i have grown tied of the lies claiming there is a "Global Warming Debate". There is no debate. It is known science. The scientists who study this, however, regularly have their characters attacked by the greedy who have much to lose from a move away from fossil fuels. i cannot assume that all Americans are scientifically literate and news outlets can no longer be trusted to dispense information as they are more interested in entertainment as of late. For that reason i offer the following post, an attempt to share my scientific knowledge in a language intended for an audience of varying scientific knowledge.
The Earth is warming up. As the average temperature of our planet continues to increase the signs of this change are becoming harder and harder to ignore. Too frequently we see the suffering of our fellow human beings yet are able to detach ourselves from the horror as we watch safely on our couches and read in the safety of our homes. But these troubles are lurking ever closer to our doorstep and we are surrounded by the calling cards of Climate Change.
Are these natural disasters actually traceable back to our Earth's warming? Indeed, and the concepts are not difficult to understand. First, let us look at our Earth's temperature. When you go to the doctor's office, after they have taken your weight, blood pressure, and pulse they take your temperature. Your core body temperature is an extremely important piece of information in assessing your overall health and it is the same for the Earth.
The temperature the doctor is looking to assess is your body's core temperature. The temperature of your fingers, toes, and nose vary greatly depending on many factors but your body's core temperature should remain relatively constant: 98.6 degrees F. An increase or decrease of that temperature by just a few degrees puts your health and survival in danger.
Our planet too has a temperature. Although the temperature outside your home may fluctuate dramatically throughout the day and throughout the year (as your finger's temperature does with your body) the Earth itself has an average temperature. Much like with your body's temperature, a change in the Earth's average temperature in either direction puts humankind's health and survival in danger.
In the last few decades we have seen the Earth's temperature increase. We are all quite aware of the symptoms of own body's fever when we get sick but what are the symptoms when our planet develops a "fever"?
A majority of the Earth's surface is covered with water so let us look at the effects of heating on water. In order to clarify some of these ideas let us envision a more day to day example. To prepare for the big game tomorrow i think we need to make ourselves a spaghetti dinner. The first step to preparing our dinner is filling a pot with water and putting it on the stove. What happens as we heat the water? It starts to turn into a vapor (boil).
On a planetary level the heating is causing an increase in the rate of evaporation (liquid turning to vapor). This means very different things depending on where you are. As our planet is mostly covered with water this increase in evaporation has resulted in their currently being about four percent more moisture in the atmosphere compared to the "average" we are used to. So what does that increase in moisture in the air mean? More precipitation.
Now let us return to our spaghetti. More heat added to our pot of water for a longer duration of time results in more steam filling our kitchen. Thankfully most of us have vents over our stoves we can turn on to keep our windows from fogging up. That fog on the windows is the water vapor condensing back into its liquid form as it cools on the window. In our atmosphere, the evaporated water cools as it rises and we get clouds. As more water is put into clouds, more water falls back to Earth (eventually).
If it is below freezing as these clouds release their moisture we of course get snow. This past winter we saw exactly that. Record breaking snow events and more states experiencing the white stuff, as there was more moisture in the air to go around. As the temperatures rose and we moved out of winter all that excess moisture was still being put in and transported through our atmosphere. The larger and more moisture rich spring storms resulted in some of the worst flooding seen in the Mississippi watershed.
Increased evaporation over the oceans and large water sources is one thing but what about the increased evaporation's effect on land? Let us jump ahead a few steps of our dinner preparation and say we have cooked the pasta and have now strained it and returned our ready to eat spaghetti to the pot. From time to time i accidentally forget to turn off the stove before i go over to the sink to drain the water. My occasional mistake, however, works well here for our environmental discussion.
If like me you have ever returned your pot of drained pasta to a still heating element you have seen what that heat does to the moisture rich starchy strands. Just as that spaghetti dries out (and sticks to the pot making a mess to clean up) our planet's soil dries out with the additional heat and evaporation.
Many of those parts of our country that are not inundated with water from flooding are experiencing record droughts. The increased evaporation is drying out the soil and shrinking local water sources. Heavily wooded areas experiencing these dry conditions create a very dangerous situation. This year we have witnessed record wild fires across many parts of the country. The increase in evaporation rate has meant extremely different thing to different areas but the net result has not been pleasant for most regions.
Now i have been using the United States in my examples because that is where i live and because historically we have been the largest contributors of air pollution (hence making us the most responsible for our current conditions). These floods and droughts however, have been occurring all over the planet.
So far i have just been talking about the vaporization of water but what about the water not evaporating? Back to the beginning of our dinner making adventure, let us think about the water before it boiled. When you are hungry and ready to eat, the time it takes for the water to boil can seem like an eternity. What is happening in our painfully slow pot is the water absorbing the energy of the heat from the stove as it raises in temperature. Think about all the energy that the water in our pot needs before it can warm even a few degrees.
Now imagine that out spaghetti pot is the size of the Gulf of Mexico. The water in the gulf is two degrees warmer than "normal". The energy needed to raise its temperature even that subtle amount is quite large. All that energy is stored right there in the gulf, in that large amount of water.
A quick, oversimplified summation of what causes tornadoes in the Midwestern United States is a convergence of cooler air coming down from Canada, warmer moist air coming from off the Gulf of Mexico, and the weather patterns sweeping across our country in a general west to east pattern during the spring months. All that extra energy currently stored up in the now warmer gulf waters makes a more dramatic difference in this weather convergence. We have seen just that with this year's horrific tornado season.
As you move away from spring tropical storms start to form in the warmer oceans waters of the summer. After we all witnessed Katrina i feel no need to explain the effect that the warmer gulf waters have on hurricanes passing over them. We all unfortunately learned that science lesson a few years ago.
With this knot in my stomach i no longer feel like eating the imaginary spaghetti we have been cooking. Although our example dinner may be imaginary the fact that our planet is warming is NOT imaginary.
The fact that the Earth's temperature is rising should not raise questions of validity as we have all taken our own temperatures when sick and should understand that temperature measurement is not some complex and difficult scientific achievement. The effects of our planet's warming should not raise questions of validity as we have all heated water up and should understand that the effects of heating water and evaporation are not some difficult and poorly understood scientific concept. There is no debate, this is what is happening. It is not some far off future, it has already begun.
There is no longer room for you to pretend it does not exist. You cannot put your fingers in your ears and hum away because it is not happening somewhere else, it is happening here in your country. The solutions have all been presented to you. If you need a refresher a simple Internet search will lead you to infinite options (a review of some of my previous entries would work as well).
So what are you going to do about it?
