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A newsletter for the students, faculty and staff of the Collin College. Published monthly. For information or submissions, call 972.599.3142. Cougar News welcomes student and faculty submissions. Next deadline: May 10 All submissions are due by 5 p.m. on the due date. Photos cannot be returned. Text should be emailed to mrobinson@ccccd.edu or sent on disk. Please submit copy that is proofed, edited and saved in Word format. Cougar News staff: Lisa Vasquez, director; Mark Robinson, editor; Marcy Cadena-Smith, contributor; Dana Schmitz, contributor; Sydney Portilla-Diggs, campus correspondent; Stephanie Hall, student correspondent; Heather Darrow, special contributor; Sandy Suvannachakkham, special contributor; Kathryn Martin, special contributor; Nick Young, photographer and layout.
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Global warming: is it too hot to handle?
By Heather Darrow
Special Contributor
More than 250 students and community members attended the fourth Knowledge is Power public lecture: “Are You Hot?: The Science and Politics of Global Warming.” Dr. Judson May, Collin professor of geology, and Dr. Dierdre Wendel, Collin professor of government, presented scientific documentation and addressed the politics surrounding global warming.
What is Global Warming?
According to Dr. May, global warming reflects an observed increase in the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere. Greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s), nitrous oxide and water vapor contribute to the warming environment.
Prior to working at the college, Dr. May served as an exploration and research geologist with ARCO oil and gas company as well as an atmospheric ozone modeler with the Dallas Environmental Protection Agency. According to Dr. May, the United States is one of the top human CO2 contributors; the country has produced 180 billion tons of the gas since 1950. However, animals exhale CO2, and the gas is also released when vegetation is burned. In addition, the oceans and limestone calcium carbonate deposits in the earth’s crust are CO2 reservoirs.
Dr. May states that CO2 levels have been tracked since 1958 at a Mauna Loa observatory. In the 1950’s, the CO2 was recorded at 315 parts per million (ppm). Today the number is 380 ppm. In 1988, two United Nations groups formed an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) comprised of 2,000 scientists.
According to the IPCC, 1998 was the warmest year on record, though 2005 has recently taken the lead. This panel also stated that the ten warmest years on record have been after 1990.
The proof is frozen -- for now
According to Dr. May, cited global warming evidence includes receding alpine glaciers, the breakup of an Antarctic ice shelf within 35 days, eight percent shrinkage of the Artic’s sea ice since 1979 and a gradual rise in measured temperature. Currently, scientists are studying tree rings and isotopes from deep sea fossils. During the last 20 years, scientists have also made infrared satellite measurements.
“Glaciers are incredible archives of historical climate data and show the net accumulation of snow. Scientists are taking glacial drill cores and shining a light through them to see the annual layers, which are lighter for summer and darker for winter. They can go back to the year 1066, as an example, and find that layer. Air bubbles trapped in glacial ice are samples of ancient atmosphere. Scientists can analyze what was in the air back then, like CO2 levels,” Dr. May said.
Is the data accurate?
Dr. May notes that most of the information has been collected in industrialized countries on land, not on the water.
“You are introducing selectivity into the data. How much bias is there? I cannot evaluate that,” Dr. May said.
He admits that we currently have elevated levels of CO2, but he points out that there have been other times in the history of the earth that have also had elevated levels of CO2. He advises people to be open minded. While the charted curves of carbon dioxide in the air seem to correspond to the increase in temperature, he postulates that other processes might also be contributing to the increases.
“Some scientists analyzing glacial ice cores believe that the temperature rises after the carbon dioxide rises, while others say that the temperature rises 800 years before the carbon dioxide rises,” Dr. May said.
He believes that greenhouse gases are not the only culprits of global warming. Other contributors include the variation in solar radiation and the earth’s astronomical cycles. He also makes the point that without any greenhouse gases, the temperature would be zero degrees F. The real world average is 59 degrees F.
What is the future outlook if we continue with the status quo?
Climate modelers use computer programs to simulate the earth’s surface processes and interactions using algorithms and equations. Dr. May reports that according to the climate modelers, without the human contribution we should be at a lower temperature. These programs also indicate that by the end of the next century the temperature could rise five or six degrees, if things continue as they are going now with no further emission controls. Increased heat will change the landscape because different plants require different climates to thrive.
According to Dr. May, maple tree forests and maple syrup production would migrate north to Canada where the trees would still flourish. After glaciers melt, many communities in mountainous regions, like the Himalayas, might not have enough water, and water sources, such as Lake Chad in Central Africa, may continue to dry up. According to astronomical cycles, the next ice age might not arrive for another 90,000 years, and Dr. May cautions individuals to be skeptical of all of the evidence, both for and against global warming, in order to have an accurate understanding of the issue.
Politics behind the issue
According to Dr. Wendel, the IPCC created a document of more than 1,000 pages of global warming research findings. However, after they presented their research to the U.N. diplomats, the conclusions based on that data were modified.
“Almost all of the scientific conclusions were omitted. That is the negative consequence of politicians involved in what is scientific. The scientists are releasing their own report, and that is the one we really need to read. The most recent document reveals that scientists are 90 percent certain that human activity is contributing negatively to global warming,” Dr. Wendel said.
According to Dr. Wendel, there is a better than two out of three chance that the world’s poor, the majority of the earth’s population, will be dramatically impacted through drought, excessive heat and flooding.
“Hundreds of millions of Africans and tens of millions of Latin Americans will have reduced water. By 2050, one billion people in Asia will face water shortages. By 2080, water shortages will impact 1-3 billion people, half of the world’s population. One hundred million people may face floods annually, and by 2100 half of Europe’s plant species could be endangered or extinct,” Dr. Wendel said.
Dr. Wendel cited the words of Stanford University’s Terry Root, a coauthor of the IPPC report, who said, “We truly are standing at the edge of mass extinction,” referring to a 30 percent plant and animal extinction.
Developed nations versus underdeveloped nations
The Kyotol Protocol requires developed countries to make a five percent reduction of their greenhouse gas emissions in comparison to the 1990 emissions. In 2005, 55 countries signed the agreement putting the Kyotol Protocol into effect. However, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Australia are not on that list. According to Dr. Wendel, the U.S. contributes 25 percent of the pollution.
The protocol does not require developing nations to comply, so that they will have the chance to grow. China is considered a developing nation, and according to Dr. Wendel it is the second-largest producer of greenhouse gases. According to Dr. Wendel, European Union ministers plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent below the 1990 level by 2020, and Germany pledged a 40 percent reduction.
Under the direction of French Prime Minister Jacque Chirac, 45 nations promised a 60 percent reduction by 2050, if the other industrialized countries join them. A carbon tax on exports has been proposed for countries that are not pledging to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
Dr. Wendel states that President Bush has joined with Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea, countries which contribute to half of the greenhouse gas emissions, to obtain private funding to develop cleaner technologies including hydrogen powered vehicles and clean coal technology. According to Dr. Wendel, the president will not sign the protocol because of the potential loss of jobs and prohibitive cost of the change to carbon-intensive industries.
What are individual states, companies and people doing to combat global warming?
Under the direction of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, California passed a bill that requires the production of new fleet of automobiles with reduced greenhouse emissions. These cars and trucks will be available in 2009. Seven Northeastern states plan to follow California’s lead. Dr. Wendel notes that companies like AT&T are proactively making changes; AT&T began eliminating CFC’s in 1994.
According to Dr. Wendel, individuals can help by writing their senators, reducing meat consumption to reduce methane gas emissions, employing a new energy system which uses recycled water to generate electricity for residences, buying hybrid cars, recycling, taking five minute showers and helping to make cities go green.
“We are seeing federalism in action because the states are taking things into their own hands. I choose to go with the 2,000 scientists who continue to watch the environment. There is a problem, and we need to do something about it immediately,” Dr. Wendel said.
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