Global Warming
As A Weapon
Of Mass Distruction
By Bruce E. Johansen
03 March, 2004
Zmag
Lord
Peter Levene, board chair of Lloyds of London, says that terrorism
is not the insurance industrys biggest worry, despite the fact
that his company was the largest single insurer of the World Trade Center.
Levene says that Lloyds, like other large international insurance
companies, is bracing for an increase in weather disasters related to
global warming. Likewise, following his assignment as chief weapons
inspector in Iraq, Hans Blix said: To me the question of the environment
is more ominous than that of peace and war. We will have regional conflicts
and use of force, but world conflicts I do not believe will happen any
longer. But the environment, that is a creeping danger. Im more
worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict.
Sir John Houghton, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, agrees. Global warming is already upon us, he said.
The impacts of global warming are such that that I have no hesitation
in describing it as a weapon of mass destruction. So what do they
know that George W. Bush doesnt?
Weather is the story;
climate is the plot. We are carbonizing the oceans, with dire implications
for life in them. As the 21st century dawned, carbon-dioxide levels
were rising in the oceans more rapidly than any time since the age of
dinosaurs. In a report published September 25, 2003 in Nature, oceanographers
Ken Caldeira and Michael E. Wickett wrote: We find that oceanic
absorption of CO2 from fossil fuels may result in larger pH changes
over the next several centuries than any inferred in the geological
record of the past 300 million years, with the possible exception of
those resulting from rare, extreme events such as bolide impacts or
catastrophic methane hydrate degassing. (A bolide
is a large extraterrestrial body, usually at least a half mile in diameter,
perhaps much larger, that impacts the earth at a speed roughly equal
to that of a bullet in flight.)
Rising carbon dioxide
levels in the oceans could threaten the health of many marine organisms,
beginning with the plankton at the base of the food chain. If
we continue down the path we are going, we will produce changes greater
than any experienced in the past 300 million yearswith the possible
exception of rare, extreme events such as comet impacts, Caldeira,
of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, warned. Since carbon
dioxide levels began to be measured on a systemic basis worldwide in
1958, its concentration in the atmosphere has risen 17 percent.
Until now, some
climate experts have asserted that the oceans would help to control
the rise in carbon dioxide by acting as a filter. However, Caldeira
and Michael Wickett said that carbon dioxide that is removed from the
atmosphere enters the oceans as carbonic acid, gradually altering the
acidity of ocean water. According to their studies, the change over
the last century already matches the magnitude of the change that occurred
in the entire 10,000 years preceding the industrial age. Caldeira pointed
to acid rain from industrial emissions as a possible precursor of changes
in the oceans. Most ocean life resides near the surface, where
the greatest change would be expected to come, but deep ocean life may
prove to be even more sensitive to changes, Caldeira said.
Marine plankton
and other organisms whose skeletons or shells contain calcium carbonate,
which is dissolved by acid solutions, may be particularly vulnerable.
Coral reefsalready suffering from pollution, rising ocean temperatures,
and other stressesare comprised almost entirely of calcium carbonate.
Its difficult to predict what will happen because we havent
really studied the range of impacts, Caldeira said. But
we can say that if we continue business as usual, we are going to see
some significant changes in the acidity of the worlds oceans.
Along the same line,
warming seas also are devastating plankton, eroding the oceans
food chain. Global warming is contributing to an ecological meltdown,
with devastating implications for fisheries and wildlife. The meltdown
begins at the base of the food chain, as increasing sea temperatures
kill plankton. Fish stocks and sea-bird populations are declining as
well.
Scientists at the
Sir Alistair Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth, England,
which has been monitoring plankton growth in the North Sea for more
than 70 years, have said that an unprecedented warming of the North
Sea has driven plankton hundreds of miles to the north. They have been
replaced by smaller, warm-water species that are less nutritious. Over-fishing
of cod and other species has played a role, but fish stocks have not
recovered after cuts in fishing quotas.
The number of salmon
returning to British waters are now half of what they were 20 years
ago, and a decline in plankton populations is a major factor. A
regime shift has taken place and the whole ecology of the North Sea
has changed quite dramatically, said Dr. Chris Reid, the foundations
director. We are seeing a collapse in the system as we knew it.
Catches of salmon and cod are already down and we are getting smaller
fish. We are seeing visual evidence of climate change on a large-scale
ecosystem. We are likely to see even greater warming, with temperatures
becoming more like those off the Atlantic coast of Spain or further
south, bringing a complete change of ecology.
Research by the
British Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has established that
seabird colonies off the Yorkshire coast and the Shetlands this year
suffered their worst breeding season since records began, with many
abandoning nesting sites. Sea-bird populations are falling in large
part because sand eels are declining. The sand eels feed on plankton.
This survey concentrated on kittiwakes, one breed of sea birds, but
other species that feed on the eels, including puffins and razorbills,
also have been seriously affected.
Sand eels also comprise
a third to half of the North Sea catch, by weight. They have heretofore
been caught in huge quantities by Danish factory ships, which turn them
into food pellets for pigs and fish. During the summer of 2003, the
Danish fleet caught only 300,000 English tons of its 950,000-ton quota,
a record low.
Beware the Methane
Burp
Yesterdays
SUV exhaust does not become todays rising temperature, not immediately.
Through an intricate feedback loop, fossil fuel burned today is expressed
in warming 30 to 50 years later. Today we are seeing temperatures related
to fossil-fuel emissions from roughly 1960, when fossil fuel consumption
was much lower. Todays fossil-fuel emissions will be expressed
in the atmosphere about 2040.
Increasing levels
of greenhouse gases near the surface hold heat there, impeding radiation
into the upper layers of the atmosphere. As the surface warms, the stratosphere
cools. The chemical reactions that consume the ozone that protects us
from ultraviolet radiation accelerate as the air chills. Thus, the area
of depleted ozone over Antarctica remains at near-record size respite
the fact that chloroflourocarbons (CFCs), the culprits on ozone depletion,
have now been banned for more than 15 years.
In his book, When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of
All Time (London: Thames and Hudson, 2003), Michael J. Benton describes
a mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, about 250 million
years ago, when at least 90 percent of life on Earth died. The extinction
probably was initiated by massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia. According
to present theories, the eruptions injected massive amounts of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere, causing a number of biotic feedbacks that
accelerated global warming of about 6 degrees Celsius. In a chapter
titled What Caused the Biggest Catastrophe of all Time?
Benton sketches how the warming (which was accompanied by anoxia) may
have fed upon itself: The end-Permian runaway greenhouse may have
been simple. Release of carbon dioxide from the eruption of the Siberian
Traps [volcanoes] led to a rise in global temperatures of 6 degrees
Celsius or so. Cool polar regions became warm and frozen tundra became
unfrozen. The melting might have penetrated to the frozen gas hydrate
reservoirs located around the polar oceans, and massive volumes of methane
may have burst to the surface of the oceans in huge bubbles.
This further input
of carbon into the atmosphere caused more warming, which could have
melted further gas hydrate reservoirs. So the process went on, running
faster and faster. The natural systems that normally reduce carbon dioxide
levels could not operate, and eventually the system spiraled out of
control, with the biggest crash in the history of life.
The oxygen-starved
aftermath of this immense global belch of methane left land animals
gasping for breath and caused the Earths largest mass extinction,
suggests new research. Greg Retallack, an expert in ancient soils at
the University of Oregon, has speculated that the same methane belch
was of such a magnitude that it caused mass extinction via oxygen starvation
of land animals. Bob Berner of Yale University has calculated that a
cascade of effects on wetlands and coral reefs may have reduced oxygen
levels in the atmosphere from 35 percent to just 12 percent over 20,000
years. Marine life also may have suffocated in the oxygen-poor water.
Events 250 million
years ago are of more than academic interest today because the 6 degrees
Celsius that Benton estimates triggered these events is roughly the
same temperature rise forecast for the Earth by the IPCC by the end
of this century.
In Abrupt Climate
Change (2002), Richard B. Alley wrote that climate may change rapidly
(as much as 16 degrees Celsius within a decade or two) when gradual
causes push the Earth system across a threshold. Just as the slowly
increasing pressure of a finger eventually flips a switch and turns
on a light.... Half the North Atlantic warming since the last
ice age was achieved, writes Alley, within one decade. The temperature
record for Greenland, according to Alleys research, more resembles
a jagged row of very sharp teeth than a gradual passage from one epoch
to another. According to Alley: Model projections of global warming
find increased global precipitation, increased variability in precipitation,
and summertime drying in many continental interiors, including grain
belt regions. Such changes might produce more floods and more
droughts. Human emissions of greenhouse gases may provide enough
of a change to trigger such a rapid change.
By 2000, the hydrological
cycle seemed to be changing more quickly than temperatures. Warmer air
holds more moisture, making rain (and sometimes snow) more intense.
Warmer air also increases evaporation, paradoxically intensifying drought
at the same time. With sustained warming, usually wet places generally
seem to be receiving more rain than before; dry places often receive
less rain and become subject to more persistent drought. In many places,
drought or deluge is becoming the weather regime du jour. Atmospheric
moisture increases more rapidly than temperature; over the United States
and Europe, atmospheric moisture increased 10 to 20 percent from 1980
to 2000. Thats why you see the impact of global warming
mostly in intense storms and flooding like we have seen in Europe,
Kevin Trenberth, a scientist with National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) told Londons Financial Times.
As if on cue to
support climate models, the summer of 2002 featured a number of climatic
extremes, especially regarding precipitation. Excessive rain deluged
Europe and Asia, swamping cities and villages and killing at least 2,000
people, while drought and heat scorched the United States west
and eastern cities. Climate skeptics argued that weather is always variable,
but other observers noted that extremes seemed to be more frequent than
before. A year later, following episodic floods during the summer of
2002, Europe experienced some of it highest (and longest-sustained)
temperatures in recorded history, causing (by various estimates) between
19,000 and 35,000 excess deaths. As much as 80 percent of the grain
crop died in eastern Germany, site of some of 2002s worst floods.
In a hotter
climate, your chances of being caught with either too much or too little
are higher, said Dr. John M. Wallace, a professor of atmospheric
sciences at the University of Washington. Government scientists have
measured a rise in downpour-style storms in the United States during
the last century. Over the past 50 years, said Wallace, winter
precipitation in the Sierra Nevada has been falling more and more in
the form of rain, increasing flood risks, instead of as snow, which
supplies farmers and taps alike as it melts in the spring.
The World Water
Council report compiled statistics indicating that between 1971 and
1995 floods affected more than 1.5 billion people worldwide, or 100
million people a year. An estimated 318,000 were killed and more than
18 million left homeless. The economic costs of these disasters rose
to an estimated $300 billion in the 1990s from about $35 billion in
the 1960s. Global warming is causing changes in weather patterns as
growing populations migrate to vulnerable areas, increasing costs of
individual weather events, said William Cosgrove, vice president of
the World Water Council. Scientists cited by the World Water Council
expect that climate changes during the 21st century will lead to shorter
and more intense rainy seasons in some areas, as well as longer, more
intense droughts in others, endangering some crops and species and causing
a drop in global food production.
Examples abound
of increasing extremes in precipitation. November 2002, December 2002,
and January 2003 were Minneapolis-St. Pauls driest in recorded
history. These followed the wettest June through October there in more
than 100 years. In December 2002, Omaha recorded its first month with
no measurable precipitation. In March 2003, having endured its driest
year in recorded history during 2002, Denver, Colorado recorded 30 inches
of snow in one storm. Some areas of the drought-parched Front Range
received as much as ten feet of snow in the same storm. After that one
storm, drought conditions returned.
Roughly half the
United States was under serious drought conditions during the summer
of 2002. The drought was occasionally punctuated by torrential rains.
On September 13, 2002, for example, drought-stricken Denver was inundated
by floods from a fast-moving thunderstorm that caused widespread flooding.
Similar events took place south of Salt Lake City. Ten days later, a
flooding cloudburst inundated similarly drought-stricken Atlanta. On
September 10, 2002, six months worth of rain fell in a few hours
in the Gard, Herault, and Vaucluse departments in the south of France,
drowning at least 20 people. In the village of Sommieres, near Nimes,
a usually-tiny stream exploded to a width of 300 meters, cutting off
road traffic.
The suburbs of Chicago
received 8 to 13 inches of rain the night of August 12, 2002, in a summer
that included devastating floods in Prague and Dresden, as well as parts
of southern China. India had a variable monsoonsome areas flooded,
while others went dry. Severe summer floods in Europe during 2002 may
be an indicator of an emerging pattern, according to Jens H. and Ole
B. Christensen, who modeled precipitation patterns in Europe under warming
conditions of a type that may be prominent in the area by 2070 to 2100.
Our results, they wrote in Nature, indicate that episodes
of severe flooding may become more frequent, despite a general trend
toward drier summer conditions. The trend toward drought or deluge
will intensify as warming distorts the hydrological cycle. A warming
atmosphere will contain more water vapor, which will provide further
potential for latent-heat release during the buildup of low-pressure
systems, thereby possibly both intensifying the systems and making more
water available for precipitation, Christensen and Christensen
wrote.
Annual mean precipitation
amounts over the United States have been increasing at two to five percent
per decade, according to atmospheric scientists Ken Trenberth and colleagues
(writing in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society), with
most of the increase related to temperature and hence in atmospheric
water-holding capacity
. There is clear evidence that rainfall
rates have changed in the United States
. The prospect may be for
fewer but more intense rainfallor snowfallevents.
Individual storms may be further enhanced by latent heat release, which
supplies even more moisture during individual storms.
Generally, higher
temperatures enhance evaporation, with some compensatory cooling when
water is available. Increased evaporation also intensifies drought,
which, to some degree, compounds itself as moisture is depleted, leading
to increased risk of heat waves and wildfires in association with
such droughts; because once the soil moisture is depleted then all the
heating goes into raising temperatures and wilting plants.
In mountain areas,
wrote Trenberth, The winter snowpack forms a vital resource, not
only for skiers, but also as a freshwater resource in the spring and
summer as the snow melts. Yet warming makes for a shorter snow season
with more precipitation falling as rain rather than snow, earlier snowmelt
of the snow that does exist, and greater evaporation and ablation. These
factors all contribute to diminished snowpack. In the summer of 2002,
in the western parts of the United States, exceptionally low snowpack
and subsequent low soil moisture likely contributed substantially to
the widespread intense drought because of the importance of recycling
[in the hydrological cycle]. Could this be a sign of the future?
The insurance companies,
whose business is making book on the future, are watching the weatherand
they are worried.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce E. Johansen, Frederick W. Kayser professor of Journalism at the
University of Nebraska at Omaha, is author of the Global Warming Desk
Reference (Greenwood Press, 2002).