How will health services survive climate change impacts on rural and remote populations?
Climate change threatens to impact the lives of Australians living in
rural and remote regions, through increased intensity of rainfall and
tropical cyclones, high-fire danger days, drought and heat wave.
Scientists
also predict agricultural viability will be compromised by drier soils
and the unpredictability of extreme weather events, and exposure to air
pollutants will increasingly impact population health, according to
research published in the Australian Journal of Rural Health.
It is predicted that climate change effects will lead to increases in:
Physical injury;
Heat-related illness;
Nutritional disorders;
Infectious diseases;
Mental health issues;
Cardiorespiratory illnesses;
Skin cancer;
Food security;
Water security; and
Vector-borne diseases.
Medical
practitioner researchers from the University of Notre Dame in Wagga
Wagga, NSW, interviewed health service managers working in rural and
remote areas, in order to determine their opinions of climate change
impacts and strategies to strengthen the health service response.
There will be a need for pharmacists and other healthcare practitioners to adapt to climate change pressures.
The majority of respondents (90%) agreed that climate change would
impact the health of rural populations in the future with regard to
heat-related illnesses, mental health, skin cancer and water security.
And
most participants identified the following population groups as being
most vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change:
Farmers;
Homeless persons;
The elderly;
Children; and
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People.
However
many (72%) reported there is scepticism regarding climate change among
both health professionals and community members – hampering their
ability to strengthen health services in order to prepare for future
climate challenges.
It was also discussed that there is a greater
need for public health education about the impacts of climate change
among staff and the community in local health districts.
“The role
of health services in providing education about the health impacts of
climage change is well recognised,” say authors Dr Rachel Purcell and Dr
Joe McGirr.
“The need for health professionals to be aware of the
health impacts of climate change has begun to be recognised in the
policies and professional development activities of postgraduate
training colleges and public health bodies.
“[Health service
managers’] recommendations for strengthening the capacity of rural
health services are integral to shaping the response of the rural health
sector to climate change.”
There are several organisations
including health practitioners with the collective goal of preparing for
climate change and advocating for pro-environmental policies.
Most participants identified children and
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People as being some of the most
vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change.
Pharmacists for the Environment Australia (PEA), for example, is involved in climate change advocacy and late last year became a member of Climate and Health Alliance.
The Climate and Health Alliance is a coalition of healthcare stakeholders who wish to see the threat to human health from climate change and ecological degradation addressed through prompt policy action.
As
a member of the Climate and Health Alliance, Pharmacists for the
Environment Australia says that it recognises “health care stakeholders
have a particular responsibility to the community in advocating for
public policy that will promote and protect human health.”
Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) is
another active organisation that says one of their primary concerns is
the health effects of climate change on humans and the biosphere on
which humans depend.
“Global warming and climate change have
serious implications for human health globally,” says the DEA in its May
2017 submission to the Federal Government’s discussion paper, Review of Australia’s Climate Change Policy.
“It
is increasingly recognised that climate change is only one facet of a
planetary health crisis; deforestation, air pollution, ocean
acidification and biodiversity loss all pose grave threats to health,”
they argue.
“Climate change threatens to further exacerbate
problems in these domains. If the current trend continues, there is a
real danger that efforts will be insufficient to prevent run-away global
warming, which will have disastrous social, economic and health
consequences.
“The mining and combustion of fossil-fuels, in
particular coal, also have direct adverse effects from emission of toxic
substances and pollution with particulates.
“The burden of repair of the environment is being passed to the next generations.”
Southern Europe and British Columbia have been devastated by wildfires this summer. And they're not the only ones - it seems like much of the world is ablaze right now, and this could be the new normal.
There have been many wildfires aound the world this summer. Canada
has seen the worst season for fires since records began, with
894,941 hectares burned, the British Columbia Wildfire Service has
confirmed. Large areas of the Western United States have also been affected.
Meanwhile
in Portugal, 2,000 people were recently cut off by flames and smoke
encircling the town of Macao. And earlier this summer, 64 people were
killed by a blaze in the country.
Like Canada, southern Europe has seen a record heatwave this year, creating hot, dry conditions that saw Italy, France, Croatia, Spain and Greece all swept by wildfires. As a result, Europe has reportedly seen three times the average number of wildfires this summer.
But
it's not just Canada and southern Europe that have been affected. In
Siberia, wildfire destroyed hundreds of homes, and around 700 hectares
of Armenian forest have also been destroyed by fire. Earlier this year, Chile saw wildfires that were unparalleled in the country's history, according to the President.
Even Greenland, not known for its hot dry conditions, suffered an unprecedented blaze this summer.
Central Portugal has been one of the areas hardest hit by fires this summer
The big picture
"A lot of these things are
happening locally, but people don't always connect them to climate
change," said Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the Climate Analysis
Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the US. "But
there is a real climate change component to this and the risk is going
up because of climate change."
With global temperatures rising, scientists say wildfires are likely to become increasingly frequent and widespread.
"What's really happening is that there is extra heat available,"
Trenberth told DW. "That heat has to go somewhere and some of it goes
into raising temperatures. But the first thing that happens is that it
goes into drying - it dries out plants and increases the risk of
wildfires."
The map above, compiling NASA satellite data on fires
from the beginning of 2017 until mid-August makes it looks as if the
whole world is on fire.
So is 2017 a record year of wildfires?
Wildfire rages in British Colombia, on July 8. It has now been confirmed the state's biggest in more than 50 years
Tough competition
It certainly looks like
it's been a big year for fires in southern Europe and North America. But
Martin Wooster, professor of earth observation science at King's
College London, says other parts of the world have seen worse in recent
years.
"For example, this year, fires across Southeast Asia are
extremely unlikely to be anything like as severe as they were in 2015,"
he told DW.
Two years ago, drought caused by El Nino created lethal conditions for Indonesian forests and peatlands that
were already degraded by draining and logging. The smoldering peat -
ancient, decayed vegetable matter condensed into a carbon-heavy fuel -
kept fires burning for months on end.
"This led to huge fires,
far bigger than any seen in Europe, and some of the worst air pollution
ever experienced," Wooster said.
NASA imagery shows a large wildfire burning in Sweden in early August
Longer fire seasons - longer recovery
But
there does appear to be a distinct trend for fire seasons to be
longer and more harsh. "In the western United States, the general
perception is that there is no wildfire season any more, but that it's
continuous all year round," Trenberth told DW.
In many parts of
the world, wildfires are part of a natural cycle. Savannahs, for
example, are maintained by fire. Some trees not only survive fires, but
need them to release their seeds. Human intervention can disrupt these
cycles, the scientific discipline of fire ecology
has found. Putting out small fires can allow flammable debris to
accumulate until a colossal fire starts that cannot be controlled.
But
global warming is resulting in hotter, drier conditions that mean such
infernos are becoming more common, even with careful forest management.
And the changed climatic conditions can mean forests take far longer to
recover. Meanwhile, fires are also starting in habitats in areas like
the tropics that have no natural fire ecology.
A wildfire smolders near Nice in the south of France in July
Human fingerprints
Climate change isn't the
only manmade factor. Fires can also be started by careless humans
dropping cigarettes or letting campfires get out of control.
And
in regions like the Amazon, where the annual fire season increased by 19
percent between 1979 and 2013, fire is deliberately used to clear
forest to make way for agriculture. "Farmers light fires to clear an
area and what happens in drought conditions is that these fires become
wild because the vegetation is so dry, it gets out of control,"
Trenberth said.
And all this can have a feedback effect - more
fires mean more carbon released into the atmosphere, which in turn
drives climate change.
Wildfires rage through Southeast Europe: Too close for comfort
Smoke and flames rise from a fire in the Croatian village of Podstrana, near the Adriatic coastal town of Split, on July 18, 2017. In Croatia, the blazes have spread over several locations along the coast and onto the islands, engulfing pine forests and low shrubbery in extremely dry and windy weather.
Smoke from hazard reduction burning has blanketed parts of Sydney, as firefighters prepare for a ‘horrific’ bushfire season. AAP Image/Dean Lewins
It might feel like the depths of winter, but Australian fire services
are preparing for an early start to the bushfire season. Sydney has
been covered with smoke from hazard reduction burns, and the New South Wales Rural Fire Service has forecast a “horrific” season.
Predicting the severity of a bushfire season isn’t easy, and – much like the near-annual announcements of the “worst flu season on record” – repeated warnings can diminish their urgency.
However, new modelling that combines Bureau of Meteorology data with NASA satellite imaging has found that record-setting July warmth and low rainfall have created conditions very similar to 2013, when highly destructive bushfires burned across NSW and Victoria.
Crucially, this research has found we’re approaching a crucial
dryness threshold, past which fires are historically far more dangerous. How to measure bushfire fuel
On September 10, 2013 several bushfires in Sydney’s West
caused havoc well before the official start of the bushfire season.
These were a precursor to fires that destroyed more than 200 properties a
month later. Warm, dry winter weather had dried out the fuels in Sydney’s forests and bush reserves beyond “normal” levels for the time of year.
The timing and severity of those preseason fires were a reminder that
the region’s forests are flammable all year round; they can burn
whenever the fuel they contain dries out past a certain threshold.
In most forests, there is an abundance of fuel in the form of leaf
litter, dead twigs, branches and logs, lower vegetation such as shrubs
and grasses, as well as higher foliage and branches.
The flammability of all these different kinds of fuel depends largely
on their moisture content. Leaf litter and fine dead branches on the
soil surface can dry out in a matter of days, whereas logs may take
weeks or months to lose their moisture. The moisture content of shrubs
and tree canopies varies depending on the amount of water in the soil,
so they reflect the overall rainfall and temperatures across a whole
season.
The flammability of an entire forest is therefore a complex
calculation of all these different kinds of fuel (both alive and dead)
and their different moisture levels.
Mapping Sydney’s forests
In a recent collaborative study, we combined data from a Bureau of Meteorology project that maps water availability levels across Australia with satellite imagery to develop new tools for mapping and monitoring moisture levels of different fuels in forests and woodlands.
We checked these tools by modelling fuel moisture levels during fires
in NSW, Victoria and the ACT between 2000 and 2014, and comparing our
predictions to historical bushfires.
Our research has identified critical dryness thresholds
associated with significant increases in fire area. Rather than a
gradual increase in flammability as forests dry out, when dead fuel
moisture drops below 15% subsequent bushfires are larger. Another jump
occurs when dead fuel moisture levels fall below 10%. We found similar
thresholds in growing plants, although their moisture content is
measured differently.
These dryness thresholds are pivotal, because they may represent the
breakdown of moist natural barriers in landscapes that prevent fires
from spreading. Understanding these mechanisms makes it possible to
predict fire risk much more accurately.
As part of this project we compared the fuel moisture in Sydney
Basin’s forested areas in 2013 and 2017. As shown in the chart below,
currently the live fuel moisture level is tracking well below the 2013
values, and is approaching a crucial threshold (indicated by the dotted
line).
The moisture content of dead fuel has been more variable, but it has
also dipped below the 2013 curve and, if warm dry weather continues,
could reach critical levels before the end of August.
The median predicted dead fuel moisture content and live fuel moisture content in forest areas of the Sydney Basin Bioregion in 2013 and 2017. Black dashed horizontal lines indicate fuel moisture threshold values. The start dates of major fires in 2013 are indicated by orange vertical lines. Author provided, Author provided
In another worrying sign, mapping shows critically dry live fuel is much more abundant in 2017 than it was in 2013.
Remotely sensed live fuel moisture content in forest areas of the Sydney Basin Bioregion in July 2013 (left) and July 2017 (right). Author provided
It’s clear that much of the Sydney Basin is dangerously primed for
major bushfires, at least until it receives major rainfall. Forecasts
for windy but largely dry weather in coming weeks may exacerbate this
problem.
These new insights into landscape-scale fuel dryness provide a
powerful indicator of what might be expected. They also build our
capacity for week by week monitoring of fire potential.
Preparation by both fire management authorities and exposed
homeowners is now an immediate priority, to cope with the strong
likelihood of an early and severe fire season. Links
Just three months after Origin Energy stunned the renewables industry
with a record low power off-take deal for the 530MW Stockyard Hill Wind
Farm in Victoria, AGL Energy has delivered more of the same, securing
an off-take price of below $60/MWh through the sale of its 453MW Coopers
Gap Wind Farm, between Kingaroy and Dalby in Queensland’s south-east.
AGL said on Thursday it had reached financial close on the Sunshine
State wind farm – which will be one of Australia’s biggest, once
completed in 2019 – with the $22 million sale of the project to the
Powering Australian Renewables Fund.
The deal includes AGL writing a PPA for electricity and associated
renewable energy certificates of less than $60/MWh for an initial five
years, with an option to extend the agreement for another five years at
the same – or even lower – price.
AGL Macarthur Wind Farm. Source: AGL Blog
In a media statement, AGL said it expected the project to cost a total
of around $850 million, funded through a combination of PARF partners’
equity and a lending group including Westpac, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking
Corporation, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Societe Generale, DBS Bank,
Mizuho Bank and ABN Amro.
The result is undoubtedly a good one for AGL, which created PARF just
one year ago, in partnership with the Queensland Investment
Corporation, with the goal of using it to underwrite 1,000MW of
large-scale renewables to be operated and managed by AGL.
After making its first acquisition in November 2016, buying up the
102MW Nyngan and 52MW Broken Hills solar farms as seed assets, it has
managed to keep growing its portfolio, adding the 200MW Silverton NSW
wind farm in January 2017.
“More than 800 MW of projects have now been vended into PARF in its
first 12 months of operation,” said AGL CEO Andy Vesey in comments on
Thursday.
“The strong support we have received from our equity partners and
lenders for these projects is testament to the readiness of the private
sector to invest in Australia’s energy transformation.”
But Vesey – who recently attended a meeting of energy retail chiefs
in Canberra to discuss the problem of Australia’s world-topping
electricity prices – was keen to stress that public policy settings
remained vital to maintain investor momentum.
“Certainty on energy policy, including the implementation of the
recommendations of the Finkel Review, will enable more projects of this
kind to go ahead and help place downward pressure on energy prices by
increasing supply,” he said.
AGL COO Brett Redman said the Coopers Gap deal has demonstrated the
effectiveness of the investment model, the falling price and increasing
efficiency of renewables technology and the key role it had to play in
Australia’s future energy market.
The project, which will be developed by GE and Catcon, will use 123
specially designed GE turbines to produce around 1,510,000MWh of energy
annually – enough to power more than 260,000 average Australian homes.
For GE, the Coopers Gap contract will bring the global giant’s total
installed wind capacity to almost 1.4GW in Australia by 2019, when the
wind farm is expected to be completed. It is GE’s first wind project in
Queensland.
“That’s the largest number of megawatts in a single year by any GE
onshore wind country outside the United States, ever,” said Pete McCabe,
GE’s global president and CEO of GE Renewable Energy’s Onshore Wind
business.
McCabe, too, took the opportunity of this week’s news to call for strong and stable renewable energy policy in Australia.
“Australia is a great market for wind, and today is GE’s second
largest region globally for our Renewables business. While we see lots
of opportunities in Australia, we need to continue to have policy
certainty to drive investment.”
GE said the successful formula for its bid for Cooper’s Gap included
custom-designed 115-metre towers for the 3.8MW turbines, to get the
optimal wind speed.
The engineering team – which included German wind engineering
“boffin” Dr Joerg Winterfeldt – had to ensure that the design of the
taller tower avoided vibration when the blades turn and also fit within
the logistical puzzle of not being too heavy or wide to cross all the
roads and bridges from port to site.
President Trump speaks about the U.S. role in
the Paris climate change accord in the Rose Garden of the White House in
June. (AP)
The Trump administration has decided to disband the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment,
a group aimed at helping policymakers and private-sector officials
incorporate the government’s climate analysis into long-term planning.
The charter for the 15-person Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment —
which includes academics as well as local officials and corporate
representatives — expires Sunday. On Friday, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration’s acting administrator, Ben Friedman,
informed the committee’s chair that the agency would not renew the
panel.
The National Climate Assessment is supposed to be issued
every four years but has come out only three times since passage of the
1990 law calling for such analysis. The next one, due for release in
2018, already has become a contentious issue for the Trump
administration.
Administration
officials are currently reviewing a scientific report that is key to
the final document. Known as the Climate Science Special Report, it was
produced by scientists from 13 different federal agencies and estimates
that human activities were responsible for an increase in global
temperatures of 1.1 to 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit from 1951 to 2010.
The
committee was established to help translate findings from the National
Climate Assessment into concrete guidance for both public and
private-sector officials. Its members have been writing a report to
inform federal officials on the data sets and approaches that would best
be included, and chair Richard Moss said in an interview Saturday that
ending the group’s work was shortsighted.
“It doesn’t seem to be
the best course of action,” said Moss, an adjunct professor in the
University of Maryland’s Department of Geographical Sciences, and he
warned of consequences for the decisions that state and local
authorities must make on a range of issues from building road projects
to maintaining adequate hydropower supplies. “We’re going to be running
huge risks here and possibly end up hurting the next generation’s
economic prospects.”
But NOAA communications director Julie
Roberts said in an email Saturday that “this action does not impact the
completion of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which remains a
key priority.”
While
many state and local officials have pressed the federal government for
more concrete guidance on how to factor climate change into future
infrastructure, President Trump has moved in the opposite direction.
Last week, the president signed an executive order on infrastructure
that included language overturning a federal requirement that projects
built in coastal floodplains and receiving federal aid take projected
sea-level rise into account.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray (D) said in
an interview Saturday that the move to dissolve the committee represents
“an example of the president not leading, and the president stepping
away from reality.” An official from Seattle Public Utilities has been
serving on the panel; with its disbanding, Murray said it would now be
“more difficult” for cities to participate in the climate assessment. On
climate change, Trump “has left us all individually to figure it out.”
Richard
Wright, the past chair of the American Society of Civil Engineers’
Committee on Adaptation to a Changing Climate, has been working with the
committee to convey the importance of detailed climate projections in
next year’s assessment. The society establishes guidelines that form the
basis of building codes across the country, and these are based on a
historical record that may no longer be an accurate predictor of future
weather extremes.
“We need to work on updating our standards with
good estimates on what future weather and climate extremes will be,”
Wright said Saturday. “I think it’s going to be a serious handicap for
us that the advisory committee is not functional.”
The committee
was established in 2015, but its members were not appointed until last
summer. They convened their first meeting in the fall. Moss said members
of the group intend to keep working on their report, which is due out
next spring, even though it now will lack the official imprimatur of the
federal government. “It won’t have the same weight as if we were
issuing it as a federal advisory committee,” he said.
Other Trump Cabinet officials have either altered the makeup of outside advisory boards or suspended these panels
in recent months, though they have not abolished the groups outright.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt decided to
replace dozens of members on one of the agency’s key scientific review
boards, while Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is “reviewing the charter
and charge” of more than 200 advisory boards for his department.
Scientists aboard a French research ship say they have been shocked to see the extent of coral bleaching across the Pacific Ocean, just halfway through their two-year voyage around the world.
The vessel Tara has been sailing around the globe for more than a decade to study the effects of climate change on the ocean.
Its current expedition will cross 11 time zones and span 100,000 kilometres from Europe to Asia and back again, and the group claims it is the biggest study of this scale across coral reefs.
The focus is how coral reefs in the Pacific are adapting to climate change, and on a stopover in Sydney, captain Nicolas De La Brosse said the extent of damage is already deeply troubling.
"What we've seen in really isolated spots like Samoa for example, even though it's very far away from [developed] countries with pollution, we struggled to find any coral life," he said.
Mr De La Brosse said nowhere was immune to the effects of global warming.
"It doesn't matter where you are in the Pacific, coral is starting to bleach."
He said data was still being collected and analysed and the final results would be released at the end of 2019.
The ship is not just a floating science lab — it is a temporary home for 16 people, including engineers, scientists, sailors, crew and, of course, a cook who whips up French dishes and sometimes, local favourites.
"When we arrived in Australia I made a banana cake because I know in Australia you have this cake," chef Dominique Limbour said.
Spending months at a time at sea together in the 26-metre vessel can be a challenge.
"We have to work all together. You can't argue with someone else — you have to be pretty easygoing," Mr De La Brosse said.
After its Sydney stop the ship will head north to study the extent to which coral in the Great Barrier Reef is adapting to climate change.
Greenhouse gases are released from a factory in Australia. (Dave Hunt / European Pressphoto Agency)
We’ve all been there: The perfectly innocuous conversation you’ve
been having at a friend’s party or your kid’s soccer game devolves into
an argument about climate change. Suddenly, you realize you’re talking
to a climate change skeptic.
You want to help your acquaintances see the light. But how?
We
asked climate scientists and communicators how to have constructive
discussions about climate change. They offered both general advice about
how to engage and specific information to rebut doubters’ claims.
Start by looking for common ground. We all depend on the same planet for our survival, and all of us want a good outcome, said Richard Alley, a geoscientist at Penn State University who studies abrupt changes in the climate.
Also,
recognize that there’s a grain of truth in most of the arguments put
out by climate skeptics — or at least an intriguing question that
climate scientists have considered at some point. Acknowledging the
merits of these ideas often leads to more productive discussions, said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
Read on and you’ll be ready when the next unexpected debate comes your way.
Beware of cherry-picking
In
many cases, so-called evidence against climate change is drawn from a
zoomed-in picture, like data taken from a short time period or a single
geographical location. It’s not that the information is wrong — it may
just be taken out of context.
Climate scientists emphasize the
need to look at global data over long periods to understand it in
context and see larger trends. For example, it’s easy to pick an
exceptionally hot year — like 1998 — and point out that the average
global temperature was only 0.1° Celsius warmer than in 2008, a relatively cool one. But all this example shows is that there are fluctuations from year to year.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen exponentially in the last century. (NASA)
What really matters, climate scientists say, is that the global average temperature is on a rising trend. NOAA’s 2016 climate report
shows that every year since 1977 has been warmer than the 20th century
average. This means the Earth is retaining more heat over time.
Always
ask skeptics about the data their argument is based on. If it’s from an
isolated location or a small chunk of time, it may not be
representative of the bigger picture.
Greenhouse gases are the key
When
looking for something to blame for rising temperatures, skeptics tend
to focus on natural factors that can shift over time, such as the
intensity of the sun, the amount of volcanic activity or changes in
Earth’s orbit. They may even acknowledge the role of certain man-made
pollutants like ozone or aerosols.
But all of these factors are dwarfed by the impact of greenhouse gases.
When
we burn fossil fuels in cars, planes and power plants, the hydrocarbon
molecules in the fuel break down to produce carbon dioxide and water.
Both are then released into the atmosphere.
Emissions spew from a large stack at a coal-fired power plant in Newburg, Md. (Mark Wilson / Getty Images)
Carbon dioxide (CO2) and some other small molecules, such as methane (CH4) and nitrous oxides (NOx), are known as greenhouse gases
because they absorb and trap light from the sun as well as infrared
radiation coming from the Earth’s surface. Both are converted into heat
by these gases that warms the air — much like a greenhouse does.
Carbon
dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas by far, Alley said. Every
time the climate has changed in ways that scientists can measure, carbon
dioxide has had something to do with it, he said.
The NASA
Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York modeled the impact of a
variety of natural and industrial factors on global temperature. They
found that only carbon dioxide levels predicted the temperature increase
we’ve seen in recent decades. This visualization from Bloomberg makes it easy to see.
Methane and nitrous oxides actually have more powerful greenhouse effects than carbon dioxide — but carbon dioxide has a larger overall influence because we’re releasing so much more of it. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, carbon dioxide accounted for 82% of all greenhouse gas emissions in 2015.
Humans are responsible for the surge in carbon dioxide
Where
did all that carbon dioxide come from? When looking at the
concentrations of CO2 over time, “nothing interesting happened until we
started burning coal,” Schmidt said.
That’s when atmospheric CO2 really picked up — and it’s increased exponentially ever since.
According to data compiled
by the Goddard Institute, carbon dioxide was at an atmospheric
concentration of 291 parts per million in 1880. It had risen to 311 ppm
by 1950 and to 370 ppm by 2000. NOAA’s reported global annual average reached 402 ppm in 2016.
Carbon dioxide concentration changes throughout the year. Shown here: September 2014 - August 2015 (NASA)
Climate change skeptics often point out that volcanic eruptions and
decaying plants also send carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But
multiple studies have shown that human activity produces at least 60 times more
carbon dioxide than volcanoes do each year. And while it’s true that
plants produce more carbon dioxide than humans, they clean up after
themselves — and even pick up some of our slack.
This is one reason the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher in the winter than in the summer.Plants
come with their own carbon sinks – they produce carbon dioxide when
they die and decay, but new plants also absorb it from the air as they
grow.
You can’t blame warming on the sun
Climate change deniers say the sun is the obvious source of the planet’s heat. After all, it’s constantly bathing us in 173,000 terawatts of energy. That’s about 10,000 times more than enough to meet the entire world’s annual energy needs.
But solar activity has actually decreased since 1950, experts said. This means that if nothing else had changed, we would be experiencing a cooling cycle right now.
Solar
energy output varies slightly over an 11-year cycle, and that does have
an effect on temperature. But these effects are much clearer in the
stratosphere than in the lower atmosphere, Schmidt said, and the solar
cycle doesn’t significantly affect surface temperatures on Earth.
A Salvation Army hydration station sign sits in the midday
sun as the temperature climbs to a near-record high in Phoenix. (Ross D.
Franklin / Associated Press)
Typically, solar activity and temperature move together: When one
rises, the other does too. So when we see solar activity and temperature
moving in opposite directions, as has happened recently, we know that
something else is going on.
Other factors are also encouraging cooling right now, several experts said, including an increase in reflective aerosols like sulfates and nitrates in the atmosphere. These block some heat from reaching the Earth’s surface.
If not for these cooling influences, our planet would be warming even more rapidly.
This is not a normal part of a natural cycle
Climate change has occurred naturally in the past. But that doesn’t mean natural causes are responsible this time.
Alley
pointed out the logical flaw in this oft-repeated argument: It’s like
saying that since wildfires sometimes begin with natural events like
lightning strikes they can never be caused by a wayward campfire.
The
climate doesn’t change unless it’s forced to change. And during the
20th century, there weren’t any natural events powerful enough to
account for the changes scientists are documenting.
“Human fingerprints are all over this,” said John Cook, a cognitive scientist who studies beliefs about climate change at George Mason University.
And
just because the climate has changed before doesn’t mean we want it to
happen again — especially this quickly. In the past, rapid changes were
usually pretty hard on living creatures that didn’t have enough time to
adapt to their new conditions. That doesn’t bode well for us.
Don’t be fooled by Antarctic sea ice
For a several years in the early part of the decade, the amount of sea ice extending from Antarctica set new records, peaking at 7.72 million square miles (an area more than twice as large as the United States).
Climate
change skeptics say this is inconsistent with a warming planet. But
they ignore the fact that the vast majority of sea ice is decreasing.
(Remember the warning about cherry-picking?) Even in Antarctica, it has
been losing ground rapidly since 2014 and has now sunk to a record low.
Arctic sea ice hasn’t varied as widely in recent years. According to a report
released in 2014 by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Royal
Society in London, the yearly minimum Arctic sea ice extent in the
summer has decreased by 40% since 1978. This could be the least icy the
Arctic has been in almost 1,500 years, the report noted. Some researchers say that Arctic summers could be completely ice-free by 2030.
Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica passes through Victoria
Strait while transiting the Northwest Passage connecting the Pacific and
Atlantic oceans earlier than had ever been recorded. (David Goldman /
Associated Press)
Richard Somerville, a climate scientist who spent many years at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, points out that sea ice is highly variable.
“It’s
not simple — the ice doesn’t just melt when the temperature falls below
32° Fahrenheit,” he said. “It gets blown around by the winds and
carried around by the currents, and it gets blown or carried to regions
that are either more prone to melting or less prone to melting.”
He
likens sea ice trends to the stock market: Although it fluctuates from
year to year, the overall trend can be seen when we look at long time
periods — and now it’s a downward one. Focusing on short-term changes
misses this bigger truth, he said.
The take-home message is that
sea ice is complicated, so be careful not to jump to conclusions — in
either direction. For example, the collapse of an iceberg that broke off from Antarctica in July has not been definitively tied to climate change.
Recognize that this is a political debate, not a scientific one
Skeptics like to say that scientists don’t agree on climate change, but the truth is that the consensus is overwhelming.
A whopping 97% of climate scientists share the view that climate change is happening now and that human activity is to blame.
Greenpeace activists in Spain protest President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. (Mariscal / European Pressphoto Agency)
It’s important to understand where science ends and politics begins.
To boost your chances for success, make a point of separating the two,
Somerville said. Many people are not suspicious of the science, but
rather of the consequences associated with climate change.
“There’s
no such thing as a Democratic or Republican thermometer,” Somerville
said. We can agree on what the science says, even if we have different
political ideas, he added.
Understand why people may be misinformed
According to a recent poll
conducted by researchers at Yale and George Mason University, only half
of the American public realizes that a majority of climate scientists
agree on climate change. Only 13% of those polled were aware that the
degree of scientific consensus is upwards of 90%.
A number of factors have led to this widespread misunderstanding, Cook said.
First,
some industry groups who oppose environmental regulation have made a
concerted effort to confuse the public about climate change.
Additionally,
media reports tend to include two sides to every story, including those
about climate change. But that implies that both sides have equal
weight, even when they don’t.
Finally, the sheer volume of climate
change information is daunting, and many Americans don’t have the time
or energy to sort fact from fiction. “Because there’s so much noise,
people tend to disengage,” Cook said.
And finally, know when to cut your losses
As with any contentious issue, you have to realize when you’re talking to someone who just wants to argue.
“If that’s the case, just stop.” Schmidt said. Links
