The End of the World

As We Know It

by Jim Redden

or years environmental advocacy groups have been warning that global warming could bring about the end of the world as we know it. Now more objective, less political organizations are beginning to agree that the planet is heating up—threatening all forms of life with hotter, higher oceans and increasingly violent weather. Among other things, temperature-driven climate changes are thought to cause increased occurances of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and other weather-related problems.

On June 23, the Red Cross issued a report stating that the world is headed for a spate of "mega-disasters" caused by a mix of climate changes, environmental damage and population pressures. The forecast was contained in the World Disasters Report 1999, published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. According to the survey, last year's season of natural disasters was the worst on record, causing more damage than ever before—and that this year will be even worse. "Everyone is aware of the environmental problems of global warming and deforestation on the one hand, and the social problems of increasing poverty and growing shanty towns on the other," said federation president Astrid Heiberg.

Late last year, the London Times reported that major insurance companies are circulating a secret map which shows which areas of the world are threatened by global warming. According to the paper's November 9, 1998 issue, the climate disaster map was compiled by scientists and researchers at Munich Re, one of the world's largest re-insurance companies. Much of it was based on information from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and centers such as the Max Planck Institute. The map couples the impact of various climatic events caused by El Niño with those predicted from more atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. "It shows where there is increased risk on top of all the natural hazards. We are fast approaching the situation where some parts of the world are becoming uninsurable," Dr Julian Salt, a disaster assessment expert with the Loss Prevention Council, told the Times. Areas most at risk include islands in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and the Pacific, which could be swamped by rising ocean levels. According to the map, the grain-growing lands of the United States could also be harmed by droughts.

The Red Cross report and the Global Warming map confirm that the following studies and incidents should be considered as components of a serious trend:

• According to the World Metrology Organization, the earth's average surface temperature in 1998 was the highest by far since people began measuring it with thermometers in the mid-19th Century. The organization, an agency of the United Nations, said 1998 is the 20th year in a row in which the globe's surface temperature has been warmer than its recent long-term average, which is the average for 1961 through 1990. Seven of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1990. The average 1998 temperature was 58 degrees Fahrenheit, a full degree warmer than the 1961-1990 average. Although this difference might appear insignificant, the earth today is only 5 to 9 degrees warmer than in the depths of the last ice age—suggesting that even small temperature increases can produce dramatic climate changes.
  

• Much of the increase in the average temperature have occured at night, which can cause serious health problems by disrupting sleep cycles. Many experts say high temperatures over successive nights is a crucial factor in heat-related deaths, such as the heat wave that killed nearly 600 people in Chicago in 1995. "I think these are the types of conditions that will become more frequent and more intense when they do occur," says Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center.
  

• Because the Earth's oceans are warming, coral is dying at an enormous rate around the world. For example, over 80 percent of the coral in parts of the Indian Ocean has already been killed by temperatures which have climbed into the 90's in recent years. This will have a devastating effect on the food chain, according to Thomas Goreau, president of the Global Coral Reef Alliance. Goreau says that many fish feed on worms, crabs, clams, and other organisms that live in coral reefs. "If there is no healthy coral, the fish won't be there," he says. "It has never gotten so hot and for so long. I think we're right up to the limit of what coral can stand." At the same time, once coral dies, the reefs which line many shores may break down, leading to increased erosion.
  

• If the polar icecaps melt, the change in weight could cause the Earth to shift on its axis, changing the seasons and causing massive, widespread devastation. Some scientists believe it happened once before—600 million years in past. when glaciers in what are now the tropics melted, causing the earth to shift approximately 32 degrees on its axis. "Like when you repeatedly push on a swing at the same point in the swing cycle," says James Kasting, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University. "If you give it a little push at the right time the swing goes higher and higher."
  

• Scientists believe that even small increases in the earth's temperature can produce "mega-droughts." Evidence shows that sudden, large-scale droughts hit western North America in the 1300s and 1500s, wiping out crops for 25 years at a time. "These abrupt shifts appear more likely when the climate is changing," said Jonathan Overpeck, a climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "As the Earth warms in the future, we could get sudden, surprising shifts."
  

• On June 25, 1999, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver reported that high-flying clouds of ice crystals were spotted in the sky over Colorado. This is the the first time they've been seen this close to the equator. Such cloud clusters are common to both poles of the Earth during the summer. "This could be a signal that something is happening to our upper atmosphere," Gary Thomas, a professor at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, told The Times. "It could be an indication that we're polluting our atmosphere with greenhouse gases, or it could be part of a natural cycle of long-term trends."
  

• The American Geophysical Union has adopted a policy statement saying that there is a "compelling basis for legitimate public concern" about human-induced climatic change. The group is the most broadly based professional organization in earth and space science in the United States. The statement, issued January 28, is the latest in a long list of pronouncements on global warming over the past two decades by prestigious scientific groups that have reached similar conclusions. An international panel of scientists convened by the United Nations has projected that if emissions are not reduced, the earth's surface temperature will rise by another two to six degrees by the end of the 21st century, producing widespread climatic disruptions. Although most of the world's industrialized nations agreed to a 1997 UN treaty reducing industrial emissions by five percent over the next decade, the Clinton Administration has not yet submitted it to the U.S. Senate for ratification. "The answer always comes back: global warming is a serious problem, and policy-makers have got to figure out what to do about it," said Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, a senior scientists at the Environmental Defense Fund.
  

• The New Year ushered in a wave of severe weather conditions around the world. In the United States, Buffalo, and Chicago were hit with record snowfalls, temperatures in Indiana and Maine dropped to all-time lows, twice the normal amount of rain fell on New York, and a record number of tornadoes were recorded in the nation's midsection.

ome politicians, such as Vice President Al Gore, believe global warming can be stopped by reducing air pollution. That is why they support the international anti-global warming treaty negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, last year. But according to the October 29 issue of USA Today, the treaty isn't going to stop the earth from getting hotter. "The measures in the Kyoto Protocol alone are expected to keep the global temperature only four-tenths of a degree lower than if there were no treaty at all, according to a recent estimate by Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research," the Times reported. "Climate scientists and policy experts say that governments should, at the very least, start thinking harder about how to cope with the havoc global warming would cause."

In fact, the current global warming trend may be part of the earth's normal heating and cooling cycles—cycles which cannot be stopped and which will ultimately destroy much of human civilization. According to a story in the February 16, 1999 issue of The New York Times, there is no such thing as a "normal" climate. Although the earth is currently in the middle of a warming period, more often than not over the last million years it has been locked in the deep cold of ice ages. "Most experts believe the ice will come again, as surely as the earth turns on its axis and revolves around the sun," the paper warned. "It will crush cities, freeze great stretches of northern lands and suck up so much of the world's water that global sea levels will drop by hundreds of feet. In some spots, the Northeast coast will be as much as 100 miles east of where it is now, as it was during the last glaciation. People will survive just as they did then, but the warm, salubrious, all-too-brief interval in which civilazation flourishes will be over. The question is: When?"

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