2010 Diary week 28
Global warming, climate change and weather extremes
Book Review
Part I of the review of The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery will be posted in the next few days. It starts with the foreword by Paul Anderson, Chairman & CEO of Duke Energy Corporation: “The real message of The Weather Makers is not that global warming is real, although he does an outstanding job of explaining the science, but that it is an issue that we must address today if we are going to avert cataclysmic changes that could affect us all by 2050.” “Energy CEOs and environmental scientists are not likely to agree on all aspects of an issue as complex as climate change. But there is one view in which Tim and I are in total agreement – it is time to move from denial to action.”
These are some snippets from the book: “The Keeling curve shows the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as measured atop Mt. Mauna Loa, Hawai. The sawtooth effect results as the northern spring extracts carbon dioxide from the great aerial ocean, recorded as a fall in concentrations on the graph. However, the inexorable rise is due to the burning of fossil fuels.” “One need do nothing more than trace its trajectory forward in time to realize that the 21st century would see a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – from 3 parts per 10,000 that existed in the early-twentieth century to 6. And that has the potential to heat our planet by around 5ºF, and perhaps as much as 10ºF.” “By drilling two miles into the Antarctic ice cap, scientists have drawn out an ice core that spans almost a million years of Earth history, showing that carbon dioxide levels have dropped to 160 ppm but have never exceeded 280 ppm until recently.” “The fossil record is characterized by sudden shifts from one steady, long-lasting climatic state to another. This series of wild shifts drove entire habitats from one end of a continent to another, causing many extinctions, yet keeping conditions within bounds tolerable to life.”