Global Warming

Global warming is a fact. The earth’s temperature has been rising steadily throughout the course of the past 150 years, and will continue to warm into the future.

That having been said, Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” does not present all of global warming. Yes, it presents the realities of climate change, yes the trend of global warming as depicted in the movie is definitely going to happen. Unfortunately, the movie pins the cause of all of this warming on atmospheric carbon dioxide, and ignores the other factors which contribute to global warming.

The movie focuses specifically on greenhouse gasses, because the focus of the movie is to call everyone out to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. CO2 emissions specifically. I sincerely hope that this movie calls many people to enact actual change of CO2 emissions.

There’s another side to global warming, though. There are many scientists who have other things to say about global warming, but their findings are called into question, and their motives called into question as well. If people say things which are perceived to run contrary to the popular model of global warming, they are immediately flagged as being paid off by the petroleum industries. This is both fortunate and unfortunate. Fortunate because it reduces dissent, and unfortunate because the full truth is not understood. There are more ways to help affect global warming than just carbon dioxide emissions.

Many of these scientists want to promote their views, but they go about it the wrong way. They come up and say “Here’s my findings on global warming. It’s not caused by greenhouse gas emissions, it’s caused by ______.” When they say this, it generates dissent about the greenhouse gas theory, and is harped on by business to help delay regulations reducing CO2 emissions. What these scientists need to be saying is “It’s caused by greenhouse gas emissions, as well as _____.”

Everyone is rallying behind CO2 emissions, which is a good thing because it will effect change, but there are many other things contributing to global warming as well, and I am afraid that a policy tuned merely towards greenhouse gas emissions may not succeed. Also, I believe that these scientists, if they listened to each other, could come up with solutions that would help not only reduce CO2 emissions, but help solve other problems as well.

There are a number of other causes to greenhouse gas emissions that are commonly overlooked. There are three that I would like to talk about right now.

Natural warming of the earth
Warming of the sun
Urban development

1. Natural warming of the earth:
Robert Essenhigh, E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conservation in Ohio State’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. Professor Essenhigh follows the research of Cambridge University geologists Nicholas Shackleton an Neil Opdyke, who reported that global temperatures have been oscillating steadily over the past one million years. There is a natural warming and cooling cycle going on, and we are currently in the warming phase. The hockey-stick graph which Al Gore presented, is not the most commonly accepted temperature graph among climatologists today. The other graphs show more of an oscillation in temperature, but still show that rising curve today. In 1850, according to ice cores drilled in Greenland and recorded temperature, there was a significant low temperature. The temperature in 1850 was definitely lower than the temperature was during the medieval times. We are coming out of a valley, and ascending a peak, so there is a significant natural portion of the warming cycle which is contributing to global warming.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/06/010615071248.htm

I definitely believe that we are currently in a natural warming cycle. I definitely believe that this is contributing to the observed temperature increase of the past century. I definitely do not believe that it is the only factor of global warming, and that when the earth’s natural cooling cycle begins all of our problems will be over.

2. Warming of the sun:
Another camp of researchers, a cross-national team of Swiss and German scientists have come up with another reason for global warming: natural warming from the sun.

Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: “The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.

“The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently – in the last 100 to 150 years.”

Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of “greenhouse gases”, such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth’s temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.

This team believes that both the sun and carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to the warming cycle. I believe in this research, and I am glad that Dr. Solanki isn’t arguing that the sun is the only cause of global warming, but it definitely shows that the earth is going to be getting hotter.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml

3. Urban sprawl
John Christy, head atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama, did an interesting experiment in atmospheric temperature change over the past century. This study showed that most of the global warming over the past century has been recorded on ground thermometers, and not recorded on thermometers in the atmosphere. He and a colleague poured over the temperature readings from weather balloons and satellites in the atmosphere over the past 50 years.

Their research found that the amount of observed temperature increase in the atmosphere is not nearly as significant as the observed temperature increase in the atmosphere, although there is a slower warming trend up higher. This research shows that, while there is significant global warming, greenhouse gasses are only one part of the global warming. To find his answers, he searched closer to the ground.

Cities are expanding rapidly. What used to be countryside – fields, trees, and natural areas are rapidly being replaced with concrete, asphalt, and buildings. These building materials definitely have an effect, called the Urban Heat Island Effect. Temperatures in cities like Atlanta, the temperatures in the cities are 5-6 degrees celsius greater than the surrounding countryside.

Unfortunately, this effect of the heating up will also affect the surrounding areas, warming the climate in and around the cities. As man does more and more of this, it will greatly raise the surface temperatures. The building of cities has been incredibly rapid over the past 100 years, and has contributed to the observed warming of the planet, and also helps to explain why, while the greenhouse gasses are producing a definite warming effect, the observed atmospheric temperatures are rising more slowly than the ground temperatures, which is an indication that there are more factors in play than greenhouse gasses.

These cities and asphalt are raising the earth’s temperature. They’re trapping heat in the concrete and asphalt, they’re rising the temperatures on the surface. They’re playing a large role in global warming. These cities are also the greatest producers of greenhouse gasses, and the single greatest cause of deforestation. As more and more people live on this earth, there is more building of developments, urban and suburban sprawl, and more destruction of the earth. These also cause irrigation issues – people live in areas and put huge drains on water supplies that would naturally be going to keep the terrain the way it is, and this creates desert areas. The spreading of the Gobi desert in China is a definite example of this problem.

Global warming is caused by both natural and manmade factors. There’s nothing that we can do about the natural causes – we can’t make the sun shine less bright, and we can’t change the natural warming cycle. We can do something about the other things though, the manmade things.

“An Inconvenient Truth” calls us to be more ecologically aware, and to reduce our greenhouse gasses. I call everyone to do more than that. We need to not merely be carbon neutral. We need to come up with ways to compensate for deforestation. We must come up with ways to live more in balance with the environment in all aspects of our life, in all the ways that we affect the environment.

Living in Taipei has given me an interesting idea. There are a lot of layers built up one on top of another here in Taipei. A lot of the buildings have grasses and plants on the roofs. There are underground car parks that have parks on top, and if you’re walking around on ground level, you think it’s a park. There are ways that we can build plants and life on top of our cities that would help replace forestation. We can plant trees on our rooftops, grasses on top of our buildings. It would create much more green space. We wouldn’t have to travel miles and miles to enjoy a park. All we’d have to do was walk to the roof of our buildings to enjoy some trees.

Reduce your carbon emissions. Live closer to work – it’s more convenient for you. Help get public transportation in your cities, and use it when it’s more convenient. It’s okay to have a car and use public transportation, you can do both – just don’t fall into the mental trap that if you have a car, you should always drive it around. Busses and metro systems could really be much more convenient. If I’m going across Taipei, sometimes I’ll ride a motorcycle, and sometimes I’ll use the metro system. The United States needs better public transportation.

Vehicle emissions aren’t even the main CO2 producers. Coal power plants are probably the single biggest creator of carbon dioxide. Find ways to make alternative power cheaper. Lobby your congresspeople to put taxes on coal, and to provide incentives for using greener technologies such as Nuclear, Wind, or Hydroelectric.

Plant trees in your yard. The shade they provide will help cool the area around them. They will help neutralize some carbon emissions, but they’ll also help to restore the kind of landscape that existed before humans came.

Carpool. It’s cheaper. If you’re making a commute everyday to work, and a coworker lives nearby, ride with him. Switch off days. It’ll save you both a lot of money, especially with gas prices the way they are. It’ll help to save greenhouse emissions. It’ll be an extra car off of the road, which will help ease traffic congestion, and will help everyone arrive faster.

Lobby your local government to provide incentives to carpoolers. Try to start a program which refunds gasoline taxes to people who can prove that they carpooled. Lobby them for carpool lanes if you’re in a larger area. Less cars on the road means everyone gets there faster. Less cars on the road means fewer roads needed to be built.

This isn’t to say don’t use your car. I love driving. I love cars. Use your car, drive your car, but make the best use of it. If you use it for recreation, don’t drive at rush hour. If you use it for a commute, try to find someone to carpool with – it’s nice to have company. Don’t add to traffic congestion – if people distribute out the times that they drive, less time would be spent on the road for everyone. Less greenhouse gasses would be produced from cars just sitting in gridlock. Driving would be more enjoyable for everyone. If I had the choice between driving in gridlock all day, and taking public transportation, I would definitely choose public transportation. I want to drive and enjoy it. I want to feel the road underneath me and really get to move. Driving in gridlock is a frustration. Don’t do it unless you have no choice.

~ by earcaraxe on November 20, 2007.