A world too hot to handle

Some people choose not to believe that global warming exists, that in fact such a thing cannot be said to exist.  On an exceptionally cool day in the middle of summer they may say, “Feel this great air, the cool breeze. Last year on this date it was hot, a real corker. What’s all this talk about global warming?”  One could agree that a single day’s—or even an entire season’s—weather cannot address the question of what is happening at a global level.  Weather is local; by itself it’s but a piece of much larger and more complex phenomena.  The local weather by itself can’t help us decide whether or not the planet is warming.  For that we need a lot of measurements, point-by-point, over the globe, and over time.  And we need realistic models of how the atmosphere is affected by a host of different factors, including large scale movements of air masses, the interactions of the atmosphere with the oceans and other large bodies of water, Earth’s rotation—the list goes on.  The ability of the weather experts on the Weather Channel to predict with some assurance the general features of the weather in any major city on the planet several days into the future derives directly from these models.  They run on powerful computers such as those at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), located in Camp Springs, Md. that are constantly being updated with new observational data collected from land, sea and air.  The fact that the weather can be predicted reliably for several days in advance, is… well, you should be amazed, considering the incredible complexity of  the problem.  

In a similar way, climatologists build models for the global climate, to forecast what’s in store over longer periods of time for the planet as a whole.  Scientists have been collecting data and other observations for many years, and have developed ever more realistic mathematical models of the climate. They incorporate land and water features of the planet, solar radiation, lunar effects, the transport of energy from tropical zones to toward the pole, oceanic currents, the exchanges of gases between sea and atmosphere, the effects of Earth’s rotation, events such as volcanic eruptions when they occur—the list goes on and on.  These calculations are carried out on multimillion dollar supercomputers, testing this or that factor—for example, the size of the Arctic ice cap throughout the year—to learn just what does make a difference in climate, and where. There is no presupposition as to what the calculations will reveal, When the results are in, everything is analyzed and checked for possible errors. 

I find it bewildering beyond measure that people in power, in government and the private sector, who should be rational, intelligent, with the best interests of society at heart, can dismiss all the hard-won science as unimportant, or even conniving on the part of some people with murky motives. Meanwhile, the weather at many places on the globe is whispering to us, not so subtly. Here are a few summer heat stories from around the world:

·       Greece has just experienced a terrible forest fire, its worst in more than a decade.

·       Over 70 people have been killed by the heatwave in Canada's Quebec providence, as temperatures rose up to 95 degrees. There's not a lot of air conditioning in Quebec.

·       The longest heat wave in Britain since1976, along with drought, has turned the landscape to brown from its customary green.

·       In Japan, an unprecedented heat wave has been judged responsible for 65 deaths, and more than 22,000 were hospitalized due to the extreme weather.

 

The World Weather Attribution Project  has just released a damning report arguing that the sizzling heat and wildfires burning the planet are largely anthropogenic in origin—human caused.  It's tiresome, having to repeat these facts and findings, knowing that most people aren't paying attention, don't really care, or lack the background to read such materials and incorporate them into their own worldview and daily life practices. But let's keep keeping on, in whatever ways we can. 

 

Our extended family is gathered this week up in Michigan's upper peninsula. Twenty three of us, spanning four generations. Two of our great grandchildren, twins, are celebrating their sixth birthdays today.  A beautiful day in the UP. May it ever be so, but I just don't know.

·       Wildfires have been raging through the Swedish forests above the Arctic Circle, where temperatures have risen to 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

·       Portland recently broke three consecutive daily record temperatures. Thursday's 99 degrees was the hottest August 18 in their recorded history. Friday's 100 followed suit. Saturday also broke 100 degrees, rounding out the streak.

Ah, it’s just the weather.  Comes and goes. Meanwhile the concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and hydrochlorofluorocarbons continue to rise, putting a bit more heat in the bank, as it were, for still faster melting of glacial ice, more violent weather events, shifting climate that brings drought and extreme heat to places that are becoming less and less friendly to human habitation.