Action is essential, even if we’re doomed
By KEN MIDKIFF
Published Friday, February 22, 2008
(http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/feb/20080222comm002.asp)

Is it too late? There are those who assert that no matter what we do - conserving energy, turning to nonpolluting sources of electricity, getting around in hybrid or zero-emission vehicles - we might be doomed.

Although the United Nations’ prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a dire warning that we had maybe two or three years to turn things around by making dramatic changes, more and more climatologists are convinced the time for action is past. They claim what we have done is irreversible. Just as it takes decades to foul the upper atmosphere, it will take an equal amount of time for greenhouse gases to return to a normal level.

In the meantime, they assert, what has been done will cause the planet’s temperature to rise dramatically and suddenly, dooming our way of life and the lives of most living things.

This is attributable to feedback. The doom-and-gloom scenario goes something like this:

Increased temperatures are melting the Arctic snowpack, exposing bare dirt to sunlight. Rather than the snow reflecting the sunlight, the dirt absorbs it, causing things in the north polar region to quickly heat up, causing more melting, and on and on we go.

Likewise, the Earth’s oceans have warmed to the point that they can no longer act as a mechanism for capturing colder air but will instead contribute to warming. Again, this process is ongoing. The warmer things get, the less able the oceans are to absorb heat, and the temperature goes up.

The polar ice caps will melt. Glaciers will convert to water. The icy covering of Greenland will be no more. Ocean levels will rise - inundating cities built slightly above current sea level. The latter is quite serious. Up to 65 percent of humans live in the danger zones along the planet’s coasts.

Gloom and doom? Perhaps. Or it could be just a dose of reality.

We cannot keep on doing the same things and expect different results. That’s Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity. We can’t keep on sending carbon dioxide and methane into the upper atmosphere and expect anything other than a planetary temperature increase.

But in our zeal to continue doing things the same way, we are more than willing to doom the planet in the long term. The Kansas Legislature voted to allow the Sunflower Electric plant to be constructed without any controls on carbon dioxide. The Columbia City Council voted to buy 25 megawatts of electricity produced by Peabody’s coal-fired Prairie State plant. We manufacture more gas-guzzling monster SUVs, with tailpipe emissions contributing mightily to an increase in greenhouse gases. More of everything that is most harmful - but there are those who insist we keep on keeping on without realizing that they’re acting counter to their own welfare.

There are, to be sure, a few skeptics. There was never any doubt that greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor) caused our climate to be clement and that more gases in the upper atmosphere would cause the planet to become warmer. But skeptics have now determined it is futile to argue that the planetary temperature is not rising - every measurement demonstrates that it is. The arguments now are about human responsibility and which areas will be affected and how.

As to the first argument, the global-warming skeptics are willing to gamble with everyone’s lives. If human activities are responsible for raising the level of greenhouse gases and no contrary action is taken, the gamble fails. That is not a risk that should be taken.

At what level of certainty is a seat belt to be fastened? Even if we are just contributing to (not totally causing) global warming, we need to find nonpolluting ways of doing things.

There are, indeed, vast differences of opinion about the effects of global warming in the next decade or so. It could well be that the Midwest will experience weather that is a bit cooler on average. It could well be that the desert Southwest will become uninhabitable.

It could well be that hotheads in Kansas will become a bit cooler. The problem is that all short-term projections (except the temperature of state senators) are based on computer models - and the data dictate what will come out. Different data result in different conclusions.

But that’s in the short term. In this mess of uncertainty, one thing is clear: All computer models agree that in the long term - beyond 10 years - unless dramatic changes occur immediately, the Earth’s temperature will soar to the point that we’ll all be forced to move to Canada and bananas will grow in Iceland. It won’t be "climate change" any longer, it’ll become global heating. Rather than 1 degree higher on average, it will become 10 degrees. Rather than an inch or two of sea level rise, this will be measured in feet.

It need not be this way (unless the doom and gloomers are correct). We need not move to Hudson Bay or live in caves with no electricity or heat. We just need to find ways to continue our way of life without dooming the planet. Those ways are readily available.

To continue doing the same things and expecting different results is insane. There are better ways. Let’s adopt them.