The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth – Review
CO2 is responsible for about eighty per cents of global warming; methane (another fifteen per cents nitrous oxides, and CFC gases are also culprits. Power plants are the best source of man-made CO2 (forty one per cents), quickly followed by oil (thirty nine per cents), and gas (twenty per cents). CO2 levels in the atmosphere were about 280 parts per million (ppm) prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution; now they are at 380. Doubling these levels has the potential to heat our planet by about 5 degrees F, maybe even 10 degrees – levels that are generally considered the limit of harmless change. “The Weather Makers” explains why this is far more serious than a problem of slightly warmer weather. It is no simple coincidence that over the past decade the world has suffered destructive hurricanes, the hottest European summer (killed 26,000 in two months), rapid slowly melting and part of glaciers and ice caps, and long droughts over larger areas. Flannery also points out that global warming originally started by these gases feeds on itself, and thus could swiftly overwhelm the earth. For example, ice/snow show up to 80-eighty per cents of sunlight, vs. five per cents for water – thus, melting icecaps also add to global warming. Meanwhile, while oceans have eventually absorbed nearly half of all carbon produced by humans from 1800-1994 (there are 50 molecules of CO2 in the ocean for every one in the atmosphere), their ability to do so decreases as temperature rises – in fact it has significantly decreased about ten per cents from the 1980’s to the 1990’s. Further, it takes the surface about 30 years to absorb heat from the atmosphere – thus, today’s oceans still just bear the effect of the 1970’s atmosphere. Finally, the atmosphere’s ability to hold water doubles with every 14 degree increase, creating storms and flooding more and more damaging. Flannery posits three possible “tipping points” caused by global warming. 1)The Gulf Stream breaks functioning as a effect of significantly decreased salinity in the North usually caused by slowly melting glacial ice – this results in a 5-7 degree cooler Europe and Eastern U.S., and a dryer/hotter Africa. 2)The Amazon forest fails off, due to hotter temperatures and greatly reduced rain – this, in turn releases massive extra amounts of CO2 from rapidly decomposing vegetation on the finely ground. 3)Frozen ice at the ocean bottom surrounds about 50 times as much methane as recoverable natural gas got throughout the world; considerable amounts of CO2 and methane are also trapped in permafrost – both could be released by and add to global warming. Flannery points out that some coal companies claim greatly increased CO2 will “fertilize” our crops and create completely increased yields. Experiments, however, have commonly found doubling CO2 yields only a six per cents improvement in rice and wheat; meanwhile, the usually accompanying decline in rain would reduce yields overall. Nations have successfully worked together to prevent ecological disaster before – the 1985 Vienna Protocol banning CFC’s which break up the UV-blocking ozone in the high atmosphere. (Luckily CFCs use chlorine instead of bromine – bromine would have greatly multiplied the damage by a factor of ten.) The U.S. and Australia are the only major originally developed nations that have not signed Kyoto. (Kyoto, however, needs to be quickly strengthened by a factor of twelve to hold CO2 to levels twice that of pre 1800 levels.) The holdouts argue their case on the source of cost – however, storm damage alone is steadily rising, and will reach 500 billion/year by 2050; in addition there are greatly increased crop losses, cooling costs, disease, etc. Solutions: Wind, nuclear, and photo-voltaic power, in addition to greatly improved combustion processes and conservation.