Just yesterday we learned that glaciers are melting in Greenland (and around the world) at an unprecedented rate, faster than even climate scientists had predicted as a worst case scenario. Well today’s news, at least for those of us not praying for the Rapture, is even worse:
ST. LOUIS — Humans are burning fossil fuels so rapidly that Earth is headed toward its warmest period in 55 million years, a panel of scientists warned yesterday.
If that sounds bad, James Zachos, a researcher from the University of California, Santa Cruz, would agree.
“It’s a threat to life as we know it,” said Zachos, who joined a panel of researchers discussing global climate change at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting.
For more details, follow me below the fold . . .
Burning coal, oil and naturalgas reserves at the current rate is expected to release 5,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide — a gigaton is 1 billion tons — into the atmosphere and push carbon dioxide levels to more than five times current levels.
The last time the atmosphere was laced with that much carbon dioxide the world’s oceans stagnated with dead vegetation and life in the sea and on land was fundamentally altered, the researchers say.
“That’s exactly the amount we will add to the atmosphere if all fossil fuels are combusted,” Zachos said.
While it might take a century or more to release that much carbon into the air, Mother Nature might require 100,000 years or more to regain the balance, the panel said.
Just for fun, I decided to convert 5,000 gigatons into the equivalent number of pounds of CO2. I came up with this number:
10,000,000,000,000,000 lbs. of of CO2
(or about 5 trillion tons of carbon dioxide
poured into our atmosphere as a result of our burning of fossil fuels, if you prefer to avoid all those zeros)
No matter how you look at it, that’s a pretty big number. And the effects of such a massive forcing of CO2 into the air we breathe would be catastrophic to life on this planet. Severe weather, dying oceans, the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals and quite possibly a planet made uninhabitable for human beings. Which means billions of people killed by the effects of our apparently uncontrollable and insatiable desire to burn every last bit of the hydrocarbon fuels that are still left on Earth.
Let me return to what the scientists are telling us:
Even scarier, according to Matt Chandler, a climate modeler from Columbia University, is that we might be underestimating the effects. Humans already could be approaching a threshold that would trigger changes no matter what is done to limit carbon-dioxide releases. […]
Scott Wing, a paleobotanist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, called global warming the biggest threat to humanity.
We, you and I, may not live to experience such dire consequences arsing from our profligate expenditure of fossil fuels, but our grandchildren and their children almost certainly will, unless action is taken now to start ending our consumption of these addictive “sources of energy.”
Democrats, please, I beg you. Make this your issue. Al Gore has, and I salute him for that, but he shouldn’t be a lone voice in the wilderness. This catastrophe in waiting should be on the lips of every Democratic candidate this Fall. Not because it’s a winning issue for them, or will cause discomfort to Republicans who are so firmly embedded in the clutches of Big Oil. Nor because it is a matter of our national security that we wean ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil.
No, Democrats running for Congress should raise this in every campaign speech this Fall because it is a matter of the survival of the human race.
Period.
End of story.
Cross-posted at Daily Kos.
Short term, this is a loser issue. Americans will not listen to bad news of having to curb their consumption. They will shoot the messenger.
And when the effects come big enough to distract from Britney’s love life, they will scream bloody murder: Why didn’t anybody tell us!
I hope I am wrong.
Britaany Spears love life. If you can connect this to Golbal warming…the ebbs and flows…we can make this an issue. Britanny just had an operation…for a hernia…I think it was her. Maybe the hernia was caused by Global warming….Better yet…her hernia causes or contributes to global warming.
I hear global warming was what split up Nick and Jessica, and maybe Brad and Jennifer as well.
You’re wrong. Polls have, IIRC, shown that most Americans are indeed concerned about environmental issues. However, two factors combine to make them unwilling to change anything:
This is why “solutions” like diesel-powered cars, clean coal, and the like are bad. Not only do they not really solve the problem, but the incremental approach to sustainability that they represent makes people lose interest. Start describing what a real sustainable society would be like, and the big changes needed to get there, and you start getting people’s attention… Especially if you can emphasize that their lives could be made happier.
Sure, they are “concerned”. But are they willing to do anything about it? Drive less? Eat fewer Big Macs?
It’s like this “War” on Terror: the administration knows that the minute they ask the people to sacrifice something for it, the bottom falls out.
We have to find a way to present the coming environmental and energy crises as great optimistic opportunities if we’re to gain any headway with the electorate.
Case in point: me. I put 15000 lb of CO2 into the atmosphere per year by driving (that’s about 700 gallons of gas). I’ve been doing this for years, but only now I’m working on my resume to find a job closer to home. Insane.
I do pledge to spend some of time saved from commuting on environmental defense. (If I get a decent job closer to home… back to resume hacking!)
Yes, actually… If they can be shown how they can live better by doing it. The key is big changes, practical benefits to people’s lives, and addressing the Media Problem.
If what’s in it for them is education and high-tech jobs for them and their kids and energy independence without a war for oil Joe Autoworker and Jane Steelworker will eat it up like Big Macs and Fries.
Bingo. Sexy, local, big, practical, effective. Get the first three and you win the PR campaign; get the last two, and you win the real world. You can even sell it as a “happy days are here again” campaign. Local jobs with reasonable education requirements (due to simplicity) and pay scales (due to necessity). “Wind Power: The New Backbone of America.” That kind of thing.
Thank you both. Which organizations in your opinion are most effectively working on this approach now?
This wouldn’t be a losing issue if the Democrats had the common sense of presenting it as investments in new clean technologies, education for the new technology, and jobs. See ManFromMiddletown’s diary and explain to me why this is a loser. It need not be presented in a gloomy manner! It can be presented as the heroic adventure of our era. Because if we don’t, we’ll get a real-life adventure that looks a lot like Mad Max.
At which point the public will not have the luxury of giving a f%^& about either party.
We won’t convince enough people that the environment is an matter of survival until the issue is so clearcut that we are past the point where we have a chance of surviving, and Democrats see the environment as a losing issue so they’re not even going to try. Hell, they see everything as a losing issue, which is why it seems like they don’t really believe in anything.
Then present it as a matter of creating high-tech industries, new jobs, education, and independence from OPEC. If the Democrats don’t figure this out soon, the JohnMcCain branch of the Republicans will, and they’ll get plenty of votes. Maybe even mine.
All our other favorite civil liberty issues ain’t gonna be worth a rats a$$ on a fried-over planet.
And the latest issue of Scientific American has an article that says the oceans have been absorbing about 1/2 of all the CO2 we have been putting into the atmosphere. This has increased the acidity of the oceans to levels that could be catastrophic for ocean life.
Thanks again Steven for your good work. This should be issue #1 in every federal election. But, since we have abused the land by the way we have spread out from our urban core cities. (due in large part to the creation of the Interstate Highway System at the expense of efficient public transport) I think most Americans are too frightened by the reality of global warming to accept it as fact. To do so would require radical changes in the “American Way of Life”. I think, because of this denial, that change will eventually be much more catastrophic than it needed to be.
This is not to say that the Dems should join their counterparts and bury their heads in the sand. I am merely commenting on what I believe the American mindset is. It will be very difficult to overcome the influence of Big Oil, the GOP, Corporate America and simply the inertia of the thing. No better time than now to start, though. (remember how Jimmy Carter tried to open our eyes back in the 70’s?)