On how climate change will affect us

17 Feb 2005

Got questions about the environment? Ask Umbra.

Dear Umbra,

My girlfriend asked me the other day why global warming was going to be so bad for her. I just graduated with a degree in environmental science, and I like to think I learned something in my classes, but I still struggled to give her a concise, straightforward answer. I see new research coming out all the time in Daily Grist and other places on the consequences of global warming and predictions for the future. Can you point me to a source where I can find an easy-to-read summary, preferably with citations for further reading, of what we currently know and how it will affect the everyday life of an "average" person?

Josh
Grandville, Mich.

Ask Umbra continues below

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Dearest Josh,

I suggest you click on over to Climate.org, which is just brimming with useful, readable tidbits on global warming. In particular, check out its page on Climate Change Impacts in North America, with pithy descriptions of what could go sour for folks in our neck of the woods as the planet heats up, and its page on Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health. You might also want to poke around the Global Warming Basics section of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change website. I think these resources will help you craft a fine explanation for your lady friend.

And here's what climate change will mean for you, my darling ...

Photo: Grzegorz Musiol.

She asks an interesting question, though, and it's a very hard one to answer. Our climate is warming, in large part due to human production of greenhouse gases, and as a consequence, the environment is changing. We are expecting and already seeing: sea levels rising, weather shifting, ice melting, wildlife migrating, rain and drought patterns changing. We fear: migration of diseases, battles over changing resources, and increases in weather-related calamities.

Will this be so bad for your girlfriend? Probably not, because she's not an average person. I don't mean to be snide, truly, but it's an important distinction. The imminent climate consequences of human actions will have a relatively small effect on U.S. residents. It's ironic: We produce a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gases, but the bulk of negative impacts will fall on the developing world, where more people rely directly on natural resources for subsistence and income, where the physical infrastructure is often inadequate and thus unnecessarily at risk from phenomena such as hurricanes, and where many governments cannot afford protective measures. Our relative wealth also provides a bulwark, sometimes literally.

Our motivation to care about climate change is limited only by our capacity to care for others. You're living in Michigan. Your weather might get a bit strange, but rising sea levels won't wash away your house. You probably aren't a farmer, so you won't have to worry about your crops. You'll still be able to buy food and pay for heat. If your lady sticks with you, she may actually get an ancillary climate-change benefit: her boyfriend's chosen career will only become more important as time goes on.

Empathetically,
Umbra

Yours is to wonder why, hers is to answer (or try). Please send Umbra any nagging question pertaining to the environment -- but first check out her FAQs!

The claims made in this column may not reflect the views of this magazine. Neither the magazine nor the author guarantees that any advice contained in this column is wise or safe. Please use this column at your own risk.

Umbra Fisk is Grist Research Associate II, Hardcover and Periodicals Unit, floors 2B-4B.

Comments: (9 comments)

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Citizen Of Earth

In answer to what global warming has to do with the guy's girlfriend: It will have a highly negative impact on life on our planet. If she counts other people and/or species and/or the planet as being part of herself, it will affect her by, for example, exterminating polar bears because they will completely lose their habitat. If his girlfriend defines herself so narrowly that "she" ends where her skin does (which is what her question implies), it will affect her to the extent that she cares about others, including non-humans.

This question highlights why environmentalists must convince people that we -- all animals, plants, the air, water, and land -- are all part of the same thing, however one cares to define or describe it. Otherwise, why not just be selfish and not care? "Hey, Global warming won't affect us Americans that much, so I don't want to make any sacrifices trying to prevent or mitigate it."

Jeff Hoffman

by jdhlax at 4:03 PM on 17 Feb 2005

Sorry, Americans are not exempt.

To think that only developing countries will be affected by global warming indicates a far too narrow view or of being deceived or living in some mythical world. Some thoughts: 1.Many medicines come from plants and animals and many medicines that are being researched that can save or prolong your life come from coral, lichens, flowers, etc. 2.Malaria is prevalent in places that are hot and humid and as America warms so will the mosquitos that bring malaria arrive as well as insects that damage crops & trees.3.As oceans, rivers, lakes warm the imbalance will affect aquatic plantlife, affecting fish, which chains up to seals, bears, humans. 4.Already critical, changes in precipitation can cause disasterous flooding or drought that will damage crops and make water for many Americans the no.1 most critical resource; 5. Untold climate changes have brought huge loss of life and lifestyle to thousands of Americans already which you will be paying through higher insurance rates and taxes. All of life is connected and when one piece is affected it will in some way affect another. I can go on, but for Umbra to insinuate that 'Americans' won't be affected by climate change not only promotes this concept of there's America and then there's 'everyone' else, that Americans can isolate themselves from the rest of the world and therefore be safe is terribly misleading. Money and might cannot prevent earthquakes, volcanos, glacier melting, tornados, drought, massive fires, hurricanes...every American better recognize that climate change is here and will affect each and every one of us in some way as well as the rest of the world.

by luna1 at 6:49 AM on 18 Feb 2005

ummmm

I too would have to disagree with the assertion that climate change will have little impact on Americans. Our economy is inextricably linked to the global economy. A crash in the global economy would drag down ours with it. A bigger issue, I believe, is the reversal of this scenario. A crashing US economy will drag down the global economy. Our economic and societal structure is a rigid one that does not respond well to instability and variability. Shifting vegetation zones, as a result of a warming climate will alter the distribution of crops. Will crop growers, here in the US and elsewhere, be willing and able to adapt? And be quick about it? What will be the financial costs of such changes? What will the ecological responses be?

Another point not covered is that of water supplies. In the western US, a majority of the water supply comes from snow pack runoff. One consequence of global warming is increased winter minimum temperatures. This results in more rain than snow. The major benefit of snow as opposed to rain is that melting snow packs deliver water gradually. In the arid west, rain runs off quickly as most soils have a low holding capacity. The result? Decreased water supplies for much of the west!

This is a global issue that we all must face. Simply having a few more resources at hand may insulate us over the short term, but I suspect that we will suffer the consequences, like the rest of the world in the long run. Humans will most likely survive regardless of the outcomes, but the survival of a high quality of life on earth for us and other species is debatable.

All this and we haven't even talked about the effects of potential declines in species diversity, resource wars, and the current US (head in the sand/ this is not happening/denial is not just a river) approach to climate variability!

by kinaz at 8:22 AM on 18 Feb 2005

warmer weather

I do not agree with Umbra's opinion.
All Americans will suffer from global warming in the next decades.
Our lives will change:
Imagine: Florida under water, part of Louisiana under water, parts of California under water, Chicago under water ...
Imagine: 10 hurricans with a 4 or 5 strength a year
Imagine: Price per barrel Oil 100 Dollar, because we burn more and more oil.
Imagine: The prices for food will raise, because more violent weather destroys the harvest worldwide. How do we
pay for the transport of the food to our super markets?
Imagine: The gulf stream would weaken and big parts of
Europe will have 6 month winter.
No food production there anymore and a lot of heating oil use
Imagine: 1 and a half Billion people have to leave their homes because of raising sea levels and violent storms, where will they go? Many of them will knock on the door of the US. Will we welcome them?
I could give you 20 more scenarios, what will happen when
global warming continues.
How can someone think America as the biggest polluter is
an island and will not suffer too?

Bear Springs Blossom Nature Conservation, charitable non profit org. 501(c)(3) Peter Bonenberger pres. May all your weeds be wildflowers!

by BearSpringsBlossom at 9:12 AM on 18 Feb 2005

Global Warming - or Not?

While I agree with all of the above, I also believe that unless America leads the world in a very real, basic turn-around in the path our society is taking and has been on for several generations, civilization as we know it is going to collapse. The only positive aspect in sight - in fact the only hope - is that at least some people, quite a few, in fact, are aware of our predicament. (This was not true a generation ago.) The heartrending aspect of it all is that we will take - actually are already taking - the innocent ones with us; the children of all species as well as plants and animals.
Global warming is perhaps the most obvious symptom in this un-seeing, un-thinking malaise which is plunging the whole world into disaster. Eliminating the pollution which causes global warming would certainly be a huge step in the right direction, but it is not the whole journey! As Dennis Kucinich asked so many times during his presidential campaign, "How much change are you ready for?" How many of you would opt for a simple life of Peace, Love, Simplicity and Health, but little money and physical power?

Jyork

by Jyork at 3:04 PM on 18 Feb 2005

You Can't Explain?

Dear Umbra,
I'm disappointed in your reasoning (or non-reasoning). Because we live in North America doesn't mean that we are exempt from GLOBAL warming. I know that you know that people in the midwest are connected to the environment all over the world in more ways than we can ever hope to understand.
I so admire your columns and the practical topics that you cover so well. I can only attribute your response to the guy from lower Michigan to being tired... that you were having a bad day or something... That you need to take a break and regroup. Maybe read Paul Watson's essay "Environmental Enlightenment" of January 22, 2005, published in "The New York Times" on February 7, 2005. It may help you to get beyond the angst and depression that one should be prone to in these dark days of the Bush presidency and SUV mentality of America.
Thanks for writing a column that I can look forward to reading. Thanks for dealing with topics that can make a difference in my life in the midst of so many columns of doom and gloom.

by DonW at 6:15 PM on 18 Feb 2005

Tell her about it...

While I'm not from the US, here in Australia were are lumbered with a leader who seems to believe we are immune from the effects of climate change - a very scary degree of shortsightedness seeing as about 90% of our population lives within about 50km of the the coasts.

I think this question highlights a bigger problem though - if the average person really doesn't understand what the implications of Global warming are likely to be, then how do we (the enlightened minority) get that message across to those people who have influnence at the highest levels? In the western world there seems to be a perception that if you throw enough money at it, the problem can be made to go away. Like you say - for much of the US the more long lasting implications of global warming may not be apparent for quite some time - far too few people actually have the foresight to consider implications/lifestyle choices/etc at the end of next week, let alone in the 10-50 year horizon. The physical implications and (un) natural phenomenon have been described over and over - sea level rises, increased minimum and maximum temperatures, reduced seasonal variations, habitat loss and species extinction, and massive impacts on developing nations, particularly in coastal lowland and island regions. Just look at the impact of the recent tsunami on coastal communities. Yep - we'ver thrown heaps of money at it and we all feel better that we've made a difference (for now). Those people will have to live with the implications of 15 minutes of nature's fury for many years to come, while they rebuild. The implications of long term global warming and its results make rebuilding after the tsunami seem like rebuilding a house of cards.

Basically, the answer to your girlfriend is for her to look around the globe at everything both natural and constructed that she places a value on, then ask her how she'd feel if it was gone forever. Sure - you can always pay a bit more for things at the local supermarket, but you can't replace entire communities, natural systems and species which have lost their natural habitat simply by throwing a few $$$ at it.

Sustainability starts with ALL OF US. It's that simple.

Accelerate Sustainability.

by MichaelOBrien at 12:15 AM on 19 Feb 2005

With Reference to Global Warming

Actually folks, it might be worse than we're discussing. There's more at stake than rising seas and the extinction of polar bears and other northern mammals. An article by John Atcheson in the Baltimore Sun December 16, 2004 discussed a "Ticking Time Bomb" in the form of Methane Hydrate frozen in and below the melting permafrost, and in the ocean's depth's. I plaigerize here: "The Arctic Council's recent report on the effects of global warming in the far north paints a grim picture: global floods, extinction of polar bears and other marine mammals, collapsed fisheries. But it ignored a ticking time bomb buried in the Arctic tundra.

There are enormous quantities of naturally occurring greenhouse gasses trapped in ice-like structures in the cold northern muds and at the bottom of the seas. These ices, called clathrates, contain 3,000 times as much methane as is in the atmosphere. Methane is more than 20 times as strong a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.

Now here's the scary part. A temperature increase of merely a few degrees would cause these gases to volatilize and "burp" into the atmosphere, which would further raise temperatures, which would release yet more methane, heating the Earth and seas further, and so on. There's 400 gigatons of methane locked in the frozen arctic tundra - enough to start this chain reaction - and the kind of warming the Arctic Council predicts is sufficient to melt the clathrates and release these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere."

The article goes on, and if you cannot find it on-line anymore, let me know; I'll send you a copy.

Since this was the first I heard on this aspect of the warming crisis, I did more research, and while there's not much available on clathrates as the threat Atcheson foresees, there's plenty available to convince you that the threat is real. So how come our friends at GRIST aren't putting out the word?

Henry A. Waxman HankWaxman@aol.com

by HankWaxman at 3:22 PM on 21 Feb 2005

Hank's article

Here's a copy of the article Hank refers to in the comment above:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1215-24.htm

grist.org

by David Roberts at 10:47 PM on 21 Feb 2005
[ Parent ]

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