Let's Talk Climate

    Or let's not.  I can remember attending an outdoor lecture from a ranger in Arches National Park who began with, "Tonight I am going to talk about something that will make all of you groan...geology."  As it turned out, it was a fascinating lecture but those opening words of his did generate more than a few people shuffling uncomfortably in their seats as if deciding whether to leave or to stay.  And in today's world, just the mention of the words climate change seems to be producing the same effect.  Hottest year on record last year?  Check.  On track for this year to be the hottest year on record?  Check.  Sea levels rising?  Check.  Carbon dioxide levels passing the "no return" point?  Check.  We're doomed....uh, not so fast.  The doomsday scenario is there but there may be hope...so let's get the bad stuff (and much of the reality) out of the way first, the stuff that is depressing everyone and filling everyone with apathy, making you turn the page or hit the delete button faster than a ranger talking about geology.

    First Paris.  Most everyone knows that the climate talks have already happened and the accord has been signed to great hoopla and some binding concerns for business leaders, never mind governments.  Nearly all of the 195 countries have signed the agreement (less than half have actually ratified it) and it went into effect today (Friday the 4th of November 2016)...in three days time, the next meeting of virtually the same UN country participants will again meet, this time in Morocco, to hammer out additional details since the pledges and the implementations drawn from Paris will not even be reviewed until 2023, which might be too late.  In a piece summarized in Common Dreams, it was reported that: ...a group of esteemed scientists is warning that current pledges to reduce emissions are far from sufficient and, in fact, put the world on track to reaching the dangerous 2°C climate threshold by 2050.  "The pledges are not going to get even close," said Sir Robert Watson, former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and lead author of a new report out Thursday.  "If you governments of the world are really serious, you're going to have to do way, way more."   Aptly titled The Truth About Climate Change, the report, put forth by the Argentina-based Universal Ecological Fund (Fundación Ecológica Universal FEU-US), comes amid a rash of new research, all suggesting that key global warming thresholds will be reached much more rapidly than previously thought.   Add to all of this the new boasting by U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump that cutting climate change funding would save the U.S. $100 billion, a figure disputed but backed by many in Congress who have consistently fought against funding climate change efforts even in the recent 2017 budget proposal introduced by President Obama.

    And then there's the acidification of the ocean and fish struggling to breathe.  In a report from Climate Central, it was explained that: As carbon dioxide dissolves into oceans and makes them more acidic, less oxygen is dissolving into warming waters.  The research (conducted by Seth Miller, an ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Institute) showed that these two chemical consequences of climate change could conspire to affect the surface-breathing behavior of some fish. “It’s the combination of lowering the pH and the dissolved oxygen,” Miller said.  No need to add that many coral reefs are bleaching out for the same reason, or that the oceans (which absorb much of our "excess" CO2) might be nearing their storage capacity.  So far, it doesn't sound too good does it?  Okay, so what's the big deal about this carbon stuff and that CO2 level passing the 400 parts per million figure; turns out that last time that happened was 2 million years ago, and temperatures did warm and sea levels did rise.  So far, our oceans have risen about 8 inches in the past 100 years; back then (when CO2 levels were this high), the oceans rose anywhere from 16 to 130...feet!  This has all been extensively written about, notably by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker on Greenland's melting ice streams (a scary but fascinating piece on what's happening under the ice and why it might prove to be too late to stop) and the rising water of Miami's shores, as well as piece by author Greta Ehrlich in Harper's where she said about Greenland: The cycle of thinning and melting is now impossible to stop.  The enormous ice sheet that covers 80 percent of the island is increasingly threaded with meltwater rivers in summer, though when I first arrived in Greenland, in 1993, it shone like a jewel.  According to Konrad “Koni” Steffen, a climate scientist who has established many camps on top of the Greenland ice sheet, “In 2012, we lost 450 gigatons of ice — that’s five times the amount of ice in the Alps.  All the ice on top has pulled apart.  It used to be smooth; now it looks like a huge hammer has hit it.  The whole surface is fractured.”

   This type of reporting shocked editor Tim Folger when he was editing articles for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016:  Here's one disheartening gauge of our society's concern: How much time did the nation's leading nightly news programs --on ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox-- devote to the subject of climate change last year?  It is, after all, the most pressing issue facing humanity.  Without concerted international action, crops will fail; refugees will flee --are fleeing-- flooded and drought-stricken lands; the extinction of species will accelerate.  So, a big story, one worthy of serious, sustained reporting.  There was even a religious angle when Pope Francis urged the world's leaders to act.  Care to hazard a guess now about the coverage?  Twenty minutes a week?  Two hours a month?  The correct answer: 146 minutes -- for the entire year, for all the networks combined.  Not even 3 minutes a week...Only one network, Fox, upped its "reporting" on the issue...denying the reality of climate change.

    So by now, you're likely really depressed...we're doomed.  Or not.  This post was meant to get the bad stuff out of the way in a somewhat hurried fashion, the stuff you hear so constantly that you might be numb to the subject...for what can be done? (sorry about all the links but those will allow you to read further if you wish, otherwise the post would have been overly long)  Change a light bulb?  Drive less?  Protest?  They all sound good and for the most part, people are trying to do what they can.  But take one look at the highways and parking lots and the lights of New York and Vegas and phew, it can frustrate the most patient of those seeking change (for me, the same effect happens when I look at our Congress).  But there actually is hope, and one of those lights-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel things comes from (of all people) the guy who might be credited with starting a lot of this pay-attention screaming about our changing climate, the former vice-president Al Gore.  He's up next...next post, that is.