Global Warming Hasn't Left Us
Global Warming
I received an email from a friend this week that ignited one of my passions. For the sake of this writing, I'll call him "Jim," in order to protect his identity, although his name really is Jim. I love Jim better than a brother, and he is responsible for the single-most funny line in history, although after laughing for an hour, we were both too drunk to remember what he said.
His email was about the fallacy of global warming. Nothing in the article was attributed to any credible source, a tendency that is escalating in an era of diminishing journalistic integrity, furthered by the political entertainment talk shows who pass themselves off as fact without attribution. And the left are as guilty as the right, although there are more right-wingers out there paying for air time to promote their agendas. For that reason, I won't re-publish the article here. I do not see why these people are fighting innovation and efforts that will lead to a cleaner, better world, generate employment and possibly save the planet. Even if the science is wrong, it's still right.
The article cited a conference of 650 of the "world's top" climate scientists. Was that title a resolution decided upon at the conference? Do they have a pageant? Aside from one fact the article got right, all of its other premises are provably false and ignore the facts that real scientists are studying and reporting in refereed journals and accepted scientific forums. These false ideas include: that the earth has cooled to pre-1980 levels, that the ice is Antartica is growing thicker, proposed spending on climate change initiatives will cost U.S. jobs. The one correct assertation the article makes is that elevated CO2 levels do not lead temperature, but lag behind. Many other foolish theories are pinned to this one fact, and the article is a right-wing attempt to slam Al Gore and protect the fossil fuel industry.
Here is the deal, people. I'll start out by saying even Bill O'Reilly said in a CBS interview with Mike Wallace that "Global warming is real. It is here."
Global warming is vastly misunderstood by most people. I don't claim to understand it, and many researchers are still trying to find answers. What I know is the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg. Global warming does not mean that Lake Ontario is going to be the next South Beach. Temperatures are raising (not declining, Jim) by 0.65 degrees Celsius in the past decade, and forecasts indicate that this increase will accelerate for the next 50 years as much as 6 degrees celsius. This 0.65 shift in temperature is barely noticeable by man. On a June day, 70 degrees and 68 degrees feel about the same, and in February, 0 degrees and 2 above are still cold. And yes, we can still have cold days when the planet is warming.
Changes due to global warming are more subtle. Over a period of time, it changes the temperature of the earth's soil, and the water, and its evaporative qualities. Jet streams that channel air flow are altered — causing aberrations like 20 degree temps in Florida and 90 degree days in Rochester last June. Ocean temperatures are rising in most places, but colder water is channeling to others, and the vast ecosystems of the earth are shifting. The atmosphere is sucking more moisture from the slightly warmer earth and oceans, leaving formerly fertile (or barely fertile) regions parched and dry in drought, such as the areas of China that suffered the heaviest drought in recorded history last summer. Other areas get flash floods and increased precipitation. Agriculture suffers with these fluctuations, and poorer regions of the world with less sophisticated equipment and irrigation will be unable to meet food supply demands. And despite your article claims, Jim, the thickening ice cover so cheerfully reported by Fox News and other global warming naysayers last August failed to report that those measurements were taken in Antartica's winter — that whole Southern Hemisphere thing. Otherwise, Antartica is losing ancient ice shelves at an alarming rate. These ice shelves supposedly will not affect ocean levels, but when the glaciers on Antartica's land mass start melting, and those of Greenland and Iceland, it is projected that a 20 percent increase in ocean depths will be probable. Low-lying countries will be submerged, including parts of Florida that we don't really need and parts of New York City that we do. (Just trying to add some levity here!) Last January's microbursts that took out my neighbor's trees and three houses on our block, and others in a direct path across the bay in Webster, are symptoms of global warming. Extended tornado seasons, cyclones and hurricanes are all associated with increasing air, earth and water temperatures.
Your article, Jim, suggests that man-made CO2 is not causing warming, but that all warming comes from the sun. It does. Your top scientists in the world at their trade show conflict with those at universities and those published in academic journals who state that greenhouse gases are increasing, throwing the earth's customary thermostat into chaos. Statistics and measurements back this up, Jim.
Your article hints at a dangerous theory that global warming may actually bring benefits, so why stop it. Yeah, I would love to work in short sleeves, year-round like you, Jim, but the trade-off is pestilence, famine and cataclysmic weather events. The World Health Organization, whose charge is to study world events that affect regions, nations and continents, reports that this 0.65 degree change in the earth's temperature is responsible for increased death rates of 150,000 people each year. Because the breeding season for mosquitoes is extended and exacerbated by the increased rainfall and flooding, malaria is dramatically increasing. Flash floods creating toxic run-offs are causing dramatic increases in water-borne diseases. We all know that our developed cities create toxic air and earth and that many companies conceal their toxic output to avoid the expense of proper disposal.
What are the primary problems at the root of global warming? Transportation, those planes trains and automobiles we so love, are just a small part of the "carbon footprint." Perhaps the electric cars will make us feel better than actually having a real effect on the solution to the problem. Coal and fossil fuels are a much larger contributor. Power plants make up the second-largest violators of the carbon cycle, burning and processing coal and oil to generate electricity. The biggest contributor to the global warming is deforestation.
Author Daniel Howden estimates that in the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 in the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. "Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories ...deforestation accounts for up to 25 per cent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14 per cent each; and aviation makes up only 3 per cent of the total,” Howden writes.
Just go to any U.S. grocery store, and you are likely to find an excess of packaging that takes energy to produce, often using forest products or petroleum-based products. I bought a package of cookies today, and could not believe the amount of wasted resources. A cellophane outer wrapping, and a thick plastic shell inside to protect the cookies. Perhaps it was recyclable, but how many people do that? Non-Dairy coffee-creamer in a heavy plastic container, with a printed plastic wrap. We do not know how long it takes for these to break down in a landfill compost because we have not had them long enough to see the first one biodegrade. They last forever, essentially, but we use them one time. And, as you know, Jim, I have developed the first reusable, recyclable pizza delivery system that will one day rid the world of 500 million tons of contaminated single-use corrugated cardboard every year. Each cardboard box takes about 20 years to completely compost, and we're discarding nearly 25 billion a year. Those bottled water bottles for the people who are destroying their immune systems — 38 billion of those are going to landfills each year making mounds of plastic.
As I attempt to start this "Green Industry," numerous other companies and entrepreneurs are developing other ways to co-exist with our environment. The argument that global warming initiatives will cost even one job is a blatant fallacy, because the potential for job creation far outweighs the old-guard status quo way of polluting the planet and cramming our landfills to capacity.
I guess I agree with O'Reilly that there is a degree of idiocy that will deny the existence of global warming. We have no excuse to stand by idly. We are smarter, supposedly, than the dinosaurs.
I received an email from a friend this week that ignited one of my passions. For the sake of this writing, I'll call him "Jim," in order to protect his identity, although his name really is Jim. I love Jim better than a brother, and he is responsible for the single-most funny line in history, although after laughing for an hour, we were both too drunk to remember what he said.
His email was about the fallacy of global warming. Nothing in the article was attributed to any credible source, a tendency that is escalating in an era of diminishing journalistic integrity, furthered by the political entertainment talk shows who pass themselves off as fact without attribution. And the left are as guilty as the right, although there are more right-wingers out there paying for air time to promote their agendas. For that reason, I won't re-publish the article here. I do not see why these people are fighting innovation and efforts that will lead to a cleaner, better world, generate employment and possibly save the planet. Even if the science is wrong, it's still right.
The article cited a conference of 650 of the "world's top" climate scientists. Was that title a resolution decided upon at the conference? Do they have a pageant? Aside from one fact the article got right, all of its other premises are provably false and ignore the facts that real scientists are studying and reporting in refereed journals and accepted scientific forums. These false ideas include: that the earth has cooled to pre-1980 levels, that the ice is Antartica is growing thicker, proposed spending on climate change initiatives will cost U.S. jobs. The one correct assertation the article makes is that elevated CO2 levels do not lead temperature, but lag behind. Many other foolish theories are pinned to this one fact, and the article is a right-wing attempt to slam Al Gore and protect the fossil fuel industry.
Here is the deal, people. I'll start out by saying even Bill O'Reilly said in a CBS interview with Mike Wallace that "Global warming is real. It is here."
Global warming is vastly misunderstood by most people. I don't claim to understand it, and many researchers are still trying to find answers. What I know is the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg. Global warming does not mean that Lake Ontario is going to be the next South Beach. Temperatures are raising (not declining, Jim) by 0.65 degrees Celsius in the past decade, and forecasts indicate that this increase will accelerate for the next 50 years as much as 6 degrees celsius. This 0.65 shift in temperature is barely noticeable by man. On a June day, 70 degrees and 68 degrees feel about the same, and in February, 0 degrees and 2 above are still cold. And yes, we can still have cold days when the planet is warming.
Changes due to global warming are more subtle. Over a period of time, it changes the temperature of the earth's soil, and the water, and its evaporative qualities. Jet streams that channel air flow are altered — causing aberrations like 20 degree temps in Florida and 90 degree days in Rochester last June. Ocean temperatures are rising in most places, but colder water is channeling to others, and the vast ecosystems of the earth are shifting. The atmosphere is sucking more moisture from the slightly warmer earth and oceans, leaving formerly fertile (or barely fertile) regions parched and dry in drought, such as the areas of China that suffered the heaviest drought in recorded history last summer. Other areas get flash floods and increased precipitation. Agriculture suffers with these fluctuations, and poorer regions of the world with less sophisticated equipment and irrigation will be unable to meet food supply demands. And despite your article claims, Jim, the thickening ice cover so cheerfully reported by Fox News and other global warming naysayers last August failed to report that those measurements were taken in Antartica's winter — that whole Southern Hemisphere thing. Otherwise, Antartica is losing ancient ice shelves at an alarming rate. These ice shelves supposedly will not affect ocean levels, but when the glaciers on Antartica's land mass start melting, and those of Greenland and Iceland, it is projected that a 20 percent increase in ocean depths will be probable. Low-lying countries will be submerged, including parts of Florida that we don't really need and parts of New York City that we do. (Just trying to add some levity here!) Last January's microbursts that took out my neighbor's trees and three houses on our block, and others in a direct path across the bay in Webster, are symptoms of global warming. Extended tornado seasons, cyclones and hurricanes are all associated with increasing air, earth and water temperatures.
Your article, Jim, suggests that man-made CO2 is not causing warming, but that all warming comes from the sun. It does. Your top scientists in the world at their trade show conflict with those at universities and those published in academic journals who state that greenhouse gases are increasing, throwing the earth's customary thermostat into chaos. Statistics and measurements back this up, Jim.
Your article hints at a dangerous theory that global warming may actually bring benefits, so why stop it. Yeah, I would love to work in short sleeves, year-round like you, Jim, but the trade-off is pestilence, famine and cataclysmic weather events. The World Health Organization, whose charge is to study world events that affect regions, nations and continents, reports that this 0.65 degree change in the earth's temperature is responsible for increased death rates of 150,000 people each year. Because the breeding season for mosquitoes is extended and exacerbated by the increased rainfall and flooding, malaria is dramatically increasing. Flash floods creating toxic run-offs are causing dramatic increases in water-borne diseases. We all know that our developed cities create toxic air and earth and that many companies conceal their toxic output to avoid the expense of proper disposal.
What are the primary problems at the root of global warming? Transportation, those planes trains and automobiles we so love, are just a small part of the "carbon footprint." Perhaps the electric cars will make us feel better than actually having a real effect on the solution to the problem. Coal and fossil fuels are a much larger contributor. Power plants make up the second-largest violators of the carbon cycle, burning and processing coal and oil to generate electricity. The biggest contributor to the global warming is deforestation.
Author Daniel Howden estimates that in the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 in the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. "Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories ...deforestation accounts for up to 25 per cent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14 per cent each; and aviation makes up only 3 per cent of the total,” Howden writes.
Just go to any U.S. grocery store, and you are likely to find an excess of packaging that takes energy to produce, often using forest products or petroleum-based products. I bought a package of cookies today, and could not believe the amount of wasted resources. A cellophane outer wrapping, and a thick plastic shell inside to protect the cookies. Perhaps it was recyclable, but how many people do that? Non-Dairy coffee-creamer in a heavy plastic container, with a printed plastic wrap. We do not know how long it takes for these to break down in a landfill compost because we have not had them long enough to see the first one biodegrade. They last forever, essentially, but we use them one time. And, as you know, Jim, I have developed the first reusable, recyclable pizza delivery system that will one day rid the world of 500 million tons of contaminated single-use corrugated cardboard every year. Each cardboard box takes about 20 years to completely compost, and we're discarding nearly 25 billion a year. Those bottled water bottles for the people who are destroying their immune systems — 38 billion of those are going to landfills each year making mounds of plastic.
As I attempt to start this "Green Industry," numerous other companies and entrepreneurs are developing other ways to co-exist with our environment. The argument that global warming initiatives will cost even one job is a blatant fallacy, because the potential for job creation far outweighs the old-guard status quo way of polluting the planet and cramming our landfills to capacity.
I guess I agree with O'Reilly that there is a degree of idiocy that will deny the existence of global warming. We have no excuse to stand by idly. We are smarter, supposedly, than the dinosaurs.
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