Temper-ature Tantrums

          On Jan. 20th, the Supreme Court threw out lawsuits against the EPA and their regulation of greenhouse gases. House Republicans passed a bill trying to stop the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate such emissions. I guess Republicans don’t need clean air. The Court unanimously ruled that the EPA had the authority to regulate carbon emissions. Republican State legislatures (why is it always Republicans?) are taking action to codify “alternative” views opposing global warming/ climate change, much as they tried to do with evolution.

          Climate change is one of the most complex subjects. It is certain that science and data are marginalized in the conflation of ideology, big money politics and big money economics. I do not concern myself with the politics or economics. The data are clear and disturbing.

          It is clear the earth is getting warmer. This is data, not opinion. Yesterday, NOAA released the numbers for 2011. The global temperature averaged 57.9 degrees, about a  degree higher than the average for the 20th Century. The 2011 numbers continue the heating trend evidenced for the last 35 years.

          How does carbon tie into climate change? The environment is based on connections. A change in one thing affects many other things. So relationships are extremely complex and indirect. The direct linkage between carbon levels and observed temperature rise is not yet established. There are many alternate explanations for the observed climate data http://www.cfr.org/climate-change/alternative-views-climate-change/p14318.

          Theoretically, carbon should affect climate and weather in a couple of ways. Increased carbon gases prevent heat from escaping into space and raise global temperatures. Greenhouse gases are what the world might be regulating if it was less selfish, greedy, myopic and self-absorbed. Carbon gases also lessen the amount of light reflected into space, absorbing more sunlight, causing shifts in the jet stream and more turbulence in the atmosphere.

          So what if it gets a couple of degrees warmer? What’s the big deal? The big deal is found in the oceans, the global generator of weather. The ocean circulation system such as the Gulf Stream and the Trade Winds are powered by temperature. If surface waters get too hot, circulation would stop. This, like all radical climate change, can occur within a decade http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?cid=9986&pid=12455&tid=282. Major changes in ocean circulation would cause major shifts in weather patterns.

            It is clear that global temperatures are rising http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=average-global-temperature-rise-creates-new-normal. Rising temperatures melt more polar & glacial ice sending more water into the atmosphere. More water in the atmosphere produces more extreme water related weather (snow, floods, tornadoes, drought).

          So it will take a big rise in temperatures to hurt anything, right? Nope. If water temperatures in the deeper oceans vary by 4 degrees, it is enough to kill phytoplankton, little sea critters that other critters eat. Phytoplankton are the foundation of the global food chain. If they go away bad things happen to life. Can you say mass extinction? Surface phytoplankton are already dying because of temperature rise http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=phytoplankton-population.

            The purpose of this piece is not to alarm, but to inform. I’m not advocating hugging trees or expensive reactive policy measures. I am advocating that global warming is real and it has very real dangers. We should all acknowledge the evidence and parse the science from the other stuff to determine a way forward.

            So in summary, I’m saying with certainty that the earth is getting warmer and there is danger associated with that. People are evidently contributing to the rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. What that produces is unclear. How much of the warming is natural or cyclic is unclear. However, ice frozen for hundreds of thousands of years is currently melting. That we as humans can do anything about all of this is also unclear. We can’t “nation build” a single country, much less change global climate. Our legislators do have a responsibility not to deny facts. Even if our efforts are futile, misdirected or incompletely informed, our legislators have a responsibility to try to preserve a livable climate for future generations. I don’t think there’s a lot of controversy inherent in this paragraph.  

            If we do have a mass extinction, the little critters living on the ocean floor next to volcanic vents should be oblivious to it. Over time, these might adapt beyond the sea floor, evolve into complex sentient beings, invent commerce and later the free market, and then screw one another over for a buck, which is a big part to how things got screwed up in the first place.