=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #430
—February 23, 1995—
News and resources for environmental justice.
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GLOBAL WARMING, PART 2: HUMAN CONSEQUENCES OF GLOBAL WARMING
As we saw last week, the worldwide scientific community has
reached consensus that global warming is inevitable if humans
continue to dump “greenhouse gases” into the atmosphere at
anything like present rates. Greenhouse gases include carbon
dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and a
few others. These gases act like the glass covering a
greenhouse, letting sunlight in but stopping heat from escaping,
thus driving up the average temperature of our earthly
“greenhouse” sooner or later. The main contributor to the
greenhouse effect is naturally-occurring water vapor, which keeps
the planet’s thermostat set at a pleasant 59 degrees or so
(Fahrenheit), average. But the main HUMAN contribution to
greenhouse warming is carbon dioxide, which is released whenever
fossil fuels are burned; fossil fuels include oil, natural gas
and coal. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have been
rising relentlessly for a century.
Global warming is one of those problems that “the market” cannot
fix. In fact, as we will see, “the market” will only make the
problem worse; the insurance industry is coming to believe that
global warming is causing increased numbers of huge storms,
floods, and droughts, and the industry is already reacting to
this belief by increasing premiums, and by canceling insurance
policies in certain storm-prone areas (the Caribbean and Florida,
for example).
The oil and coal corporations have little or no incentive to help
the world change over to energy sources that will avoid global
warming, such as solar power using hydrogen as a storage medium.
On the contrary, oil and coal companies are in business to do one
thing: sell oil and coal. Indeed, their corporate charters allow
them to do little else. Because the automobile industry is
presently oil-based, and because automobiles are critical to the
steel, glass, rubber and concrete industries, together the oil
corporations and their allies create a political mountain that
has, so far, proven impossible to move.
What are the effects we might expect as global warming comes upon
us? Recently, a catalog of global-warming-related events has been
published. Organized chronologically, starting in 1990, the
catalog consists of short paragraphs, written in an evenhanded
style, describing new scientific studies, new government reports,
important speeches (by insurance executives, for example), and
news reports (of floods, typhoons, etc.). Although no single
piece of information in the catalog, taken alone, is sufficient
to persuade anyone that global warming is occurring and that it
has real consequences, all together the information in this
150-page catalog is impressive and persuasive. Jeremy Leggett and
his co-editors have provided an important public service. [1]
As any reader of this catalog will see, there is abundant
evidence that warming is occurring planet-wide, as well as in
particular regions. According to the consensus statement by
scientists from 80 countries published in 1990, the polar regions
should see more rapid warming than other regions. [2] That is
what seems to be happening. For example, in late 1993 the U.S.
Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center reported that
scientists from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration) find that surface temperatures at 9 stations
north of the Arctic circle have increased by about 5.5 degrees
Celsius (C) (9.9 degrees Fahrenheit (F)) since 1968, increasing
at an average rate of 0.24 degrees C (0.43 deg. F) each year.
Measurements at a station in Alaska confirmed the trend. [3]
During 1994, a series of boreholes in the ground in Alaska
revealed that the temperature of the soil has increased 2 to 5
degrees C (3.6 to 9 degrees F) during this century. Tree ring
data from the Canadian arctic show a 3 deg. C (5.4 deg. F) rise
in temperature this century. [4]
The British Antarctic Survey in 1994 reported that air
temperatures at the British Faraday Base on the Antarctic
Peninsula have increased 0.5 degrees C (0.9 degrees F) each
decade since 1947. These are the fastest temperature changes
recorded since the British began making such measurements 130
years ago. [5]
In 1994, a Swiss study of the length of 48 valley glaciers, over
the period 1850 to 1990, revealed that all 48 glaciers have
diminished in length by 0.86 to 1.3 meters per year. [6] The
glaciers on Mount Kenya (in Kenya) receded 40% between 1963 and
1987. [7]
None of these reports, by itself, is persuasive; but combined
with several hundred others, a picture emerges of a planet that
is feeling the effects of warming –many of them bad. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 1990
report and a series of subsequent reports, has given the basic
outlines of what we should expect: greater extremes of weather
(more and stronger storms; longer and drier droughts; heavier
rains and increased numbers of larger, more costly floods). We
should also expect altered patterns of climate and weather –less
rainfall in the interior of continents; less snowfall, and so
forth. We should also expect the seas to rise a few inches,
first because seawater will expand as it gets warmer, and
secondly because ice will flow off the land and melt.
Some aspects of global warming are not often discussed. For
example, the secondary consequences of heat waves, droughts, and
storms. In Papua, New Guinea in 1994, flooding brought the
threat of influenza, malaria and dysentery in the affected human
population. [8] In the midwestern U.S. in the summer of 1993,
some of the people rebuilding their homes after the flood
reported that they and their neighbors had come down with
meningitis and hepatitis A. [9] That Mississippi flood had other
unexpected consequences; according to U.S. Geological Survey
(USGS), tremendous quantities of herbicides washed off the land
and into the river. [10] At the height of the flood, according to
USGS, the river was carrying 12,000 pounds of atrazine per day
past Thebes, Illinois, where the agency took measurements.
Atrazine is an herbicide that interferes with the endocrine
system in wildlife and humans. [11] In addition to atrazine, the
river was carrying other agricultural poisons in
higher-than-normal concentrations: cyanazine, alachlor, and
metolachlor. Furthermore, dozens of “Superfund” chemical waste
dumps were flooded in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, adding
to the toxic soup carried downstream. [12] At the outflow of the
Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico, a “dead zone” developed over
6000 square miles, a “fishing wasteland” where fish and other sea
life could not survive because of sewage, urban runoff, and
agricultural poisons. [13]
Unusual weather brings many unexpected side-effects. In
Australia in 1993 and again in 1994, mild winter weather extended
the breeding season for rodents and insects; then a wet summer
and a long, mild autumn increased the food supply for these
pests. In July, 1993, mice ravaged crops in south Australia,
costing farmers $100 million; [14]in the worst-hit areas, there
were more than 100 mice per square meter. [15](A square meter is
approximately a square yard.) Furthermore, the combination of
drought, high temperatures, and mice loosened the soils over a
large area, allowing winds to strip off 20 to 30 million tons of
valuable topsoil and move it out to sea. [16] In 1994, Zimbabwe
suffered a plague of rodents and insects because their natural
predators (snakes, frogs, small birds and owls) had been killed
off by drought. [17] Drought affects human health as well. In
New Zealand, as a long drought worsened in 1994, authorities made
preparations for managing epidemics of hepatitis A, diarrhea, and
cholera. [18]
The World Health Organization (WHO) has suggested that many
diseases will increase as the earth’s average temperature
increases, mainly because disease vectors (carriers) such as
mosquitoes and rats will thrive in warmer temperatures. Malaria,
schistosomiasis (bilharzia), and dengue fever are likely to
increase, says WHO. Elephantiasis, onchocerciasis (river
blindness) , African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), yellow
fever, and Japanese encephalitis are also likely to increase,
says WHO. [19]
The IPCC in 1994 estimated that global warming is likely to have
its severest impacts on humans by diminishing agricultural output
and making food scarce. Shifting climatic zones northward will
increase the arid zones and thus diminish the land available for
crops. Rising seas will cover much good farmland, further
reducing available croplands. Increased numbers of pests
(rodents and insects) will take a greater toll than at present.
In sum, said the IPCC. “it is likely to be an enormously
difficult task for [hu]mankind, not only to limit climate change
to a tolerable level, but also to simultaneously achieve
sufficient food production for a still rising world
population.” [20]
And we face these deteriorating prospects, world-wide, chiefly so
that the oil and coal companies can report acceptable quarterly
profits to their shareholders.
                
                
                
                
    
–Peter Montague
===============
[1] Jeremy Leggett, editor, THE CLIMATE TIME BOMB; SIGNS OF
CLIMATE CHANGE FROM THE GREENPEACE DATABASE (Amsterdam,
Netherlands: Stichting Greenpeace Council, 1994), pg. 154.
Hereafter cited as TIME BOMB. This extraordinarily useful volume
is available for $25.00 from: Greenpeace, 1436 U Street, N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20009; phone (202) 319-4444. To request
information about a semiannual update to this volume, send e-mail
to lyn.goldsworthy@green2.dat.de, or send regular mail to The
Climate Impacts Unit, Greenpeace International, P.O. Box 800,
Surry Hills, New South Wales 2010, Australia. Leggett is one of
the scientists who make up the IPCC; see note 2, below.
[3] Quoted in Leggett, cited above, pg. 136.
[5] Jeremy Leggett, UPDATE, cited above, pg. 11, citing a Reuters
wire service story June 24, 1994.
[8] Jeremy Leggett, UPDATE, cited above, pg. 10.
[12] “Midwest toxic sites at risk,” ENGINEERING NEWS RECORD
August 2, 1993, pg. 11.
[14] Jeremy Leggett, UPDATE, cited above, pg. 4.
[15] Jeremy Leggett, TIME BOMB, cited above, pg. 115.
[16] Jeremy Leggett, UPDATE, cited above, pg. 10.
[17] Jeremy Leggett, TIME BOMB, cited above, pg. 156.
[18] Jeremy Leggett, UPDATE, cited above, pg. 11.
[20] Jeremy Leggett, UPDATE, cited above, pg. 8.
Descriptor terms: carbon dioxide; methane; cfcs;
chlorofluorocarbons; greenhouse effects; atmosphere; air
pollution; global environmental problems; global warming; fossil
fuels; oil; natural gas; coal; storms; floods; droughts;
insurance; solar power; drought; hydrogen; automobile industry;
steel; glass; rubber; concrete; arctic; antarctic; glaciers;
weather; climate change; sea rise; oceans; new guinea; usgs; us
geological survey; atrazine; pesticides; herbicides; mississippi
river; gulf of mexico; australia; superfund; zimbabwe; new
zealand; who; world health organization; agriculture; pests;
rodents; insects;