Section 4: Policy issues
From carbon to hydrogen energy
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Weather extremes - is there a connection with warming?
Gilbert Plass at Johns Hopkins University believed in 1956 that increasing carbon dioxide with increased warming would affect climate.

    REF: Parsons, M.; Global Warming; page 6.


Feedbacks
Isaac Asimov writes in Our Angry Earth about a scenario of runaway carbon dioxide production until all of the oxygen had combined with all of the oxygen in a process that fed on itself, much like the out-of-control forest burnings in the west mid-west of the United States this summer (2000).

There are good feedbacks and bad feedbacks.

Feedback is a result if inputting the outputs of one process into another process. When a microphone squawks, it is receiving its own output from a speaker as input.

So it is with increasing carbon dioxide. The warming would trigger melting of polar ice. The ice reflects the sun back. Thus, the calculation of warming is doubled because of this feedback. On the other hand, water may evaporate and provide cloud cover, to produce a cooling feedback effect.

A good feedback is the sink provided by plankton, in the oceans, which fix carbon dioxide. When they die, the carbon dioxide ends up on the ocean floor for possibly ever.

A bad feedback comes from methane, a greenhouse gas produced from decay of human garbage and sewage. Methane sunk in water vapor in higher elevations is released with warming. As temperature rises, decomposition (methane production) is accelerated.

Another bad feedback is that with warming, microbes in the soil generate more carbon dioxide.

One bad feedback we've seen recently (summer 2000) in the United States is the increasing frequency of forest fires due to forest and brush dying from warming.

With increasing warming, water evaporates with more water vapor, which is a greenhouse gas. This effect greatly increases the warming effect, feeding on itself. On the other hand, cloud formation blocks sunlight and provides cooling.

It is easier to heat the air than to heat ocean water. Oceans, then, provide a moderating affect on climate, mitigating temperature variation extremes. Oceans transport heat through currents.


This is Floyd's representation of the hydrological cycle. The little cloud can be tracked by his shadow as he goes up the hill from the ocean shore. When he gets to the top of the hill, he stops to rain. Floyd has the water in English letters with a watery fluff. After raining, he shrinks down and makes his way into the sunset. Another little cloud forms up at the ocean shore and makes his way back up the hill to start the cycle all over again. Notice that the water runs back down to the ocean.
We had to reduce Floyd's animation from around a megabyte to 47K. It was taking about a half a day to download on our 14k modems. The original animation is beautiful. If you want a copy, email us and we'll send you one.
© 2000 - Samuel Floyd Anderson

Hydrological cycle

This cycle consists of evaporation and condensation in the form of rain (snow). In this way energy is transferred between the atmosphere and land.

Warmer climate impacts the hydrological cycle. Thus, we could have more severe precipitation. This is the scenario behind expecting flooding, severe storms, and higher precipitation.

As population increases, more people use water. As warming increases, evaporation limits sources of water available for use.

As land use (development) replaces green vegetation with asphalt, water cannot soak into the ground, but runs off. Much of run off ends up in the oceans, rather than underground sources. With wetlands disappearing, the run off problem increases. Run off removes rich soil needed for growing food.

Deforestation has been linked to changes in rainfall. The following land areas reflect sunlight:
  • forests - 14%
  • grassland - 20%
  • desert sand - 40%

      REF: Houghton, J.; Global Warming; page 121.

Evaporation is greater in forests than in grasslands. This is why rainfall decreases with deforestation.

Ross Gelbspan, author of the Heat is on point to a 1995 study, by the NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, which addressed severe rainfall and weather extremes. He believes that it is due to warming's accelerating evaporation and the hydrological cycle.


Climate change

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center, a branch of NOAA (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov), has attempted to create indicators to link warming to climate change and extreme weather in the United States:
  • Above normal mean temperature
  • Above normal precipitation in the cold season
  • Extreme drought in the warm season
  • Extreme rainfall in a single day
  • Below normal temperature differences
This index is called the GCRI (Greenhouse climate response index).

While there is much data to be found on http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/climate/severeweather/extremes.html, there are no direct linkages of warming to extreme weather overtly stated on the page, as of the completion date of this project (8/15/2000).

John Houghton, author of Global Warming - the complete briefing believes that in looking at the GCRI since 1980, the 13% average increase is perfectly rational based on global warming theory. In other words, he blames global warming for the extreme variation in climate. He attributes 5% to natural variability. (page 49 of referenced work).

As noted in the carbon section , Mars, where 95% of its atmosphere is carbon dioxide has temperature variations of -189°F to 98°F. Mars is a lot further from the sun than earth.

Connection of warming & El Niño
Kevin Trenberth of the Climate and Global Division of NCAR believes there is a link between El Niño and global warming. Although he admits some questions have to be answered by scientists concerning the link.

The oceans move salt and heat/cold around through currents, as we will study in detail in section 4 later.

Basically, El Niño removes heat from the tropics and redistributes it northward. La Niña transfers cold waters. Lately this scientist has found that in the last 20 years there has been a marked trend to higher frequencies of El Niños over La Niñas.

Simply put: El Niño brings drought to Australia (West Pacific) and heavy rains to South America (East Pacific). La Niña brings drought to South America and rains to Australia.

Later, we'll see how Australia is not committing to emission containment. It looks like the Australians are going to cook themselves out of a continent.

Trenberth feels that this heating accelerates the hydrological cycle. They net result is the expectation by this scientist of increased flooding and storms delivering more water due to increased evaporation from the heat. He notes that atmospheric water has risen 10% since 1970.


Water problems in Northwest USA
Patrick Mazza, Research Director for Climate Solutions reports that currently there is a drought once in ten years. He predicts one in 5 years in 2020. By 2050, there will be one in every three years.

He uses the same data we have presented above. The culprit is El Niño. Not only will warming cause more severe storms and flooding due to increased evaporation rates, but also the snowlines in the Cascades will retreat. This means that during the summer, the usual source of water, snow meltdown, will not be available.

Scientist L. Ruby Leung says that the lack of snow meltdown will ruin the salmon because they like cooler water. The faster flows from more violent storms and floods wash away salmon nests. They would migrate to cooler ocean waters around the Bering Sea.

There will be economic losses from a continual shortening of the skiing season.

Another impact of this climate change would be the drying of the forests and the subsequent burnings predicted. She forecasts disease carrying algal blooms in the oceans, disease carrying insects, and dramatic sea level rise - all from this warming from El Niño increase phenomenon.

BBC reports 1998 weather damage due to heat
Warming has caused more severe storms due to increased evaporation, according to Worldwatch. It cost the world $92,000,000,000.00. 1998 set a record for weather related damage, topping the next record year, 1996, by 53%. Storms and floods left 300,000,000 people homeless.




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