Climatologist gives in-depth global warming talk
Dr. Michael Mann speaks Wednesday at Washington & Jefferson College.
Proxy data such as tree rings and ice cores from the Arctic affirm multiple disciplines’ findings on climate change, and the dire warnings of the “hockey stick” spike in average temperatures over the past century.
The “Hockey League” graph shows 12 independent reconstructions of historical global temperatures. Climatologist Dr. Michael Mann said while the particular points differ in the past, they still show consensus on the “hockey stick” surge in global temperatures in recent years.
Climatologist Dr. Michael Mann said there are many “geo-engineering” proposals to curb the effects of climate change by way of removing or trapping carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, but only one that he believes is viable with present and near-future technology: synthetic “super trees” that remove carbon dioxide at a faster rate than natural-growing trees.
Last year was the warmest year on record, as was 2014 before its record was shattered. Penn State professor of atmospheric science and published climatologist Dr. Michael Mann said 2016 is setting up as the next record-setting year since bookkeeping began in 1880.
Mann’s talk at Washington & Jefferson College Wednesday highlighted that the scientific debate over whether human-caused climate change is happening ended, and political and policy debates about what to do are the next step.
“Human-caused climate change is arguably the greatest threat to human civilization and habitability of the planet,” Mann said.
For the first time, the planet breached a 3.5-degree Fahrenheit increase in average temperatures during February and March. That is a “dangerous threshold,” Mann said, that shows how close the planet is to permanently crossing it.
“I believe that permanent crossover is in two decades, a fixed move above a threshold that will exacerbate coastal flooding, droughts and disrupt the jet stream in the oceans,” Mann said. According to climate models, if current fossil fuel consumption habits continue through the end of the century, the planet will see a 7 to 9 degree increase in average temperatures.
“Understanding and addressing climate change is the biggest challenge of our time,” said Dr. Robert East, director of the Environmental Studies department at W&J, which co-hosted Mann along with the college’s Center for Energy & Policy Management.
“The topic cross-cuts various disciplines of the liberal arts, and it’s part of our college’s mission to graduate people who understand these issues and are equipped to address them,” East said, “but scientists must also be more engaged with the public in communicating complex issues like climate change … data from climate modeling are so easily cherry-picked for convenient and sometimes misleading messaging.”
But public apathy doesn’t match the dire warnings scientists have been forecasting for decades. Generally, more pleasant weather over the past 40 years has Americans shrugging off climate change as a major policy issue, according to the Associated Press and a new study in the journal “Nature.” Yet, going coatless in December will soon make way for regularly scorching hot summers and hyperactive weather systems, according to the research led by New York University professor Patrick Egan.
The so-called poster child of climate change – the polar bear – is a misplaced mascot, Mann said, because the scope and reach of climate change is beyond the arctic – even if a majority of the problems start there. Sea ice is melting faster year over year than climate models predicted. There’s no longer any ice stored in the arctic polar cap, just seasonal ice that freezes and melts every year. And that’s disrupting the oceans’ jet streams, the pulse of the planet’s hydrological cycle.
“With the polar bear imagery stranded on a melting ice floe we’ve made it this exotic, far-off problem. We’re seeing the effects of this already. That’s unusual trajectories and severity of hurricanes, like Sandy, which made a beeline for New York. In 2011, Texas had the worse drought on record. California is going off into a new normal with drought. And we’re experiencing record flooding in the Gulf coast now,” Mann said, “and previously record-level heat will soon be a normal summer day.”
Sea rise will endanger coastal states and their populations. A foot in sea rise leads to an additional 25 feet of coastal flooding. “By the end of this century, we’re on track to see six feet in sea level rise. If one foot could do that kind of flooding, imagine what six feet could do,” Mann said.
The politicization of climate science has been frustrating, Mann said, but he’s encouraged by past precedent of conservative politicians conceding to science despite monied influence from fossil fuel companies.
There’s no magic bullet, but a list of futurism-inspired “geo-engineering” solutions are feasible, Mann said, including pumping liquid carbon dioxide deep beneath the earth’s surface. But a lot of these options are expensive, or have a dangerous potential to backfire – like an earthquake releasing trapped CO2.
Incentivizing green living and entrepreneurial innovation are the keys to reducing carbon – and methane, a more potent greenhouse gas – production and release into the atmosphere. And those are elements in conservative ideology, Mann said, that could again contribute to the political debate on what to do about climate change.
“There is value in that mindset. The free market investigation and profit of these ideas to solve this problem are part of this. But there is not a worthy debate about if this problem is happening; it’s what do we do about it,” Mann said.
The political roadblocks are apparent, Mann said, when leaders like U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Chairman Senator Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., made light of the issue by throwing a snowball during a Senate hearing. Inhofe said in a 2012 interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that he actually believed in global warming and “that it must be true, until (he) found out what it cost.”
“This next national election may be the cliff for the Republican party to go over and let moderates like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who want to do something, to speak out. But right now it’s dangerous to their political futures to even talk about it because there’s been various primary challenges put up by fossil interests as a warning: If you’re not on board with them, you’ll be forced out,” Mann said.