By: Arin
What's the Deal with Climate Change?
I've lived in the north my whole life. I've studied and worked in Alaska, Northern Norway, and Svalbard. Studying ecology the last 6 years in the arctic and sub-arctic, it seemed climate change was the underlying driver behind all the research, the classes, and the history of how the natural world has changed and how. The arctic is warming at twice the global average and has been called the barometer of global climate change, the early warning system. Its isolated environments are powerfully demonstrating something that we've known for decades. Climate change is the largest and longest reaching major global catastrophe that human kind has ever seen. Its detrimental effects are incalculable and unless action is taken in the next few years, it will negatively and irreversibly affect the planet's ability to support human life.
Anyone can see the changes happening in the natural world: the huge increase in forest fires, the abnormal winters and tropical storms, the heat waves and droughts and failing ecosystems. All of this is a direct result of human activities and it has been repeatedly proven and supported by every credible scientist on the planet. To disbelieve in human caused climate change at this point is to deny the earth revolves around the sun or eating lead will make you sick. It is to dismiss all other scientific breakthroughs.
How Does it Work?
Man-made climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels like oil and coal and gas. It started during the industrial revolution in the late 18th century when coal powered steam engines changed the world, allowing people to venture farther and more efficiently than ever before. Coal was a miracle technology and the scientific method was not yet standard. So for over 200 years, huge amounts of green house gases (like carbon dioxide (CO2)) were pumped into the atmosphere completely unchecked. The massive concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere formed an insulating layer over the planet (like a greenhouse) and over time, as the concentrations increased, began to affect the biosphere. The global temperatures began to increase and affect the weather, worsening with the rise of human populations and disrupting natural cycles that took millions of years to evolve and balance. Climate change refers not to isolated weather incidents, but to global averages over long periods of time, and the global average temperature has increased 1.4 °F ( 0.8 ° C) since 1880. That may not sound like a lot, but it's rising 10 times faster than what has happened in the past 5,000 years naturally. Which leads us to...
Isn't it Just the Natural Cycles of the Earth? Business as Usual?
No. Ice ages have come and gone in earth's history, so yes, temperature fluctuations do happen, and yet humans are still here, so what's the problem?
The problem is the rate at which the climate is changing. The unchecked emissions of people over the last 200 years has risen earth's temperature to a degree that took thousands of years in the past. Evolution and adaptation are slow processes and the rate at which the natural environments are changing is happening too fast for most species to reasonably adapt a way to survive. We might think: perhaps it's the natural cycles of the earth moving towards or away from the sun, but that is also incorrect. Models show the earth is actually supposed to be moving away from the sun as it would in an ice age, and in any case such events are on time scales too massive to have any relevance.
The atmosphere has become saturated with greenhouse gases over the last century. Of course carbon sinks such as plant life and the ocean absorb gases like CO2 regularly, as most living things expel it. But we have reached a saturation level beyond what the plant life (or any carbon sink for that matter) of the earth can handle. If you were sweeping a floor, you could manage as long as just a thin layer of dust was falling every few hours or so. But if someone fills the room with sand then suddenly you and your tiny broom are laughably out of your league.
What are the Consequences?
As carbon dioxide is released into the environment by human activity, there are several sinks that absorb it from the atmosphere, such as forests and the ocean. Of all the carbon dioxide released into the environment, 43% goes to the atmosphere (greenhouse effect), 31% is absorbed by plants and soils (respiration, storage), and 26% is absorbed by the oceans, leading to ocean acidification.
When the ocean becomes saturated with CO2 it becomes more acidic, which can prevent the shell formation of calcifiers like coral, molluscs, and shellfish. Thus, over time, as these effects worsen, ecosystems could collapse as the base of food webs faces increased mortality and anything that feeds on these creatures or relies on them for habitat struggles to survive. The ocean is 26% more acidic now than it was in 1800 before the industrial revolution. by 2100 it is predicted to be 150% higher and by 2300 it will be 530% (assuming the burning of all fossil fuels). By 2100 the pH changes in the open ocean that make it more acidic will be greater than anything that has happened to the ocean in the last 300 million years. If the oceans become too acidic, the world fishing industry could collapse. The global fishing industry provides 3.1 billion people with 20% of their necessary protein and even now wild fisheries are not enough to support demand, about half of global consumption comes from farmed fish supplies and aquaculture.
Warmer oceans and global temperatures are also disrupting bird migrations, causing them to miss food sources and starve during crucial breeding seasons. Sea ice and glaciers will melt, destroying marine habitat and releasing stored contaminants into the ocean. By the end of the century the arctic will be ice free if trends continue. Permafrost will also melt and release stores of greenhouse gases, pathogens, and contaminants that lower the survival rates of biota and worsen warming. The lack of sea ice will leave shorelines exposed to severe storms and erosion. As ice melts, sea levels rise, salinity changes, and habitats are destroyed or altered at rates that wildlife cannot adapt to. Droughts, heat waves, and severe storms will also increase and already have. And these are just the consequences we can see or predict, there could be incalculable more effects whose destruction we will not be able to see until it's too late.
Why Should We Care?
Ecosystem services are services humans reap from the natural world. Trees providing oxygen is an ecosystem service, as is roots holding soil to prevent landslides, the meat and plants we use for food, the fibers we use for clothes, the wood we use for our houses, even the general aesthetics of a nice landscape is a service to human well being. Absolutely any benefit humans gain from the existence and smooth functioning of an ecosystem is a service. Ecosystem services have an estimated global value of $125 trillion. Already with increased weather damage and pollution health effects, climate change costs the USA some $300 billion a year. Now imagine if the fishing industry collapsed, the droughts and weather worsened, and disease outbreaks became more frequent and widespread? The loss to the economy, human life, and quality of life will be disastrous.
So even if a few species going extinct or a few degrees of warming don't seem like a big deal, the living and physical systems that run the planet are intricately connected in ways we cannot even fathom. Small events and chronic action over long periods of time work insidiously to bring about slow destruction and eventually, at some point, the loss of these ecosystem services will affect everyone on earth.
We are already seeing these effects. Wildfires and floods are on the rise, clean drinking water is becoming scarce, and we are seeing increasing numbers of climate refugees: people whose homes, towns, and land have been flooded by rising seawater or whose food sources or land is unable to support them anymore. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you're familiar with the summertime aura of smoky smog from wildfires. Get used to it. Tropical storms and floods and the damage they cause will increase, invasive species and pathogens from the south will move north as the environment warms and lakes and forests will dry out, increasing fire risk.
What Can We Do for the Future?
To combat climate change, individuals can alter their energy consumption, use less resources, and change their diet based on location (plant base diets reduce emissions from the livestock industry, local food sources also lessen travel emissions). Oftentimes though the ability to switch to a green lifestyle is a privilege not everyone has. Choosing "environmental food" or buying green products can be expensive, and usually the communities or countries who feel the worse effects from climate change are not the ones driving it and thus don't have the power to stop it.
Global affluence disparity is one of the biggest problems in the world fight against climate change. 17% of the world's population is using 80% of its resources, with the human population increasing from barely a billion in 1800 to 7 billion today and the world's wealthiest people hoarding resources. Many times, fights for social equality can drive climate change action through education, limiting population growth, and giving people the option to live in a sustainable way.
Industry is also a major emitter of fossil fuels. The US military is one of the worst in the world, factories and companies unburdened by laws of regulation do more damage than any individual could ever do in a lifetime. Just 100 companies in the world are responsible for 71% of global emissions since 1988 and the USA is the largest contributor of carbon emissions in history. We barely have 4% of the world's population yet contribute to almost a third of the emissions destroying the planet.
It is the responsibility of developed and wealthy countries (who are the main drivers of climate change) to aid those who have no choice but to continue with their current destructive industries and help everyone make the shift to greener solutions. Individuals can choose greener lifestyles and support movements for social justice and equality. Major change however, can only be achieved on a political level, making laws and committing to agreements that protect the future and curb fossil fuel emissions on a major scale. Therefore the absolute biggest thing an individual can do, is to vote into power leaders who will write and enforce laws requiring climate change action.
This issue is a simple one: do we want to live in a world that allows a small amount of people to destroy the planet's ability to support human life? Do we want to stand back and watch as billions of people die in a disaster that we could have prevented with diplomacy and a reliance on science? Will we describe what a polar bear used to be to descendants who live in a world of water shortages and climate refugees and hurricanes? What is happening to the world is not solely a failing of individuals but of the instruments of power and inequality and greed. There are solutions for the future but they can only be achieved through political responsibility and fights for science and social equality.
"Right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: Climate change...If we don't take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon."
Sir David Attenborough
For more resources:
NASA: https://climate.nasa.gov/
National Geographic: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/global-warming-effects/
NOAA: https://www.noaa.gov/categories/climate-change
IPCC Report: https://www.ipcc.ch/
Norwegian Polar Institute: http://www.npolar.no/en/themes/climate/climate-change/global-climate-change/
Thank you for writing this factual commentary on climate change. This should give pause to anyone that is a critical thinker. Humans are facing a crisis that appears to be accelerating faster than we imagined. People that continue to deny the science are a big part of the problem. As the economic repercussions are felt in the low lying regions, the tide of opinion will change. I fear that by that point, it will be too late.