Baking the Earth (Blog Action Day 09)

Note: This post is part of the global effort of Blog Action Day,  an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day which aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. This year Blog Action Day is about Climate Change.

Global Warming, defined as the increase in earth’s global temperature, has been one of the key issues that have been talked about recently. This article offers quick facts of certain aspects of Global Warming that insist that serious action be taken globally.

Humans, Major cause for Global Warming

The increase in greenhouse gases (GHG), most prominently CO2,  plays a major role in increasing global warming. While other factors such as the increased water surface resulting from molten ice, will furthermore contribute to the temperature increase.

The cause of global warming is however “human”.

“Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”; It is extremely unlikely (<5%) that the global pattern of warming during the past half century can be explained without external forcing (i.e., it is inconsistent with being the result of internal variability), and very unlikely that it is due to known natural external causes alone. The warming occurred in both the ocean and the atmosphere and took place at a time when natural external forcing factors would likely have produced cooling. “

“From new estimates of the combined anthropogenic forcing due to greenhouse gases, aerosols, and land surface changes, it is extremely likely that human activities have exerted a substantial net warming influence on climate since 1750.”

“It is virtually certain that anthropogenic aerosols produce a net negative radiative forcing (cooling influence) with a greater magnitude in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere.”

Working Group I: The Physical Basis for Climate Change“. IPCC.

The problem is, that we do possess all the technology to start reducing the threat and eliminate most of it, however our downfall is that we have not been taking enough action, major companies and political forces failed to see it as a pressing manner, and even failed to see it as a valid topic. Reports of tampering with scientific papers (either through financial/political pressure or censoring) have been on the rise in an attempt to intensify skepticism on Global Warming

“Nearly half of all respondents perceived or personally experienced pressure to eliminate the words ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’ or other similar terms from a variety of communications”

“A UCS survey found that 150 climate scientists personally experienced political interference in the past five years in a total of at least 435 incidents.”

Francesca Grifo, of the Union of Concerned Scientists

Global Warming is bad for the Earth and You

“There is broad scientific consensus that coral reefs are heavily affected by the activities of man and there are significant global influences that can make reefs more vulnerable such as global warming….It is highly likely that coral bleaching has been exacerbated by global warming”

Australian Coral Reef Society

“It is anticipated that continuing changes to the climate will have serious negative impacts on public, animal and ecosystem health due to extreme weather events, changing disease transmission dynamics, emerging and re-emerging diseases, and alterations to habitat and ecological systems that are essential to wildlife conservation. Furthermore, there is increasing recognition of the inter-relationships of human, domestic animal, wildlife, and ecosystem health as illustrated by the fact the majority of recent emerging diseases have a wildlife origin”

American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians

“Outbreaks of a number of diseases, including Lyme disease, hantavirus infections, dengue fever, bubonic plague, and cholera, have been linked to climate change”

American Society for Microbiology

“Anticipated direct health consequences of climate change include injury and death from extreme weather events and natural disasters, increases in climate-sensitive infectious diseases, increases in air pollution–related illness, and more heat-related, potentially fatal, illness. Within all of these categories, children have increased vulnerability compared with other groups”

American Academy of Pediatrics

“The changing climate will inevitably affect the basic requirements for maintaining health: clean air and water, sufficient food and adequate shelter. Each year, about 800,000 people die from causes attributable to urban air pollution, 1.8 million from diarrhoea resulting from lack of access to clean water supply, sanitation, and poor hygiene, 3.5 million from malnutrition and approximately 60,000 in natural disasters. A warmer and more variable climate threatens to lead to higher levels of some air pollutants, increase transmission of diseases through unclean water and through contaminated food, to compromise agricultural production in some of the least developed countries, and increase the hazards of extreme weather”

World Health Organization

“Climate change over the past 30 years has produced numerous shifts in the distributions and abundances of species and has been implicated in one species-level extinction. Using projections of species’ distributions for future climate scenarios, we assess extinction risks for sample regions that cover some 20% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface. Exploring three approaches in which the estimated probability of extinction shows a power-law relationship with geographical range size, we predict, on the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios for 2050, that 15−37% of species in our sample of regions and taxa will be ‘committed to extinction’. When the average of the three methods and two dispersal scenarios is taken, minimal climate-warming scenarios produce lower projections of species committed to extinction (18%) than mid-range (24%) and maximum-change (35%) scenarios. These estimates show the importance of rapid implementation of technologies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and strategies for carbon sequestration.”

“Extinction risk from climate change” (PDF). Nature 427 (6970): 145–148.

Erring is obsolete

In my opinion I do not see it as even a questionable matter to take the necessary measures to avert such a crisis. If it is a matter of error then erring on the side of not taking action is obsolete.

If we assume that global warming does exist, taking these steps reduce pollution greatly, and also have positive effects on the biosphere in general and on the human health. It will also help avert another problem, the Solid Fuel that is bound to become extinct not in the near future. (Through use of efficient energy alternatives)

However if we do not take these steps, and assume that no action should be taken since global warming is not a threat, then, if that were to be erroneous there will be devastating and almost irreversible changes on Earth.

Taking Action

• Ten Personal Solutions to Global Warming (Union of Concerned Scientists),  describes ten easy things you can do to participate in reducing global warming.
• How to Fight Global Warming (Natural Resources Defense Council NRDC)
• You can also help spread the world, through any kind of media, or by just bringing the topic up in discussions.

Further Readings

• GHG Data from the UNFCCC
• International Energy Agency (IEA):  CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion
• Scientific Opinion on climate Change (Wikipedia)
• Global Warming Controversy (Wikipedia)
• Eco-Efficiency (Wikipedia), a method to reduce global warming.
• Blog Action Day 09, check other blog posts about Climate Change
• Other posts by Lebanese (via Lebanese Bloggers Network)
• More posts by Lebanese bloggers (via IndyACT)

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