Global Warming – History Over Dinner

This article contains extracts from the book “Boiling Point” by Ross Gelbspan printed 2004 plus other supplementary information.

Insects

(Page 119) Of all the systems of nature, one of the most sensitive to temperature change is insects. Warming accelerates the breeding rates and the biting rates of insects. It accelerates the maturation of the pathogens they carry. It expands the range of insects, allowing them to live longer at higher altitudes and higher latitudes.

As a result, climate change is fuelling the spread of a wide array of insect-borne diseases among populations, species and entire ecosystems all over the planet

The World Health Organisation (WHO) now projects that millions of people will die from climate related diseases and other impacts in the next few decades.

Professor Andrew P. Dobson, professor at Princeton University department of ecology and evolutionary biology and one of the authors, writes, “It’s much more scary threat than bioterrorism. Climate change is disrupting natural ecosystems in a way that is making life better for infectious diseases. The accumulation of evidence has us extremely worried. We share diseases with some of these species. The risk for humans is going up.”

(Page 121) The risk is not confined to humans. In Canada an explosion in the population of tree-killing bark beetles is spreading rapidly through the forests. As late as 2002, the deadly bark beetles had spread throughout an area of British Columbia totalling about 9 million acres. Officials attributed the spread of the insects to unusually warm winters.

The massive fires in southern California in the summer of 2003 were made more intense by the dead and tinder dry large number of trees that had been killed by the bark beetles.

The impact of the warming-driven population boom of insects on humans is likely to be at least – if not more – severe than the impact of the world’s forests.

About 160,000 people currently die each year from the impact of warming, but WHO calculates that that figure will rise into millions in the near future – from the spread of various infectious diseases, increased heat stress and the warming-driven prolification of allergens.

(Page 122) Mosquitoes, which historically could survive no higher than 1,000 metres, are now spreading malaria, dengue, and yellow fever at elevations of 3,200 metres, to populations that never before have been infected and carry no immunity to those diseases.

Mosquitoes are spreading West Nile virus and by June 2003 had surfaced in 24 US States and not only to people but to more than 230 species of birds and animals and other insects.

Malaria, another mosquito spread disease, has more than quadrupled worldwide between 1995 and 2000 and today each year kills at least one million people and causes more than 300 million acute illnesses each year.

(Page 123) According to an article in Scientific America “Diseases relayed by mosquitoes – such as malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever and several kinds of encephalitis- are amongst those bringing the greatest concern as the world warms.

Epstein from the Harvard Medical School explains that “mosquitoes proliferate faster and bite more as the air becomes warmer. At the same time, greater heat speeds the rate at which pathogens inside them reproduce and mature.

Mosquito-borne disorders are projected to become increasingly prevalent because their insect carriers are very sensitive to metrological conditions. Cold can limit mosquitoes to seasons and regions where temperatures stay above certain minimums.

(Page124) By the 1980s in USA mosquito-control programs and other public health measures had restricted malaria to California. Since 1990, however, when the hottest decade on record began, outbreaks of locally transmitted malaria have occurred during hot spells in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey and New York, as well as in Toronto, Canada.

Epstein informs “Malaria has returned to the Korean peninsular, parts of southern Europe, and the former Soviet Union and to the coast of South Africa along the Indian Ocean.

Dengue fever (a severe flu-like viral illness that sometimes causes fatal internal bleeding) is spreading as well. Today it afflicts an estimated 50 million to 100 million people in the tropics and sub-tropics, broadening its range in the Americas over the past 10 years and had reached down to Buenos Aires by the end of the 1990s and reached northern Australia. Neither a vaccine nor a specific drug treatment is yet available.

(Page 125) Another insect that flourishes in a warmer world is the tick. In coastal New England, as well as in coastal areas of Scandinavia, researchers have documented a substantial increase in tick born Lyme disease. This is due to the shorter and warmer winters in the northern temperature latitudes and no longer providing the deep prolonged killing frosts that normally kill the ticks during the winter season.

Plant Pollens

(Page 126) The changes in the climate are also expected to trigger far more allergies among humans. One team of researchers found that a doubling of carbon dioxide levels – which is expected to occur after 2050 – produced 61 percent more pollen than normal. This, in turn, strongly suggests more virulent allergies among current sufferers and new allergies for people who were previously unaffected.

Climatic Extremes – 2001 Year

(Pages 78 and 79 – “Boiling Point”). Ross Gelbspan notes the following events –

Early year Britain emerged from its wettest winter in more than 270 years of record keeping.
In January/February in northern China 22 successive blizzards stranded more than 100,000 herders, many of whom starved.
In South Florida, the worst drought in 100 years decimated citrus crops, prompted extensive water restrictions and triggered the spread of more than 1,200 wild fires.
In early May, some 40 people died in the hottest spring on record in Pakistan.
In June, Houston (USA) suffered the single most expensive storm in modern history when tropical storm Allison dropped 35 inches of rain in one week, leaving US$6 billion in damages.
By late July, a protracted drought in Central America left more than 1.5 million farmers with no crop to harvest – and one million people verging on malnutrition.
In Iran, a devastating drought left more than $2.5 billion in agricultural losses. (The drought was temporarily interrupted in August by Iran’s worst flash floods in 200 years, which killed nearly 500 people).
In October, meteorologists documented a record 92 tornadoes in what is normally a quiet period for these events.
In November, the worst flooding in memory killed more than 1,000 people in Algeria.
In Boston (USA) after an October and November of record setting warmth, it was 71ºF on December 1.
In 2002, more than 1,000 people died from a spring heat wave in India.
The summer’s floods in Russia, Czech Republic and Germany were the worst in memory.
Wildfires consumed more than five million acres in the western United States and northern Canada.
In India, 235 million people were plunged into darkness when the electricity grid collapsed because its hydro-electric sources dried up.
Health officials reported locally transmitted cases of malaria in northern Virginia.
West Nile virus spread to 42 USA States – and even more disturbing, to more than 230 species of mammals, insects and birds.
In South Asia, more than 12 million people were displaced by severe flooding.
In 2003 (spring), 1,400 people died from a heat wave in India and Pakistan
In May, the USA experienced a record 562 tornadoes
A brutal heat wave in Europe, set new temperature records in Britain, triggered Portugal’s worst forest fires in 50 years and killed as many as 11,000 people in France in a four week period.

Changes in seasons

(Page 26 – Boiling Point) In 1995 David J. Thompson, a signals analyst at A.T. & T. Bell Labs, evaluated a century of summer and winter temperature data. He discovered that since the beginning of World War 11, when accelerating industrialization led to a skyrocketing of carbon dioxide emissions, the timing of the seasons had begun to shift. Since 1940, he wrote in the journal “Science”, the seasonal patterns “of the previous 200 years began to change and now appears to be changing at an unprecedented rate.”

(Page 33) – All over the world, species are travelling towards the poles in an effort to maintain temperature stability. This was recorded in two major studies in early 2003. One study showed that animals have shifted north an average of nearly four miles per decade. Another study showed that animals are migrating, hatching eggs, and bearing young an average of five days earlier than they did at the start of the twentieth century, when the global temperature was 1ºF cooler.

(Page 34) It was noted that an Artic seabird breeds twenty four days earlier than it did decades ago, and one species of butterfly shifted its range northward by sixty miles over the last century.

(Page 35) In Britain a recent study found in the autumn of 2002 that British seasons are becoming increasingly muddled. Spring arrived three weeks earlier that year. Oak trees changed colour more than a week late, while birch trees lost their leaves twelve days later than usual.

(Page 36) As growing numbers of plants, animals, birds, insects and fish are becoming imperilled, their past and future habitats face an equally bleak outlook. On landmasses around the world, habitats are being rapidly altered. According to one report, one-third of the world’s habitats could disappear or change beyond recognition by the end of this century.

In Russia, Canada, and Scandinavia, up to seventy percent of habitats could be lost. In the United States, much of the spruce and fir forests of New England and New York state may be wiped out if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. “This is not some slow, controlled change we’re talking about. It’s fast, it’s unpredictable and it’s unprecedented during human civilization,” said Adam Markham, a co-author of the report. The study was based on “moderate” projections that concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will double from pre-industrial levels during this century.

These forecasts were underscored at the beginning of 2004 by a study in the journal Nature by nineteen researchers from seven countries, warning that rising temperatures could doom more than one-third of the planet’s species to extinction by 2050.

Temperatures

In his book “Boiling Point” Ross Gelbspan notes that in the period 1980 to 2003, seventeen of the hottest years on record have occurred with the period from 1991 to 1995 constituting the hottest five-year period on record. The year 1998 replaced 1997 as the hottest year in human history and 2001 replaced 1997 as the second hottest year. Then 2001 was replaced by 2002. The decade of the 1990s was the hottest in this last millennium. And the planet is heating at a rate faster than at any time in the last 10,000 years.

Senior scientist, Tom M.L. Wigley of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research says, “There is only one chance in 100 that the rate warming will be less than double the warming rate of the last 100 years – and a 99 percent probability that it will exceed double the past warming rate – The most likely estimates of warming between now and 2100 is 3.5°C. This is five times the warming rate experienced over the past 100 years. At the high end, there is a five percent chance that the warming could be more than eight times the warming rate of the past century.

In an article in the United Kingdom newspaper, The Independent on 9 February 2007, the author Steve Connor notes –

the average temperature in Britain for 2006 was higher than at any time since records began in 1659.

He says, “The signs during the past 12 months have been all around us –

little snow in the alpine ski resorts
continuing droughts in Africa
mountain glaciers melting faster than at any time in the past 5,000 years
disappearing Artic sea ice.
Greenland’s ice sheet sliding into the sea.”

Other scientists are warning of rising sea levels, altered patterns of agriculture, extreme weather events, an increase of tropical diseases and drastic economic impact.

During the 2006 year, scientific findings emerged that made even the most recent doom-laden predictions about climate change seem a little on the optimistic side. Climate positive feedbacks could turn the Earth into a very different planet over a dramatically short period of time. Abrupt changes have happened repeatedly in the past, scientists say, and it could easily happen in the future given the unprecedented scale of the environmental changes caused by man.

Around 55 million years ago a trillion tons of methane were suddenly and mysteriously released from frozen stores on the seabed, causing temperatures to soar 10ºC and a mass extinction of species. Another catastrophic event happened 14,500 years ago when ice sheets dramatically collapsed into the ocean causing sea levels to rise by 20 metres in just 400 years. And it happened 6,500 years ago when the Sahara was suddenly turned from lush vegetation to dry desert.

Greenhouse gases

The main greenhouse gases that are increasing in concentration due to human activities are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluocarbons (CFCs) and ozone in the lower atmosphere.

Greenhouse gases differ in their contributions to global warming. For example, molecule for molecule, nitrous oxide and methane are more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide.

	Carbon Dioxide	Methane	Nitrous Oxide	CFC-11
Current Concentration	370ppmv	1,720ppbv	312ppbv	260pptv
Pre-industrialConcentration – c1700	288ppmv	850ppbv	285ppbv	0
Annual rate of increase	0.4%	0.6%	0.25%	0
Atmospheric lifetime	50-200 years	12 years	120 years	50 years

CARBON DIOXIDE

Most of the increase in carbon dioxide comes from burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas and from deforestation.

Scientists study the composition of air in the past by examining air trapped in Antarctic ice. Analysis of these bubbles shows that carbon dioxide concentrations are now higher than at any time in the past 420,000 years. In fact it is likely the concentration today is higher than it has been for 20 million years. The current rate of increase of carbon dioxide is greater than at any time in the past 20,000 years.

Scientists can infer from the ice records past temperatures of the atmosphere. There is a close relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and world temperatures. Periods of high global surface temperature have occurred when carbon dioxide concentrations have been high.

METHANE

Methane forms when organic (carbon containing) material is broken down in the absence of oxygen. Ruminant animals such as cows and sheep rely on bacteria to decompose the cellulose they eat. These bacteria generate methane. Bacteria also play a roll in releasing methane from rice paddies. Other sources of methane are lands fills, burning vegetation, coal mines and natural gas fields.

The concentration of atmospheric methane continues to rise, with levels today greater than at any time during the past 420,000 years. The growth rate of methane slowed and was more variable in the 1990s than in the 1980s. Slightly more than half of methane emissions currently come from human sources, such as those listed above.

Most atmospheric methane is eventually converted into carbon dioxide.

Methane is also to be found in the bogs of Siberia, Alaska and Northern Canada and until recently has been safely stored under the permanently frozen ground. The peat bogs of Siberia are vast, bigger than France and Germany combined.

Climate scientists reported in August 2005 that a one million square kilometre of permafrost peat bogs in Western Siberia is starting to melt for the first time since it was formed 11,000 years ago at the time of the last ice age. By the summer of 2006 the now liquid lakes began to “boil” furiously as methane bubbled to the surface.

Exactly how much methane is being released into the atmosphere is unknown, although some estimates put it as high as 100,000 tons a day – which means a warming effect greater than America’s man-made emissions of carbon dioxide.

Another researcher, Katey Walter of the University of Alaska, believes this could be seriously underestimated with her and colleagues calculating that the level of methane from Siberia could be anywhere between 10% and 63% higher.

With the continuing melting of the permafrost, it is estimated that over the next few decades, 70,000 million tonnes of methane will be released from the Western Siberian bogs into the atmosphere. An earlier report in May 2005 reported similar melting in eastern Siberia.

Further, extremely large deposits of methane, in the form of methane clathrate, also called methane hydrate, have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of the Earth. The methane is stored in a form of water ice with the methane held within its crystal structure.

Recent experiments indicate that a rise in deep sea temperature of 5ºC would be sufficient to release the solid methane hydrate. One source estimates the size of the methane hydrate deposits of the oceans at ten trillion tons (10 exagrams).

The sudden release of large amounts of natural gas from methane clathrate deposits in a runaway greenhouse effect could be a cause of past and future climate changes. The release of this trapped methane is a potential major outcome of a rise in temperature; it is thought that this might increase the global temperature by an additional 5ºC in itself, as methane is much more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

NITROUS OXIDE

Nitrous oxide concentrations are increasing because of land-use changes, biomass burning, fertilizer use and some industrial processes.

Nitrous oxide is an important greenhouse gas, as it does not easily breakdown. It has an atmospheric lifetime of more than a century. Present concentrations of the gas have not been exceeded for at least the past 1,000 years.

Approximately one-third of nitrous oxide emissions are from human sources. Oceans and soils are natural sources of nitrous oxide.