934
MODERN TIMES
by Art Hobson
ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times 18 Feb 2006
GLOBAL WARMING AND
OIL
Global warming and oil are central to the energy/environment conundrum which is in turn central to nearly every other global problem. Global warming and oil are in a sense equivalent problems, because solving either one necessarily implies solving the other.
Last year was, once again, the hottest year on record. Nineteen of the hottest 20 years since record-keeping began in 1860 have occurred since 1980. The Arctic, which might be Earth's canary in the coal mine, is rapidly approaching a point of no return. Arctic sea ice extent reached its lowest recorded level last September, with Arctic temperatures now at a record 5 to 9 degrees above the 1960-1990 average. According to research by a large team of experts (email me for references), "The Arctic system is moving toward a new state that falls outside the envelope of recent Earth history. A summer ice-free Arctic Ocean within a century is a real possibility. ...The change appears to be driven largely by feedback-enhanced global warming, and there seem to be few, if any, processes within the Arctic system capable of altering the trajectory."
The feedback mentioned here is the ocean's reflectivity: As ice melts, the Arctic reflects less sunlight, which warms the ocean further, which melts more ice, and so forth. This feedback can enhance global warming by a factor of up to seven. This causes substantial warming of surrounding landmasses, reducing winter snow duration, which reduces reflectivity even further, producing further warming. The entire region is caught in a feedback spiral, and scientists are already asking, "Is the Arctic we know today already lost?"
Of course, it's not just the Arctic. Glaciers are melting everywhere, sea levels are rising, hurricane intensities are increasing, other extreme weather is increasing, and biological organisms are migrating northward or going extinct, just to list a few consequences.
It's reached a point where a few serious scientists believe it's already too late to turn things around. James Lovelock, a well-known environmental scientist and Fellow of the British Royal Society, writes in his new book "The Revenge of Gaia" that feedback effects will bring on drastic warming so rapidly that humankind will find it impossible to respond in time. The only hope, he says, is that we will respond massively within just the next couple of decades, but he sees no sign that this will happen.
David King, chief scientific adviser to the British government, says that the only realistic way to meet energy demands while warding off catastrophic warming is a rapid and massive deployment of a new generation of nuclear power stations. But this isn't on the horizon in Britain or anywhere else.
These are extreme opinions, but I'm hearing them more frequently from good scientists. More moderate opinions, including mine, have it that renewable energy, a gradual phase-out of coal plants (which are far more dangerous than nuclear plants) in favor of renewables and nuclear, and serious energy standards, could solve the problem if instituted rapidly. The goal must be to reduce global fossil fuel use by at least two-thirds within the next few decades. To mention one hopeful example, Sweden's prime minister has announced plans to end oil use entirely by 2020, without turning to nuclear power.
America's current non-response to humankind's greatest threat will be seen by future generations as criminal. Americans, forming 5 percent of the planet's population, cause 25 percent of the problem. We have a president who has trouble even recognizing that global warming exists, let alone doing anything about it. We are willing to sacrifice American lives in a disastrous war with Iraq over access to oil, yet unwilling to demand practical efficiency measures that would save far more oil than could be imported from Iraq even if that war should, miraculously, succeed.
The case of James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, is instructive. Hansen recently noted that the expected 4 degrees of global warming over the next century would "imply changes that constitute practically a different planet. ...It's not something you can adapt to. We can't let it go on another 10 years like this. We've got to do something."
The administration did something, all right. In line with a string of anti-scientific policies, it tried to muzzle Hansen. Under pressure from the Bush administration, NASA officials have recently canceled interview requests for Hansen, monitored his approved interviews, and ordered him to remove global warming information from the internet. NASA public affairs officer George Deutsch rejected a request from National Public Radio to interview Hansen on the grounds that NPR was "the most liberal" media outlet in the country and that his job was "to make the president look good." Hansen, who says these efforts are just the tip of the anti-science iceberg, plans to continue speaking out.
The administration is nearly as dismissive of the fossil fuel problem as it is of global warming. Bush's recent State of the Union address, while finally recognizing that "America is addicted to oil," offered a dubious response that won't achieve his stated goal "to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."
If the president really wants to reduce oil imports, he could begin by immediately raising SUV mileage standards to that of passenger cars, then raising mileage standards to 40 miles per gallon by 2010, and to 55 mpg by 2020. These easily-attainable goals would by themselves replace 60 percent of Middle East imports by 2010, and 200 percent of Middle East imports by 2020.
America has not been serious about humankind's most serious problems. It's time to get busy.