It's gettin' hot in here
So...maybe we should think about turning off the gas to the oven, huh?
Update: Links now added for extra factual goodness. Also, arse poetica has a good comprehensive post with the numbers on what the US is doing to cause all this global warming.
That climate change is occurring and will continue to do so is not disputed within the scientific community, despite what a sizeable segment of the public thinks. Atmospheric CO2 levels are expected to reach at least double what they were in pre-industrial times within the coming century, up to 500 parts per million at least. Again, this is not disputed. There is a scientific consensus, as a survey of over 900 articles in peer-reviewed journals shows.
Nobody publishing in peer reviewed journals thinks that global climate change will have no effect, but what no one is sure of is how much world temperatures will go up. Different climate models predict different effects, and you can find a model that will give you whatever magnitude of temperature rise you want between about 1 and 10 ºC. In general, though, the most trusted models put the rise in global temperature between 1.5 ºC and 6.5 ºC over the next century, as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
So, that's the problem. Despite what authors funded by oil companies and the Bush administration say, global warming is real and it is happening. So, what will the result be?
Maybe I should start out here: a warmer atmosphere means a wetter atmosphere. When the air is warmer, it can hold more water before it has to get rid of it in the form of rain or snow. This does not mean that there will necessarily be less rain, just that when it does fall, it's gonna fall hard. Extreme weather events will come more often, and they'll be more extreme. Get used to storms, especially if you live in higher latitudes.
When it snows in higher latitudes now, the snow adds to the existing snowpack. This mediates the effect of all that water falling, and the runoff is spread over months instead of days, providing a steady water flow through the spring and a mediated water flow during storms. But when the snowpack gets smaller due to warming, this mediation won't happen. That means flooding, and in areas with poor sewage infrastructure, it means shit getting washed into the water supply.
Flooding = less clean drinking water = more disease.
So what about the lower latitudes? Well, they get less rain in general. The problem will be most pronounced at around 20 degrees north and south latitudes, where the depletion of water (evaporation) will increase and the restoration of water (rainfall) will decrease. Here is a figure with those areas highlighted; these areas include north Africa, the Middle East, South American countries like Venezuela and Colombia, and [gasp] the American Southwest. That's right, Greg, Phoenix will be even hotter and even drier. The paper I got that figure from is not available for free online, but I can email it to you if you're especially curious. Look at this table again, and see what it has to say about summer drying and increased heat index.
Egypt in particular is in big, big trouble. If you look at a satellite photo of Egypt, you see a strip of green and a triangle at the Nile delta, and then desert. The vast majority of Egypt's population lives in those green areas, and something like 95% of the power-producing and land-watering capacity of the Nile is being used to sustain that population. Egypt is in trouble in two ways:
1) That green triangle of the Nile Delta won't be there any more. When the oceans heat up (and they already are), they will expand (raising average sea levels by up to a meter [3 feet]). Also, when more glaciers (and polar ice) start to melt, the sea level will rise more. The projected rise in sea level will inundate 15 km inland from the Meditteranean, basically erasing the Nile Delta. That's going to displace a huge number of people, since again, most of Egypt's population is near the Nile. This will be felt throughout the world as well; as this table shows, there are many US states (and the District of Columbia) whose lowest points are within a meter of sea level. I suggest you visit Florida now.
2) The Nile (and almost every other river in the middle latitudes) will experience reduced streamflow. As temperatures rise, evapotransipration (transport of water from the surface to the atmosphere) will increase. In the high latitudes, that evapotranspiration will be balanced by more precipitation (and so streamflows might even increase), but in the low latitudes that won't happen. There's not going to be much rain falling into the Nile Basin, and that means reduced streamflow, which will result in less agriculture, hydroelectric power, and drinking water for the region.
Less rainfall = less drinking water.
Less rainfall = less water for agriculture = famine.
In countries where agriculture is a big part of their economy, less irrigation water will mean major economic problems, which will in turn result in a decreased investment in water infrastructure (pipes, etc.). Governments only try to improve their citizens' access to clean water when economic times are good (Gadgil, Annu. Rev. Energy Environ., 1998 - not online, sorry).
Another scary possible consequence of reduced streamflows is war. Seriously. In 1998, Turkey and Syria almost went to war over ethnic problems with the Kurds, exacerbated to a great extent by a dispute over the Euphrates. Turkey has been building huge dams on the river for power and irrigation, but this means fertilizer runoff and less water gets into Syria. Syria gets more than 80% of its water from the Euphrates. If the flow lessens and Turkey doesn't adjust its usage accordingly, things could get tense there again.
It seems like there are a lot of misconceptions out there about the possible impacts of global climate change. People either believe the government that tells them it's not going to happen, or they think that things are just going to get really hot, and we'll crank our air conditioners and be fine. Well, I'm here to tell you that it won't be that way. The above is just one minor part of the effects that global warming will have.
Currently, 20% of the world (more than a billion people) has no access to clean drinking water, according to the BBC, and that number hasn't changed a whole lot since 1998, when it was 1.1 billion. Also in 1998, 400 children per day died in the third world because of diseases they got from their drinking water. For the reasons above, this situation will get worse as a result of global warming. Floods wash sewage into water supplies, obviously leading to disease. And when less water is available, people don't use it for hygiene (since it's more important to drink it), which also obviously leads to disease. As you can see, the results of global warming are going to be global catastrophe - pestilence, war, famine and death.
Hmmm...maybe those people hoping for the End Times are planning better than we give them credit for. Something to keep in mind: Bush's scheme to "reduce" greenhouse emissions (actually reducing something called "emissions intensity") actually allows for an INCREASE in our CO2 emissions over the next decade. Since emissions intensity is defined as emissions per unit of economic production, if the economy grows our emissions can too. It's likely that our increased emissions will overwhelm any potential gains from Kyoto. With this plan, Bush proves that he just doesn't take the scientific community seriously and in fact is hostile to its conclusions.
Why? Well, the "hoping for the End Times" thing may be a little farfetched. But why in the world would he and his advisors ignore all of the dire warnings coming out of the scientific community? Arguing that "it'll hurt the economy" is not a good enough reason. It's just not worth it. When the third world devolves into famine and disease, a few extra bucks in the bank won't help anything.
One more thing: perhaps there are some of you sitting there now saying "this guy's an alarmist! No way will it be this bad". Well, maybe you're right. But think about this: on almost every issue, the scientific community has one outlook and the general public has another. On almost every issue (GM crops and microwave ovens come to mind), the scientists are less alarmed about potential problems than are the public. In the case of global warming, the people who most closely study the situation are the most alarmed, and the public is telling them not to worry. Why is that? It's because the government tells us not to worry about it, without giving one shred of scientific evidence to back themselves up. Well, I'll go with the evidence, and with the scientific community. If that makes me sound alarmist to you, then maybe I am. And maybe you should be alarmed too.
One final thing about this post: I didn't include any links to my source material, since it's all in .pdf files that I got out of journals doing the research for this post. If you're really dubious about any claims I make here, email me and I will either find an online source for you or just send you the .pdf of the paper I used. Comments and questions are welcomed, if you think anything I said was way off base or didn't make sense. But please, don't just call me an ivory tower asshole or tell me I hate America.
UPDATE: Sources have been requested, as a way to make this post more informative. They've now been added, but there still may be claims you'd like to see sources for. If there are, let me know in the comments or email me and I'll put sources in for those too.
Tags: global warming, anthropogenic climate change, drinking water, developing world, atmospheric CO2, global climate, oil companies
Update: Links now added for extra factual goodness. Also, arse poetica has a good comprehensive post with the numbers on what the US is doing to cause all this global warming.
That climate change is occurring and will continue to do so is not disputed within the scientific community, despite what a sizeable segment of the public thinks. Atmospheric CO2 levels are expected to reach at least double what they were in pre-industrial times within the coming century, up to 500 parts per million at least. Again, this is not disputed. There is a scientific consensus, as a survey of over 900 articles in peer-reviewed journals shows.
Nobody publishing in peer reviewed journals thinks that global climate change will have no effect, but what no one is sure of is how much world temperatures will go up. Different climate models predict different effects, and you can find a model that will give you whatever magnitude of temperature rise you want between about 1 and 10 ºC. In general, though, the most trusted models put the rise in global temperature between 1.5 ºC and 6.5 ºC over the next century, as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
So, that's the problem. Despite what authors funded by oil companies and the Bush administration say, global warming is real and it is happening. So, what will the result be?
Maybe I should start out here: a warmer atmosphere means a wetter atmosphere. When the air is warmer, it can hold more water before it has to get rid of it in the form of rain or snow. This does not mean that there will necessarily be less rain, just that when it does fall, it's gonna fall hard. Extreme weather events will come more often, and they'll be more extreme. Get used to storms, especially if you live in higher latitudes.
When it snows in higher latitudes now, the snow adds to the existing snowpack. This mediates the effect of all that water falling, and the runoff is spread over months instead of days, providing a steady water flow through the spring and a mediated water flow during storms. But when the snowpack gets smaller due to warming, this mediation won't happen. That means flooding, and in areas with poor sewage infrastructure, it means shit getting washed into the water supply.
Flooding = less clean drinking water = more disease.
So what about the lower latitudes? Well, they get less rain in general. The problem will be most pronounced at around 20 degrees north and south latitudes, where the depletion of water (evaporation) will increase and the restoration of water (rainfall) will decrease. Here is a figure with those areas highlighted; these areas include north Africa, the Middle East, South American countries like Venezuela and Colombia, and [gasp] the American Southwest. That's right, Greg, Phoenix will be even hotter and even drier. The paper I got that figure from is not available for free online, but I can email it to you if you're especially curious. Look at this table again, and see what it has to say about summer drying and increased heat index.
Egypt in particular is in big, big trouble. If you look at a satellite photo of Egypt, you see a strip of green and a triangle at the Nile delta, and then desert. The vast majority of Egypt's population lives in those green areas, and something like 95% of the power-producing and land-watering capacity of the Nile is being used to sustain that population. Egypt is in trouble in two ways:
1) That green triangle of the Nile Delta won't be there any more. When the oceans heat up (and they already are), they will expand (raising average sea levels by up to a meter [3 feet]). Also, when more glaciers (and polar ice) start to melt, the sea level will rise more. The projected rise in sea level will inundate 15 km inland from the Meditteranean, basically erasing the Nile Delta. That's going to displace a huge number of people, since again, most of Egypt's population is near the Nile. This will be felt throughout the world as well; as this table shows, there are many US states (and the District of Columbia) whose lowest points are within a meter of sea level. I suggest you visit Florida now.
2) The Nile (and almost every other river in the middle latitudes) will experience reduced streamflow. As temperatures rise, evapotransipration (transport of water from the surface to the atmosphere) will increase. In the high latitudes, that evapotranspiration will be balanced by more precipitation (and so streamflows might even increase), but in the low latitudes that won't happen. There's not going to be much rain falling into the Nile Basin, and that means reduced streamflow, which will result in less agriculture, hydroelectric power, and drinking water for the region.
Less rainfall = less drinking water.
Less rainfall = less water for agriculture = famine.
In countries where agriculture is a big part of their economy, less irrigation water will mean major economic problems, which will in turn result in a decreased investment in water infrastructure (pipes, etc.). Governments only try to improve their citizens' access to clean water when economic times are good (Gadgil, Annu. Rev. Energy Environ., 1998 - not online, sorry).
Another scary possible consequence of reduced streamflows is war. Seriously. In 1998, Turkey and Syria almost went to war over ethnic problems with the Kurds, exacerbated to a great extent by a dispute over the Euphrates. Turkey has been building huge dams on the river for power and irrigation, but this means fertilizer runoff and less water gets into Syria. Syria gets more than 80% of its water from the Euphrates. If the flow lessens and Turkey doesn't adjust its usage accordingly, things could get tense there again.
It seems like there are a lot of misconceptions out there about the possible impacts of global climate change. People either believe the government that tells them it's not going to happen, or they think that things are just going to get really hot, and we'll crank our air conditioners and be fine. Well, I'm here to tell you that it won't be that way. The above is just one minor part of the effects that global warming will have.
Currently, 20% of the world (more than a billion people) has no access to clean drinking water, according to the BBC, and that number hasn't changed a whole lot since 1998, when it was 1.1 billion. Also in 1998, 400 children per day died in the third world because of diseases they got from their drinking water. For the reasons above, this situation will get worse as a result of global warming. Floods wash sewage into water supplies, obviously leading to disease. And when less water is available, people don't use it for hygiene (since it's more important to drink it), which also obviously leads to disease. As you can see, the results of global warming are going to be global catastrophe - pestilence, war, famine and death.
Hmmm...maybe those people hoping for the End Times are planning better than we give them credit for. Something to keep in mind: Bush's scheme to "reduce" greenhouse emissions (actually reducing something called "emissions intensity") actually allows for an INCREASE in our CO2 emissions over the next decade. Since emissions intensity is defined as emissions per unit of economic production, if the economy grows our emissions can too. It's likely that our increased emissions will overwhelm any potential gains from Kyoto. With this plan, Bush proves that he just doesn't take the scientific community seriously and in fact is hostile to its conclusions.
Why? Well, the "hoping for the End Times" thing may be a little farfetched. But why in the world would he and his advisors ignore all of the dire warnings coming out of the scientific community? Arguing that "it'll hurt the economy" is not a good enough reason. It's just not worth it. When the third world devolves into famine and disease, a few extra bucks in the bank won't help anything.
One more thing: perhaps there are some of you sitting there now saying "this guy's an alarmist! No way will it be this bad". Well, maybe you're right. But think about this: on almost every issue, the scientific community has one outlook and the general public has another. On almost every issue (GM crops and microwave ovens come to mind), the scientists are less alarmed about potential problems than are the public. In the case of global warming, the people who most closely study the situation are the most alarmed, and the public is telling them not to worry. Why is that? It's because the government tells us not to worry about it, without giving one shred of scientific evidence to back themselves up. Well, I'll go with the evidence, and with the scientific community. If that makes me sound alarmist to you, then maybe I am. And maybe you should be alarmed too.
One final thing about this post: I didn't include any links to my source material, since it's all in .pdf files that I got out of journals doing the research for this post. If you're really dubious about any claims I make here, email me and I will either find an online source for you or just send you the .pdf of the paper I used. Comments and questions are welcomed, if you think anything I said was way off base or didn't make sense. But please, don't just call me an ivory tower asshole or tell me I hate America.
UPDATE: Sources have been requested, as a way to make this post more informative. They've now been added, but there still may be claims you'd like to see sources for. If there are, let me know in the comments or email me and I'll put sources in for those too.
Tags: global warming, anthropogenic climate change, drinking water, developing world, atmospheric CO2, global climate, oil companies
posted by The Disgruntled Chemist at
8:32 PM
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