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Global Warming Fast Facts
National Geographic News
Global warming, or climate change, is a subject that shows no sign of cooling down.
Here's the lowdown on why it's happening, what's causing it, and how it might change the planet.
Is It Happening?Yes. Earth is already showing many signs of worldwide climate change.
• Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
• The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850.
• The Arctic is feeling the effects the most. Average temperatures in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia have risen at twice the global average, according to the multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report compiled between 2000 and 2004.
• Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completely ice-free summer by 2040 or earlier. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice loss.
• Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting—for example, Montana's Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. In the Northern Hemisphere, thaws also come a week earlier in spring and freezes begin a week later.
• Coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to small changes in water temperature, suffered the worst bleaching—or die-off in response to stress—ever recorded in 1998, with some areas seeing bleach rates of 70 percent. Experts expect these sorts of events to increase in frequency and intensity in the next 50 years as sea temperatures rise.
• An upsurge in the amount of extreme weather events, such as wildfires, heat waves, and strong tropical storms, is also attributed in part to climate change by some experts.
New York Times Global warming and Climate Change Jan 8 2013
Global Warming & Climate Change
Steen UlrikJohannessen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Updated: Jan. 8, 2013
Global warming has become perhaps the most complicated issue facing world leaders. Warnings from the scientific community are becoming louder, as an increasing body of science points to rising dangers from the ongoing buildup of human-related greenhouse gases — produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and forests.
Global emissions of carbon dioxide were at a record high in 2011 and were likely to take a similar jump in 2012, scientists reported in early December 2012 — the latest indication that efforts to limit such emissions are failing.
Over all, global emissions jumped 3 percent in 2011 and are expected to jump another 2.6 percent in 2012, researchers reported.
The new figures show that emissions are falling, slowly, in some of the most advanced countries, including the United States. That apparently reflects a combination of economic weakness, the transfer of some manufacturing to developing countries and conscious efforts to limit emissions, like the renewable power targets that many American states have set. The boom in the natural gas supply from hydraulic fracturing is also a factor, since natural gas is supplanting coal at many power stations, leading to lower emissions.
But the decline of emissions in the developed countries is more than matched by continued growth in developing countries like China and India, the new figures show. Coal, the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, is growing fastest, with coal-related emissions leaping more than 5 percent in 2011, compared with the previous year.
Emissions continue to grow so rapidly that an international goal of limiting the ultimate warming of the planet to 3.6 degrees, established three years ago, is on the verge of becoming unattainable, said researchers affiliated with the Global Carbon Project, a network of scientists that tracks emissions.
Yet nations around the world, despite a formal treaty pledging to limit warming — and 20 years of negotiations aimed at putting it into effect — have shown little appetite for the kinds of controls required to accomplish that goal.
For almost two decades, the United Nations has sponsored annual global talks, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international treaty signed nearly 200 countries to cooperatively discuss global climate change and its impact. The conferences operate on the principle of consensus, meaning that any of the participating nations can hold up an agreement.
The conflicts and controversies discussed are monotonously familiar: the differing obligations of industrialized and developing nations, the question of who will pay to help poor nations adapt, the urgency of protecting tropical forests and the need to rapidly develop and deploy clean energy technology.
2012 Was Hottest Year Ever in U.S.
In January 2013, the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., announced that 2012 was the hottest year ever in the contiguous United States since records began in 1895. The year 2012 brought a blistering March heat wave, a severe drought in the Corn Belt and a massive storm that caused broad devastation in mid-Atlantic states.
The temperature differences between years are usually measured in fractions of a degree, but 2012 blew away the previous record, set in 1998, by a full degree Fahrenheit.
If that does not sound so impressive, consider that 34,008 new daily high records were set at weather stations across the country, compared with only 6,664 new record lows, according to a count maintained by the Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton, using federal temperature records.
That ratio, which was roughly in balance as recently as the 1970s, has been out of whack for decades as the country has warmed, but never by as much as it was in 2012.
Scientists said that natural variability almost certainly played a role in last year’s extreme heat and drought. But many of them expressed doubt that such a striking new record would have been set without the backdrop of global warming caused by the human release of greenhouse gases.
Notice these graphs are very similar both showing an increase in overall temperature. The lines showing trends, that have been added to the graphs, have been placed differently to give an overall different impression to the increasing temperature.
This graph shows the temperature ranges for the last 1000 years. Notice the large spike in temperatures in the last few decades.
The globes above show an increase in temperatures after thirty years. The red color shows higher annual temperatures.
This graph shows that CO2 levels are not directly correlated with temperatures. The rising CO2 levels are only having some effects on temperature changes.
Global Warming A Chilling Perspectives
Global warming alarmists maintain that global temperatures have increased since about A.D. 1860 to the present as the result of the so-called "Industrial Revolution,"-- caused by releases of large amounts of greenhouse gases (principally carbon dioxide) from manmade sources into the atmosphere causing a runaway "Greenhouse Effect."
Was man really responsible for pulling the Earth out of the Little Ice Age with his industrial pollution? If so, this may be one of the greatest unheralded achievements of the Industrial Age!
Unfortunately, we tend to overestimate our actual impact on the planet. In this case the magnitude of the gas emissions involved, even by the most aggressive estimates of atmospheric warming by greenhouse gases, is inadequate to account for the magnitude of temperature increases. So what causes the up and down cycles of global climate change?
Causes of Global Climate Change
Climate change is controlled primarily by cyclical eccentricities inEarth's rotation and orbit, as well as variations in thesun's energy output.
"Greenhouse gases" in Earth's atmosphere also influence Earth's temperature, but in a much smaller way. Human additions to total greenhouse gases play a still smaller role, contributing about 0.2% - 0.3% to Earth's greenhouse effect.
A Matter of Opinion
Has manmade pollution in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases caused a runaway Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming?
Before joining the mantra, consider the following:
Compiled by R.S. Bradley and J.A. Eddy based on J.T. Houghton et al., Climate Change: The IPCC Assessment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990 and published in EarthQuest, vo. 1, 1991. Courtesy of Thomas Crowley, Remembrance of Things Past: Greenhouse Lessons from the Geologic Record / 1. The idea that man-made pollution is responsible for global warming is not supported by historical fact. The period known as the Holocene Maximum is a good example-- so-named because it was the hottest period in human history. The interesting thing is this period occurred approximately 7500 to 4000 years B.P. (before present)-- long before humans invented industrial pollution.
2. CO2 in our atmosphere has been increasing steadily for the last 18,000 years-- long before humans invented smokestacks.Unless you count campfires and intestinal gas, man played no role in the pre-industrial increases.
As illustrated in this chart of Ice Core data from the Soviet Station Vostok in Antarctica, CO2 concentrations in earth's atmosphere move with temperature. Both temperatures and CO2 have been on the increase for 18,000 years. Interestingly, CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not a primary driver of the temperature changes (9).
Incidentally, earth's temperature and CO2 levels today have reached levels similar to a previous interglacial cycle of 120,000 - 140,000 years ago. From beginning to end this cycle lasted about 20,000 years. This is known as the Eemian Interglacial Period and the earth returned to a full-fledged ice age immediately afterward.
3.Total human contributions to greenhouse gases account for only about 0.28% of the "greenhouse effect".Anthropogenic (man-made) carbon dioxide (CO2) comprises about 0.117% of this total, and man-made sources of other gases ( methane, nitrous oxide (NOX), other misc. gases) contributes another 0.163% .
Approximately 99.72% of the "greenhouse effect" is due to natural causes -- mostly water vapor and traces of other gases, which we can do nothing at all about. Eliminating human activity altogether would have little impact on climate change.
4. If global warming is caused by CO2 in the atmosphere then does CO2 also cause increased sun activity too?
This chart adapted after Nigel Calder (6) illustrates that variations in sun activity are generally proportional to both variations in atmospheric CO2 and atmospheric temperature (Figure 3).
Put another way, rising Earth temperatures and increasing CO2 may be "effects" and our own sun the "cause".
FUNFACTS about CARBON DIOXIDE
Of the 186 billion tons of carbon from CO2 that enter earth's atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth's oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.
At 380 parts per million CO2 is a minor constituent of earth's atmosphere-- less than 4/100ths of 1% of all gases present. Compared to former geologic times, earth's current atmosphere is CO2- impoverished.
CO2 is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen as a waste product. Humans and animals breathe oxygen and emit CO2 as a waste product. Carbon dioxide is a nutrient, not a pollutant, and all life-- plants and animals alike-- benefit from more of it. All life on earth is carbon-based and CO2 is an essential ingredient. When plant-growers want to stimulate plant growth, they introduce more carbon dioxide.
CO2 that goes into the atmosphere does not stay there but is continually recycled by terrestrial plant life and earth's oceans-- the great retirement home for most terrestrial carbon dioxide.
If we are in a global warming crisis today, even the most aggressive and costly proposals for limiting industrial carbon dioxide emissions would have a negligible effect on global climate!
Global Warming: Myth vs. Reality
The media is responsible for popularizing the fear that increases in carbon dioxide emissions will lead to a catastrophic upset in the global climate structure. The truth of the situation is: some parts of this new climate pattern are not completely understood and scientists are still researching. There are some myths about Global Warming that have been repeated and magnified so many times by so many people that most people accept them on blind faith without thinking to question them or listen to the other point of view. Here are some of the main myths and assumptions Global Warming followers support and why they are just plain untrue.
Figure 1:
Myth: The Ozone Layer is in serious danger
Although the hole in the Ozone Layer directly above Antarctica is extremely large, the whole layer is not falling apart. While the hole above Antarctica has been growing larger during the past couple of years, the ozone concentration has held pretty constant and the rest of the layer around the Earth has been building up. While it is necessary to make sure that our planet is protected under an adequate coat of ozone, we have some time to help it to continue to mend and our atmosphere is heading in the right direction for a complete ozone restoration.1
Myth: CO2 causes climate change
Many Americans take for granted the idea that an increase in carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is what leads to an increase in Earth’s temperature. In fact, that is only a theory. Professor ZbigniewJaworowski, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw, Poland published his research that found that a change in Earth’s temperature would have more to do with cloud cover and water vapor than carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. He “points out that cloudiness and water vapour [sic] are nearly a hundred times more influential on global temperature variations than all the rest of the greenhouse gases combined. He suggests for example, that if it were possible to double the global CO2 concentration, the effect could be cancelled out by a 1% increase in cloudiness.”2
Many scientists believe that changes in solar irradiance are what cause the changes in average global temperature from year to year.3
Figure 2:
As you can see in Figure 2, solar irradiance is closely related to Earth’s surface temperature which leads many scientists to believe that when the sun’s radiation increases or decreases from one year to the next, the Earth’s temperature responds respectively.
Myth: All scientists agree with the media on the subject of Global Warming
This is very untrue. In fact, there have been three famous petitions by scientists trying to tell the world that the media’s portrayal of Global Warming is false. These three are the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992 from Germany with 4000 signatures, the Leipzig Declaration in 1996, from Germany again with 110 signatures and the Oregon Petition Project from California, USA with 17,000 signatures from concerned scientists from around the world.2
A survey conducted by Greenpeace found that only 13% of scientists asked believed that the continuation of current levels of energy usage will result in catastrophic changes in climate. A poll conducted within the Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society concluded that 17% of members believe greenhouse gas emissions caused the increase in global temperature.4
Myth: Most people support the Kyoto Protocol
By 2004, seven years after the Kyoto conference that gave birth to the Kyoto Protocol was held, only 15% of countries that considered the protocol actually started using it. Even though our friends in the media were claiming that all of the countries in the world held a consensus and were unified in their fight behind the Kyoto Protocol; that just wasn’t true. Out of the 210 countries that adopted the Kyoto Protocol, only 32 actually ratified it. That means 85% of countries that signed this set of restrictions rejected them, as of 2004. In May of 2004, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the country’s most prestigious technical institute, published a report concluding that the Kyoto Protocol has no scientific grounding at all.2
Myth: The Earth cannot withstand higher levels of CO2
Increasing amounts of carbon dioxide is actually an amazingly good thing for the environment. A lot of research shows that increased levels of carbon dioxide “accelerate the growth rates of plants and also permit plants to grow in drier regions”5 Since 1950, there are 30% more trees available to make timber and, currently, there is about 60 tons of timber for every American. Also, “mature Amazonian rain forests are increasing in biomass at about two tons per acre per year; and a composite of 279 research studies predicts that overall plant growth rates will ultimately double as carbon dioxideincreases.”
Polar Bears Victims of Inaction on Global Warming
Posted on 14 May 2002
The report Polar Bears at Risk reviews the threats faced by the world's 22,000 polar bears and highlights that climate change is the number one long-term threat to the survival of the world's largest terrestrial carnivores. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said that climate change in the polar region is expected to be the greatest of anywhere on Earth. The WWF report finds that there is evidence that global warming is already affecting the condition of polar bears in Hudson Bay. Canada - home to 60 per cent of all the world's polar bears - is one of the leading global warming polluters currently dithering on ratifying the Kyoto climate treaty.
"The WWF report shows that polar bears in Hudson Bay are being impacted by climate change," said Lynn Rosentrater, co-author of the report and Climate Change Officer at WWF's Arctic Programme. "As sea ice is being reduced in the area, the polar bear's basis for survival is being threatened," said John Laird, WWF's Nunavut regional conservation director. "The sea ice is melting earlier in the spring which is sending the polar bears to land earlier without them having developed as much fat reserves for the ice free season. By the end of the summer they are skinny bears, which in the worst case can affect their ability to reproduce."
Increasing global warming pollution has caused Arctic temperatures to rise by 5°Celsius over the past 100 years, and the extent of sea ice has decreased by six percent over the past 20 years. Scientists now predict a 60 percent loss of summer sea ice by around 2050, which would more than double the summer ice-free season from 60 to 150 days. Sea ice is critical to polar bears' survival as it is the platform from which they hunt their primary prey, ringed seals and bearded seals. Longer ice-free periods limit the time the bears have on the ice to hunt, and in some areas means that they have fewer fat resources to survive on land during the longer summer season. In addition, lower body weight reduces female bears' ability to lactate, leading to greater mortality among cubs.
The rapid pace of change in the Arctic means there is no time to lose in reducing global warming pollution. Currently, the Kyoto climate treaty is the world's only defence against this problem. Its target of reducing global warming gases from industrialised nations by 5 per cent in the coming decade is the bare minimum if there is to be any chance of halting global warming this century. Though the European Union, Russia and Japan are now moving towards ratification, Canada urgently needs to ratify in time for August's World Summit on Sustainable Development to ensure that the Kyoto treaty becomes international law.
"Arctic nations that are home to most of the world's polar bears should be leading the charge against global warming," said Jennifer Morgan, Director of WWF's Climate Change Programme. "Instead, Canada, Russia and the United States - the largest global warming polluters - are in the camp of those slowest to act on global warming. It is imperative that they all ratify the Kyoto Climate Treaty as soon as possible."
The impacts of global warming come on top of problems that polar bears face from hunting, toxic pollution and future oil developments in the Arctic. In some areas, research on polar bears shows a link between high contaminant levels and reduced immune system function