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Scientists view climate change as all-too-real global threat
By BRIAN HELMUTH
Published on: 01/06/05
With hurricane season now officially over, those of us in the southeastern United States can
breathe a little more easily. But allow me to walk you through the following scenario.
Imagine that a major hurricane has been reported off the coast, and the National Hurricane Center
has calculated that there is a 90 percent probability that it will strike somewhere near Savannah.
There is an 85 percent chance that the storm will be at least category 3 (winds of 111 mph), and a
65 percent risk that the storm will strike as a catastrophic category 5. The amount of damage and
loss of life depend strongly on how decisively we act. What should our response be?
Should we:
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• Recognize that a major storm is almost certain to make
landfall, and figure out how best to minimize the ensuing
damage?
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• Criticize the science of hurricane prediction because there
is "only" a 90 percent chance that the storm will make
landfall, and if it does, the scientists apparently can't make
up their minds just how strong it will be.
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Brian Helmuth is an associate
professor of marine science at the
University of South Carolina.
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• Accuse the National Hurricane Center of "fear mongering" as
a method of garnering funding, or wait and see what happens
when the storm strikes before responding because
evacuation would reduce tourism dollars?
Most of us, I'd venture, would view the first option as the only
sensible course of action. Even if a response comes at
some expense, we should do everything in our power to
avoid the damage that such a monster can cause, because
in the long run ignoring the storm would be far more costly.
I pose this seemingly farfetched question because the latter
three options have all been proposed as appropriate
responses to global climate change, even though ignoring
global warming is certainly no less catastrophic than
ignoring a major hurricane.
Among the scientific community, there is broad consensus
that climate change is already occurring, and (with a
confidence level of about 90 percent) that humans are
contributing to this process through the production of
greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, largely by
burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Every major
relevant scientific society has acknowledged the validity of
these theories.
Climate change scientists predict that average global air
temperature will increase anywhere from 2.5 to 10 degrees F
within 100 years. To place this into context, the average air
temperature during the last ice age was about 9 degrees F
colder than today. Importantly, the temperature increase will
depend largely on carbon dioxide emission levels.
Thus, while the precise magnitude of global warming still
remains to be seen, the fact that our climate is already
showing signs of change, and will continue to do so, is not in
doubt. Nor is the fact that these changes will have major
consequences: a warmer world will affect crop yields,
increase the prevalence of many diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, and increase the
frequency and severity of hurricanes.
In the last decade alone, more than 25 percent of coral reefs have sustained significant damage
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http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0105/06warming.html
from elevated water temperatures and disease, and entire island nations are poised to be
swallowed by rising sea levels. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment recently released by
scientists from eight nations noted that winter temperatures in parts of the Arctic have risen by up
to 7 degrees F, melting large sections of ice. This is not a storm to be ignored.
Scientists do not make predictions of the impacts of climate change to garner funding, or to create
support for environmental causes, as posited by Michael Crichton in his new novel, "State of Fear."
We make them because the data all point to major changes on the horizon, and because we would
be remiss not to tell the public about the coming crisis.
The only way to address this problem is to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
immediately and permanently. We need to support bipartisan legislation (the Climate Stewardship
Act) that calls for reductions in greenhouse gases by large companies. An analysis by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that the annual cost of this legislation would be
approximately $20 per household, not exactly the end of the American economy.
Will climate change occur as rapidly as in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow?" Of course not. Our
planet's climate is like an enormous ship, and it has taken many years for us to turn its course
through the burning of fossil fuels.
But solutions to climate change take time as well, and the longer we wait to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions, the more difficult the problem becomes to correct. This is not a crisis we can afford
to ignore.
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