts, the effort is both necessary and worthwhile because it will give humankind a great cause—quite literally, a chance to save the world. As Al Gore argued in a 2007 New York Times article: The future of all human civilization . . . is hanging in the balance. . . . The climate crisis offers us the chance to experience what few generations in history have had the privilege of experiencing: a generational mission; a compelling moral purpose; a shared cause; and the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict of politics and to embrace a genuine moral and spiritual challenge.2

THE SCIENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING

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ince the planet was first formed, Earth’s climate has constantly changed and evolved, and temperatures have varied widely. Throughout the period of human civilization, however, the world has been enjoying a warm, temperate, and relatively stable climate. This stability has allowed human civilizations, along with countless other species of animals and plants, to proliferate and flourish in recent centuries. The release of carbon and other gases from the burning of fossil fuels in the last hundred years, however, may be causing a dramatic spike in global temperatures. Scientists have been studying this phenomenon since the 1950s, but only recently has a consensus emerged— that Earth is getting warmer due to human activities.

Natural Climate Changes Climate scientists have known since the eighteenth century that Earth’s climate can change dramatically due to natural causes. In fact, evidence from ice cores extracted from the Arctic and Antarctic regions show that planetary temperatures have varied by more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11.2 degrees Celsius) during the last 350,000 years. Long periods of lower temperatures have resulted in prolonged ice ages that lasted tens of thousands of years. Approximately every 100,000 years, these cold phases have been interspersed with warmer but shorter interglacial periods. More than 18,000 years ago during the last ice age, called the Pleistocene Ice Age, massive glaciers up to eight thousand feet thick covered almost a third of the Earth’s land surface, including much of North America, Europe, and Asia. Areas not covered by glaciers were largely cold and desolate deserts that supported only very hardy plant and animal life. 11

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GLOBAL WARMING Within these larger climate fluctuations, smaller-scale warming and cooling cycles have historically occurred. Many of these climate changes have been abrupt, and they appear to have caused mass extinctions of large numbers of the planet’s animal and plant species. The end of the dinosaur era, for example, coincided with a sudden global cooling that may have been caused by a large asteroid colliding with the Earth. Since before the dawn of human These Pleistocene-era human footprints may have been preserved for more than 18,000 years at the height of the last ice age. During this time period, massive glaciers covered almost a third of the Earth’s land surface.

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civilization, however, the Earth has been experiencing an interglacial period of unprecedented stability, with no major climate fluctuations. Cold deserts and glaciers have given way to lush forests, grasslands, and an abundance of plant and animal species, and the human population has soared under these conditions. Yet today’s relatively stable global climate is fueled by a number of climate forces—such as volcano activity, cloud cover, the changing intensity of the sun’s radiation, and varying ocean currents and temperatures—that have caused fluctuations in temperatures during the last thousand years. During the Medieval Warm Period, for example, which lasted from approximately A.D. 1000 to 1350, temperatures were warm and comfortable for humans. From around 1400 to about 1860, however, the Earth experienced what has been called the Little Ice Age—a small drop of about 0.9 degree Fahrenheit (0.5 degree Celsius) that produced harsh winters, shorter growing seasons, and a drier climate. Yet even this slightly colder period caused crop failures and other problems, including a potato famine in Ireland that reduced the Irish population by about 25 percent in just six years between 1845 and 1851.

The Greenhouse Effect Scientists say that the Earth’s temperatures are largely determined by the balance between the amount of sun energy entering the atmosphere and the amount of energy lost from the Earth into space. One of the most important climate mechanisms affecting this balance is a natural greenhouse effect—a band of gases that trap the heat emanating from the planet’s surface similar to the way a glass greenhouse warms the air inside its glass walls during a cold winter. These gases include water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and tropospheric ozone, but the single most important greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, which accounts for the largest part of the greenhouse effect. These greenhouse gases allow visible sunlight energy to penetrate deep into the atmosphere, where much of it is absorbed by the oceans and land masses. When this stored energy is released back toward space as infrared radiation, or heat, the greenhouse gases then act as an insulating blanket, absorbing and holding the

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GLOBAL WARMING heat in the lower atmosphere and helping to maintain the warm temperatures needed for humans to survive. As climate expert Mayer Hillman explains, “Without this natural greenhouse effect, the planet would be over 35º cooler than it is now—too cold for us to inhabit.”3 The amount of heat trapped in this greenhouse process, however, varies depending on a number of factors. Some sunlight never reaches the Earth’s surface because it is reflected back into space by clouds and various types of particles and pollutants in the air. In addition, different regions on the planet’s surface reflect and absorb solar radiation differently. The ice caps at each of the Earth’s poles, for example, act as giant mirrors that reflect back most of the sunlight that hits them, while exposed desert soils, oceans, and forested areas tend to absorb more of the sun’s energy, helping to heat the atmosphere. A third factor is the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, with higher levels producing more warming. All these elements must be in balance to produce average global temperatures that are in the relatively narrow range necessary for humans, plants, and animals to survive on the planet’s fragile surface, seas, and skies. As British scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock has reThis diagram shows the “greenhouse effect.” Sunlight enters the atmosphere and heats the Earth; the heat is then reflected back into the atmosphere, but greenhouse gases cause some of the heat to be trapped from the planet’s surface. sunlight enters atmosphere, heating the Earth greenhouse gases cause some of the heat to be trapped

carbon dioxide

an do th e es as rg

heat is reflected back into the atmosphere

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minded us, the portion of the Earth that supports life is only “a thin spherical shell of land and water between the incandescent interior of the Earth and the upper atmosphere surrounding it.”4

The Warming Effects of the Industrial Revolution Until recently, humans did not significantly affect the much larger forces of climate and atmosphere. Many scientists believe, however, that with the dawn of the industrial age—and the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil—humans began to significantly add to the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, enhancing the planet’s natural greenhouse effect and causing higher temperatures.

CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS SOCIETY “Climate change . . . is the single greatest threat that societies face today.” —James Gustave Speth, environmentalist and dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. James Gustave Speth, “The Single Greatest Threat: The United States and Global Climate Disruption,” Harvard International Review, Summer 2005. http://hir.harvard. edu/articles/1346/.

The Industrial Revolution began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Great Britain when manual labor began to be replaced by machinery fueled by new sources of energy. The first sign of this change was mechanization of England’s textile mills, the development of iron-making techniques, and the increasing use of coal rather than wood and water power for heating, industry, and transportation. Around 1850, steam power was invented as a way to use coal energy more efficiently, and soon steam engines were used to power trains, ships, and industrial machinery of all sorts. These inventions spread throughout Europe, the United States, and other regions, bringing enormous changes in society and commerce. Later in the nineteenth century, scientists learned how to generate electricity, and the discovery of oil led to the invention of the internal combustion

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Around 1850, steam power was invented as a way to use coal energy more efficiently, bringing enormous changes in society and commerce. Here, a worker operates a steam engine in 1854.

engine, both technological developments that further changed the way humans lived and worked around the globe. By the end of the twentieth century, the world was completely dependent on and rapidly depleting the planet’s fossil fuels— resources such as coal, natural gas, and oil that are formed from the decomposed remains of prehistoric plants and animals. As Hillman explains, “Fossil fuels contain the energy stored from the sun that took hundreds of thousands of years to accumulate, yet within the space of a few generations—a mere blink of the planet’s life so far—we are burning it.”5 The result of this rapid burning of fossil resources, many scientists believe, is rising concentrations of greenhouse gases that may be overheating the planet. Scientists have determined, for example, that concentrations of carbon dioxide have been increasing

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since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In 1750, there were 280 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but by 2005, the levels of carbon dioxide had risen to 380 ppm, an increase of over one-third. And much of this increase has occurred in recent years, since 1959, as world energy usage has expanded dramatically. The United States is responsible for almost a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and China is the second-largest emitter. Other countries with high emissions include members of the European Union, while the lowest emissions come from various nations in Africa. The major source of human-produced greenhouse emissions— accounting for approximately 65 percent—is the use of fossil fuels to power industry, transportation, home heating, electricity generation, and cooking. However, carbon emissions are also increased when carbon-absorbing forests are cut down to make way for human developments and woodlands, grasslands, and prairies are converted into farmland for agriculture. As geography professor Michael Pidwirny explains, “Rural ecosystems can hold 20 to 100 times more carbon dioxide per unit area than agricultural systems.”6 Together, these human activities are believed to account for at least 28 percent of the Earth’s total greenhouse emissions, with the balance produced by natural sources.

The Scientific Study of Global Warming Scientists have long suspected a link between industrialization and global warming, but serious study of the issue did not begin until the second half of the twentieth century. In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius was the first to suggest that the burning of fossil fuels adds carbon dioxide gas to the Earth’s atmosphere and could raise the planet’s average temperature. At the time and for decades thereafter, however, Arrhenius’s discovery of the greenhouse effect was dismissed by the mainstream scientific community, which reasoned that such a major climate change would not likely be produced by humans and could only happen slowly over tens of thousands of years. Most scientists at the time also believed that the vast oceans would absorb most of the carbon dioxide produced by industry.

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GLOBAL WARMING By the 1950s and 1960s, however, improved instruments for measuring long-wave radiation allowed scientists to prove that Arrhenius’s theory was correct. At that time, studies also confirmed that carbon dioxide levels were indeed rising year after year. In 1958, Charles D. Keeling, a scientist with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, conducted the first reliable measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory and found concentrations of the gas to be 315 ppm and growing. Charles D. Keeling, a scientist with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, receives the National Medal of Science from President George W. Bush on June 12, 2002. Keeling took the first reliable measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide and confirmed that carbon dioxide levels were rising every year.

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Criticisms of Al Gore’s Claims Global warming skeptics criticize former vice president Al Gore for exaggerating scientific assessments and predictions and presenting an alarmist portrayal of global warming. In a March 13, 2007, article in the New York Times, for example, columnist William J. Broad cited several scientists who criticized Gore’s portrayal of global warming as a terrible catastrophe that will cause soaring temperatures, seas that might rise twenty feet, and more frequent and more deadly hurricanes. According to scientists quoted in the article, temperatures are the highest in four hundred years, but no higher than they were sixteen hundred years ago during the Medieval Warm Period. The article also says most scientists agree that warmer temperatures will likely make many storms and hurricanes stronger, but notes that the latest Atlantic hurricane season produced fewer hurricanes than predicted (five instead of nine), none of which hit the United States. Similarly, although seas are expected to rise, most experts think this will be a very slow process—

Al Gore has been criticized for his portrayal of global warming.

according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), up to twentythree feet by the end of the century. Other scientists, however, defend Gore and think that he is presenting the big picture of climate change accurately. William J. Broad, “From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype,” New York Times, March 13, 2007.

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GLOBAL WARMING Over the next several decades, scientists used a variety of methods to study exactly how the Earth’s temperature was changing. Some scientists studied ancient tree rings, corals, fossils, pollens, sediment cores, ice cores, and cave stalactites— called paleoclimatic data—to compare ancient temperatures with modern data. This paleoclimatic record allowed researchers to examine global temperature fluctuations over the last several centuries and even farther back in time. Still other researchers devised mathematical models of the climate, which allowed for predictions to be made about temperature changes when the amount of carbon dioxide input was increased. In recent decades, these climate models have been greatly improved by the use of computers, which can incorporate massive amounts of weather information into the climate formulas and produce much more accurate predictions of future climate changes. Also during the last twenty years, scientists began to use satellites to observe the Earth’s changing climate. All of the methods of global warming study have some scientific uncertainties, but each suggested that the Earth has warmed over the last hundred years and that it is likely to grow even warmer due to rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Scientific Uncertainty Despite these scientific findings, however, there was considerable disagreement within the scientific community about global warming throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Many scientists accepted that a warming trend was likely but believed that average temperatures would rise only a few degrees in the next century—not a significant change that seemed to require immediate policy changes. In addition, a number of scientists were equally concerned about the effects of smog—air pollutants from fossil fuels that could potentially block sunlight and cause the world to cool, rather than heat up. In fact, a cooling trend was recorded between the 1940s and 1970s, when air pollution became a serious problem in developed countries such as the United States. No one was completely sure whether the Earth would dip into another ice age or heat up as global warming theory predicted. Most scientists at this time

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agreed only that the Earth’s climate was very complicated and that more research was needed before accurate predictions about the effect of human activity on climate change could be made.

CLIMATE CHANGE MAY BE NATURAL “The Earth was evidently coming out of a relatively cold period in the 1800s so that warming in the past century may be part of this natural recovery.” —John R. Christy, climate and atmospheric science expert at the University of Alabama. Testimony of John R. Christy to the Committee on Environmental and Public Works, Department of Atmospheric Science and Earth System Science Laboratory, University of Alabama in Huntsville, July 10, 1997.

In the 1980s, largely because of antipollution efforts made by the United States and other industrialized nations, air pollution began to decrease and average global temperatures again began to rise. More research followed, including the collection of massive amounts of weather data by oceangoing ships and Earthorbiting satellites, and consultation among scientists around the globe. As information about the climate increased, a growing number of scientists became more convinced of the existence and potentially serious impacts of global warming, and they began to warn policy makers of the need to address the problem.

The IPCC Scientists’ efforts to draw attention to climate change were aided in the summer of 1988, when temperatures around the globe soared to the highest levels on record, helping to focus public attention on the issue. That same year, the rising concerns about global warming prompted the world’s governments to organize the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an independent panel of world climate scientists. Created as part of the UN, the IPCC was asked to examine the available scientific, technical, and socioeconomic evidence on human-induced climate change and provide advice to the international community about its impact and possible solutions.

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GLOBAL WARMING In 1990, the IPCC published its First Assessment Report. The report concluded that increased greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity “will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface.”7 The 1990 report served as a scientific and technical basis for negotiating a UN agreement on global warming called the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted in 1992, in which nations pledged to try to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions. Several scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) answer questions on global warming during a press conference in 2001. During this session, chairman Dr. Robert Watson and other scientists warned that global warming will cause an increase in air pollution and other disasters, including droughts.

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A Second Assessment Report was issued by the IPCC in 1995. At this time, the IPCC again concluded that the increase in global temperatures was likely caused, at least in part, by human activities. However, the report cautioned that it had “not been possible to firmly establish a clear connection between . . . regional [climate] changes and human activities”8 because of inadequate data about weather variability over the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the IPCC recommended that nations act to reduce emissions, and the report provided information that led to the 1997 adoption of the Kyoto Protocol—an international treaty that set binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse emissions by developed countries.

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“A broad array of scientists . . . said the latest [IPCC] analysis was the most sobering view yet of a century of transition—after thousands of years of relatively stable climate conditions—to a new norm of continual change.” —Elisabeth Rosenthal and Andrew C. Revkin, reporters for the New York Times. Elisabeth Rosenthal and Andrew C. Revkin, “Panel Issues Bleak Report on Climate Change,” New York Times, February 2, 2007.

In 2001, in its Third Assessment Report, the IPCC announced that the majority of the world’s scientists believed the Earth was facing significant global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions released by the burning of fossil fuels. The report also said that “there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.”9 The IPCC predicted that temperatures would most likely rise about 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) by 2100, and that this would cause significant climate changes and risks to ecosystems. This assessment helped to convince many people that climate change is a serious environmental, social, and political problem. Yet the report conceded that there were still some scientific uncertainties about the causes and impacts of global warming that required additional study.

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GLOBAL WARMING Six years later, in 2007, the IPCC released a Fourth Assessment Report that made its strongest case yet about the dangers of global warming. This time, the IPCC concluded that global warming is “unequivocal,” and that the world’s rising temperatures are “very likely”10 (defined as 90 percent certainty) to be the result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels. The report confirms that the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and methane, two important greenhouse gases, are higher than they have been for 650,000 years. Since the dawn of the industrial era, the report found, concentrations of both gases have increased at a rate unprecedented in more than 10,000 years. The result, the IPCC concluded, is rapid warming with significant temperature increases expected in the future.

CAUSES ARE STILL UNCERTAIN “The greenhouse effect must play some role. But those who are absolutely certain that the rise in temperatures is due solely to carbon dioxide have no scientific justification. It’s pure guesswork.” —Henrik Svensmark, director for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Center. Quoted in Copenhagen Post, “Cosmic Rays Linked to Global Warming,” October 4, 2006.

A Scientific Consensus According to most commentators and scientists, the IPCC reports establish that there is a scientific consensus that climate change is occurring and that it is the result of human activities. In 2004, Naomi Oreskes, a science professor at the University of California at San Diego, surveyed 928 abstracts of peer-reviewed papers related to global climate change and found that none of them disagreed with the IPCC position. In a widely discussed article published in the journal Science, Oreskes stated, “Scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies [that global warming is caused by human activities].”11

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Today, most scientists continue to support the conclusions of the IPCC. In a joint statement issued in 2007 (after the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report was released), science academies in the major industrialized countries—including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—as well as a number of developing nations, stated: “It is unequivocal that the climate is changing, and it is very likely that this is predominantly caused by the increasing human interference with the atmosphere. These changes will transform the environmental conditions on Earth unless counter-measures are taken.”12 Members of the IPCC attend the IPCC XXVII opening session ceremony on November 12, 2007. Most scientists support the conclusions of the IPCC that climate changes are occurring due to human activities.

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Global Warming Skeptics Despite the apparent convergence of scientific opinion on the causes and dangers of global warming, a few skeptics remain. Most skeptics agree that global temperatures are increasing, but they believe that temperature fluctuations are relatively small and primarily caused by natural forces. One area of disagreement, for example, revolves around a temperature graph used by global warming advocates called the “hockey stick” (because it is shaped like a hockey stick). This graph, usually attributed to University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann, shows that there have been virtually no global temperature variations over the past thousand years in the Northern Hemisphere, except during the last hundred years, when temperatures have sharply peaked, presumably due to humans’ use of fossil fuels. Some critics of this graph cite errors in the Mann analysis, and others charge that it conveniently omits natural temperature fluctuations

Natural Climate Change Some scientists emphasize the contribution of natural climate change to today’s warming temperatures. A study of climate published in the magazine Nature on February 10, 2005, for example, showed a significant temperature swing between the twelfth and twentieth centuries and a cooling period that ended around 1800. The study, conducted by scientists at Stockholm University, also showed that temperatures in the twentieth century were similar to those in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but temperatures in the last fifteen years appear to be warmer than during any previous time. These results appear to track

a thousand-year-long climate simulation undertaken by another research group that included two natural forces—solar radiation and volcanic dust—believed to affect global temperatures. Experts say these studies suggest that the Earth’s climate is naturally variable and that changes in the sun’s radiation and volcanic eruptions may be the cause. However, the increased warming during the past fifteen years still supports the idea that humans, too, are contributing to global warming. Science Daily, “Natural Climate Change May Be Larger than Commonly Thought,” February 17, 2005. www.science daily.com/releases/2005/02/050212195414.htm.

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Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, is an outspoken skeptic of the global warming theory and does not believe that global warming results from human activities.

such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Since the Medieval Warm Period produced temperatures much warmer than those the Earth is experiencing today, critics argue that the Earth today may simply be experiencing a similar natural warming cycle following the end of the Little Ice Age. In addition, skeptics question the accuracy of another important piece of evidence relied upon by global warming advocates—climate models, many of which predict the possibility of skyrocketing heat before the end of this century. In

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GLOBAL WARMING truth, some critics say, global temperatures may be turning out to be milder than these models predicted. Climate scientist John Christy, for example, coauthored a 2006 report that found that global temperatures increased only about 0.22 degree Fahrenheit (0.12 degree Celsius) per decade since 1958 and only about 0.29 degree Fahrenheit (0.16 degree Celsius) per decade since 1979—far less than most climate models predicted. Christy concludes that the Earth is not heating up rapidly and that “the rate of change is rather modest.”13 Skeptics also note that while parts of the planet are warming, such as much of the Northern Hemisphere and the Arctic, the Southern Hemisphere and Antarctica are not experiencing any statistically significant warming. In fact, researchers agree that although the Antarctic Peninsula—a sliver of land that projects into the ocean toward the southern tip of South America—is seeing a rapid rise in temperatures that is causing the melting of glacier ice, most of Antarctica has not registered any warming trend in the last fifty years, basically the period for which data is available. And some researchers have reported that over the past twenty years, temperatures in Antarctica have actually cooled slightly, accompanied by increasing snowfall and thickening ice. As atmospheric scientist David Bromwich explains, “It’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now. . . . The best we can say right now is that the climate models are somewhat inconsistent with the evidence that we have for the last 50 years from continental Antarctica.”14 These and other criticisms of the global warming science continue to create a seed of doubt among the public and policy makers about whether climate change is truly a threat.

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n addition to disagreeing about whether global warming is being fueled primarily by human activities, global warming scientists and their critics also have differing opinions about exactly how much temperatures will rise. In fact, even the forecasts by the IPCC vary depending on a number of factors, primarily how much carbon is released into the atmosphere from human sources. Other climate scientists have proposed that various natural forces may play a role in regulating the Earth’s temperature, potentially affecting whether the Earth’s temperatures will cool or warm. Most scientists and researchers believe the warming trend will definitely continue, but just how warm the planet will get over the next century is still somewhat difficult to predict conclusively.

Temperature Changes So Far Temperatures vary naturally from year to year, but most climate scientists agree that average global temperatures have risen about 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 degree Celsius) during the last century, with two-thirds of this warming occurring since the 1970s. Temperatures have warmed on land more than in the oceans, and land surface temperature measurements (available since 1860) indicate that the 1990s was the warmest decade ever. In fact, according to the IPCC, eleven of the last twelve years were among the twelve hottest years on record. In the United States, the consensus view is that average temperatures rose approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.56 degree Celsius) during the last century. Most of this warming has occurred in the winters, and certain parts of the country such as the coastal Northeast, the upper Midwest, the Southwest, and 29

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GLOBAL WARMING Alaska grew much hotter than the 1-degree average. According to past weather data, 1998 was the hottest year in world history, but according to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), an organization run by the U.S. Department of Commerce that collects climate data, 2006 was the warmest year on record for the United States. These conclusions about temperature increases may be somewhat exaggerated, however. In 2007, for example, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) revised its official Drought and weeks of extreme heat cause thousands of dead fish to line the shore of Jackson Lake in Franklin, Tennessee, in August 2007. Many climate scientists agree that average global temperatures have risen about 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 degree Celsius) during the last century, with two-thirds of this warming occurring since the 1970s.

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records of surface temperatures in the United States. As global warming critic Joseph Blast of the Heartland Institute explains: “The revised data show 1998 falling to second place behind 1934 as the warmest year, followed by 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, and 1953. Four of the top 10 years on record are now from the 1930s . . . while only three of the top 10 (1998, 2006, 1999) are from the past 10 years.”15 Other critics have suggested that worldwide temperatures during the 1990s may have recorded hotter than past decades because hundreds of measuring stations were shut down in cold regions of the world, such as the Soviet Union. Also, critics say, many once-rural measuring stations may have been surrounded by urban sprawl—suburban developments with numerous roads and concrete parking lots that are known to absorb more sunlight and become much hotter than the countryside.

LINK

TO

HUMAN ACTIVITY GETTING CLEARER

“Despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences.” —Michael LePage, writer and editor for NewScientist.com, an online science and technology magazine. Michael LePage, “Climate Change: A Guide for the Perplexed,” NewScientist.com, May 16, 2007. http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462.

Yet even taking these explanations into account, it is clear to most researchers that the Earth has warmed, particularly in recent decades. To the average person the amount of warming so far may seem quite small, but scientists say even minor temperature changes can have significant effects on the climate and ecosystems.

Continued Warming Predicted Because greenhouse gases already released into the atmosphere will linger for many years, and because the Earth is slow to adjust to these changes, the climate is expected to continue to warm

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A boat sits on the dry reservoir bed of the Entrepenas reservoir in Spain in 2006. The IPCC says future warming is expected to be greatest over land and in the high northern latitudes.

in the future. In fact, this continued warming will occur even if governments act today to reduce emissions from cars, power plants, and other sources. As Mayer Hillman explains, “Even if no additional carbon dioxide were emitted from now on, atmospheric concentrations would take centuries to decline to pre– Industrial Revolution levels.”16 The most widely accepted predictions of future temperature and climate changes are found in the IPCC’s 2007 report. Essentially, the IPCC says that the degree of global warming will vary depending on the level of future greenhouse emissions. So it developed six emission scenarios and, using sophisticated climate simulation programs, projected “best estimate” and “likely range” future temperatures for each scenario. Overall, the IPCC projected a range of temperature increases between 2 to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century.

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The most optimistic IPCC scenario, for example, assumes that emissions can be dramatically lowered as a result of a rapid change toward a service and information economy and a quick shift toward clean energy technologies. Under these conditions, the IPCC predicts a likely range of 0.5 to 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.3 to 0.9 degree Celsius), and a best estimate temperature rise of about 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 degree Celsius) by 2100. If no action is taken to reduce emissions, however, the IPCC concludes that there may be twice as much warming over the next two decades as today. And the worst-case scenario predicted by the IPCC suggests that the world might see drastically higher temperatures over the next century. This scenario assumes that there will be rapid economic growth and continued reliance on fossilintensive energy production and consumption, and thus continuing high levels of greenhouse emissions. If this occurs, the IPCC says the world would likely see temperatures soaring somewhere in the range of 4.3 to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4 to 6.4 degrees

The Expanding Tropics According to researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a U.S. government science agency, the tropics are rapidly expanding due to global warming. In an article published December 13, 2007, in the magazine Nature Geoscience, the NOAA researchers found that the tropical zone—a geographic band around the Earth’s equator—was spreading both northward and southward toward the poles. In addition, the study found that this expansion was happening at a rate much faster than predicted by climate models. Under the most extreme

scenario predicted by climate models, the tropical zone was supposed to expand by about 2 degrees latitude (about 120 miles, or 200 kilometers) by the end of the twenty-first century, but NOAA found this worst-case scenario has already happened. The tropical zone includes Florida and parts of the U.S. Southwest, as well as southern Australia, southern Africa, and parts of the European Mediterranean region. Experts said this study suggested that these heavily populated areas may face even drier conditions than expected from future global warming.

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GLOBAL WARMING Celsius), with a best estimate that temperatures would increase by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) by 2100. The IPCC says future warming is expected to be greatest over land and in the high northern latitudes and lowest over the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean) and parts of the North Atlantic Ocean. This means warming will be close to the global average in some regions of the world, such as south Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and southern South America. However, regions farther north are expected to experience higher than average heat; this includes most of North America, all of Africa, Europe, northern and central Asia, and most of Central and South America.

WARMING IS BETTER

THAN

FREEZING

“We’ll continue to get a slow, sunny, erratic warming through the next few centuries—which is far better than the alternative of another harsh, cloudy, unstable Little Ice Age.” —Dennis T. Avery, senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, an organization that promotes free market solutions to social and economic problems. Dennis T. Avery, “Our Moderate Climate Crisis,” Heartland Perspectives, October 18, 2007.

In the United States, according to the IPCC report, temperatures in northern states will warm primarily in the winters, while southwestern states will experience higher summer temperatures and much less rain. IPCC climate models suggest that by 2100 the eastern, western, and southern edges of the country might warm between 3.6 and 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (2 and 3 degrees Celsius), and the northern regions by 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius). Alaska may experience the most warming— as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). Temperature increases in these ranges will almost certainly produce major climate and lifestyle changes for Americans.

Climate Feedbacks The Earth’s climate is highly complex, however, and experts say it is possible that the climate could change even more rapidly

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Icebergs are seen melting in Antarctica in 2007. It is unclear whether climate “feedbacks,” changes in response to warmer temperatures, will increase or decrease the effects of global warming.

than scientists now predict. One factor that cannot be figured into the climate models used by IPCC scientists is known as climate feedbacks—changes in climate that occur in response to rising temperatures. These feedbacks can either increase or decrease the effects of global warming. One example of positive feedback that could produce additional warming involves melting Arctic sea ice. This melting could, in turn, add to the Earth’s warming because the loss of large sections of highly reflective ice would mean that less sunlight is reflected back into space and more of this energy is absorbed by the oceans. Similarly, if higher temperatures produce more drought and more forest fires, the decrease in carbon-absorbing greenery and the burning of these organic matters is expected to add carbon to the atmosphere and increase global warming. An even more worrisome positive feedback is the increased rate of decay of organic matter in soils—a process that increases atmospheric carbon levels, enhancing the greenhouse effect.

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GLOBAL WARMING This phenomenon is expected to be especially widespread in areas in the Arctic region, such as Alaska and Greenland, where higher temperatures could melt permafrost—long-frozen land areas that store massive amounts of carbon from decayed vegetation that grew during prehistoric warm periods. Walter Oechel, a scientist studying this problem, is concerned that this feedback could tip the Earth into an uncontrollable warming cycle. He explains: “Humans [now] are putting about 6 billion or 7 billion metric tons of carbon in the atmosphere a year, and we are standing on 200 billion tons here [in Alaska]. If any significant portion came out, that dwarfs the current human injection into the atmosphere. And once that runaway release occurred, there’d be no way to stop it.”17

IPCC REPORT

A

“SCREAMING SIREN”

“The good news is our understanding of the climate system and our impact on it has improved immensely. The bad news is that the more we know, the more precarious the future looks. . . . If the last IPCC report was a wake up call, this [2007] one is a screaming siren.” —Stephanie Tunmore, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace International. Quoted in Christian Science Monitor, “Key Players React to the IPCC Global Warming Report,” February 8, 2007. www.csmonitor.com/2007/0208/p25s01-sten.html.

Yet another positive feedback that could have a significant effect on temperatures is the release of methane by the world’s oceans and glaciers. According to Tessa Hill, a geologist at the University of California at Davis, as oceans warm, oil and gases seep out of the ocean floor, including methane—a greenhouse gas that is considered twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide at creating global warming. Glaciers, too, release a form of methane as they begin to melt, adding to the Earth’s greenhouse effect. As Hill explains: “These petroleum seeps appear to be activated by periods of climate change. . . . If the Earth is already in a mode of warming, they ‘turn on’ and become more active, which promotes further warming.”18

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These positive feedbacks, however, could potentially be offset by negative feedbacks. An example of a possible negative feedback is the creation of more low clouds from the increased evaporation that will be caused by warmer surface temperatures. A greater number of low, thick clouds would tend to cool the climate by reflecting more sunlight back into space and reducing the amount of sun energy that is absorbed by the Earth’s land masses and oceans. The absorption of carbon by the oceans is also considered a negative feedback, as is any increased vegetation that might grow in previously cold regions of the Earth due to warmer temperatures. Meteorologist and prominent global warming critic Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has even suggested that a negative feedback called “infrared iris effect” could blunt all the positive feedbacks and significantly counter future global warming. This theory, first proposed in 2001, suggests that global warming may dry out the upper levels of the troposphere, the part of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface, allowing more of the Earth’s heat to escape. Lindzen believes this mechanism works something like the iris of the eye: Warmer temperatures produce fewer cirrus clouds (wispy clouds formed from ice crystals), creating holes in cloud formations that act to reduce the greenhouse effect naturally. As Lindzen explains: This is a terrifically important feedback because if you double the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but don’t have any feedback within the system, you only get about 1 degree of warming (averaged over the entire globe). But climate models predict a much greater global warming because of the positive feedback of water vapor. Yet these models are missing potentially another negative feedback (the infrared iris) which can be anywhere between a fraction of a degree and 1 degree—the same order of magnitude as the warming.19 Other scientists have tried to test Lindzen’s theory, with mixed results, leading many to conclude that much more research is needed on the role of clouds and precipitation in regulating climate.

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Global Dimming Yet another group of scientists warn that a different cloud phenomenon—“global dimming”—may be masking the true amount of global warming that will occur in the future. First studied during the 1990s by Gerry Stanhill, a British scientist, global dimming refers to an increase in air pollution that has been causing a decrease in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth during recent decades. According to Stanhill and other scientists, tiny particles of soot, ash, and other air pollutants— most of it from the burning of the same fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases—attract water droplets and then create polluted clouds. These polluted clouds contain a larger number of droplets than unpolluted clouds, making them more reflective than unpolluted clouds. Polluted clouds thus reflect more of the sun’s energy back into space, reducing the amount of sunlight Airplane contrails criss-cross the sky over Bay St. Louis in Mississippi. Contrails—the vapor from jets seen as white streaks in the sky—also create sunlight reflection and dimming and polluted clouds.

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reaching the planet’s surface. Contrails—the vapor from jets seen as white streaks in the sky—also create polluted clouds and are another significant cause of sunlight reflection and dimming.

FEEDBACK CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING “Feedback in our global climate could determine humankind’s future prosperity and even survival.” —Thomas Homer-Dixon, author and professor of peace and conflict studies at the University of Toronto. Thomas Homer-Dixon, “A Swiftly Melting Planet,” New York Times, October 4, 2007. www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/opinion/04homer-dixon.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.

Scientists worry that global dimming may be offsetting and hiding the real degree of future global warming—a proposition which, if true, could mean that global warming will soar to much higher levels than currently projected. Indeed, if air pollution continues to be reduced, some scientists suggest that average global temperatures may actually rise as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) within the next century. Such a staggering temperature increase would destroy many plants and animals that humans depend on for food, medicine, and other products; destroy the world economy; and make many regions on the Earth uninhabitable for humans.

Alternate Theories on Global Warming While some scientists and researchers focus on the possibility of a much hotter Earth, another group of scientists believe that global warming may not be as great as currently predicted because natural causes, rather than human activities, account for most of the current rise in temperatures. A study published in 2005 by scientists from Finland and Germany, for example, identified a strong correlation between solar activity and temperatures. Specifically, the study found that the sun has been more active in the last 60 years than anytime in the past 1,150 years, and that this increased solar radiation corresponded closely with rising temperatures during the last century. Many

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Faster Melting of Arctic Ice During the last couple of years, the melting of ice in the Arctic region has rapidly accelerated—a warning sign that scientists say could mean that global warming has already passed a tipping point. In 2006, for example, scientists found that Arctic sea ice was melting so fast that it would disappear completely by 2040. In 2007, however, satellite data showed that Arctic ice melt had speeded up so much that the Arctic Ocean might be ice-free in just five years, by 2012. This melting of Arctic ice is expected to affect the whole world.

Two major effects of faster melting are that sea levels will rise more rapidly and that winter weather will weaken sooner. In the United States, for example, a weakening cold Arctic flow of air colliding with moist warm air from Mexico will probably result in less rain and snow in many areas, including the already-dry Southwest. The new data caused many commentators and policy makers to urge that governments take quick action to limit greenhouse emissions before global warming spins out of control.

The Arctic region has experienced an increase in the melting of ice in the last several years.

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scientists believe that this data suggests that the sun has a considerable effect on our temperatures. Around 1975, however, solar activity diminished while temperatures continued to rise, confirming to some researchers the existence of a human-produced greenhouse effect. Danish climate physicist Henrik Svensmark, meanwhile, proposed in 2007 that climate changes such as global warming may be primarily caused by cosmic rays—that is, ionizing radiation from space. According to Svensmark, fluctuations in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere affect the number of clouds covering the Earth, and recent years have seen a decreased cloud cover, which reflects less of the sun’s energy back into space and causes the planet to warm. If this theory proves true, human activity may have less impact on global warming than many scientists now think, and there may be more time for humans to reduce their carbon emissions. As Svensmark explains: “It was long thought that clouds were caused by climate change, but now we see that climate change is driven by clouds. . . . We may see CO2 is responsible for much less warming than we thought and if this is the case the predictions of warming due to human activity will need to be adjusted.” 20

The Possibility of a New Ice Age Some researchers have even proposed that the effects of global warming could trigger a major climate change that could suddenly plunge the world back into another ice age rather than the warming period predicted by the IPCC. At the center of this theory is the Gulf Stream—a strong ocean current that transports warm water from the tropics to northwestern Europe, giving it a temperate climate similar to that of the United States even though it is located at a much higher latitude, more like the location of Alaska. The Gulf Stream is driven mostly by differences in water temperature and salinity: Warmer waters from the tropics evaporate and are cooled as they head north, and these salty, cool waters then settle to the bottom of the sea, where they form a massive undersea river that flows south down to the Southern, Antarctic Ocean. The process then repeats, creating what has been referred to as a conveyor belt in the ocean that

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GLOBAL WARMING helps regulate temperatures between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. According to researchers, however, melting polar ice caps and the melting glaciers in Greenland caused by global warming will add huge amounts of freshwater to the northern Atlantic Ocean, and this freshwater could disrupt the Gulf Stream conveyor proThe Gulf Stream cuts a path through the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, as seen from space.

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cess because it will not sink like salty water. Such a slowing or shutting down of the Gulf Stream, some scientists speculate, could cause a rapid cooling of temperatures within a few decades, possibly causing a little ice age like the one that occurred a few centuries ago and contributing to harsher winters, droughts, and crop failures in some countries. The worst-case scenario is that the world could return to a full-blown ice age, a prospect that could challenge the ability of humans to survive around the globe. Scientists once believed that such a major climate shift could only occur gradually over hundreds of years. However, newly developed drilling equipment has allowed scientists in recent years to extract and examine ice cores from some of Greenland’s most ancient glaciers. Thanks to this new technology, scientists were able to look at individual years of snow. What they learned is that the Earth has often transitioned from ice-age weather to temperate weather like that of today in a matter of just two to three years. The shocking news is that instead of a slow change in climate, the Earth is capable of making a major climate shift when it reaches a certain tipping point. In fact, there is now evidence that the Gulf Stream may already be weakening due to global warming. A group of scientists in Britain have recently shown that the flow rate of the Atlantic current dropped significantly from 1957 to 1998, and in 2004 the Gulf Stream even came to a complete halt for ten days. Although the current has speeded up slightly since 2004, policy makers in Europe remain concerned because of the dramatic effect that such a change could have on Europe’s climate. Indeed, scientists worry that a slowdown in the Gulf Stream could produce a temperature drop of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) over the next decade in Britain, and a complete shutdown could lead to a 7.2- to 19.4-degree-Fahrenheit (4to 6-degree-Celsius) cooling over twenty years. At this point, no one knows whether or not this data is a sign that the Gulf Stream is sputtering to a halt. As lead scientist Harry Bryden at the National Oceanography Centre in the United Kingdom said about the temporary stopping of the current: “We’d never seen anything like that before and we don’t understand it. We didn’t know it could happen.”21

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Climate Uncertainties In the final analysis, most scientists remain very concerned about future global warming, but a lack of knowledge and understanding of the many complex and interdependent climate processes continues to hinder efforts to definitively predict the degree of warming we might expect. Although experts expect global warming to continue, especially if human-produced greenhouse emissions are not reduced, both positive and negative climate feedbacks will likely influence the rate that temperatures will rise. Most experts think that the overall effect of these feedbacks will be to add to an already dangerous warming trend, but because the climate is somewhat unpredictable and chaotic, there is a possibility that future temperatures may differ in either direction from today’s best climate predictions.

THREATS POSED BY GLOBAL WARMING

I

f global warming continues as most scientists expect, it will cause significant changes in the environment. According to the IPCC’s 2007 report, increases in greenhouse emissions will produce not only rising temperatures, but more severe weather, rising sea levels, and continued melting of glacier ice. These environmental changes, in turn, could cause the extinction of many plant and animal species, threaten many aspects of human existence—such as food, water, energy, health, and security— and depending on the degree of warming, possibly even challenge the Earth’s ability to support human life.

Signs of Global Warming Rising global temperatures have already had a major impact on the environment and ecosystems in many regions of the world. The 2007 IPCC report, for example, found that numerous environmental changes can be clearly linked to climate change. Arctic glaciers are rapidly melting, creating more and larger glacial lakes and increased earlier spring runoff into snow-fed rivers. Mountainous regions are experiencing more rock avalanches. And warmer temperatures are causing previously frozen soil, called permafrost, to thaw, causing increasing ground instability in northern latitudes. The IPCC report also says warming water temperatures are causing changes in some Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems. Changes in ice cover, water salinity and acidity, oxygen levels, and water circulation, for example, are harming algae, fish, and plankton (microscopic marine life that provide food for many larger marine creatures). And rising sea levels are causing losses of coastal 45

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GLOBAL WARMING wetlands and mangrove forests, which in turn contribute to more coastal flooding. Other changes are occurring in land-based biological systems. Events such as the unfolding of leaves, laying of eggs, and migration, which usually happen in the spring, are now happening earlier, and many plants and animals are moving northward and to higher altitudes as temperatures warm. Many experts believe that larger Arctic creatures, such as polar bears and the seals they feed on, are starving and well on their way to extinction. So far, the state of Alaska is the region in the United States most affected by global warming. Reporter Timothy Egan provides the distressing details of these changes: In Shishmaref [Alaska], on the Chukchi Sea just south of the Arctic Circle, it means high water eating away so many houses and buildings that people . . . [may] move the entire village inland. In Barrow, the northernmost city in North America, it means coping with mosquitoes in a place where they once were nonexistent, and rescuing This chart shows ecosystems that are being threatened by global warming.

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The Portage Glacier in Alaska can no longer be seen from the visitors center, which was built in 1986. Many people feel the retreat of the glacier is due to global warming. Alaska is the state that has been most affected by global warming.

hunters trapped on breakaway ice at a time of year when such things once were unheard of. In Fairbanks, where wildfires have been burning . . ., it means living with hydraulic jacks to keep houses from slouching on foundations that used to be frozen all year. Permafrost, they say, no longer is permanent. On the Kenai Peninsula, a recreation wonderland south of Anchorage, it means living in a 4 million-acre spruce forest that has been killed by beetles, the largest loss of trees to insects ever recorded in North America, federal officials say. Government scientists tied the event to rising temperatures, which allow the beetles to reproduce at twice their normal rate.22

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In 2007 one of the worst droughts in Georgia’s recent history saw water levels recede to record levels, as is shown here at Lake Lanier, where dry land is exposed where water once covered the shoreline.

Human health, too, is already being affected by global warming. In Europe, for example, heat waves have led to a rise in heatrelated deaths in recent years. Extreme temperatures in the summer of 2003, for example, are believed to have caused thirty-five thousand deaths in European Union countries. In fact, climate researchers say that since 1880, extremely hot days have become almost three times more frequent in the region, and the length of these heat waves has doubled. Other parts of the world are noticing different health threats as a result of rising temperatures. In 2007, countries in Southeast Asia, such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and Cambodia, experienced one of the worst-ever outbreaks of dengue fever, a serious illness carried by mosquitoes that causes fever, joint pain, and sometimes death. Dr. Thawat Suntrajarn, director of Thailand’s Department of Communicable Diseases, explained, “Experts say it’s partly due to global warm-

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ing because it’s increased the amount of water, not only sea water, but fresh water where mosquitoes breed.”23 Moreover, periods of severe weather—both heavy precipitation and sustained droughts—have become more common, and this has caused a decline in food production in some parts of the world. One of the areas most affected is the continent of Africa, which in recent years has been experiencing both torrential floods and severe drought—each a threat to the region’s food supply. In 2002–2003, for example, southern Africa suffered from a drought that caused a serious food deficit in which an estimated 14.4 million people needed food assistance, and in 2007, West Africa was hit with heavy rains and widespread flooding that also destroyed crops. In 2007, Australia, too, faced an unprecedented drought that led to severe water restrictions, crop failures, and a drying up of rivers in the Murray-Darling river system—the source of irrigation for much of the country’s food production.

POSITIVE EFFECTS

ON

AGRICULTURE

“Alarmists say rising temperatures will produce droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events that hurt agriculture. . . . [But] more often than not, researchers have found that a warmer climate seems to have positive impacts on agriculture.” —Dr. Craig Idso, Chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. Quoted in Diane Carol Bast, “Expert Comments: Drought, Flood Risk Exaggerated,” Heartland Perspectives, April 14, 2008. www.globalwarmingheartland.org/article.cfm?artId=23097.

And in the United States, water shortages that have long plagued the western states have now begun to affect the East. In the fall of 2007, for example, southeastern states such as Florida, Georgia, and Alabama experienced a drought of historic proportions. In the Northwestern states, many scientists are noticing a connection between increasing temperatures and more frequent, large forest fires that burn more than a thousand acres. Many commentators also question whether the multiple chaparral fires that raged through Southern California during the fall of 2007 may be related to global warming, because the fires were

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GLOBAL WARMING fueled by a prolonged drought and stronger-than-normal westerly Santa Ana winds.

Environmental Changes Expected As temperatures increase, experts say these trends will deepen. Over the next century, the IPCC predicts more extreme weather and more ice melts, accompanied by potentially devastating rises in sea levels. Weather changes will also include more severe heat waves, more drought and fires, and more frequent and intense storms, hurricanes, and cyclones. Yet not all regions will be affected in the same way. The 2007 IPCC report, for example, says, “By mid-century, annual average river runoff and water availability are projected to increase by 10–40% at high latitudes and in some wet tropical areas, and decrease by 10–30% over some dry regions at mid-latitudes and in the dry tropics.”24 Thus, dry regions of the world will get drier and see more frequent and larger fires, and wet regions will see more and bigger storms and increased risks from flooding. In the United States, the IPCC predicts an average 6 inches (0.15m) or less annual rainfall for the U.S. Southwest, increased annual rainfall for the U.S. Northeast, and fifty more (than average) days that never fall below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) for the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Particularly for the Southwest, these conditions could be devastating, creating an inhospitable desert climate for the millions of people who live there. In addition, melting glaciers, sea ice, and snow, together with ocean expansion resulting from increased water temperatures, are expected to cause sea levels to rise dramatically. The IPCC climate models project that by the end of this century, the global average sea level will rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 and 58cm) above the 1980–1999 average. Even bigger changes are possible, however, if Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets melt faster than expected. In fact, the IPCC report states that the upper range for sea-level rise by 2100 is 31 inches (79cm). Yet even a relatively small sea-level rise could threaten coasts, cities, and low-lying islands around the world and cause flooding that could kill millions. As National Geographic magazine has explained:

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Over a third of the world’s population now lives within 62 miles (100 kilometers) of a shoreline, and 13 of the world’s 20 largest cities are located on a coast. Unfortunately, the world’s booming coastal population faces an uphill battle for survival against rising seas. As sea levels go up, wetland ecosystems suffer, saltwater contaminates aquifers, and catastrophic storms wreck coastal properties. Particularly vulnerable are low-lying lands and shallow islands. High-rise resorts perch precariously along shorelines of tiny Caribbean nations whose economies rely heavily on tourist dollars. In countries such as Bangladesh, where the flood-prone Ganges Delta is the breadbasket of the nation, the entire country—not just coastal dwellers—suffers from episodic inundation of crops. Saltwater intrusion on groundwater sources in the Marshall Islands has rendered aquifers useless. Louisiana is losing as much as 35 square miles (91 square kilometers) of wetlands a year to erosion. If sea levels continue to inch higher, the severity and frequency of the destruction will only increase.25 Flash floods caused by torrential rains, soil erosion, and rising sea levels cause problems for countries like Bangladesh, where a lot of the population lives near the shoreline.

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GLOBAL WARMING Many of these weather changes, such as increased wildfires, storms, and flooding, will likely occur even with just 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.56 degree Celsius) of additional warming, but a greater degree of warming in the higher ranges projected by the IPCC will cause even more serious problems. As Lynn Laws of the Iowa Environmental Council explains, “More than five degrees Fahrenheit will result in up to 3.2 billion people facing water shortages, 20% of the global population affected by flooding, and 3–8 times more heat waves in some cities.”26

Species Extinctions Expected The changes in the environment are expected to severely test the resilience of many plant and animal ecosystems, and they are expected to lead to mass extinctions of many species. In fact, according to an article published in the journal Nature in 2004, Increases in ocean temperatures will have a great effect on biodiversity. Coral systems at the Great Barrier Reef are dying at an alarming rate due to increasing ocean temperatures.

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The Plight of the Polar Bear Wildlife experts say one of the first results of global warming is that polar bears may go extinct. Polar bears spend much of their lives on and around floating ice sheets in the Arctic region, where they hunt for seals and raise their young. Many of these ice sheets, however, have been rapidly melting due to global warming, sometimes leaving bears stranded on open sea waters. In fact, scientists have already documented multiple polar bear drownings. Following a fierce winter storm in September 2004, for example, researchers counted about forty dead polar bears

in the ocean about sixty miles offshore from the coastline of Alaska. Polar bears can swim long distances, but they are believed to have tired and drowned in the rough waters during the storm because they were too far from an ice platform. In addition, researchers are seeing a change in the bears’ habits, with many bears choosing to stay on or near land. This behavior change, however, may not help the bears, because most have not adapted to hunting for land animals and because they seem to require more fat intake than land animals can provide.

Polar bears may become extinct as a result of global warming.

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GLOBAL WARMING climate change could threaten nearly a million land species—a quarter of the plant and animal species living today—by the year 2050. The article discusses a study of six biodiversity-rich regions around the world representing 20 percent of the Earth’s land area. In these regions, scientists used climate models designed to simulate the way that species’ ranges might change in response to warming temperatures and climate conditions. The scientists found that 15 to 37 percent of the 1,103 plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, frogs, butterflies, and other invertebrates studied could be driven extinct. If this percentage is applied globally, it could mean a million species will go extinct due to global warming. The article’s coauthor, Lee Hannah, a scientist at the nonprofit Conservation International, concluded, “This study makes clear that climate change is the biggest new extinction threat.”27

A TOTAL SCAM “[Global warming] is the greatest scam in history. . . . Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an allusion of rapid global warming. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.” —John Coleman, meteorologist, TV weatherman, and founder of the Weather Channel. John Coleman, “Weather Channel Founder: Global Warming ‘Greatest Scam in History,’” Icecap, November 11, 2007. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/comments_about_ global_warming/.

Meanwhile, increases in ocean temperatures, expected to be about 1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 3 degrees Celsius) in the next century, will most certainly have a negative effect on the vital chain of biodiversity, the world’s great variety and complexity of life forms, that keeps the seas and their fish populations healthy. The world’s precious coral systems, which provide protections and shelter to many different species of fish, will probably bleach—that is, lose their color due to environmental stress—and eventually die. The oceans will also become more acidic, a phenomenon that will lead to the deaths of many more marine creatures. Shellfish, sea urchins, starfish, and plankton will be particularly affected because they may not be able to form skeletons and

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shells if the oceans become too acidic. The loss of plankton, a food source for many larger fish, and habitat changes caused by warmer ocean temperatures will in turn threaten other fish species, as well as large marine mammals such as whales and dolphins. In fact, a study conducted by an international team of scientists and ecologists and published in the journal Science in 2006 even predicted that all species of wild seafood may collapse by the year 2050 due to a combination of overfishing and climate change. As coauthor Steve Palumbi of Stanford University warned, this century could be “the last century of wild seafood.”28

Human Food and Water Shortages For humans, climate change may not only diminish seafood from the oceans; it also may mean declining water supplies and decreased agricultural productivity. Although some regions may experience floods and rising seas, other parts of the world will In drought-ravaged Moyale, Ethiopia, cattle are led to one of the few remaining watering holes in the region. This lack of water, along with other climate changes, can cause a decline in food production, affecting the lives of millions of people.

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GLOBAL WARMING suffer from drought and reduced rainfall. With the world’s population rapidly increasing, these problems could become very serious, producing widespread water shortages and more hunger and malnutrition, especially for people in less developed areas. According to the IPCC, hundreds of millions of people in Africa and Latin America will not have enough water to live in less than twenty years, and by 2050, hundreds of millions in Asia could face the same situation. By 2080, water shortages could threaten a total of 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people. This lack of water, along with other climate changes, in turn, could cause a decline in food production, particularly in developing countries located close to the equator such as India and Sudan. According to William Cline, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Center for Global Development, developing countries are predicted to suffer an average 10 to 25 percent decline in agricultural productivity by the 2080s. As a result, the IPCC projects that by 2030, malnutrition will rise dramatically, and that by 2080, 200 million to 600 million people could go hungry.

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“The most recent international moves towards combating global warming represent a recognition . . . that if the emission of greenhouse gases . . . is allowed to continue unchecked, the effects will be catastrophic—on the level of nuclear war.” —International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based public policy and education organization that focuses on political and military issues. Quoted in Jeremy Lovell, “Global Warming Impact Like ‘Nuclear War,’” Reuters, September 12, 2007. www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/12/3791/.

Notably, the most vulnerable agricultural crops may be grains, such as wheat, corn, and rice, the main dietary staples for much of the world’s population. Experts say these crops tend to be extremely sensitive to higher temperatures and they are already being grown in the tropics and subtropics just under the maximum temperatures they will tolerate. In 2006, for example, the

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Wildfires and Global Warming In recent years, Southern California has experienced a series of wildfires that have caused significant property damage for homeowners. Whether these fires are connected to global warming has been a hotly debated topic. Experts say the answer to this question depends, in turn, on whether the ongoing drought in the U.S. Southwest is related to climate change. Some researchers say the drought could, indeed, be related to expected results of warming temperatures, such as early snowmelt, the disappearance of winter storms, and expansion of subtropical weather into the area. Climate models have predicted that these conditions will

be increasingly common in the future. Another climate phenomenon that contributed to wildfires and may be developing as a result of global warming is more frequent Santa Ana winds—dry, westerly winds that blow hot air from the inland deserts in the fall. Other scientists, however, downplay the connection between fires and global warming, pointing out that large wildfires are a common occurrence in Southern California and that the damage caused by recent wildfires is due largely to the accumulation of fuel due to modern fire suppression policies and the fact that people are increasingly building homes in rural, fire-prone areas.

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, an organization representing many of the world’s top crop research centers, examined the impact of climate change on wheat, the source of one-fifth of the world’s food. Computer models used by researchers predicted that by 2050, warming weather conditions would decimate wheat crops in a vast, now fertile wheat-growing region that stretches from Pakistan through Northern India and Nepal to Bangladesh. This would threaten the food supply of 200 million people. Experts say other major food sources, such as cereals and corn produced in Africa and the rice crop in much of India and Southeast Asia, are at similar risk. Like some other impacts of global warming, however, the brunt of the consequences may fall on developing countries. While countries located in temperate regions, such as America, Europe, and Russia, may see a small overall increase in agricultural yields due to warmer temperatures, countries in warmer

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GLOBAL WARMING climates, many of them poorer nations, will face food declines. As Louis Verchot, an ecologist at the World Agroforestry Center in Nairobi, Kenya, explains: “The impacts on agriculture in developing countries, and particularly on countries that depend on rain-fed agriculture, are likely to be devastating. . . . With climate change, the agricultural areas in Canada, Russia and Europe will expand, while the areas suited for agriculture in the tropics will decline.”29

More Infectious Disease and Deaths The IPCC also expects global warming to contribute to increased rates of illness, injuries, and death for people around the globe. Developing countries, many of which are already struggling to cope with extreme poverty and epidemics, will likely see a rise in malnutrition, diarrhea, and stunted child growth and development due to decreased food production. Increased flooding and water shortages will also raise the risk of waterborne bacteria and disease pathogens. Children, the elderly, and the poor are the most at risk, and some may not be able to survive. A study by scientists from the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2002, for example, found that 154,000 people already die every year from these effects of global warming, and WHO says these numbers could double by 2020.

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“Current preoccupation is with terrorism, but in the long term climate change will outweigh terrorism as an issue for the international community. . . . Climate change is going to make some very fundamental changes to human existence on the planet.” —David Anderson, a former Canadian environment minister. Quoted in CNN.com, “Official: Global Warming Bigger Threat than Terrorism,” February 6, 2004. www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/02/05/canada.environment. reut/index.html.

Since tropical weather is expected to expand as temperatures rise, another health effect is that dangerous tropical diseases could spread into higher altitudes and latitudes. Malaria, for ex-

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Although the use of nets could greatly reduce the number of deaths due to malaria, many people in affected areas are too poor to afford them.

ample, is a disease transmitted by mosquitoes, which thrive in warmer temperatures. As temperatures rise, many experts expect mosquitoes to travel farther and expand the territory subject to malaria infections. A similar threat may come from influenza, or the flu. Global warming could release flu microbes that have been locked in glaciers for centuries, potentially creating deadly new types of flu. In addition, experts say the indirect effects of global warming, such as drought and flooding, could send millions of rural residents fleeing into the cities, where dense housing conditions could help spread many other highly infectious illnesses such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and other sexually transmitted diseases. Scientists, however, cannot predict exactly how diseases will respond to the multitude of anticipated climate changes. As Stephen Morse of Columbia University said: “Environmental

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GLOBAL WARMING changes have always been associated with the appearance of new diseases or the arrival of old diseases in new places. With more [global warming] changes, we can expect more surprises.”30

Resource Wars Perhaps the worst possible impact of global warming, however, would be military conflicts that could break out as nations compete for dwindling water, food, energy, and other resources. Many military experts, in fact, see the climate crisis as a “threat multiplier” that will intensify global political instability by creating pressures—such as water shortages, food insecurity, disease, and flooding—on some of the world’s most fragile governments. According to a U.S. Department of Defense report in 2004, climate change could produce famine and widespread riots. Here, a former waiter works as a security guard for food shipments during Somalia’s civil war in 2007.

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This is the conclusion reached in a 2007 report by a United Statesbased national security think tank, the CNA Corporation. The report, approved by eleven U.S. admirals and generals, warned: Projected climate change will seriously exacerbate already marginal living standards in many Asian, African, and Middle Eastern nations, causing widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states. . . . The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide, and the growth of terrorism. . . . The U.S. may be drawn more frequently into these situations, either alone or with allies, to help provide stability before conditions worsen and are exploited by extremists. The U.S. may also be called upon to undertake stability and reconstruction efforts once a conflict has begun, to avert further disaster and reconstitute a stable environment.31 According to press reports, a secret report prepared by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2004 contained an even grimmer outlook on the dangers of climate change. According to the report, the warming climate could produce famine, widespread riots, millions of homeless migrants, and a decrease in the planet’s ability to sustain its current population. The report concluded that global warming is a major national security concern because climate changes will raise issues of survival that will lead many countries into wars with their neighbors. Abrupt warming, the report predicted, could even result in global anarchy—that is, lawlessness, civil disorder, and wars—because nations might use the threat of nuclear weapons to defend and secure dwindling food, water, and energy supplies. If this occurs, the report warned, “disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life. . . . Once again, warfare would define human life.”32 The goal, of course, is to prevent such depressing and horrific outcomes from becoming reality. To this end, most military reports on global warming urge that efforts be made to reduce global warming before it is too late. Avoiding resource wars and planet annihilation, these military experts argue, presents one of the most compelling reasons for taking action to reduce greenhouse emissions.

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f, as most scientists believe, human carbon emissions are a major cause of rising global temperatures, then only human action to reduce those emissions will be effective in solving the problem. Many people hope that technology and new renewable energy sources will provide an easy solution, but scientists and energy experts are not confident that this can occur quickly enough. Instead, most experts think that immediate caps on human carbon emissions are also necessary to prevent a future global warming disaster. For this reason, the IPCC has urged that governments adopt multiple strategies for radically cutting carbon emissions from fossil fuels. So far, however, there has been only modest progress in this direction.

The Need for Immediate Action Reducing emissions is difficult because the world is very addicted to fossil fuels. Oil, natural gas, and coal provide the energy that heats (and cools) our homes and powers our cars and airplanes. Fossil fuels also provide the electricity essential to maintaining our modern lifestyles, which are dependent on computers, telephones, televisions, and numerous other machines and appliances. The world economy, too, requires cheap fossil fuels to manufacture a multitude of products, to grow food, and to transport people and products around the globe. Developed countries use the largest share of energy, while less developed nations use very little. The United States is one of the world’s highest energy users. According to energy expert Mayer Hillman, “In 2004, the average American used 7.9 tons of oil equivalent, the United Kingdom was half that at 3.8, China was much lower at 1.0, with Bangledesh accounting for only 0.11.”33 62

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World energy consumption is likely to grow in the future. The world population is increasing rapidly, particularly in developing countries. The global population in 2000 was about 6.1 billion people, but by 2050 it is expected to rise to 9.3 billion, with some estimates closer to 10.9 billion. In addition, certain developing countries such as China and India are experiencing rapid economic growth. For example, China, which is home to 1.3 billion people, has been growing at a rate of 8 percent annually since 1980, and its economy is expected to quadruple in the next twenty years. People in these countries want all the same technologies now available to people in developed countries. Altogether, more people with more economic wealth wanting cars, computers, and appliances means there will be an ever-increasing demand for more energy in the future. If this added energy demand is satisfied by burning fossil fuels, it will produce a significant increase in greenhouse emissions. In fact, some experts say that if people

U.S. Climate Change Initiatives In the United States, the federal response to global warming has been slow. The lack of federal efforts, however, has inspired states and localities to take action. Almost half of all states, for example, have created funds to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy, and twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have mandated that electrical utility companies generate a certain percentage of their electricity from renewable sources. Twenty-nine states also have adopted climate plans to reduce their overall emissions, but California is the clear leader. In 2006, California enacted the first mandatory and enforceable statewide

program to cap carbon emissions from major industries. California’s goal is to reduce total state greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to reduce emissions by 80 percent by 2050. California also has approved a requirement to reduce carbon emissions in light-duty vehicles by 30 million tons by 2020, and in 2007 the state announced plans to establish the world’s first low-carbon fuel standard, with the goal of reducing the carbon emissions on all passenger vehicles by 10 percent by 2020. California and numerous other states have also formed regional initiatives aimed at combating climate change.

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GLOBAL WARMING in the developing world adopt the same energy-intensive lifestyles as people in developed countries, global carbon emissions could triple—a level that most scientists believe would result in catastrophic climate change.

START FINDING SOLUTIONS NOW “The great party of the twentieth century is coming to an end, and unless we now start preparing our survival kit we will soon be just another species eking out an existence in the few remaining habitable regions [on Earth].” —James Lovelock, scientist, author, and environmentalist. James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia. New York: Perseus, 2006, p. xiv.

According to climate experts, however, it is still possible for humans to curb the most dire effects of global warming. The 2007 IPCC report, for example, concluded that catastrophic global warming can be avoided if the world takes immediate and decisive action to stabilize and then reduce greenhouse emissions. The IPCC recommended that a variety of methods be used to achieve this goal—everything from increasing energy efficiency, to greater reliance on nuclear energy, to development of new and emerging technologies, including renewable energy sources. The 2007 IPCC report also encouraged governments to employ a wide range of political tools, such as regulations and standards, taxes, trading schemes, subsidies, financial incentives, and research and development programs. Most importantly, the IPCC report underscored the need for a new global warming treaty to cut global emissions drastically.

The Role for Renewable Energy The ideal solution to global warming would be a technological one that allows the world to switch quickly from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal, which emit zero or low levels of carbon dioxide. Each of these sources, however, has its limitations.

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According to many experts, wind power is the most promising source of clean energy. Turbines capture the energy of the wind using propeller-like blades positioned on 100-foot-high towers, and the moving blades are connected to turbines to generate electricity. Supporters say even a small wind tower could produce more than half of the electricity used by an average home, but more massive wind farms could contribute a significant share to utility grids. Denmark, for example, already generates 20 percent of its electricity from wind. Unfortunately, the wind does not blow all the time, causing a problem of intermittent and unreliable electricity generation, and many people think large wind turbines detract from the beauty of landscapes and views. Solar energy is another exciting renewable technology. Supporters say the amount of sun energy that hits the Earth every day is enormous. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a leading science organization, “Averaged over the entire Many experts consider wind power one of the most promising sources of clean energy.

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GLOBAL WARMING surface of the planet, 24 hours per day for a year, each square meter [of land on Earth] collects the approximate energy equivalent of almost a barrel of oil each year, or 4.2 kilowatt-hours of energy every day.”34 The two main types of solar systems are solar hot water and photovoltaic cells. Solar water systems are usually simple boxes with liquid-filled pipes that are placed on the rooftops of buildings to absorb solar rays and heat household water. Solar photovoltaic (PV) cells, made from silicon, are a more complex type of rooftop system that can convert solar heat directly into electricity to power homes and businesses, add to a larger electrical grid, or be stored in batteries. Countries such as Germany and Japan have already invested heavily in solar energy, and the United States may soon follow their example. California has put in place an incentive program A stainless-steel pipeline carries steam to the Geysers geothermal plant in Middletown, California. This area has been producing renewable energy since the 1960s and is the largest producer of geothermal energy in the United States.

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that should result in solar power for a million homes in the next ten years, and other regions of the country are also ideal for solar. As the U.S. Energy Department explains: “Solar energy represents a huge domestic energy resource for the United States, particularly in the Southwest where the deserts have some of the best solar resource levels in the world. For example, an area approximately 12 percent the size of Nevada has the potential to supply all of the electric needs of the United States.”35 So far, however, solar systems only capture a fraction of the sun’s energy. Like wind they are intermittent, and they are very expensive, costing several times more than conventionally produced electricity. Research is underway that could produce much more efficient and less costly solar energy systems, but solar energy’s future largely depends on these technological developments.

WARMING IS HERE; HOW MUCH DEPENDS ON US “This new [2007] IPCC report makes it clear that global warming is here now, and we must take swift and effective action to stave off the most severe consequences. . . . At this point, some warming is unavoidable, but there is a world of difference between one degree and seven degrees.” —Dan Lashof, environmentalist and science director at the Climate Center, a project of the National Resource Defense Council, an environmental group. Quoted in Environment News Service, “Global Warming Shock Wave Awakens World Leaders.” February 2, 2007. www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2007/2007-02-02-01.asp.

Geothermal—energy generated by heat from deep inside the Earth—is also a clean energy source that can be used either directly for heating buildings or indirectly for generating electricity. According to some experts, geothermal technology might eventually be developed to supply 100,000 megawatts of electricity at less than ten cents per kilowatt hour, the price of conventional electricity. Today, however, geothermal remains more expensive than fossil fuels, and at most it could provide only about 10 percent of America’s energy needs.

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GLOBAL WARMING Biomass, or plant material, is another potential alternative energy source. Historically, humans have burned trees and other crops for heat energy, but today researchers are focusing on noncombustion methods that turn biomass into gaseous, liquid, or solid fuels that can be used in power plants to generate electricity with significantly lower greenhouse emissions. Biomass also can be used to produce transportation fuels that produce fewer harmful emissions than gasoline. Two examples are biodiesel, an oil collected from plants that can power diesel engines, and ethanol, a type of alcohol produced from corn, sugar beets, or switchgrass that can be mixed with gasoline and used in most cars. The main limitation of biomass energy is that it would require large quantities of plant material and thus use huge tracts of land for single-crop agriculture—an unsustainable practice that could further degrade rural environments.

Transportation Technologies Several transportation technologies may also help to reduce carbon emissions. Of these, hydrogen fuel is probably the most attractive because it can be stored and used like gasoline. Hydrogen can be easily produced from water by separating hydrogen from oxygen, but this requires energy, either from fossil fuels or renewable sources. Thus, hydrogen is only as emission-free as the energy that is used to produce it. Other obstacles to hydrogen gas are that it must be compressed or liquefied in order to fit into the size of a typical car’s gasoline tank, and numerous hydrogen stations would have to be erected to distribute the fuel, similar to the present-day gas station system. Overcoming these obstacles depends on achieving technological breakthroughs in the future. In addition, even if technical aspects are solved, experts say changing a nation’s infrastructure to fit a new type of fuel presents a massive undertaking. Many energy experts are therefore skeptical about whether hydrogen can ever truly replace gasoline as a viable energy source. Electric vehicles might also lower emissions but they, too, depend on the development of renewable energies to produce clean electric power that can be stored in batteries. Today’s electric cars have another major disadvantage—current battery

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Energy from the Oceans The world’s oceans may provide another viable source of renewable energy. Researchers have long been studying how to exploit the energy from ocean waves, tides, and ocean-based winds, which tend to be stronger than winds on land. Some experts predict that these ocean resources may eventually overtake solar energy as the most economical clean energy source. Ocean wind power is the most developed of these ocean energy technologies, and some countries are already investing in offshore wind systems. Denmark is the world leader so far, but in 2007 Britain announced plans to build thousands of turbines in the

North Sea, Irish Sea, and off the coast of Scotland—enough to supply almost half of the country’s current electricity needs. Ocean turbines are typically huge—up to 850 feet high—and each can power up to eight thousand homes. Wind power is intermittent, however, so fossil-fuel power stations would still be needed as a backup during windless days. Wind turbines have been criticized for killing birds and bats, but most experts believe the benefits of wind power far outweigh the environmental damage. Environmental groups are also working to develop wind systems that will be less likely to harm wildlife.

Oceans are becoming a valuable source for renewable energy.

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GLOBAL WARMING technology prevents them from being used to travel very far on a single charge. For this reason, hybrid vehicles containing both an electric battery–powered motor and a conventional gasoline engine now seem more promising. Already, many major car companies have begun to produce and market hybrid vehicles that achieve better mileage, and advancements over the next few decades could increase efficiency to fifty to eighty miles per gallon— more than twice that of today’s average passenger car. This would significantly reduce emissions, but today hybrid cars are still relatively expensive. One day, researchers hope that renewable hydrogen can be used to power fuel cells, a pollution-free technology that could efficiently convert the gas into electricity. Fuel cells could then be used instead of batteries to power zero-emission vehicles. For now, most of these transportation technologies, like renewable energy technologies, remain in the development phase.

Clean Coal and Nuclear Technologies Because renewable technologies need further development, some experts argue that currently abundant fuel sources, such as coal and nuclear energy, may have to be relied on until better energy sources are available. The United States, for example, already uses coal to produce much of its electricity, and it has enough coal to last another 250 years. President Bush has proposed that more coal plants be built to reduce the country’s reliance on foreign oil, but the problem is that coal is a fossil fuel that produces harmful emissions when burned. Entrepreneurs therefore are researching ways to produce a form of clean, emission-free coal. One of their ideas is coal gasification—a way of chemically converting coal into a cleaner-burning natural gas by using steam and high pressure. Another idea currently being researched is carbon sequestration—a method of capturing the carbon dioxide that is produced from burning the coal and burying it deep underground so that it does not escape into the atmosphere. In the future, supporters say these two technologies might be combined to produce zero-emission coal energy. Critics, however, claim that there is no such thing as clean coal and that even zero-emission coal plants will produce toxic

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wastes and damage the environment. As reporter Kari Lydersen explains: “[Critics are] skeptical of the relatively untested clean coal technology and worried about the solid waste the plants will produce. . . . And nothing about zero-emissions technology can help . . . West Virginia, where strip mining is permanently removing vast swaths of the mountain range to feed the nation’s power plants.”36 Indeed, critics say that clean coal will create just as much pollution as older coal plants because clean coal plants take heavy metal toxins like mercury out of the air but leave higher levels of these toxins in solid waste ash, much of which ends up polluting ordinary landfills. In short, air pollution is traded for ground pollution. In addition, clean coal technology remains very expensive, so its usage may be limited in any case. A protester wearing a mask of Australian prime minister John Howard pretends to clean coal at an Australian energy and water conference in 2006. Many environmentalists say that there is no such thing as clean coal.

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GLOBAL WARMING President Bush has also championed nuclear energy, an energy source that currently provides about 20 percent of America’s electricity but one that has fallen out of favor because of environmental concerns. Nuclear power plants in the past have leaked radiation and caused accidents such as the one at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979. And they pose a problem of how to dispose of the end product of nuclear fission—radioactive nuclear waste. As a result of these environmental and safety issues, no nuclear power plants have been built in America since the 1970s. Today, however, the nuclear industry is gaining support as a possible alternative to fossil fuel options because it does not produce greenhouse emissions. Supporters also argue that nuclear plants can be operated safely. They cite the safety record of countries such as France, which relies on nuclear power for much of its electricity. Even if the public can be convinced to accept the risks and solid waste pollution of nuclear power, however, nuclear (like coal) is expensive. Experts say a typical nuclear power plant costs $2 billion to build, making nuclear power substantially more costly than electricity made from wind, coal, oil, or natural gas. Because it can only be used to make electricity, not fuel for transportation, it also addresses only part of the emissions problem. Neither coal nor nuclear, therefore, appears to be the perfect solution for global warming.

Energy Efficiency Improving energy efficiency could also help to reduce greenhouse emissions. In fact, according to the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council, “The cheapest and fastest way to cut global warming pollution is to make things that use electricity— like appliances, industrial equipment and buildings—more energyefficient.”37 Major home appliances such as refrigerators, clothes washers, and dishwashers account for a large portion of people’s monthly utility bills, and replacing them with new models— especially energy-efficient ones with a government Energy Star label—can dramatically reduce the amount of electricity consumers use. Using energy-efficient and environmentally friendly, or “green,” techniques to build homes and commercial buildings is an-

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In 1996 Deborah Davis, owner of Cleaner by Nature, traded chemical-based dry cleaning solvents for a solution that dry cleaned clothes “wet” using waterbased, “green” cleaners. Using more energy-efficient appliances can reduce global warming pollution.

other important objective. Some experts say that retrofitting older buildings and establishing strong efficiency standards for new construction could cut energy consumption by 40 to 50 percent. The U.S. Green Building Council, a U.S. nonprofit coalition of building industry leaders, has already developed a green building rating system, called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—to promote energy-efficient, healthy, and green design and construction practices. In addition, because gas-burning vehicles create much of the greenhouse gas problem, increasing gas mileage and vehicle efficiency would go a long way toward reducing global warming. Today, under the U.S. Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations, all new cars must exceed 27.5 miles per gallon, and light

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GLOBAL WARMING trucks must exceed 20.7 miles per gallon. Legislators, however, are pushing to increase CAFE standards to at least 35 miles per gallon. Some policy makers are also interested in regulating emissions from air travel, because aviation is the world’s fastest- growing source of greenhouse gases and a major contributor to global warming.

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“Because the risks [of global warming] to society and ecosystems could prove to be significant, it is prudent now to develop and implement strategies that address the risks, . . . [including] putting policies in place that start us on a path to reduce emissions.” —ExxonMobil, a leading oil corporation. Quoted in Christian Science Monitor, “Key Players React to the IPCC Global Warming Report,” February 8, 2007.

However, experts say that technology to foster efficiency, produce renewable energy, and help clean up fossil fuel emissions cannot be developed quickly enough to prevent dangerous levels of warming. As Hillman explains, “[Even] the combined and most optimistic projections of technological developments will not begin to deliver the [emissions] reductions required.”38 For this reason, most scientists and global warming experts continue to press for meaningful global limits on greenhouse emissions— essentially a new, tougher version of the current Kyoto treaty.

The Future for Kyoto’s International Cap and Trade System So far, the Kyoto Protocol—an international agreement negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997 and ratified by 172 countries—is the main global response to climate change. The treaty sought to limit the greenhouse gas emissions of industrialized countries by 5.2 percent by the year 2012. Under Kyoto, each country was assigned a mandatory goal for emission cuts, with some countries facing much higher goals than others. Countries could take direct actions to cut their own emissions, or because Kyoto sought global emissions cuts without regard to their origin,

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the treaty created a “cap-and-trade” scheme that allowed participating countries to trade emissions credits. Under this program, a country that could not meet its emissions goal was permitted to purchase or trade for credits from countries that were exceeding their goals. Countries could also offset their excess emissions by financing emissions-reducing projects in developing countries under a program called the Clean Development Mechanism. A similar program, called Joint Implementation, was available to encourage emissions-reducing projects in eastern Europe and countries that used to be part of the former Soviet Union. In February 2005 members of the National Global Warming Coalition present a Valentine’s Day card to President George W. Bush outside the White House, urging him to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

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GLOBAL WARMING From the beginning, however, the Kyoto treaty faced many obstacles. The most damaging blow was that the United States— the single largest source of carbon emissions, responsible for about 25 percent of global greenhouse gases—refused to approve the treaty. The U.S. Senate in 1997 passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, claiming that the treaty’s failure to cover developing nations would place U.S. companies at a disadvantage and harm the U.S. economy. The rapidly developing nations of China and India, for example, were not required to reduce any carbon emissions under the Kyoto agreement. As a result of this opposition, U.S. president Bill Clinton never submitted the Kyoto treaty to the U.S. Senate for ratification. Australia, also a major source of carbon emissions, rejected the treaty for similar reasons. Without the United States and Australia, Kyoto became a treaty that primarily targeted Canada, Japan, and the European Union. UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon addresses delegates to the 2007 UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia. Supporters hope to finalize a new treaty by 2009.

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Today, even these countries are failing to meet their emissions targets. Canada and Japan, for example, each had a target of 6 percent reduction over 1990 emissions levels, but instead their emissions have increased. In addition, ten of the fifteen European Union countries appear likely to fail to meet their Kyoto goals by a wide margin. At the same time, China’s emissions have grown considerably, and it remains unregulated. Moreover, even if Kyoto goals were completely met, experts say this would reduce global temperatures only slightly, not enough to stop global warming or its harmful consequences. The 1997 Kyoto treaty, therefore, is now seen by many people as a failure. A process is now underway to negotiate a new global emissions treaty. Representatives from around the world have already met several times, and formal negotiations on a new treaty began in December 2007 in Bali. Supporters hope to finalize a new treaty by 2009 in order to allow time for ratification before 2012, when the current treaty expires. However, most commentators think treaty negotiators will face huge challenges. The issue of whether industrialized countries should bear most of the burden for reducing emissions promises to be the main stumbling block to a new global agreement. The United States joined the Bali negotiations, but it continues to demand that China and India also cap their emissions. The view of China, India, and other developing countries, however, is that most of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today is the result of more than a hundred years of unfettered development in the industrialized world, so these developed nations should bear most or all of the burden for reducing future emissions, while allowing emerging nations their chance to develop their economies. Many climate experts agree. As UN Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Yvo de Boer argued, “[any new treaty] should respect the . . . need for much deeper emission reductions by industrialized countries.”39 Another issue for negotiation is the level of mandatory emissions caps. A draft document at Bali suggested cuts for industrialized countries of 25 to 40 percent by 2020—significant increases from the reductions called for in the 1997 Kyoto treaty—but the United States, Russia, and Japan objected. Yet

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GLOBAL WARMING scientists have suggested that much bigger cuts—in the range of 50 to 80 percent—must be made to avoid catastrophic global temperature increases. For example, a 2007 report released by scientists at Texas Tech University, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Stanford University recommended that the United States reduce its emissions by at least 80 percent below 2000 levels by 2050. And some controversy still remains about the methods for reducing emissions. Despite the Kyoto treaty’s past flaws, many commentators stand by its cap-and-trade system. Many other observers, however, favor a carbon tax—a flat tax that would be applied across the board to all homes, businesses, automobiles, and public transportation systems. Supporters say that a carbon tax would be much simpler, require less enforcement and international effort, and would automatically promote conservation and business innovations to save fuel. Some European countries, such as France, have publicly supported a carbon tax approach, but American leaders so far have been wary. Many policy makers fear it could increase the prices of consumer goods and create inflation or, if not adopted globally, that it could drive jobs and business toward countries that do not adopt such a tax. Only time will tell which, if any, of these strategies will be adopted by the global community. Many commentators think, however, that the negotiations begun in Bali will ultimately succeed simply because they must. As Tony Juniper, executive director of the environmental group Friends of the Earth, puts it, “Bali could be the last chance to avoid the worst effect of global warming. . . . One should be cautiously optimistic about the prospects for getting the outline of the deal because we’re . . . [ruined] if we don’t.”40

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lthough much of the focus to date has been on mitigation of global warming—that is, measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—even immediate emissions cuts will not completely stop global warming in the near future. As a result, many climate experts and policy makers are beginning to think about a complementary strategy of adaptation—actions that individuals, businesses, and governments can take to live with the changes to the environment and economy that global warming is expected to cause in the next several decades. At this point, in fact, there appears to be no other choice but to prepare to live with a planetary warming trend.

Adapting to Global Warming For many years, global warming experts refused to embrace adaptation strategies, fearing that a discussion about adapting to global warming would give governments an excuse for not taking action to mitigate climate change. Today, most experts continue to stress that strong and immediate intervention is needed to protect future generations from global warming, but they accept that humans also must begin to prepare for the consequences of the higher temperatures that now seem certain to occur in coming decades. As the IPCC’s 2007 report explains, “Adaptation will be necessary to address impacts resulting from the warming which is already unavoidable due to past emissions.”41 Many commentators agree that these adaptation efforts must be made very soon, because global warming is already upon us. As author Mark Hertsgaard explains: For years, global warming was discussed in the hypothetical— a threat in the distant future. Now it is increasingly regarded as a clear, observable fact. . . . This sudden shift . . . [means] 79

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The Thames Barrier in London, England, is the world’s second-largest movable flood barrier and is used to control the water levels of the Thames River by raising and lowering a system of hydraulic gates.

we must start thinking about the many ways global warming will affect us, our loved ones, our property and our economic prospects in the years ahead. We must think—and then we must adapt to this new reality as best we can.42 At the same time, as IPCC coauthor Richard Klein of the Stockholm Environment Institute cautioned, “Adaptation . . . cannot be a substitute for mitigation.”43 Instead, experts stress that both strategies—mitigation and adaptation—must take place simultaneously. During the next few decades, therefore, governments around the globe must act to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions significantly while also working to strengthen systems to protect against stronger hurricanes, heat waves, fires, droughts, rising seas, and other impacts of global warming. Commentators warn that this challenge is necessary even though it will require massive efforts and expenditures in many countries. As Hertsgaard puts it, “Adapting to global warming won’t be cheap. It won’t be optional either.”44

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Escalating Allergens and Asthma Although global warming may help some crops and beneficial plants to grow, it also could spur the growth of harmful plants, such as those that produce allergic reactions in many people. Global warming is expected to produce higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and warmer temperatures. In addition, this warming will cause spring to arrive earlier in many locations, leading to a longer growing period. All these conditions, researchers say, are expected to cause common plants to produce more pollens and allergens—particles that cause many

people, especially those who suffer from asthma, to sneeze, itch, and have trouble breathing. According to a recent study by Duke University scientists, in fact, the amount of pollen produced by the ragweed plant (a weed common to North America that is a major source of allergic reactions) is expected to more than double if carbon emissions continue to climb in the future. Researchers say that rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide will also likely fuel the growth of other opportunistic wild plants, including a more poisonous form of poison ivy.

Global warming may cause plants to produce more pollens and allergens.

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GLOBAL WARMING Experts say adaptation strategies will vary from region to region depending on the effects that global warming has on different parts of the world. In places that receive more rainfall due to climate changes, for example, the goal might be to build more flood defenses and turn vulnerable, low-lying lands into nature preserves that can be allowed to flood periodically. In coastal areas where hurricanes and storms are expected to increase in number and intensity, officials might need to strengthen coastal wetlands to provide a storm buffer and make land-use decisions that keep residents safe from intense weather. In regions that experience more drought and more fires, governments may decide to revise building codes or zoning laws, reevaluate water supply systems, or add more firefighters to protect residents better against changing weather patterns. Meanwhile, regions affected by the spread of infectious diseases may need to improve their health systems, and countries that suffer from declining agriculture and food supplies may need to import more of their food. The idea of adaptation is simply that climate change must begin to be factored into all policy and planning decisions by individuals and their governments on local, national, and global levels.

A GENERATION’S LEGACY “We will be living with global warming for the rest of our lives.” —Mark Hertsgaard, journalist and author. Mark Hertsgaard, “Living Through the Storm,” Time, April 3, 2007.

Many countries have already begun to plan ahead for the effects of climate change. The Netherlands, which has historically struggled with flooding, is making its flood defenses even stronger. Britain, too, has doubled its spending on flood control and coast management in recent years. Other countries in Europe have also made various efforts to prepare for future climate changes. The United States, critics say, has been slow to respond, but the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 at least caused policy makers to begin thinking about how similar intense storms, and other impacts of global warming, might

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affect American towns and cities. The cost of cleaning up and recovering from the Katrina disaster has run into the hundreds of billions, and such events are predicted to become more commonplace in the future as global temperatures continue to rise.

Unequal Pain Achieving timely adaptation to climate change, however, may be the most difficult for poorer countries. Ironically, although developing countries contribute the least to global warming, they are expected to face the biggest global warming problems with the fewest financial and technical resources for combating these problems. While people in the United States and other industrialized nations will be affected by global warming in many ways, developing countries tend to be located in less temperate parts of the world where higher temperatures are expected to cause more dramatic environmental changes. As UN intern Sana Aftab Khan explains: “Reduced rainfall and prolonged droughts [in developing regions] could lead to dwindling water supplies, while Bangladesh, a low-lying country, has been subjected to massive flooding and mudslides in the last decade that many people believe to be a result of global warming. Here, Bangladeshi villagers carry the body of a mudslide victim in 2007.

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GLOBAL WARMING subsistence agriculture, on which these countries depend heavily, will be damaged by increased tropical cyclones, droughts and loss of soil fertility. Coastal flooding, droughts and diseases could also force many people out of their homes.”45 Also, poorer countries are less able to devote funds to infrastructure and other projects to protect against extreme weather or recover from disasters that could be caused by global warming. Americans thus might have to drive a smaller car or pay more for water or food, but people in poor countries may lose their homes, their jobs, their food and water, or their very lives. Bangladesh, for example, is a poor, low-lying country of 140 million people that has already experienced higher-than-normal flooding in the last decade caused by rising sea levels believed to be a result of global warming. According to retired national meteorologist M.H. Khan Chowdhury, “On an average, river erosion takes away about [19,000 acres] of land every year . . . [and] about one million people are directly or indirectly affected by river-bank erosion every year in Bangladesh.”46 If sea levels rise as much as expected if no action is taken to mitigate global warming, experts predict that rising waters will cover more than 15 percent of the country, displacing more than 13 million people and seriously damaging the nation’s rice fields, which provide much of its food. Today, Bangladesh is trying to raise roads, wells, and houses to higher levels and cope with rising seas but is having great difficulty doing so because of meager resources.

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“Climate change is here and now. . . . We have to adapt.” —Ian Noble, senior climate-change specialist at the World Bank, an international organization that provides aid to developing nations. Quoted in Peter N. Spotts, “Time to Begin ‘Adapting’ to Climate Change?” Christian Science Monitor, February 13, 2007.

Meanwhile, in the semi-arid region of Africa south of the Sahara Desert, reduced rainfall may put food and water at risk and threaten the existence of people and animals alike. As Paul

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Desanker, codirector of the Centre for African Development Solutions, warned: “If carbon pollution is left unchecked, climate change will have a pervasive effect on life in Africa. . . . It will threaten the people, animals and natural resources that make Africa unique.”47 Global warming could also lead to much higher rates of disease in developing parts of the world that are already struggling to contain a variety of epidemics. Because of the unequal burden of climate change, the IPCC has urged developed nations to help the developing world cope with the changes that will be brought by global warming. In most cases, this will mean providing financial assistance to poor countries to enable them to pay for such things as flood protection, food, and aid for those who suffer damage from weather disasters.

Sustainable Living For all countries, the key to adapting to climate change may be implementing sustainable development—a term defined by the World Commission on Environment and Development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”48 Long before today’s concerns about global warming, advocates for sustainable development argued that human activities were exploiting environmental treasures and ecosystems at an unsustainable rate that would eventually destroy the planet. This reckless use of natural resources, many environmentalists have claimed, has not only caused serious environmental destruction, but also deepening poverty and inequality for people in many developing regions of the world. Advocates have long urged governments around the world to embrace sustainable development as a way to repair this damage and avoid environmental and human catastrophe. In fact, these concerns sparked a UN Conference on Environment and Development, also called the Earth Summit, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992 to discuss global environmental issues and rethink destructive models of economic development. Over 152 world leaders attended the conference and agreed on a plan of action that included a recommendation that governments produce sustainable development strategies to decrease pollution and protect the environment. However, critics say very little progress has been made since the Rio Earth Summit. In 2005, for example,

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GLOBAL WARMING the UN issued a comprehensive report on the state of the global environment called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. The report was prepared by thirteen hundred researchers from ninetyfive countries over a four-year period, and it concluded, in part: • Everyone in the world depends on nature and ecosystem services to provide the conditions for a decent, healthy, and secure life. • Humans have made unprecedented changes to ecosystems in recent decades to meet growing demands for food, fresh water, fiber, and energy [which has] helped to improve the lives of billions, but at the same time they weakened nature’s ability to deliver other key services such as purification of air and water, protection from disasters, and the provision of medicines. . . . • Human activities have taken the planet to the edge of a massive wave of species extinctions, further threatening our own well-being. • The loss of services derived from ecosystems is a significant barrier to the . . . [reduction of] poverty, hunger, and disease. • The pressures on ecosystems will increase globally in coming decades unless human attitudes and actions change.49 Today, experts say global warming and related climate changes are adding significantly to the stresses on the environment. Many commentators, including the IPCC, have therefore renewed the call for sustainable development as a way to ease the Earth’s vulnerability to climate change. As the IPCC explained in its 2007 report, by reducing pollution and overdevelopment, sustainable development could help increase the environment’s ability to rebound from higher temperatures and related climate impacts. A large part of the problem, however, is that today’s economic systems do not measure the pollution or other environmental impacts or include them in the costs of products produced from natural resources. Instead, these environmental costs are passed along to society in the form of hidden health, environmental cleanup, and other expenses. For example, airlines do not pay for the large

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Due to the overfishing that was depleting the local fish supply, the government of Djibouti asked fishermen to go back to rod-and-hook fishing in an attempt to establish sustainable fishing.

amounts of carbon dioxide they put into the atmosphere, and the price of food does not reflect the costs of water, air, and soil pollution caused by the runoff of chemical pesticides and fertilizers used in modern agriculture. Moving to a sustainable development model, therefore, will involve making fundamental changes in the way the world economy works—a major undertaking for all nations.

Economic Concerns One of the biggest unknowns about global warming, in fact, is what effect it will have on the world economy. Mitigating greenhouse emissions, many people fear, will add to the normal costs of doing business and slow the economies of many nations around the world. In addition, countries that are hit with the results of rising temperatures— such as agricultural declines, food and water shortages, rising rates of disease, or disasters caused by floods, fires, or droughts—will face other significant economic costs. These economic blows may be especially difficult for developing or newly emerging economies, which have lately helped improve the world economy.

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In 2006 Gordon Brown, (left); Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist and vice president of the World Bank; and former British prime minister Tony Blair discuss Stern’s report on the economics of climate change.

On the other hand, not doing anything to stop global warming may result in the destruction of the very resources on which the economy, and human life, depend—a scenario that could lead to even lower economic growth or even a worldwide recession or depression. In 2006, for example, Nicholas Stern, former chief economist and vice president of the World Bank (an international organization that provides loans and economic assistance to developing countries), prepared a report for the British government on this issue. The main prediction of the report was that if nothing is done to mitigate global warming, a major worldwide depression could occur that could lower the global economic output, or gross domestic product, by 20 percent. The widely cited report concludes, “Our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century.”50 Although the Stern report has been criticized by some economists as too pessimistic, other economists praised it for providing a careful and realistic picture of the potential economic effects of climate change.

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Even in the United States, economists say, the costs of unchecked climate change will be staggering. In 2007 a study by University of Maryland researcher Matthias Ruth found that climate impacts will be widespread, affecting various sectors of the economy—such as rising water costs for agriculture; added infrastructure costs for building and maintaining water and sewer facitilies; increased energy costs for more summer cooling; higher health-care bills; and repairing property damage caused by storms, fires, and rising seas. As Ruth explained, “Climate change will affect every American economically in significant, dramatic ways, and the longer it takes to respond, the greater the damage and the higher the costs.”51 The most hopeful view, however, is that a prompt and effective global response to climate change could actually stimulate the world economy. The IPCC’s 2007 report, for example, concludes that governments could slow and then reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases over the next several decades

A Decline in Winter Sports For many locations on the planet, global warming may mark the end of winter sports, tourism, and recreation. Glaciers are already disappearing throughout the Alps, and resorts throughout Europe and the United States are worried about their future. There are good reasons for their concerns, because scientists have predicted that warmer temperatures and related climate changes could mean the end of reliable snow at resorts situated below altitudes of about 5,000 feet (1,500m) by the year 2050. And even if snowmaking equipment is deployed, many of these

resorts will not be able to survive. In fact, even famous ski resorts such as Aspen, Colorado, may be put out of business. By the middle of the century, according to some reports, springtime snowpack in the Rocky Mountains is expected to decrease by 37 percent and as much as 80 percent in the Southwest. And in New Hampshire, some experts predict that the number of ski days will be reduced by 10 to 20 percent. The global ski industry today is estimated at about $4 billion, so the economic losses from these changes could easily run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

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GLOBAL WARMING while at the same time recharging their economies by investing in new technologies and energy-saving policies. In one scenario envisioned by the IPCC, for example, the world would experience “very rapid economic growth, low global population growth that peaks in mid-century and declines thereafter, and the rapid introduction of new and more efficient technologies.”52 If this direction prevails, the IPCC predicts that the global economy would grow at 3.5 percent per year, giving the world a $550 trillion global economy in the year 2100, more than twice the size of the economy that would result from not taking strong action to stop climate change. As the UN Foundation explained in a February 2007 report: Significant harm from climate change is already occurring, and further damages are a certainty. The challenge now is to keep climate change from becoming a catastrophe. There is still a good chance of succeeding in this, and of doing so by means that create economic opportunities that are greater than the costs and that advance rather than impede other societal goals.53 A similar conclusion was reached in a 2007 report by the British investment bank Barclays Capital. The report takes the view that focusing on how much climate change is going to cost us is the wrong approach. Instead, the report predicts that the need to find replacements for fossil fuels over the next twentyfive years will result in an “energy revolution” that will “prove highly stimulatory for the global economy.”54 As the report’s author, Tim Bond, explains: “We’ve seen throughout history that wherever an economy adopts a new general purpose technology there has been no circumstance where it has had a negative effect on growth. The shift from hydrocarbons to alternatives should be seen in these terms.”55 If these optimistic projections are correct, mitigating and adapting to climate change may turn out to be the best possible way to boost the global economy.

Personal Strategies Although action by national governments and global alliances will be necessary to make the fundamental economic and other

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changes needed to adapt to temperature increases and shift away from fossil fuels, individuals can also play a role. They can try to reduce their own personal carbon production, called their “carbon footprint,” and make plans to live with warmer temperatures and other expected climate changes.

HUMANS CAN CONTROL GLOBAL WARMING “Global warming is already starting, and there’s going to be more of it. I think there is still time to deal with global warming, but we need to act soon. Humans now control global climate, for better or worse.” —James E. Hanson, scientist at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Quoted in Tom Gardner, “Scientist: Global Warming Could Melt Ice Caps, Eliminate Half of Earth’s Species,” Associated Press, USA Today, November 11, 2007.

As a beginning, people can try to travel less. Air travel burns more fossil fuel per person than any other mode of transportation, so avoiding flying can significantly reduce contributions to emissions. Private automobiles are the second-biggest offenders in creating carbon emissions, so driving less, telecommuting, carpooling, or using public transportation is another way to help reduce global warming. When driving is absolutely necessary, however, it can also help to keep tires inflated and engines tuned, so that cars get the best possible mileage out of each gallon of gas. And when buying a new car, people can consider buying a hybrid vehicle, which uses less gasoline than conventional automobiles. Home heating and cooling is the next biggest source of carbon emissions. Wearing sweaters in the winter, setting thermostats slightly lower, and using fans and opening windows for summer cooling can help address this problem. Insulating homes can also help reduce both heating and cooling costs. Another simple way to reduce home emissions is reducing electricity usage by buying more efficient appliances and using more efficient lighting options. Consumers can look for the blue Energy Star labels, which signify energy efficiency, and substitute compact fluorescent bulbs for incandescent ones. In fact, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, if

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GLOBAL WARMING every American household replaced five of their current lightbulbs with compact fluorescent lightbulbs, it would save as much energy as taking 8 million cars off the roads. Even better, homeowners can use LED (light-emitting diode) lightbulbs, which will last twenty years and yet consume only about 10 percent of the electricity used by incandescent bulbs. Home electric usage can also be reduced by simply unplugging computers and appliances when they are not in use. Even if they are turned off, experts say, many electronic devices continue to suck energy as long as they are plugged into an electric outlet. Consumers who can afford it can also purchase carbon offsets to help make up for their carbon usage. Various organizations have set up programs for this purpose, and these contributions are then used to fund projects that reduce global warming pollution. Finally, when planning for the future, individuals can incorporate climate change into their decision making. For example, people might want to avoid living in storm- or flood-prone areas; move to areas that will likely have a good water source; or move away from regions that are expected to face droughts, water shortages, and forest fires. When building or renovating homes, consumers can choose environmentally friendly materials, use renewable energy technologies whenever possible, and take steps to make their homes more fire-resistant. Other choices might include buying more locally produced food, growing a home vegetable garden, or installing highly water-efficient irrigation systems. And voters can let their concerns about global warming be known to their governments. As the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council urges: “We need new laws that will steer our nation toward the most important solutions to global warming—cleaner cars and cleaner power plants. Send a message to your elected officials, letting them know that you will hold them accountable for what they do—or fail to do—about global warming.”56 All of these types of individual choices, multiplied by the millions of people in the United States and billions more on the rest of the planet, can have a tremendous effect on our global warming future.

Hope for the Future Above all, commentators say, it is important for people to avoid fatalistic attitudes and maintain hope. Although global warming

Individuals can play a role in helping to make economic changes. One way is to reduce home emissions by buying more energy-efficient appliances and using more efficient lighting options. The blue Energy Star labels, which signify energy efficiency, can assist customers.

sounds very frightening, it is a problem that humans can fix if we summon the will and determination to do so. As U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont explains: The situation is by no means hopeless. Major advances and technological breakthroughs are being made in the United States and throughout the world that are giving us the tools to cut carbon emissions dramatically, break our dependency on fossil fuels and move to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. . . . With strong governmental leadership the crisis of global warming is not only solvable; it can be done while improving the standard of living of the people of this country and others around the world.57

Introduction: Global Warming: A Planetary Emergency 1. Al Gore, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech in Oslo, Norway, December 10, 2007. www.salon.com/news/primary_ sources/2007/12/10/al_gore/. 2. Al Gore, “Moving Beyond Kyoto,” New York Times, July 1, 2007. www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/opinion/01gore.html?_ r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin. Chapter 1: The Science of Global Warming 3. Mayer Hillman, Tina Fawcett, and Sudhir Chella Rajan, The Suicidal Planet. New York: St. Martin’s, 2007, p. 12. 4. James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia. New York: Perseus, 2006, p. xv. 5. Hillman, Fawcett, and Rajan, The Suicidal Planet, p. 15. 6. Michael Pidwirny, Fundamentals of Physical Geography, 2nd ed., online textbook, 2006. www.physicalgeography.net/fun damentals/contents.html. 7. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “IPCC First Assessment Report: Scientific Assessment of Climate Change,” 1990. www.ipcc.ch/pub/reports.htm. 8. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “IPCC Second Assessment Climate Change 1995,” December 1995. www. ipcc.ch/pub/sa(E).pdf. 9. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “IPCC Third Assessment Report: Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis,” January 2001. www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf. 10. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007,” November 2007. http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM. pdf. 94

NOTES 11. Naomi Oreskes, “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” Science, December 3, 2004, p. 1,686. www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686. 12. The Royal Society, “Joint Science Academies Statement: Global Response to Climate Change,” June 2005. www.royalsoc. ac.uk/displaypagedoc.asp?id=20742. 13. Quoted in Juliet Eilperin, “Study Reconciles Data in Measuring Climate Change,” Washington Post, May 3, 2006, p A03. www. washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/02/ AR2006050201677.html. 14. David Bromwich, “Antarctic Temperatures Disagree with Climate Model Predictions,” Ohio State University, February 15, 2007. www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/osu-atd 021207.php. Chapter 2: Predicting the Future 15. Joseph L. Bast, “A Turning Point in the Global Warming Debate?” Heartland Perspectives, October 18, 2007. www.global warmingheartland.org/article.cfm?artId=22197. 16. Hillman, Fawcett, and Rajan, The Suicidal Planet, p. 26. 17. Quoted in ABC News, “What is a ‘Feedback Loop’?” February 18, 2006. http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Science/story?id=160 7112&page=1. 18. Quoted in Elizabeth Svoboda, “Global Warming Feedback Loop Caused by Methane, Scientists Say,” National Geographic News, August 29, 2006. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/ news/2006/08/060829-methane-warming.html. 19. Quoted in David Herring, “Does the Earth Have an Iris?” Earth Observatory, June 12, 2002. http://earthobservatory. nasa.gov/Study/Iris/. 20. Quoted in Richard Gray, “Cosmic Rays Blamed for Global Warming,” Sunday Telegraph, November 2, 2007. http://www.telegraph. co.uk/news/worldnews/1542332/Cosmic-rays-blamed-for-globalwarming.html.

21. Quoted in James Randerson, “Sea Change: Why Global Warming Could Leave Britain Cold,” Guardian, October 27, 2006. www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/oct/27/science. climatechange.

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GLOBAL WARMING Chapter 3: Threats Posed by Global Warming 22. Timothy Egan, “Alaska, No Longer So Frigid, Starts to Crack, Burn, and Sag,” New York Times, June 16, 2002. www.common dreams.org/headlines02/0616-06.htm. 23. Quoted in Associated Press, “Dengue Fever Hits Asia Hard; Experts Question Whether Global Warming to Blame,” International Herald-Tribune, October 26, 2007. www.iht.com/ar ticles/ap/2007/10/26/asia/AS-MED-Southeast-Asia-DengueFever.php. 24. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007.” 25. Eileen Yam, “Earth Pulse: If You Feel Like Your Favorite Beach Keeps Getting Skimpier Each Time You Visit, It’s Not Your Imagination,” National Geographic, 2001. www.national geographic.com/ngm/0102/earthpulse/. 26. Lynn Laws, “Climate Change Affects Iowans; Iowans Can Help Turn It Around,” Iowa Environment Council, April 6, 2007. www.iaenvironment.org/documents/IPCCrept4-6-07. pdf. 27. Quoted in University of Leeds, “Press Release: Climate Change Threatens a Million Species with Extinction,” January 7, 2004. www.leeds.ac.uk/media/current/extinction.htm. 28. Quoted in Environment News Service, “Collapse of All Wild Fisheries Predicted in 45 Years,” November 6, 2006. www.ensnewswire.com/ens/nov2006/2006-11-06-02.asp. 29. Quoted in Martin Mittelstaedt, “How Global Warming Goes Against the Grain,” Globe and Mail, February 23, 2007. www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.2007 0223.wclimatestarve0224/BNStory/ClimateChange/home/? pageRequested=all. 30. Quoted in American Society for Microbiology, “Scientists Concerned About Effects of Global Warming on Infectious Diseases,” May 23, 2007. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/07 0522082450.htm. 31. CNA Corporation, “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, Executive Summary,” 2007. www.npr.org/doc uments/2007/apr/security_climate.pdf.

NOTES 32. Quoted in Mark Townsend and Paul Harris, “Now the Pentagon Tells Bush: Climate Change Will Destroy Us,” Observer/ UK, February 22, 2004. www.commondreams.org/headlines 04/0222-01.htm. Chapter 4: Solutions for Global Warming 33. Hillman, Fawcett, and Rajan, The Suicidal Planet, pp. 39–40. 34. Union of Concerned Scientists, “How Solar Energy Works,” January 1, 2007. www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/renewable_ energy_basics/how-solar-energy-works.html. 35. Quoted in Bernie Sanders, “Global Warming Is Reversible,” Nation, November 27, 2007. www.thenation.com/doc/2007 1210/sanders. 36. Kari Lydersen, “The False Promise of ‘Clean Coal,’” New Standard, March 16, 2006. www.alternet.org/environment/33587. 37. Natural Resources Defense Council, “Solving Global Warming: It Can Be Done.” www.nrdc.org/globalWarm ing/solutions/step1.asp. 38. Hillman, Fawcett, and Rajan, The Suicidal Planet, p. 125. 39. Quoted in Patrick Goodenough, “Europe Eyes 20 to 30 Percent Post-Kyoto Emission Cuts,” CNSNews.com, November 2, 2007. www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp? Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200711/INT20071102a.html. 40. Quoted in Juliette Jowit, “Climate Talks ‘Last Chance’ to Avoid Catastrophe,” New Zealand Herald, December 3, 2007. www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&object id=10479692. Chapter 5: Preparing for a Warmer Future 41. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007.” 42. Mark Hertsgaard, “Living Through the Storm,” Time, April 3, 2007. www.markhertsgaard.com/articles/208. 43. Quoted in Hertsgaard, “Living Through the Storm.” 44. Hertsgaard, “Living Through the Storm.” 45. Sana Aftab Khan, “Saving Least Developed Countries from Disastrous Effects of Climate Change,” UN Chronicle, July

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52. 53.

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9, 2007. www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2007/webArticles/07 0907_LDCs_climate_change.htm. Quoted in World View of Global Warming, “Warming Winds, Rising Tides: Bangledesh.” www.worldviewofglobal warming.org/pages/rising-seas.html. Quoted in BBC News, “Global Warming Threatens Africa,” August 20, 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/22 04756.stm. Quoted in Anup Shah, “Sustainable Development Introduction,” Global Issues, May 26, 2005. www.globalissues.org/Trade Related/Development/Intro.asp. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, “Living Beyond Our Means: Natural Assets and Human Well-Being,” March 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/30_03_05_ boardstatement.pdf. Nicholas Stern, “Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, Executive Summary,” 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/30_10_06_exec_sum.pdf. Quoted in Science Daily, “Hidden Costs of Climate Change in US: Major, Nationwide, Uncounted,” October 17, 2007. www. sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071017085305.htm. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007.” Quoted in Pamela W. Person, “Economic Effects of Not Taking Action on Climate Change,” League of Women Voters, 2007. www.lwv.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&CONTEN TID=9859&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm#18. Quoted in James Murray, “Climate Change to Warm Up Global Economy,” Business Green, February 9, 2007. www. itweek.co.uk/business-green/news/2199646/climate-changewarm-global. Quoted in Murray, “Climate Change to Warm Up Global Economy.” Natural Resources Defense Council, “How to Fight Global Warming,” December 18, 2003. www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/ gsteps.asp. Sanders, “Global Warming Is Reversible.”

Chapter 1: The Science of Global Warming 1. What is the “greenhouse effect,” and what role does it play in global warming? How is the greenhouse effect related to fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and natural gas? 2. What is the position of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on whether humans are causing climate change? 3. Explain some of the arguments offered by global warming skeptics. Chapter 2: Predicting the Future 1. According to the book, how much have average global temperatures risen during the last century? 2. According to the IPCC’s 2007 report, what is the range of likely global temperature increases between now and the end of this century? 3. Give some examples of positive and negative climate feedbacks that may affect future global warming. Chapter 3: Threats Posed by Global Warming 1. What are some of the current effects of rising global temperatures, according to the IPCC? 2. Describe some of the possible impacts of future global warming if nothing is done to mitigate greenhouse emissions. 3. Why do some military analysts see climate change as a security threat? Chapter 4: Solutions for Global Warming 1. Do IPCC scientists believe there is still time to avert a global warming catastrophe? 99

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GLOBAL WARMING 2. Name and describe several types of renewable energy sources that could help to reduce carbon emissions. 3. How much will the United States have to cut its greenhouse emissions to avert catastrophic climate change, according to many scientists? Chapter 5: Preparing for a Warmer Future 1. What types of action can countries take to adapt to coming climate changes, according to the author? 2. What effects will a prompt and effective response to global warming have on the world economy, according to optimists? 3. What actions can individuals take to reduce global greenhouse emissions?

The Alliance for Climate Protection Palo Alto, CA e-mail: www.climateprotect.org/contact Web site: www.climateprotect.org/ The Alliance for Climate Protection is a nonprofit educational organization led by former vice president Al Gore that seeks to persuade people around the world of the importance and of adopting and implementing effective solutions for the climate crisis. The group’s interactive Web site contains information and links to help people reduce their carbon footprints and make their voices known to decision makers on the issue of climate change. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) phone: +41-22-730-8208/84 e-mail: [email protected] Web site: www.ipcc.ch/ The IPCC is an intergovernmental scientific body set up by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to provide an objective source of information about climate change. The IPCC’s role is to assess the latest literature produced worldwide on the risk of human-induced climate change, its impacts, and options for adaptation and mitigation. This site provides access to each of the IPCC reports on climate change. National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) 601 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Ste. 900, South Building Washington, DC 20004 phone: (202) 220-3082 fax: (202) 220-3096 Web site: www.ncpa.org/ The NCPA is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization that promotes private alternatives to government 101

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GLOBAL WARMING regulation and control and defends the competitive, entrepreneurial private sector. A search of the NCPA’s Web site produces a list of articles and reports setting forth the arguments of skeptics of global warming. National Center for Public Policy Research 501 Capitol Ct. NE Washington, DC 20002 phone: (202) 543-4110 fax: (202) 543-5975 e-mail: [email protected] Web site: www.nationalcenter.org The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation that is dedicated to a strong national defense and providing free market solutions to public policy problems. The group’s Web site contains a “Global Warming Information Center” that lists selected global warming articles, documents, blogs, and links on the topic of global warming. Examples include a blog called “100 Prominent Scientists Disagree with UN Secretary General on Global Warming” and a video titled “Don’t List the Polar Bear Under the Endangered Species Act.” National Wildlife Federation 11100 Wildlife Center Dr. Reston, VA 20190 phone: (800) 822-9919 Web site: www.nwf.org/ The National Wildlife Federation is an organization that seeks to inspire Americans to protect wildlife. The group’s Web site contains a special section on global warming focused on legislative action on climate change. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) 40 West Twentieth St. New York, NY 10011 phone: (212) 727-2700 fax: (212) 727-1773 e-mail: [email protected]

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The NRDC is an environmental action organization with 1.2 million members and online activists that seeks to protect the planet’s wildlife and to ensure a safe and healthy environment for all living things. Its Web site contains a special section on global warming that provides in-depth information about the causes, effects, and solutions for global warming, as well as news articles, fact sheets, and ideas for how individuals can help reduce their greenhouse emissions. Pew Research Center 1615 L St. NW, Ste. 700 Washington, DC 20036 phone: (202) 419-4300 • (202) 419-4349 Web site: http://pewresearch.org/ The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan “fact tank” that provides information on the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polls and social science research, reports and analyzes news, and holds forums and briefings, but it does not take positions on policy issues. A search of the center’s Web site produces a list of reports on public attitudes about global warming. The Sierra Club 85 Second St., 2nd Fl. San Francisco, CA 94105 phone: (415) 977-5500 fax: (415) 977-5799 e-mail: [email protected] Web site: www.sierraclub.org/globalwarming/ The Sierra Club is a well-known grassroots environmental organization based in the United States and founded in 1892 by the early environmentalist John Muir. The group’s Web site contains a section on global warming and energy that provides general information about global warming, as well as legislative updates, news, and various fact sheets on related topics. Union of Concerned Scientists 2 Brattle Sq. Cambridge, MA 02238–9105

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GLOBAL WARMING phone: (617) 547-5552 fax: (617) 864-9405 Web site: www.ucsusa.org/ The Union of Concerned Scientists is a leading science-based nonprofit organization working for a healthy environment and a safer world. The group’s Web site contains a special section on global warming with a wealth of information about climate change, including articles summarizing the IPCC findings, reports on related topics, and the latest global warming news. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) 1250 Twenty-fourth St. NW Washington, DC 20037 phone: (202) 293-4800 fax: (202) 293-9211 Web site: www.worldwildlife.org/ The WWF is a multinational organization dedicated to conserving and protecting nature. Under the heading “Global Forces,” the WWF’s Web site contains a special section on climate change that provides an overview of the issue; details the group’s projects in this area; and contains information about what individuals, businesses, and governments can do to help.

Books Ronald Bailey, ed., Global Warming and Other Eco Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death. Washington, DC: Competitive Enterprise Institute, 2002. A book that takes a skeptic’s perspective of the claims of the environmental movement’s concerns about global warming. It includes essays and commentary from many prominent scientists and scholars. John D. Cox, Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change and What It Means for Our Future. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry, 2005. A book for the general reader about the science and future impact of climate change, by a science and environmental journalist. Laurie David and Cambria Gordon, The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming. New York: Orchard, 2007. An upbeat and articulate book about the climate crisis and the actions that individuals can take to reduce their carbon footprints. Joseph F. Dimento and Pamela M. Doughman, Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and Our Grandchildren. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. An introduction to the science, politics, and policies of climate change for the layman, with information about what individuals can do to combat global warming. Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming. New York: Viking, 2007. Former vice president Gore’s bestselling book about global warming, adapted for the young adult audience. Christopher C. Horner, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism. Washington, DC: Regnery, 105

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GLOBAL WARMING 2007. A best-selling book by a conservative attorney and environmental policy analyst that details arguments made by skeptics about global warming. Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe. New York: Bloomsbury, 2006. A New York writer’s personal narrative about global warming. Fred Pearce, With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change. Boston: Beacon, 2007. An exploration of the possible major shifts in climate that could be caused by global warming. Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder, The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change. London: Icon, 2007. A book by scientists who theorize that subatomic particles from exploded stars have more effect on the climate than human-made carbon emissions. Periodicals John Carey, “The Real Costs of Saving the Planet; Critics Say Limiting Carbon Emissions Could Cost Trillions. But a New Study Suggests the Costs Are Much Lower,” Business Week Online, December 4, 2007. www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/ content/dec2007/db2007123_373996.htm?chan=top+news_ top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives. Global Agenda, “Losing Sleep Over Climate Change; Joining the Fight; Involving Poor States in the War Against Climate Change.” July 16, 2007. Peter Jackson, “From Stockholm to Kyoto: A Brief History of Climate Change,” UN Chronicle, June 2007. Brad Knickerbocker, “Will Global Warming Cause War?” Christian Science Monitor, April 19, 2007. www.csmonitor. com/2007/0419/p02s01-usgn.html. Portia Simpson Miller, “Confronting Climate Change: A Shared and Global Responsibility,” UN Chronicle, June 2007. Hilary Osborne, “CO2 Emissions Rise Outpaces Worst-Case Scenario,” Guardian Unlimited, May 22, 2007. www.guardian. co.uk/environment/2007/may/22/climatechange.climatechange environment.

FOR MORE INFORMATION Space Daily, “Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change,” December 5, 2007. Peter N. Spotts, “Time to Begin ‘Adapting’ to Climate Change?” Christian Science Monitor, February 13, 2007. www.csmonitor. com/2007/0213/p03s02-wogi.html. U.S. News & World Report, “Climate Clash, Round 2; Nations Answer the Bell for the Next Global-Warming Slugfest,” December 10, 2007. Bryan Walsh, “Cutting a Climate Deal,” Time, December 10, 2007. Jennifer Winger, “An ‘Unequivocal’ Change: Monumental Report Leaves Little Doubt That Humans Have Hand in Climate Change,” Nature Conservancy, Summer 2007. Web Sites Clean Energy, Union of Concerned Scientists (www.ucsusa. org/clean_energy/). A very useful Web site on clean and renewable energy options by a leading science-based nonprofit organization. Climate Change, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (www.epa.gov/climatechange/). An informative federal government Web site on the science, effects, and solutions to climate change. Global Climate Change, Pew Center (www.pewclimate.org/). A very helpful site with both basic and in-depth information about all aspects of the climate change issue, including the latest news on efforts to address the problem. The Global Warming Survival Guide, Time (www.time.com/ time/specials/2007/environment/). A Time magazine site that provides articles, graphics, and references to past Time issues on global warming.

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A Action, need for immediate, 62–64 Adaptation strategies, 79–83, 90–92 Africa, 17, 49, 56, 84–85 Agriculture negative effects on, 49, 55–58, 84 positive effects on, 49 Air pollution, 20, 21, 38–39 Air travel, 86–87, 91 Alaska, 34, 36, 46–47 Allergens, 81 Anderson, David, 58 Antarctic Peninsula, 28 Antarctica, 28, 45 Arctic, 36, 45 Arctic ice, melting of, 35, 40, 50 Arrhenius, Svante, 17 Asia, 56 Asthma, 81 Atmosphere, carbon dioxide in, 16–17, 18, 24, 32 Australia, 49, 76 Automobiles. See Cars Avery, Dennis T., 34 108

B Bali negotiations, 77, 78 Bangladesh, 51, 57, 84 Biodiesel, 68 Biodiversity, 52–55 Biomass, 68 Blast, Joseph, 31 Bond, Tim, 90 Britain, 69, 76, 82 Broad, William J., 19 Bromwich, David, 28 Bryden, Harry, 43 Building codes, 82 Bush, George W., 9, 70, 72 Byrd-Hagel Resolution, 76

C California climate change initiatives by, 63 solar energy in, 66–67 wildfires in, 49–50, 57 Cambodia, 48 Canada, 58, 76, 77 Cap and trade system 74–78 Carbon dioxide absorbed by oceans, 37

INDEX atmospheric concentrations of, 16–17, 18, 24, 32 as cause of global warming, 6 from decay of organic matter, 35–36 greenhouse effect and, 13 measurement of, 18 U.S. emissions of, 9 Carbon emissions. See Greenhouse gas emissions Carbon footprints, 91 Carbon offsets, 92 Carbon sequestration, 70 Carbon tax, 78 Caribbean nations, 51 Cars electric, 68, 70 emissions from, 91 Cereal crops, 57 Child growth, 58 China energy consumption by, 62, 63 greenhouse gas emissions by, 17, 77 Kyoto Protocol and, 76 Chlorofluorocarbons, 13 Chowdhury, M.H. Khan, 84 Christy, John R., 21, 28 Cities, 59 Clean Air Act, 9 Clean coal, 70–71 Clean Development Mechanism, 75

Climate stability of, 13 uncertainties about, 44 See also Temperatures “Climate Change 2007” (IPCC), 8–9 Climate changes impact of future, 23 natural, 11–13, 26 predictions on future, 31–34 U.S. initiatives for, 63 See also Global warming Climate feedbacks, 34–37, 44 Climate models, 20, 27–28, 35 Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act, 9 Cline, William, 56 Clinton, Bill, 76 Cloud cover, 13, 37–39, 41 CNA Corporation, 61 Coal, 15, 16, 70–71 Coal gasification, 70 Coastal flooding, 46 Coastal regions adaptations in, 82 sea-level rise and, 50–51 Coastal wetlands, 46 Coleman, John, 54 Compact fluorescent bulbs, 91–92 Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, 57

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GLOBAL WARMING Cooling trend, 20 Coral systems, 54–55 Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), 73–74 Cosmic rays, 41 Crop failures, 13, 49, 56–57

D Davis, Deborah, 73 Deaths, 58–60 Dengue fever, 48–49 Denmark, 65, 69 Depression, economic, 88 Desanker, Paul, 84–85 Developing countries food and water shortages in, 56–58 global warming impacts in, 83–85 increased energy consumption in, 63–64 infectious diseases in, 58–60 Dinosaurs, 12 Diseases, 58–60, 82 Droughts, 35, 49, 57

E Earth climate of, 11–13 poles of, 14 Earth Summit, 85–86 Economic concerns, 87–90

Ecosystem changes, 45–47, 54–55 Egan, Timothy, 46 Electric vehicles, 68, 70 Electricity from fossil fuels, 62 invention of, 15 from nuclear power, 72 reducing usage of, 91–92 from solar energy, 66 from wind, 65 Electronic devices, 92 Emissions. See Greenhouse gas emissions Emissions reductions, 8–9 Energy clean coal, 70–71 nuclear, 70, 72 renewable, 64–68, 69 Energy consumption, 17, 62–64 Energy efficiency, 72–74 Energy Star labels, 91 Environmental changes current, from global warming, 45–50 future expected, 50–52 species extinctions caused by, 52–55 Erosion, 84 Ethanol, 68 European Union adaptations in, 82 agriculture in, 58

INDEX decline in temperature in, 43 greenhouse gas emissions by, 17 heat waves in, 48 Kyoto Protocol and, 77 Extinctions, 12, 46, 52–55 Extreme weather, 49, 50 F Famines, 13, 49, 56 First Assessment Report (IPCC), 22 Flood defenses, 82 Flooding, 46, 49, 50–52 Flu, 59 Food importation, 82 Food prices, 87 Food shortages, 49, 55–58 Forest, 17 Forest fires, 35, 49–50, 57 Forests, 46 Fossil fuels burning of, 6, 11, 15, 16–17 depletion of, 16 reliance on, 62 Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC), 24 France, 72, 78 Fuel standards, 63, 73–74 G Gas mileage, 63, 73–74 Geothermal energy, 67

Germany, 66 Glacial lakes, 45 Glaciers during ice ages, 11 melting of, 40, 42–43, 45, 50 release of methane by, 36 Global anarchy, 61 Global dimming, 38–39 Global temperatures. See Temperatures Global warming adapting to, 79–83 alternate theories on, 39, 41 changes from, 6–7 climate feedbacks and, 34–37 defined, 6 economic concerns from, 87–90 impact of, 45–61, 83–85 Industrial Revolution and, 15–17 political will for addressing, 10 public awareness of, 6 scientific consensus on, 24–25 scientific study of, 17–20 signs of, 45–50 skeptics of, 19, 26–28 solutions for, 62–78 uncertainties about, 44

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GLOBAL WARMING Gore, Al Greenhouse gas intensity, campaign by, to raise 9 awareness of global Greenland, 36, 42–43 warming, 6–7 Gulf Stream, 41–43 criticism of, 19 Nobel Peace Prize won by, H 7 Hannah, Lee, 54 on threat of global Hanson, James E., 91 warming, 10 Health impacts, 48–49, Grain crops, 56–57 58–60, 81 Great Britain. See Britain Health systems, 82 Greenhouse effect, 13–15 Heat, trapped by greenhouse Greenhouse gas emissions effect, 13–15 cap and trade system for, Heat waves, 48, 50, 52 74–78 Hertsgaard, Mark, 79–80, caps on, 63 82 cuts needed in, 77–78 Hill, Tessa, 36 immediate action to cut, Hillman, Mayer, 14, 16, 32, 62–64 62, 74 mandatory caps on, 9, 63, HIV/AIDS, 59 77–78 Home heating and cooling, personal strategies for 91 reducing, 91–92 Homer-Dixon, Thomas, 39 sources of, 91 Human activities Greenhouse gases global warming from, atmospheric concentrations 22–24, 31 of, 16–17 greenhouse gases from, burning of fossil fuels and, 16–17 16–17 Human health, 48–49, as cause of global 58–60, 81 warming, 6 Hurricane Katrina, 82–83 goals to reduce emissions Hurricanes, 19, 50, 82 of, 8–9 Hybrid vehicles, 70 rising levels of, 8–9 Hydrogen fuel, 68, 70 types of, 13

INDEX I Ice ages, 11, 13, 41–43 Ice caps, melting of, 14, 42–43 An Inconvenient Truth (Gore), 6–7 India, 56, 57, 63, 76 Indonesia, 48 Industrial Revolution, 15–17 Industrialized countries, 77 Infectious diseases, 58–60, 82 Influenza, 59 Infrared iris effect, 37 Infrared radiation, 13–14 Interglacial periods, 11, 12–13 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on adaptation, 79 Nobel Peace Prize for, 7, 8–9 predictions on future temperature changes by, 32–34 recommendation by, to curb global warming, 64 reports by, 21–25, 36, 45, 89–90 on sea level rise, 19 weather predictions by, 50 Internal combustion engine, 15–16

International Institute for Strategic Studies, 56 Ionizing radiation, 41 Ireland, 13

J Jackson Lake, 30 Japan, 66, 76, 77 Joint Implementation, 75 Juniper, Tony, 78

K Keeling, Charles D., 18 Khan, Sana Aftab, 83–84 Klaus, Vaclav, 27 Klein, Richard, 80 Kyoto Protocol, 9, 23, 74–78

L Lashof, Dan, 67 Latin America, 56 Laws, Lynn, 52 LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs, 92 LePage, Michael, 31 Lieberman, Joe, 9 Lindzen, Richard, 37 Little Ice Age, 13, 27 Louisiana, 51 Lovelock, James, 14–15, 64 Lydersen, Lari, 71

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GLOBAL WARMING M Malaria, 58–59 Malnutrition, 56, 58 Mandatory emissions caps, 9, 63, 77–78 Marine ecosystems, 54–55 Marshall Islands, 51 Mass extinctions, 12, 46, 52–55 Mathematical models, 20 McCain, John, 9 Medieval Warm Period, 13, 19, 27 Methane, 13, 24, 36 Military conflicts, 60–61 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 86 Morse, Stephen, 59–60 Mosquitoes, 48–49, 59 Murray-Darling river system, 49

N National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 30–31 National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), 30 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 33 National security, 61 Natural gas, 16, 70

Natural Resources Defense Council, 72, 92 Negative climate feedbacks, 37 Netherlands, 82 New Hampshire, 89 Nitrous oxide, 13 Nobel Peace Prize, 7–8 Noble, Ian, 84 Northeast, 50 Nuclear energy, 70, 72

O Ocean currents, 13, 41–43 Oceans carbon absorption by, 37 energy from, 69 increasing temperatures in, 13, 54–55 rising levels of, 19, 40, 45–46, 50–51, 84 Oechel, Walter, 36 Oil, 15, 16 Oreskes, Naomi, 24 Organic matter, decay of, 35–36

P Pacific Northwest, 50 Pakistan, 57 Palumbi, Steve, 55 Pandemics, 7 Pathogens, 58

INDEX Permafrost, 36, 45 Personal adaptation strategies, 90–92 Photovoltaic (PV) cells, 66 Pidwirny, Michael, 17 Plankton, 54–55 Pleistocene Age, 11 Polar bears, 7, 46, 53 Polar ice caps, melting of, 14, 42–43 Political instability, 60–61 Pollution, 20, 21, 38–39 Population increases, 56 Positive climate feedbacks, 34–36 Potato famine, 13 Precipitation, 37, 49 Public awareness, of global warming, 6

R Radiation infrared, 13–14 ionizing, 41 solar, 13–15, 39, 41 Rainfall, 50 Renewable energy, 64–68, 69 Resource wars, 60–61 Rice crops, 57 Rio Earth Summit, 85–86 Rivers, 45 Rocky Mountains, 89 Russia, 58, 77

Ruth, Matthias, 89

S Sanders, Bernie, 93 Santa Ana winds, 50, 57 Satellites, 20 Scientific consensus, 24–25 Scientific findings disagreement over meaning of, 20–21 on global warming, 17–20 by IPCC, 21–25 skepticism of, 19, 26–28 Seafood, 55 Sea-level rise from arctic ice melting, 40 impact of, 84 projections on, 19, 50–51 as sign of global warming, 45–46 Second Assessment Report (IPCC), 23 Severe weather, 49, 50 Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), 59 Skeptics, 19, 26–28 Ski resorts, 89 Smog, 20 Solar activity, 39, 41 Solar energy, 65–67 Solar radiation greenhouse effect and, 13–15

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GLOBAL WARMING increased, 39, 41 Southeast Asia, 48–49 Southwest, 50, 57, 67 Species extinctions, 12, 46, 52–55 Speth, James Gustave, 15 Stanhill, Gerry, 38 State climate change initiatives, 63 Steam power, 15 Stern, Nicholas, 88 Storm buffers, 82 Storms, 50, 52 Sudan, 56 Sun energy, greenhouse effect and, 13–15 Suntrajarn, Thawat, 48–49 Sustainable development, 85–87 Svensmark, Henrik, 24, 41

T Technology alternative energy, 64–68 clean coal, 70–71 nuclear, 72 transportation, 68, 70 Temperature graph, 26–27 Temperatures cooling, 20, 43 greenhouse effect and, 13–15 impact of climate feedbacks on, 34–37

impact of rising, 39 natural changes in, 11–13, 26 ocean, 13 predictions on future, 23, 24, 27–28, 29, 31–34 record of ancient, 20 rising, 9, 11, 29–31 solar activity and, 39, 41 water, 45–46, 50, 54–55 Terrorism, 58, 61 Thailand, 48 Third Assessment Report (IPCC), 23 Three Mile Island, 72 Transportation technologies, 68, 70 Tropical diseases, 58–59 Tropics, expansion of, 33 Tropospheric ozone, 13 Tuberculosis, 59 Tunmore, Stephanie, 36

U UN Conference on Environment and Development, 85–86 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, 22, 77 Union of Concerned Scientists, 65–66 United Kingdom. See Britain United States

INDEX adaptations in, 82–83 climate change initiatives by, 63 climate impacts in, 40 economic effects in, 89 energy consumption by, 62 environmental changes in, 49–50 greenhouse gas emissions by, 17 ignoring of global warming by, 9 Kyoto Protocol and, 76–78 solar energy in, 66–67 temperature predictions for, 34 U.S. Green Building Council, 73

V Vegetation, 37 Vehicle mileage standards, 9 Verchot, Louis, 58

Vietnam, 48 Volcano activity, 13

W Warming trend, 29–34 Wars, resource, 60–61 Water shortages, 49, 52, 55–58, 83 Water supplies, 51 Water temperatures, 45–46, 50, 54–55 Water vapor, 13 Weather, severe, 49, 50 Wetlands, 46, 51 Wheat crops, 57 Wildfires, 52, 57 Wind power, 65, 69 Winter sports, 89 World Health Organization (WHO), 58

Z Zero-emission vehicles, 70 Zoning laws, 82

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Cover photo: PhotoLink/PhotoDisc/Getty Images © Michael Amendolia/Corbis, 12 AP Images, 7, 8, 18, 19, 22, 25, 27, 30, 32, 35, 38, 40, 46, 47, 48, 51, 53, 55, 59, 60, 65, 66, 69, 71, 73, 75, 76, 80, 81, 83, 87, 88, 93 © Corbis, 42 © Orjan F. Ellingvag/Dagens Naringsliv/Corbis, 52 Gale, Cengage Learning, 14 Time Life Pictures/Getty Images, 16

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Debra A. Miller is a writer and lawyer with a passion for current events, history, and public policy. She began her law career in Washington, D.C., where she worked on legislative, policy, and legal matters in government, public interest, and private law firm positions. She now lives with her husband in Encinitas, California. She has written and edited numerous books and anthologies on historical, political, health, environmental, and other topics.

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