The Weather Forecast, Part 1
I am currently engaged in my yearly struggle to preserve the lawn around our house against the hot and dry climate of my western state. No one said that we should have lawns here in what is essentially a desert, but long-established custom and my homeowners association says that we must. Since our current president has pulled the U.S. out of any kind of commitment to work with the rest of the world on issues of climate, I feel that I must speak out. I am a firm believer in climate change, we are headed down a dark road that we cannot clearly see what is at the end, and this is very frightening to me. The climate has always changed on our planet, this is not disputed, what is in dispute, (and should not be), is that we are warming it up on an unprecedented scale.
Over the last 3 million years we have endured a series of ice ages, having just recovered from one, less then 12,000 years ago. At that time, levels of CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) in the atmosphere was 180 parts per million, (PPM), making it warm enough to begin melting the glaciers. Since then, a relatively stable warmer climate allowed humanity to begin farming, cutting down forests, burning fossil fuels and creating civilization, this pushed CO2 to a pre-industrial rate of 280 PPM. Currently with 7 billion people on the planet, we are using considerable amounts of fossil fuels to move people around in cars, planes and ships. We generate incredible levels of electricity to power our modern lives and that burns coal, oil and gas and it all creates more CO2. In 2014 we blew past 400 PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere. Today it is 408 PPM, and it will continue to climb. CO2 traps heat in our atmosphere and in the distant past this helped keep our planet from becoming a frozen ice-ball like some of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. But too much of a good thing is very dangerous, and by 2050, CO2 levels may balloon to 500 PPM. So what? Higher levels of CO2 and warmer climates have increased plant life, longer growing seasons and more atmospheric water vapor and doesn’t CO2 get absorbed into the oceans and land? Well, yes, it does all that. But of course, there is a dark side to additional CO2 as well, which cannot be ignored or explained away. I find that it is just simple mathematics that we are dealing with here, add more CO2 and that will trap more heat in the atmosphere. The oceans, land and plants are reaching saturation points and there will be no place for additional CO2 to go. As a futurist and science fiction writer, in my next blog, I will explore what might possibly happen when the CO2 levels reach 500 PPM, around 2050, some 33 years from now.
When the Catholic Inquisition in 1633 threatened Galileo with prison and torture, he was forced to renounce his discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun, (contrary to religions teachings at the time). He is reputed to have muttered under his breath, “and yet it moves.” So go ahead and shout it as much as you want, “Climate change is a hoax!” I will continue to say, “and yet it is getting hotter.” (Below is a very old painting of mine. Dinosaurs are thought to have flourished under a very long period of stable climate on Earth).
