(MintPress) – The Northeast is still working to dig out of the destruction of Hurricane Sandy. With projected economic costs as high as $30 billion, the devastation inflicted by the storm is amongst the worst in history. The storm, however, may have broken a streak that promised to have been even worse climate-wise than the […]
In this Feb. 25, 2008 file photo the tower of a church is seen between the smoke billowing chimneys of the brown coal power plant Frimmersdorf in Grevenbroich near Duesseldorf, Germany. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)
(MintPress) – The Northeast is still working to dig out of the destruction of Hurricane Sandy. With projected economic costs as high as $30 billion, the devastation inflicted by the storm is amongst the worst in history.
The storm, however, may have broken a streak that promised to have been even worse climate-wise than the hurricane. For the last 16 months, the nation has endured consecutive warmer than average temperatures, leading to droughts, unseasonably high winds, increased wind and storm activity and additional wildfires due to dry vegetation. However, in part due to Hurricane Sandy and in part due to a waning El Nino, the average temperature for October was 53.9 degrees — or 0.3 degrees below average.
Despite this, 2012 promises to be the warmest year in the history of the nation. According to the National Climatic Data Center, the national average temperature for the contiguous United States of 58.4 degrees is 3.4 degrees above the average for the 20th century and 1.1 degrees above the previous 10-month record of January-October 2000.
The Climate Prediction Center projects that there will be no El Nino in play during the winter months. This is despite previous predictions that there will be a weak El Nino developing. El Nino is the periodic warming of North Pacific waters, which weakens the Gulf Stream and forces humid air farther north. This creates instability in weather patterns and increased precipitation. El Nino is part of a cyclical cooling process known as the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The ENSO is only one among a set of oscillations (cyclical air/water temperature variations) that regularly influence weather throughout North America. Without El Nino, the CPC is predicting higher-than-average temperatures in the Rockies and the Great Plains.
Experts predict that global change will affect the ENSO irreplaceably. In a warmer climate, the cyclical warming and cooling of equatorial trade winds in relations to the circulation of heated water in the Tropics is lessened significantly, with the conveyor belt of dry air moving east to west and humid air moving west to east slowed. In this event, the interval between El Nino events could double or even triple. The inverse, or La Nina, would become more frequent. This means colder, drier weather in the Plains and the West, and wetter, warmer temperatures and more chaotic weather patterns in the South and the Eastern Seaboard.
Sounds familiar?
To really understand why things are heating up, we have to look at climate change. Let’s start with the basics. Global warming is not a synonym for climate change. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, global warming is the “recent and ongoing rise in global average temperature near Earth’s surface. It is caused mostly by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.” Climate change, on the other hand, is any significant measurable change lasting for an extended period of time. This includes global warming.
The Earth goes through natural cycles of cooling and warming. Known as oscillations, these cooling and warming session can last months — such as the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (which was previously mentioned) — or they can last for centuries, such as the Little Ice Age — which hit in three intervals (about 1650 A.D., 1770 A.D. and 1850 A.D. with brief warming periods between periods). This period exhibited low sunshine due to increased cloud cover, heightened volcanic activity, colder temperature and a vast decrease in the size of the human population.
However, no one can deny that humans are directly influencing the size and intensity of these oscillations and are influencing the base climatology. As the only animal (besides beavers) that can directly influence the ecology of his environment, the full impact humans are making may not be truly measurably for many generations to come, but there is enough evidence now to suggest we are contributing to our doom.
According to the EPA, the Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1.4 degrees over the past century, and it may rise from 2 to 11.5 degrees over the next 100 years. That may not sound like a lot, but it is enough to melt the polar cap, flooding all coastal cities, from London to Amsterdam to New York to Sydney, Tokyo and Shanghai, among others. Washington D.C. would be under water.
Humans — within themselves — cannot destroy the environment, but their industry can. Massive release of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane and other greenhouse gases — so called because they reflect back to the Earth or trap solar radiation that would otherwise escape back into space, warming the atmosphere in the process — are created with the burning of fossil fuels and timber; the chemical refinement of petroleum; and the overturning of oceanic soil, polar ice and tundra — none of which contain large amounts of dissolved carbon dioxide. Due to the industrial buildup of the last 150 years, the tonnage of atmospheric waste that has been released by means of industrial operations has reached toxic levels for life on this planet.
The greenhouse effect is the naturally occurring manner in which the atmosphere is thermally insulated from the temperature-null vacuum of space. Atmospheric-component heavy oxides, such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and carbon monoxide — under normal conditions — absorb infrared radiation reflected or radiated from the Earth or received via solar radiation at a rate of 350 watts per cubic meter of greenhouse gas. (For a point of reference, the average light bulb uses 60 watts of energy.) The unnatural injection of these gases into the atmosphere increases the greenhouse zone, increasing the thermal potential for the habitable zone of the atmosphere.
Land-clearing also complicates things. The foliage coverage was the planet’s all-purpose fallback plan if carbon dioxide levels got out of control. While oceanic absorption of greenhouse gases is always a possibility, the process is slow and unlikely to yield immediate measurable results. Trees and other chlorophyll-bearing plants are carbon dioxide scrubbers; they strip the carbon atom from carbon dioxide to combine with water to make fructose, releasing the now free oxygen molecule back into the atmosphere. Clear-cutting operations limits the amount of foliage coverage available for atmospheric scrubbing; and even though many timber companies now offer new growth forests to replenish cutting zones, the tree will not reach maximum potential for carbon scrubbing for 20 years — which, at that time, the tree will be eligible for harvesting.
In other words, we are killing ourselves with our wallets.
In the United States, influences — such as the previously mentioned La Nina — promise to change the climate of every part of the nation. Alaska will warm at a rate of twice that of the contiguous United States. Higher temperatures and a heightened sea level will increase pest infestation and alter the water table in the Northwest. More frequent and severe droughts will inflame the dwindling water supply in the Southwest. The Ogallala Aquifer will be stressed to unforeseen levels in the Great Plains, promising worse droughts to come. The Midwest promises hotter, longer summers and colder, drier winters to come. The Southeast and the Northeast will be wetter, with increased storm activity and a greater chance of hurricane strikes. Freshwater supplies can be compromised on the islands, and with the ocean’s acidity rising (the ocean absorbs greenhouse gases, effectively turning water into an acid), local fauna and flora could be endangered.
Agriculture yields will fall (but, on the plus side, the growing season will shorten — plants grow faster with more sunlight and warmer temperatures). Wildfires and insect outbreaks will increase. Roads will be damaged quicker due to rippling (the road deck folding upon itself due to thermal expansion) and erosion. Energy demands will increase due to a heightened need for artificial cooling and warming. Water supplies will be compromised. Human health will drop due to worsening air-quality and heat-related illnesses.
In this new world we have created for ourselves, any leader who wishes to govern must be able to address these concerns.
In President Obama’s acceptance speech last Tuesday, the president spoke candidly about climate change:
“But despite all our differences, most of us share certain hopes for America’s future. We want our kids to grow up in a country where they have access to the best schools and the best teachers. A country that lives up to its legacy as the global leader in technology and discovery and innovation, with all the good jobs and new businesses that follow. We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt, that isn’t weakened by inequality, that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.”
This was surprising, since — during the actual campaign — he said little about climate change. Politically, it’s a hot potato; usually, the tactics needed to curb carbon emissions kill jobs in the short run — and even though in the industry shift to green manufacturing more jobs will be made, the temporary loss of jobs in a recession could be devastating (or, at the very least, panic-inducing).
However, it is clear that President Obama would be more green than the now hypothetical President Romney. Republicans promised a rollback on EPA’s regulations on coal-burning plants, fuel-economy standards and enforcement of the Clean Air Act. With President Obama’s re-election, all of these things are here to stay. As reported in the Washington Post, the Brattle Group projects one-fifth to one-quarter of all older coal plants in this country to be decommissioned by 2016. This was something Republicans desperately sought to block, as coal-rich regions are typically Republican country. Natural gas drilling and coal burning can face even tighter restrictions during Obama’s second term, while wind may see more federal subsidies. A carbon tax may be on the horizon, as well.
But, it wasn’t so much these policies that re-elected the president. It was the hard reality of the consequence of climate change.
The regions most affected by the ENSO are South and Central America, particularly Ecuador and Peru. Many regions in Latin America are agricultural-based. In an area gripped by economic crisis, the thought of widespread drought, high groundwater acidity on coastal farms, melting glaciers and uncontrollable wildfires drive many to the brink. While immigration has decreased in recent years, as reported by the Center for American Progress, as many as 100,000 Mexicans still immigrated to the United States last year, with as many as 11.5 million immigrants total living in this country undocumented — mostly in response to the tightening economic situation at home. It is not a logical stretch to say that climate change — and the water shortages that come with it — can precede a major spike in Latino immigration to this country.
Most Latino immigrants have no intentions of returning to their home nations; 86 percent of all undocumented immigrants have been in the United States for seven years or longer. The prospect of returning to a continuously worsening situation negates the legal and practical difficulties living illegally in the United States present.
The solution to the illegal immigration problem is not as simple as “send them all back.” The successful modern politician must embrace that seemingly different issues — immigration, climate change, jobs — all link together as pieces in the same puzzle: Proactively dealing with one creates positive solutions for the other.
While the average Latino family may not think about climate change as an immediate voting issue, they do think of deportation of their fellow Latinos, and they do think of the quality of life awaiting them in Latin America. This is why the president won the Latino vote 3 to 1.
More to the point, climate change affects us all, Latino or not. The escalation of climatological events this year was shocking, and it promises to get worse next year. Until Republicans learn to honestly speak to these issues, there may never again be a Republican in the White House.
