Sustainable Societies
Climate
Climate includes variables such as temperature, precipitation, wind, and humidity. Climate change is the significant long-term shift in the scientific measures of those variables.
Global warming and climate change are often used interchangeably, but there is an important distinction. Global warming is the temperature part of the larger phenomena of climate change. Fifty climatic variables make up climate change.
Anthropogenic global warming refers to a long-term rise in atmospheric and near-surface temperatures due largely to burning fossil fuels, releasing C02 into the atmosphere. The C02 increase creates the greenhouse effect, trapping heat and triggering a larger series of atmospheric changes. Greater warming in Polar Regions, and increasingly unpredictable precipitation patterns, will destabilize the water cycle -- creating sea level rise, coastal and inland flooding, and drought. These disruptions create conditions where water stresses, food scarcity, airborne disease, habitat and species extinctions, and many other negative impacts become more likely.
Some climate change impacts include:
- Atmospheric disturbances, such as unpredictable and violent weather patterns, are increasing. Drought and deluge will alternatively create havoc, often in the same locale.
- Regional and urban air pollution, whose sources also cause climate change, are creating environmental and public health problems. Eastern North America, Europe and -- increasingly -- East Asia are experiencing acid rain, resulting in fish kills, forest damage and architectural degradation. Many urban environments face dangerous levels of air pollution, accompanied by cardiovascular and pulmonary problems, asthma, cystic fibrosis, and cancer. Urban air pollution’s impact varies depending upon topography, climate, and human activity.
- Aquatic manifestations include Arctic sea ice loss, sea-level rise, coral bleaching and ocean acidification. By 2100, a one-meter sea level rise is projected, with serious consequences for tens of millions of coastal residents worldwide. Less conservative estimates put that rise much higher. Major coastal dislocations of populations would occur, creating disruptive internal migrations. Some island nations, such as the Maldives, would cease to exist.
- Terrestrial effects will have worldwide impact. Mountain glacier melt will destroy ecosystems and create water stresses on large populations. Agricultural growing zones will be degraded by desertification and water stresses. Wide areas of Africa, Central Asia, Australia, and the Western United States are particularly vulnerable.
Climate change is rearranging the habitable and arable zones of the planet. While changes can occur from natural causes like sunspots and volcanic activity, they are usually cyclical, regional and short-lived. Global climate change represents a profound worldwide shift in meteorological norms, and an overwhelming scientific consensus points to carbon emission as the root cause. Proposed goals to limit global temperature rise to less than two degrees Celsius are quickly becoming unreachable, and discussion and action must turn to carbon mitigation, plus climate adaption strategies.
Immediate economic concerns, the gradual nature of the threat, and deliberate misinformation campaigns by carbon-based industries have resulted in enough public confusion or skepticism to allow decision makers who doubt or deny climate science enough political capital to block needed actions. However, when climate degradation events reopen the policy agenda window, actions must be taken quickly to incentivize economy-wide shifts away from carbon wherever possible.
Carbon mitigation efforts must include mass deployment of clean technologies such as solar and wind. Carbon scrubber, capture, and sequestration efforts should be funded and deployed. Other adaptive strategies must include agricultural biotechnology to resist drought, increased irrigation networks, water desalinization, rainwater storage, and glacial lake damming. Reengineering and research into possible large-scale efforts to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere should be given priority, support and urgency.