The New Natural

So lets take a look at the earth we know and love so much. Though the big, beautiful blue planet may look perfect doesn't mean it is. Our planet is actually at a tilt, 23.4 degrees to be exact. This helps us out because this seemingly small tilt is responsible for the inspiration of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" our seasons of course. Everyone knows that climate change is natural. The earth's positioning from the sun determines the weather we experience. Climate will be controlled by these external forcings until the end of time. We can even predict an ice age occurring in the next 40,000 years. This may make a lot of people ask why we should act so quickly when we are dealing with an occurrence so natural and out of our control as the weather seen here.

The changes described above can be defined as noise. They are problematic processes that occur over time but are adaptable and gradual. When humans introduce anthropogenic, or human made, emissions into the atmosphere they get trapped in the atmosphere, which can be bad. This process, known as the greenhouse effect, is not something inherently bad. Our atmosphere helps us out by trapping long form waves like heat in order to insulate the atmosphere and keep us from going into that ice age early. As a natural result the earth gets warming, which sounds natural enough right?

The problem in today's climate is something unnatural called global disruption. It is an upset to the natural order of things due to our habits speeding a process that would normally be sustainable into a worldwide issue that we must correct. We are able to tell from gases trapped in ice cores that our carbon emissions have never been this high in the last 800,000 years. This escalation can be seen in the chart below.

The map measure the rise of carbon dioxide from 1978-2006. As you can see there are variations in the rise of this gas but the overall trend goes upward. We would be very unfortunate if the earth wasn't covered in 70% of our own personal, greenhouse stabilizer.

Water from our oceans soak up a large amount of heat trapped within our atmosphere. Water heats faster than land but cools down faster as well. Unfortunately, they can't keep it up forever. This cyclical trapping of heat is known as feedback. Positive feedback relates to this heat trapping process where ocean water particles continue to trap heat, sending it back into the clouds and down into the earth. Despite it's name, this is a process that is actually problematic because it we don't need our oceans heating up anymore. This change might be hard to notice for most. For example, the world has only risen 1.2 degrees on average but the Arctic has warmed 4 degrees. This only intensifies the effect of the feedback. Remember those trapped gas bubbles in ice cores that I told you about earlier? Well when they melt (and in theory they're never supposed to) this release methane into the air and contribute the global disruption effect.

It is important to end on that phrase. Disruption refers to the fact that the habits of our society are speeding up natural processes to the point to where we are interfering with our capacity to predict a stable future. It is a fact and is less sticky than the generalities and misunderstandings associated with global warming. Pass on the term and pass on responsibility.

Global Warming in the Media

 
As you all know from reading previous blog posts, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a complex but significant report on the state of our climate system in an era of global warming. This lengthy article contains pressing information on the past, present and future of warming activity and suggests that scientist are convinced that human activities are speeding up carbon emissions that, in turn, cause warming around the earth.

 In the wake of this report, two media outlets published reports focusing on climate change. Justin Gillis’ New York Times article"Panel's Warming on Climate Risk: Worst is Yet To Come"  and Ann Curry’s NBC special "Our Year of Extremes: Did Climate Change Just Hit Home?" delve into this situation and try explain complex environmental information in a way that every day people can understand.The reports broke down scientific evidence proving the world around us is changing. 

Richard Perry/The New York Times

                              
Gillis told the story with special care to the politics of climate change. He sets up a conversation between what politicians say, what experts say and how all of this actually effects people who's lives have already been majorly effected by this phenomenon. One of the most impacting points in his story is when he presents figures from the IPCC report which states that developed countries would have to give poorer countries 100 billion dollars a year to help slow down changes occurring because of climate change. He details that the responsibly falls on richer countries because socieities with limited resources have "virtually nothing" to do with climate change. It is large consumer cultures such as America, China and India that chalk up a large amount of carbon emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels found beneath the earth through complex and expensive process that disrupt atmospheric stability. 

Joe Dael/ Getty Images File

Curry's special focused mainly on the people affected by environmental upset. She talked to an Inuit man with heritage stretching back thousands of years in the Arctic.His village, entitled Ilulissat, is pictured on the right lies near the icebergs that broke off from the Jakobshavn Glacier in 2013. Warm weather has been more extreme in the area and the melting snow and ice have disrupted their lives majorly. Curry took us on a hunting trip with the man's family to illustrate how hard it was for them for maneuver through the melting landscape and hunt for scarce amounts of food as a result of animal migration. The man expressed disapproval for having to suffer for the rest of the worlds mistakes. She also presented views from the opposite side of the spectrum-- wildfires and drought. She went to the southwest and interviewed the chief of a group of volunteer firemen known as the Laguna Hotshots. The Hotshots fight wildfires in southern California caused by heat and dry foliage where water is scarce. Curry mainly alternated between scientific experts and profiles of specific people effected by climate change. 

 AP Photo/NSW Rural Fire Service, James Morris

 

 

 

The Australian ecosystem is heavily susceptible to drought similar to those seen in the Southwest. This also puts them at risk to wildfires, such as the one on the right seen crossing the Princes highway near Deans Gap, Australia. The rapidly spreading flames displace homes, effect wildlife and lead to loss of human life. The weather changes the curry mentioned in her special are also directly relevent to Australian citizen considering that most of the live near the coast. This positioning makes thes inhabitants subceptible to flood and extreme weather. Gillin's coverage of developed countries pertains to Australia as well. The country's thriving urban sprawl calls for the city to keep itself in check. The article "Climate Targets: Australia Can't be Caught Napping While others Take Action" explains why Australia should cut back carbon emissions by at least 25% to prevent a global temperature increase which would only mean more water restrictions for the densely populated area of the continent.



 

Politics Over Science? Climate Change Skepticism Continues

 

This Gallup poll entitled Americans Most Likely to Say Global Warming Is Exaggerated documents political and personal beliefs that Americans have regarding the validity of climate change.  Studies have shown that a little under half (%42) of Americans think that climate change is an exaggeration. Though these numbers have gone down since 2010 this still means that virtually three-quarters of Americans don’t see climate change as a serious concern. Since 1998-- when the Environment survey was first issued but Gallup-- views that see climate change as unnecessarily alarmist have gone up even though scientists release studies yearly outlining the reality of global warming. Opinions don’t exist in a vacuum and the article states that most Americans agree that they’ve experience out of the ordinary weather, which means that there must be something other than the view from their window affecting these opinions. The article probed further into this issue and found that there seems to be political ties that may influence skepticism about the changing environment. They found that %68 of republicans think of global warming as a generally exaggerated issue whereas only %15 of democrats share this view. Their final study complicates this view even further because the split in the political realm does not reflect what people believe scientists are saying about the issue. Six out of ten people believe that scientists believe that climate change is happening. This proves that people know that our environment is changing but political alliances and wavering bipartisan claims on the issue in the media muddle the perception of threat, which also affects the immediacy of the issue. However, the rest of the statistics go all over the place with 40% who are unsure, have no opinion or who are complete naysayers of the issue. This brings light to a split between the truth as we know it and the truths that we are told.  It is clear that most people are aware of a scientific certainty around climate activity but political professionals whose agendas differ greatly from the scientist of the world distort their views.  The article concluded that most Americans believe that climate is happening but do not think that it will have a significant impact on their way of life. Messages from the media and scientific evidence suggest that human life will definitely change if patterns of human activity don’t change and yet there are still 29% of people that claim to be unsure about the seriousness of climate change. The data ultimately shows that the core of changing the American people’s minds about our climate rests with governmental cooperation on the issue that, because of deep political rivalries embedded in our government, seems unlikely.  

 

An Inconvenient (and steadily approaching) Truth

So lets get down to business. We all know that I'm going to have fun with the kangaroos and the koala bears of the Australian wilderness but I've also got some important work to do.

Now this may seem like a joke...because..well it is but don't let the funny cartoon medium fool you. Climate change is something real and scientific evidence proves that if humans (mainly developed countries) don't change their behavior soon then we will start experiencing unfavorable climate effects.
 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) release a "Summary for Policymakers" this year which consolidated information from multiple scientific observations of the climate system. In this report scientists outline changes in atmosphere, sea level and air pollution. There are also handy visualizations which show you projections for this phenomenon if human activity doesn't change in years to come such as this one:

My final opinion of this report was that it was helpful but only to those with the patience to dredge through the science and get the facts. To a layman it would come off as wordy and filled with overwhelming science lingo making reference to levels of certainty that might make the average person's head explode.

A panel of scientific minded journalists foresaw this and published "What We Know". It was their own report based off of information in the IPPC's literature that they thought was important. They also made connections between climate change and political activity. They really told it like it was using definite language that was so strong that report seemed like a call to action. Some may say this is alarmist but the firm language in tangent with easily understood statistics may be just what the average person needs to understand and acknowledge a phenomenon that has been extorted by the government and the media. The point is that both reports aim to inform people that climate change is neither a myth nor is it disagreed upon in the science world. It is here and now but we can manage its effect via legislation and minimizing our own biological footprint.

But WHAT about Aussieland?! Well Australia is a great place to look at what's going on with nature. As I mentioned in my last post most of the population lives near the coast meaning that there is a lot of untouched nature to study and compare. There is also the ocean which surrounds the continent and houses the Great Barrier Reef which has experienced bleaching problem directly relation to environmental unrest. This doesn't mean that the population won't feel it too. Australians are already no strangers to droughts and brush fires that we Texans know all too well. The 20th century brought on one of the worse rain deficiencies in Australian history from which they recovered in 2012 but as we all should know by now it only takes a matter of time for history and for science to repeat itself.
If you'd like to know more about the IPCC report and the claims made in "What We Know" check out the New York Times article below:
Scientists Sound Alarm on Climate Change

It really delves into the information I've been researching and it is an example of the work that I will be burning the midnight oil to produce.

Now Reduce, Reuse and go learn about climate change!