Political snark obscuring real danger of global warming
When someone holds a position with which you disagree, is your first impulse to make fun of it? Well, that’s one of the things we saw and heard at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Paul Ryan’s snarky remark about President Obama wanting to stop sea levels from rising and Romney’s jab at his attempts to heal the planet could be an indication they fear he may be serious.
But one wouldn’t get that impression from transcripts of the July meeting in Rio of the world’s nations on the 20th anniversary of the 1992 environmental summit. Obama was a no-show. The Copenhagen climate conference of 2009, where Obama took the lead in drafting what was called the “Copenhagen Accord,” was deemed a failure in that it “committed no one to anything,” noted Bill McKibben in “Global Warming’s Terrible New Math” published in the Aug. 2 edition of Rolling Stone magazine.
McKibben’s 1989 book, “The End of Nature,” was one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Ignored by many who found it inconvenient, the book was followed by “Hope, Human and Wild” (1995), “Deep Economy” (2007) and others. His latest is “Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet,” in which he writes: Change—fundamental change—is our best hope on a planet suddenly and violently out of balance.
In his article, he notes the Copenhagen Accord did recognize “the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below two degrees Celsius.” That’s about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s the first number.
McKibben gives some background: So far, we’ve raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius and that has caused far more damage than most scientists expected. (A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere over the oceans is a shocking five percent wetter, loading the dice for devastating floods.)
The second number is 565 gigatons. That’s the amount of carbon dioxide humans can pour into the atmosphere by mid-century and still have some reasonable hope of staying below two degrees. “Reasonable, in this case, means four chances in five, or somewhat worse odds than playing Russian roulette with a six-shooter,” McKibben notes.
In late May, the International Energy Agency reported “CO2 emissions last year rose to 31.6 gigatons, up 3.2 percent from the year before. (U.S. emissions fell slightly as we had a warm winter and converted more coal-fired power plants to natural gas.) If emissions continue to grow by roughly three percent a year, we’ll blow through our 565 gigatons allowance in 16 years, McKibben writes.
IEA chief economist Faith Birol has said, “When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of about six degrees.” McKibben responds: That’s almost 11 degrees Fahrenheit, which would create a planet straight out of science fiction.
The third number is 2,795 gigatons. That’s the amount of carbon already contained in the proven coal and oil and gas reserves of the fossil-fuel companies (and countries like Venezuela and Kuwait). “In short, it’s the fossil fuel we’re planning to burn and that number is five times higher than 565. And while this fuel may still be in the ground, economically it’s figured into share prices, companies are borrowing against it . . . It explains why the big fossil-fuel companies have fought so hard to prevent the regulation of carbon dioxide.”
Maybe it also explains why our “Pragmatist in Chief” is keeping a low profile on this issue. And, McKibben adds, why the president has gone out of his way to frack and mine.
He campaigned in 2008 on climate change, telling supporters that his election would mark the moment “the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal.” Aside from a steady increase in fuel efficiency for automobiles, which is probably too little too late, he’s been unwilling to challenge the energy companies.
There are others who counter such global warming deniers as U.S. Sen. James Inhofe and novelist Michael Crichton.
As stated by physicist Louis M. Branscomb in “Catalyst” when asked why our elected leaders aren’t living up to expectations: “In this era of hyper-partisanship and the over-influence of money in politics, too often science and facts aren’t just lost in the debate, they’re deliberately corrupted or excluded.”
Will these scientific facts be discussed in the upcoming presidential debates? Not bloody likely.