=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #429
—February 16, 1995—
News and resources for environmental justice.
==========
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
==========
The Back issues and Index are
available here.
The official RACHEL archive is here.
It’s updated constantly.
To subscribe, send E-mail to rachel-
weekly-request@world.std.com
with the single word SUBSCRIBE in the message. It’s
free.
===Previous
Issue==========================================Next
Issue===
GLOBAL WARMING, PART 1: EVIDENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING ACCUMULATES
According to SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, a new report from AT&T Bell
Laboratories shows that “not only has global warming arrived, the
signal should have been obvious years ago.” [1] AT&T engineer
David J. Thompson –a well-known researcher in the field of
signal processing –used a novel approach to analyze climate
change. He examined locations around the world with long
historical records, such as central England where climate records
date back 344 years, to 1651. Among such records, Thompson
examined the dates when the change of seasons occurred. In a
paper presented in December to the American Geophysical Union
(and not yet fully published), Thompson reports that the timing
of the seasons changed slowly –about one day per century –until
1940; since 1940, a “pronounced anomaly in the timing of the
seasons has appeared in Northern Hemisphere records,” says
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.
Thompson’s novel approach allowed him to “sidestep completely the
nasty problem of compiling an accurate global average temperature
from limited historical records,” says SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.
Jeffrey J. Park of Yale University says, “The important result of
[Thompson’s] paper is that the match between this timing shift
[in the change of seasons] and the CO2 increase [in Earth’s
atmosphere] is very good, UNLIKE the match (or lack of it)
between CO2 and the global temperature increase in the last
century. The seasonal shift since 1940 appears to be an
anthropogenic [human-created] signal,” Park says. [2]
CO2 is carbon dioxide, a gas that is increasing steadily in
Earth’s atmosphere, trapping the sun’s energy, and thus –sooner
or later –heating the planet. CO2 is released by the burning of
fossil fuels –oil, natural gas, and coal. The chief scientific
debate over global warming is not WHETHER it will happen, but
WHEN its effects will become undeniably obvious. The scientific
problem is one of detecting the signal (compelling evidence of
greenhouse warming) among all the noise (the natural fluctuations
of weather and climate, including temperature).
In 1990, in 1992, and again in 1994 the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) –made up of 140 scientists from 80
countries –issued reports published by the World Meteorological
Organization and the United Nations stating their consensus
belief that the CO2 buildup in Earth’s atmosphere will lead to an
average global temperature increase of between 2.7 and 8.1
degrees Fahrenheit during the next century. In 1994, the IPCC
reaffirmed its conclusions of 5 years earlier. [3]John Houghton,
a British climate researcher who co-chaired the scientific working
group that produced the IPCC’s 1994 report said, “It is
interesting that in this very uncertain area, over a period of 5
years, the essential story remains the same. There’s been no
evidence that’s come to light to destroy those basic findings.”
In the U.S., the National Academy of Sciences said in 1990, “The
future of the earth’s climate and, perhaps, its inhabitants,
depends on how much concentrations of carbon dioxide [CO2] and
other trace gases are likely to rise.” [4,pg.33] CO2
concentrations in the atmosphere have increased about 25% since
the 18th century, from 280 to 350 ppm [parts per million], and
are steadily climbing. [4,pgs.33,35] The Academy said in 1990
that the “greenhouse effect” –whereby the CO2 in Earth’s
atmosphere acts like the glass covering a greenhouse, trapping
heat energy to produce a warming effect–“explains why gases
produced by human activity will probably cause the earth’s
average temperature to increase within the lifetimes of most
people living today.” [4,pg.63]
Even earlier, in 1989, the editors of SCIENCE magazine had
concluded that global warming is the most serious environmental
problem that humans face. SCIENCE is the official (and
profoundly conservative) voice of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science. “As serious as the problems of acid
rain, toxic waste, and depletion of the ozone layer are, the
greenhouse effect looms over all of them because it poses such
great potential damage to the environment and is by far the most
difficult to solve.” [5] SCIENCE then called for “…a massive
effort to use solar power,” saying, “To develop solar energy
technology to supply large amounts of power… should be a major
priority of our civilization.”
The IPCC’s 1994 report offered new information concerning efforts
to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, such as CO2. In 1992, 155
nations signed a treaty in Rio de Janeiro pledging to stabilize
atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at an unspecified
level. Toward that goal, developed nations agreed in a
nonbinding way to scale back their emissions to 1990 amounts by
the year 2000. The treaty does not say whether countries must cap
their emissions after that time. The wealthy nations produce
about 80% of greenhouse gases.
The 1994 IPCC assessment concludes that the guidelines set in the
Rio treaty will not stop the atmospheric accumulation of
greenhouse gases. To stabilize concentrations at today’s amounts
or even twice those, nations will need to decrease their
emissions to well below 1990 levels, Houghton told SCIENCE
NEWS. [3]
The Clinton administration has done little to bring the U.S. into
compliance with the 1992 treaty. The NEW YORK TIMES reported in
August, 1994, “During his campaign for the Presidency, Bill
Clinton promised to set higher standards for automotive fuel
efficiency, but his Administration has instead favored a largely
voluntary approach, which has done little to reduce automotive
pollution.” [6] Worldwide, automobiles account for 1/3 of all oil
use. [4,pg.49]
The IPCC and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences agree that one
major effect of global warming is likely to be more extreme
weather –longer droughts, worse floods, hotter summers and
colder winters, more and stronger hurricanes, tornadoes and wind
storms. In 1994, the head of the IPCC, Professor Bert Bolin of
Stockholm University, warned that, “Most of the damage due to
climate change is going to be associated with extreme events, not
the smooth global increase of temperature that we call global
warming.” [7]
In the U.S., the winter of 1994 broke low temperature records in
several eastern states. [8] In June 1994, heat records were
broken in the southwestern U.S. when the thermometer hit 120
degrees Fahrenheit. [9] In Europe, 1994 set heat records from the
Netherlands to Hungary and Poland; German Environment Minister
Klaus T pfer said he was afraid the unusual heat signaled a
possible climate change from the greenhouse effect. [10] A heat
wave in Japan set records in Tokyo in 1994, and blistering,
prolonged heat in India in June 1994 killed “thousands of
people,” according to the NEW YORK TIMES. [10]
In early 1995 the NEW YORK TIMES reported that the Earth’s
AVERAGE temperature during 1994 “approached the record high of
almost 60 degrees [Fahrenheit] measured in 1990.” [11] The
all-time record, set in 1990, was 59.85 degrees Fahrenheit; the
1994 average was 59.58, making it the 4th hottest year since
record-keeping began in 1880. During 1991 and 1992, the Earth had
cooled as a result of the June, 1991, eruption of Mount Pinatubo,
a volcano in the Philippines which spread sulphur droplets
throughout the Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of about 12
miles, reducing the sunlight striking the planet, thus driving
down average global temperature by about one degree Fahrenheit.
Now the pre-Pinatubo warming has returned, says the TIMES.
Dr. James E. Hansen, who heads the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New
York told the TIMES in 1995 that he is “more confident than ever”
that there is “a real warming which is not just a chance
fluctuation but is a long term trend, and that trend is due to
the greenhouse effect.” [11,pg.A13] Hansen in 1981 published the
first paper showing that the average temperature of the Earth
had, in fact, increased during the past 100 years, a finding that
is now widely accepted; the CAUSE of that temperature rise is
still in dispute because not all CLIMATOLOGISTS are yet convinced
that the greenhouse effect is causing the observable warming.
However, unlike climatologists, much of the insurance industry is
coming around to the view that extremes of weather are increasing
along with global temperature, and that greenhouse gases (CO2 and
others) are the cause. Munich Re, the world’s largest
re-insurance company (whose business is insuring insurance
companies against catastrophic losses) observed in 1993 that in
the 10-year period 1983-1992 insured losses from natural
disasters were almost 12 times higher than in the decade of the
1960s, even allowing for inflation. Commenting on Munich Re’s
analysis, LLOYD’S LIST INTERNATIONAL (a publication of Lloyd’s,
the London insurance giant) writes, “The convenient theory that
the increase in the size of losses is mainly a reflection of
higher wealth –and consequently, of insured values –in those
countries affected by natural disasters seems to be incorrect.
It is far more likely that other causes, such as climatic
changes, have already taken over as main factors pushing losses
upwards.” [7,pgs.108-109]
In late 1993, Skandia, one of Sweden’s largest insurance
companies, stopped insuring weather-related damages. Ake
Munkhammar, Skandia’s expert on storms and natural catastrophes,
said climatologists have the luxury of delaying their decision as
to whether the bounds of natural variation in the weather have
been exceeded, but insurance companies do not. [7,pg.135] Climate
change could bankrupt the insurance industry, and, without
insurance, civilization as we know it would be impossible. More
next week.
                
                
                
                
    
–Peter Montague
===============
[1] David Schneider, “Global Warming is Still a Hot Topic,”
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN Vol. 272 No. 2 (February 1995), pgs. 13-14.
Descriptor terms: global environmental problems; atmosphere;
carbon dioxide; co2; methane; nitrous oxide; fossil fuels;
global warming; drought; flooding; hurricanes; tornadoes;
storms; wind; insurance; natural disasters; natural
catastrophes; seasonal change; ipcc; intergovernmental panel on
climate change; wmo; unep; national academy of sciences;
greenhouse effect; solar energy; solar power; climate change
treaty; bill clinton; automobiles; james hansen; munich re;
skandia;