Copenhagen and Reality.

In December, the leaders of the world will congregate in Copenhagen, Denmark to fashion a new climate change treaty. Like any multi-lateral treaty, the participants will negotiate to secure their own benefit while attempting to get others to sacrifice and still make themselves look good. I don't mean to sound cynical when I say that. It is simply the way of geo-politics. There will be many in attendance who believe in the importance of reducing and ultimately eliminating carbon dioxide emissions through human economic activity and doing it quickly. Many nations citizens overwhelmingly and rightly see the current warming trend as both caused by humans and as a real threat to planetary well being. Being a citizen of the United States, there are two aspects that are starkly out of tune with the spirit of international agreement generally and in the reality of human caused climate change specifically.

It is a pity when public discourse in the U.S. centers around the question of the reality of climate change and it's cause and not on a more pertinent one; whether it is too late to stop it. Things being as they are, Americans will continue to muddle through the "debate", with "skeptics" on one side and people who know what they are talking about on the other. It should be quite a spectacle, contentious and stupid, as the right wing, funded by the entrenched interests, and propelled by their passion for ignorance for it's own sake, will poison the well of constructive and critical discourse. I think we can expect a racheting up of the rhetoric as we saw during the fight over health care legislation. They will alternately dismiss the climate change problem as imaginary, fraudulent, conspiratorial, and nothing we need to worry about. They will use arguments that have already been debunked, like the variable solar radiation hypothesis, or the cyclical climate change as a natural function we can do nothing about anyway argument. Lots of money, hundreds of millions, will be spent, have been spent, to sway public opinion to see climate change as a hoax or a sideshow. Because anybody who bothers his or her pretty little head about climate change is "hysterical", a "dupe", or is part of a socialist conspiracy to destroy capitalism and the American economy. This last should sound familiar to anyone who pays attention.

In the meantime, as we have been wasting our time thusly, the world has and will continue to get warmer due to carbon dioxide emissions released into the atmosphere. It is expected by climate scientists that even if we stop all CO2 emissions today that the carbon released up to yesterday will raise the temperative another half degree centigrade. To put that into perspective, the temperature rise above the post-glacial norm is .8 degrees C. That is about 1.5 degrees F. The consensus view is that we must absolutely keep global temperatures from rising two degrees centigrade, just under 4 degrees F because it is believed that it is a tipping point after which warming will rise beyond our ability to control it. They fear that a 2 degree rise will initiate a positive feedback loop which will unleash carbon stored in the form of methane that is trapped in tundra and the oceans, through the burning of forests, and the further heating of the artic regions after the ice has melted and sunlight is absorbed in open water.

The alarm of scientists over the rate of change of climate zones should cause commensurate alarm in the population. For various reasons it doesn't. Perhaps the American public has "climate" fatigue. That says maybe, but given my general sense that American leadership isn't quite as alarmed either, and is not presenting to the American public the reality of climate change and the threat it poses, I think Copenhagen might underwhelm. There is reason to hope that something dramatic will happen in Copenhagen in targeting a low carbon emissions treaty with the targets coming sooner rather than later. But I'm not holding my breath. This may mean the next climate summit will be an emergency summit for reasons that will likely be evident over the next several years.

It begins with what happens when the temperature rises only .8 degrees. What we've seen is ice melting at a rate faster than scientists ever thought it would. We have lost 20% of the arctic winter ice and the Arctic Ocean will likely be ice free in summer by 2015. What happens then is anybody's guess, but is certain to happen is the blue ocean water would absorb heat energy from the sun rather than reflect the sunlight back into space. This would cause the Greenland ice sheet to melt at an even faster rate, adding water to the oceans and raise sea levels. Climate patterns would change in unpredictable ways. This would certainly impact agriculture negatively and maybe disasterously. This is the form the feedback loop will take.

Glaciers are receding all over the world. Glaciers feed many of the major rivers around the world, most notably in China and India. The Ganges, Indus, Yellow, Yangtze and others have their source in the Himalayan glaciers. These glaciers are receding and the amount of water that flows from them during the spring thaw is lessening. Eventually they will not flow at all. Hundreds of millions of people depend on those rivers for their water.