Climate change: living in the edge

Greenpeace and scientists make a simple picture to explain the magnitude of mankind’s footprint in Earth’s evolution. They compare the planet, which has an estimated age of 4.600 millions years, to a 46-year old person.

The Modern Man has lived on the planet just for four hours. In the last hour, he discovered agriculture, and in the last minute of that hour the Industrial Revolution gave birth to the backbone of today’s progress, the machine, which soon burned fuel oil.

In the last five seconds, things really went out of man’s hands, and just in the last second, we have realized that we urgently need to change our ways of doing and our priorities in order to have a future.

In that last second, we have learned scary news. The scale of global warming is unprecedented in at least 20,000 years, and concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are at the highest for at least 650,000 years.

Uncomfortable certainty

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988, and two years later produced a first report highlighting that there was a “natural greenhouse effect”, which was being enhanced by human activities and the resulting concentrations of CO2, methane, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere.

More than 3000 scientists from across the world produced, revised and supported the fourth report in 2007.

The IPCC then left no space for doubts.

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”

In just a few months, climate change became a major – and trendy- issue, taking over the agenda in international meetings like the Davos Summit, bringing about controversial steps like an environmental tax in London or the UE scheme to cut emissions, and forcing the US government and presidential candidates to recognize that is time to act.

Unbalanced forces and signs

Natural forces have been acting for ages according to cause-effect relations, but nature could not predict that more than 6bn people would be populating the planet, using millions cars and building societies based on highly polluting industries.

The worst news is that changes in climate are accumulative, which means that they will persist for decades and perhaps centuries even if current levels of emissions are minimized.

When it comes to define the evidences proving that climate change is already happening, temperatures, oceans, hurricanes, weather, season alterations and polar icecap are key words.

Temperature: The transformation from the last Ice Age to a warmer climate that allowed life on Earth to adapt to the changes took 5,000 years. Today events are going too fast.

Warming in the last Century caused a 0.74 °C increase in global average temperature, and 11 years between 1995 and 2006 ranked among the top 12 warmest since 1850.

Melting ice: Average Arctic temperatures increased at almost twice the global average rate in the past 100 years. Arctic sea ice has shrunk by 2.7 per cent per decade since 1978. A rapid warming is also reported in the Antarctic, with 90% of the world’s fresh water in its icecap.

The American Geophysical Union found that Arctic ice at the North Pole melted at a record rate in the summer of 2007.

“While in the summer of 1980 an ice sheet about the size of the continental United States covered the North Pole, this summer the ice would not have covered the states west of the Mississippi River,” said an expert from the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory.

Ocean: Sea level rose at an average rate of about 1.8 mm/year during the years 1961-2003, but for the period 1993-2003 the average was 3.1 mm/year.

Since ocean absorbed almost half of fossil fuel CO2 launched to the atmosphere, it is becoming more acidic. This and sea warming lead to physical, chemical and biological changes affecting patterns of circulation and micro organisms like the phytoplankton, the base of the food web for all marine life.

Weather: Hurricane activity in the North Atlantic and other regions increased since the 1970s, and between 1995 and 2000 rose by 82%, according to a study by experts from University of London.

Cold days, cold nights and frost events became less frequent, while hot days, hot nights and heat waves are now more frequent. Spring events such as the unfolding of leaves, laying of eggs and migration are happening earlier.

Complexity

There are no isolated reactions within nature.

A symbol of this complexity and of nature’s immense forces is the Gulf Stream, which conveys heat from the tropics to the north and keeps Western Europe warmer by 5 to 10 degrees.

Changes on ocean’s temperature and salinity and accelerated melting of Greenland ice sheets could cause a reversal or even a shutdown of this energy transporter, with huge consequences for global climate that were featured in Hollywood’s production The day after tomorrow.

In 2006, scientists from Cambridge University reported a slow down of the Gulf Stream, which is only one part of an interconnected global system of currents influencing temperatures, winds and rains across the planet.

According to World Wildlife Fund, by 2030 the rain decrease related to climate change could destroy the 55% of the Amazon, a major stabilizer of global temperatures and sea currents.

If deforestation goes that far, the Amazon could affect back the climate by releasing 55bn-96bn tons of CO2 in a few decades.

The permafrost is another threat.

The underground and underwater icecap contains huge deposits of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than CO2, which could dramatically increase the rate of global warming. It is already melting and releasing gas.

The ice in the arctic normally reflects 85% of sun’s radiation, keeping water cool. As it melts to water, that percentage falls to 7%. The result is higher seawater temperature, accelerated melting of ice and rising of the ocean’s level.

Future scenarios

Figures on how climate change will affect our life in the years to come are not definite. There are many factors involved and the uncertainty remains about how far will go global actions to tackle the phenomenon.

But there is no doubt that we will face higher temperatures (1 to 6 degrees in the next 70 years) and more extreme weather events like heat waves, floods, storms, hurricanes, high tides and droughts.

Coasts will suffer higher erosion and sea-level rise (between 0.4 and 1.4 metres) will flood vast low-lying areas and islands, with disastrous consequences for countries relying on tourism-based economies.

Different projections predict the extinction of 30-70% of animal and plant species in the next 50 years, from koalas and seals to those we have not even discovered.

That means approximately 450.000 of the 1.5m species known up to today.

There will be a significant increase in cases of food poisoning, including salmonella; the number of pathogens and bacteria in surface water; deaths and hospital admissions for respiratory diseases, and skin cancers, even in countries that today have cool or template climate.

Humankind and nature

Climate is more than an environmental issue.

Governments and international organisations have recognized that it is already causing economical loses due to more frequent natural disasters, and posing serious threats to the security in a world that will host more than 9bn people by 2050.

Institutions like the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo and the American International Institute for Strategic Studies have warned that the phenomenon puts at stake peace and stability and that climate wars are already taking place in Africa.

Last January, Director-General of World Health Organisation, Margaret Chan, stressed the links between climate change and health and said that humankind is the most threatened species by the climate change.

“We have only a few years to take action. The WHO has evidences of what droughts, floods, storms, heat waves, pollution, under nourishment and spread of transmissible deceases can mean for human health,” she added.

The proposed solutions range from environmental taxes and cutting emissions schemes to the use of controversial biofuels, seaweed crops to absorb extra greenhouse gas and the CO2 storing in underground deposits.

But consensus is growing about the need to change the patterns of development and consumption, promoting cleaner and sustainable technologies and energy sources.

Scientists hold that the effort to reduce emissions by 50-85% by 2050 will take between 0.2 and 3% of the world’s GDP.

It is not a high cost in sight of the frightening and unpredictable consequences that climate change could unleash.

This is not a battle of man against nature. It is not about judging what goes first, man or nature, because they are linked and man is not above nature, as well as nothing is above time.

This is man's quest for the best way to save nature in order to save man's future on the planet.

Sea temperature and hurricanes: Research by the University of London showed that sea surface warming (0.5ºC in the Caribbean Sea between 1996 and 2005) was responsible for approximately 40 percent of the increase in Atlantic hurricane activity between 1996 and 2005. The World Meteorological Organisation reported that 90% of natural disasters in the last years were caused by extreme weather events, due to climate change at a large extent. According satellite images, West Antarctica lost 132 billion tons of ice in 2006, compared to about 83 billion tons in 1996, and Arctic sea ice shrank last September to a low of 4.1 million sq km, more than 1.2 million sq km less than the previous recorded low in 2005. The British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge reported that 87% of the 224 glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula are in retreat and major ice shelves have collapsed.

Human activities and their contribution to the global warming: electricity (24%), manufacturing (11%), sipping (4.5%), aviation industry (2%), refineries (4%) and deforestation (20%). The US contribute the 42% of global fossil fuel CO2 and 34% of combined greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, methane and nitrous oxide).

Special Report on Emissions Scenarios for XXI Century by the IPCC, based on the progression of variables like emissions, population growth and land-use:

Scenario B1: Best estimate temperature rise of 1.8 °C with a likely range of 1.1 to 2.9 °C . Sea level rise likely range [18 to 38 cm].

Scenario A1T : Best estimate temperature rise of 2.4 °C with a likely range of 1.4 to 3.8 °C. Sea level rise likely range [20 to 45 cm].

Scenario B2: Best estimate temperature rise of 2.4 °C with a likely range of 1.4 to 3.8 °C. Sea level rise likely range [20 to 43 cm].

Scenario A1B: Best estimate temperature rise of 2.8 °C with a likely range of 1.7 to 4.4 °C. Sea level rise likely range [21 to 48 cm].

Scenario A2: Best estimate temperature rise of 3.4 °C with a likely range of 2.0 to 5.4 °C. Sea level rise likely range [23 to 51 cm].

Scenario A1FI: Best estimate temperature rise of 4.0 °C with a likely range of 2.4 to 6.4 °C. Sea level rise likely range [26 to 59 cm].