There’s an old saying which some believe originated as a Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. The new millennium certainly qualifies! It often seems that the weather has become our worst enemy. If I were a polar bear, I know that I’d feel that way.
Greenland photo credit: Kim Hansen
So far this month, I’ve been telling you about the significance of proclamations about global warming which have emerged from the scientific community this year. The news is not good. In fact, it’s horrible. All peer-reviewed predictions about the causes and effects of global warming are coming to fruition and it may well happen that next month, summertime melting of polar ice in the Northern Hemisphere will be complete. We could have an ice-free Arctic for the first time in the history of humankind.
That’s a very big deal. In fact, some of the more conservative estimates by very respected academic bodies gave us until 2050 before we’d see a completely ice-free Arctic, even in summer. They were way off. Why? Was there a flaw in their interpretation? Could it be that atmospheric carbon content is not the best measure of the doom we have leveled on ourselves?
No and no!
The problem is that we are in uncharted territory. While deep-core isotopic analyses of the planet’s ice shelves tell us a great deal about the atmosphere going back millennia and beyond, we don’t have satellite imagery or constant monitoring of ocean temperatures or data from weather stations on every continent. In short, the predictions which gave us until 2050 were guesses, highly accurate ones by many of our best minds, but guesses nonetheless.
Besides, the estimates were based on a snapshot of atmospheric content. There was no way to predict an outcome based on carbon content if more carbon is added every day and we spew 40 million tons of it every 24 hours. Even Albert Einstein struggled with the challenge of predicting a random event.
Where do we go from here? Well, my first recommendation is to watch the film The Day After Tomorrow. It is a bit overdone for dramatic effect but not by too much. As you see things like tornadoes attacking Los Angeles as a stampede and Manhattan underwater, reflect on the killer storms which much of the world has seen so far this year. Living in the center of America’s hurricane zone, I shudder to think what the summer storm season has in store for Chez Kroehler, let me tell you.
I don’t wish to give you nightmares so let me end with this. Skepticism is healthy but stoicism is not. On the question of humanity’s role as the central cause of global warming, we are long past any doubt. The book is closed. Carbon is the culprit and the industrialized world loves it.
On the question of the causes and effects of global warming, melting of polar ice is as predictable as the dawn and we have known for decades that an ice-free Arctic would occur at some future point. Now, we know with scientific certainty that it will occur as soon as next month but no later than the summer of 2015.
What should you do? Live carbon-neutral today, immediately and aspire to live carbon-negative by the end of the year. It’s easier than you think and now you can watch on the evening news what will happen if you don’t.
photo taken by: Mila Zinkova
Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line
Corbett Kroehler
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