Climate Change Factoid - Is This The Endgame? (# 16 of a series)
Author: Rich Albertson
Author: Rich Albertson
The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word Endgame as: The final stage of an extended process or course of events. The question this Factoid attempts to answer is; exactly where does humanity find itself today in relation to the development of climate change? Is it just getting started and we have plenty of time to get our act together - or, has it developed considerably and we need to get cracking or it could get out of hand - or, has our dithering allowed climate change to develop beyond the point where changing our behavior could help - forcing us to employ extraordinary, possibly risky, technology to avoid a catastrophe? Or, finally, have we delayed action to the point where the full development of the catastrophic heating potential of our current atmosphere is unavoidable or, said another way - is there nothing left we can do but await our fate. That last sentence describes Endgame.
Consider this, and then decide where we are for yourself. In Factoid 11 The Carbon Cycle, it was stated that the elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere were many multiples of the amount necessary to heat the planet beyond human endurance and that this level will remain stable for many thousands of years. The length of time CO2 will reside in the atmosphere is the central scientific issue. If it really is thousands of years, that would be more than time enough for the heat to rise beyond our tolerance level. At the start of the Industrial Era the four compartments of the Carbon Cycle, which manage all of the carbon in the oceans, living things, the soil (to a foot or so in depth) and the atmosphere, were all operating at full capacity and had been doing so for millions of years. What we humans did was to go outside the four compartments, underground, to find oil that had been sequestered away from the carbon cycle, and sucked the equivalent of a 40% increase in atmospheric CO2 up into the atmosphere. Now, we want that extra CO2 to go away but it cannot do that because the other three compartments of the carbon cycle are already mostly full up. If you have no place to go you have to stay put.
Add to that - for nearly two decades now (17 years), the mean temperature of earth has been rising steadily. As of 2009 the temperature has increased 0.6C, of a predicted 6-10C or, somewhere between 6 and 10 percent of what we should expect as a total. And then add that, for almost as many years as the heat's been rising, the total amount of ice on earth has been declining, because fresh snowfall has been unable to keep up with the accelerating melt down of earth's ice. If you put those three things together: More heat, less ice and no relief anywhere in sight, you could reasonably conclude that this trend has no alternative route but to continue until it achieves the full heating potential that has been predicted. That would mean that all of the ice is going to melt and we cannot stop it, even if we reduced our CO2 emissions to zero today. I read that as Endgame, what do you think? (Peer reviewed research, supporting the claims made in this Factoid, can be found at the website shown below)About the Author:
Rich Albertson is a retired lawyer, author, builder, building designer, carpenter and long time amateur naturalist. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Albertson's most recent book (2009), The Sky is the Limit A Brief and Easy Explanation of Climate Change for Present and Future Voters (134pp), is an explanation of the science, economics, politics and a discussion of the future of climate change written for people of average experience. Climate Change Factoids are drawn from the book. His first book (1978), The Bio-Conversion of Waste to Resource (4 Vols, 2624pp), was a treatise on methods for the sustainable management of solid and liquid waste in urban society. More about the Sky is the Limit book can be found at
http://www.thecircleworks.org As a Naturalist, Albertson's primary interest is to understand and then explain the conflicts that result from modern human practices that interfere with the operation of the natural world on a planetary scale.
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