Irreversible Warming
by Jack Penland |
January 26th, 2009 |
Published in
All, Environment, Featured
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Interviewee: Susan Solomon, NOAA |
The Next Nuclear Waste
Writing in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” a group of scientists from all over the world found that the resulting climate change from carbon dioxide emissions will be essentially irreversible for a thousand years or more, even after emissions are halted.
“We have to think about it much more like nuclear waste than, like say, smog or acid rain,” explains one of the world’s top atmospheric scientists, Susan Solomon, Senior Scientist for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Solomon is leading the research team. She adds, “What we’re doing with carbon dioxide is forever.”
Key to their findings is the already-known role oceans play both for cooling the atmosphere and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Their research shows that the two processes work against each other so that the warming lasts, even after emissions stop. Says Solomon, “It’s the cancellation between those two terms that keeps the temperature constant for a thousand years in our calculations.”
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“It evokes, I think, clearly what really is at stake here,” says Solomon, “Which is the future of the planet in the long, long term. Changes that this generation could make, choose to make, or not to make, which will affect the world for a thousand years or more.”
Presently carbon dioxide is at 385 parts per million. The team looked at several peak concentrations above that level and used computer models to see what the consequences were. They found that several things would happen and that they would be essentially irreversible.
Rising Seas
They found that the oceans themselves would expand and raise sea levels. While there’s been much debate over what melting ice might do to sea levels, Solomon’s team stuck to a basic premise of physics: that when heated, things generally expand. As she says, “When the ocean gets hot it expands, just like the water in your teakettle.” They found that the average rise would be a minimum of 1.3 to 3.2 feet by the year 3000.
While rising seas due to melting ice has been the subject of much discussion, Solomon’s team saw those impact as too uncertain to measure at this time. Instead, by concentrating upon physics and the phenomenon of expanding sea water, they could limit their discussion to processes that are well understood by scientists and subject to little debate. Says Solomon, “There’s no beating physics.”
They also saw that in and near the Earth’s tropics, many areas will become 10% to 20% drier. Says Solomon, “Twenty percent might not sound like a lot, but actually, the “Dust Bowl” that hit North America…was about a 10% reduction in rainfall that lasted about 10 years.” Here, she notes, the drop would be much greater and last for hundreds of years.
A New Way of Thinking
Solomon says the research shows that we can’t think of carbon dioxide emissions like other pollution problems. When considering something like smog, she notes, “It’s a problem where if you decide you’ve done too much you can make a change to your patterns of behavior and you can reverse it.” But for this she says, “This is more like a legacy for the future which simply is forever.”
Solomon is experienced in solving the mysteries of our atmosphere. In Antarctica, she confirmed the Earth’s Ozone hole was growing and that chlorofluorocarbons, commonly called CFC’s, were the cause. In 2007 NOAA listed her as one of their “Top Ten History Makers.” As a co-chair of one of the three working groups of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) she played a key role in the committee that shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice-President Al Gore.
This paper was published online the week of January 26, 2009 by the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” and was supported by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, ETH, Zurich, and IPSL, France.
Elsewhere on the Web:
World Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 2005-2030
Time Magazine’s Top 100 Scientists of 2008
The Discovery of Global Warming—A History
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February 8th, 2009 at 4:05 pm (#)
Why bother about global warming politicans don’t seem to care. The good thing is when natural decides enough is enough we will suffer.
February 13th, 2009 at 9:40 am (#)
[...] Irreversible Warming- A just published report on the future of global warming is showing that unless the output of carbon dioxide is curbed soon, the severe consequences of global warming will be essentially irreversible. [...]
March 6th, 2009 at 1:56 am (#)
We can blame this current hysteria of Gullible Warming that will last “…for a THOUSAND years!!!…” on the Ruskies. If they hadn’t wimped out and tore that wall down we’d still be living under constant threat of global nuclear war. And along with that threat came the now-unheard-term, “Nuclear Winter”.
Dr. Susan Solomon is old enough to remember this. Shame on her for hyperbole– Irreversible? Ha ha ha ha… yeah, right… Full nuclear war would cool the planet almost immediately. Regardless whether nuclear war is desirable or not, it WOULD reverse the supposedly ‘irreversible’ gullible warming, so her statements stand as clear attempts to dishonestly scare the Dickens out of the yokels.
I’ve presented one way to reverse the supposedly irreversible- and again, whether you like or don’t like the solution, it still IS a solution that would work. So imagine what we could come up with if we sat down anytime in that 1,000 years and brainstormed until we arrived at a workable solution. I am just highly ashamed that an American scientist would even make such a chock-full-of-hyperbole statement.
Of course it was about 12,000 years ago (but it seems like just yesterday) Ogg was saying to Grog, as they were standing at the southern end of the Des Moines Lobe, “You know, Grog, the earth must be warming up because every year our glacier gets smaller. I think it is our campfires that are causing this. If we don’t stop using fire, this warming may become irreversible. It might last TEN THOUSAND years or longer!” Grog thought about that for a minute, then he replied, “Well Ogg, you’ve heard the songs of our tribal History-Chanter. His songs contain several verses about past warming and subsequent cooling and further subsequent warming. It seems like it is a natural cyle for our land to freeze, then warm, then freeze again.” Ogg nevertheless maintained the frantic we-got-to-do-something-now! look on his face. He spent the rest of his life wandering from village to village trying to warn people that if they didn’t stop using fire, dire consequences would result.
Years later Ogg died alone in the lush tropical forests just outside of modern-day TwentyNine Palms, California. He insisted to his dying day that if people didn’t stop using fire, the Earth would continue to warm and many lush tropical places would become deserts. As we know now, man continued to use ‘fire’; the Earth continued to warm for more than 10,000 years; and lush tropical forested areas became deserts.
What do you say to people who readily admit that the Earth naturally goes through heating-up and cooling-down cycles all by itself– but then look you straight in the face and plaintively cry, “But this time, it’s OUR fault!”?
I’m a Grog: How about you?
April 16th, 2009 at 9:11 am (#)
[...] Irreversible Warming 1.26.09 [...]
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:33 am (#)
“We have to think about it much more like nuclear waste than, like say, smog or acid rain,” explains one of the world’s top atmospheric scientists, Susan Solomon, Senior Scientist for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Solomon is leading the research team. She adds, “What we’re doing with carbon dioxide is forever.”
Oh.
My.
God.
Is she actually comparing CO2 to nuclear waste? Seriously? Never mind smog or acid rain, which is stupid enough on its own, but nuclear waster?!?
How can these people still call themselve scientists? Anyone who spouts this sort of drivel cannot be believed in anything they say.