Global
Warming Has Arrived
By Jim Lobe
02 November, 2004
OneWorld.net
With
only eight weeks left before the elves finish their work and Santa Claus
mounts his sleigh, an eight-nation study on global warming co-sponsored
by the United States has concluded that the North Pole is melting beneath
St. Nick.
The 144-page report,
which is due to be officially released a week after Tuesdays elections,
says the accelerated warming of the globe which it blames mostly
on the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced
by the industrial age is transforming the Arctic region dramatically.
The Arctic is
now experience some of the most rapid and severe climate change on Earth,
according to the report, which was obtained by the New York Times and
the Washington Post this weekend, apparently from European sources that
wanted to publicize its findings before Tuesday.
The European Union
(EU), some of whose member states co-sponsored the study, strongly supports
the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse emissions, while President George
W. Bush has rejected the accord. His Democratic challenger, Sen. John
Kerry, has called for the U.S. to rejoin negotiations on the treatys
terms.
Over the next
100 years, climate change is expected to accelerate, contributing to
major physical, ecological, social and economic changes, many of which
have already begun, the report stated, adding that greenhouse
gas emissions have clearly become the dominant factor in
the Arctics changing climate.
The study, whose
conclusions were disclosed as the Russian government, another co-sponsor,
completes its ratification of the Protocol this week, was based on the
work of nearly 300 scientists, as well as elders from native
mainly Inuit communities living in the Arctic regions of North America
and Eurasia over the past four years.
The governmental
sponsors of the study include Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway,
Russia, and Sweden, as well as the United States.
It confirms earlier
studies that the Arctic has warmed and is warming at a much faster rate
than the Earth as a whole. While the Earth has warmed by roughly one
degree Fahrenheit over the past century that is, the bulk of
the industrial age temperature increases in the Arctic area have
been as much as ten times greater.
That warming has
produced dramatic, across-the-board effects on both the climate and
the land. Once solid tundra or permafrost has turned ever soggier, while
animal, fish, and plant species that have thrived in the region for
millennia are either moving northward or dying out. The report predicted
that polar bears, ice-loving seals and indigenous people who rely on
the two large mammals for food are likely to be devastated by the changes,
particularly the melting of sea ice throughout the Arctic.
The major
message is that climate change is here and now in the Arctic,
Dr. Robert Corell, a U.S. oceanographer who directed the assessment,
told the Times.
Not all of these
changes are due solely to changes in temperature; also cited are a number
of other human-caused factors, including overfishing, growing human
population, and rising levels of ultra-violet radiation from the depleted
ozone layer, as contributing to the change.
The sum of
these factors threatens to overwhelm the adaptive capacity of some Arctic
populations and ecosystems, according to a section of the report
quoted by the Times.
But the consequences
of what is happening to the Arctic are certain to be global in scope,
according to Gunnar Palsson, the chairman of the Arctic Council, who
told the Post the region should be seen as sort of a bellweather
for the rest of the planet. In order to contain these problems,
we cannot think in terms of regional solutions.
Indeed, the melting
of Arctic ice, which is taking place at a faster-than-anticipated pace,
could have dire consequences on coastal areas as a result of the resulting
rise in sea levels.
The melting of the
two-mile-high icepack on Greenland by itself will send sea level as
much as 25 feet higher, washing away low-lying islands in the South
Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean and heavily populated coastal
areas from Bangladesh to New Orleans and the Mississippi delta.
Even if the U.S.
joins the Kyoto Protocol which will take legal effect 90 days
from Moscows formal ratification -- the results will be too little
and too late to reverse the changes that are well underway in the Arctic
because carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have been built up
in the atmosphere for more than a century and cannot be dispersed or
broken down. At best, implementation of the treaty will slow the rate
of change over the long term.
The Protocol calls
for a seven-percent reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions by the
worlds industrialized countries below 1990 levels by the year
2012 but does not yet require cuts in emissions by other major greenhouse-gas
producing nations, notably China and India. Washingtons adherence
to the treaty is nonetheless considered critical, because the country
is the worlds biggest greenhouse gas emitter by far, accounting
for about 25 percent of annual global emissions.
Bush has opposed
the treaty on the grounds that it will reduce economic growth, an assertion
challenged by many economists and scientists who say it will make U.S.
industry more globally competitive, particular as the rest of the world
develops new technologies to reduce emissions.
The new studys
main conclusions were to some extent anticipated in September in Senate
hearings in which Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a representative of the 155,000
Inuit who live in Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and Russia, testified about
the changes her people were enduring.
We find ourselves
at the very cusp of a defining event in the history of this planet,
she told Sen. John McCain, who is co-sponsoring legislation to require
reductions in greenhouse emissions, and other senators. The Earth
is literally melting.
She pointed in particular
to the growing unpredictability in the weather, melting of permafrost
and glaciers, the retreat of sea ice, and the presence of previously
unknown species, such as robins and mosquitoes and other insects. Protect
the Arctic and you will save the planet, she said. Use us
as your early-warning system.
The new study suggests
that there may be some benefits to the changes being wrought by warming,
including the possibility of longer growing seasons further north and
even rebounds in dwindling fish stocks. In addition, the retreat of
sea ice may make off-shore drilling for oil and gas more feasible and
enhance trans-Arctic navigation.
Many scientists
have argued that the warming trend could help produce bigger plants
that in turn will be able to take more carbon out of the atmosphere
and slow the warming rate accordingly.
But a study regarding
a 20-year project to test that thesis published in September by Britains
Nature magazine found that warming could actually release
even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and thus contribute to
greater warming. It found that while tundra plants did indeed become
more productive at the surface, releases of carbon and nitrogen from
deep-soil tundra layers more than offset their ability to store more
carbon.
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2004, OneWorld.net