Clyde Burnett, Peak to Peak. We have become more concerned about climate change with recent extreme weather, wildfires and triple digit temperatures. It is now more important that we make proper responses in environmental policies. Corrections in individual lives and leadership require knowledge of the universal laws of nature. I have prepared a series of questions and answers for readers, as well as any government leaders and candidates who recognize this responsibility.

Question I: What is the difference between weather and climate? 

Question II: Why has climate change become so important recently?

Question III: What are greenhouse gases and why is atmospheric CO2 so important?

Answer I: Weather is the short-term record of temperature and precipitation and related droughts, floods, etc. Climate is the long-term average, 30 years or so, of the weather and weather-related events. 

Triple-digit temperatures in one city is weather, but to continue to climate change, we must find higher temperatures in more places, and that is now happening! 

Answer II: Human population and resultant industrial activity has doubled. With a world population of 4 billion, we could operate almost independently from nature, with only a few pollution nuisances like clean water and air to manage. Now with a population of over 7 billion, we are capable of changing the radiation energy balance of the climate by altering the atmospheric constituents of the Greenhouse Effect that traps much of the outgoing infrared radiation from the Earth. We have become part of nature. 

A tragic example is the burning of live forests in the Amazon to clear for farming. (See photo) Sequestering of CO2 from the atmosphere has been interrupted. Is our failing leadership in attention to climate change a factor?   

Answer III: Greenhouse gases trap heat from the Earth and are presently increasing the planet’s energy imbalance. Water is the most effective greenhouse gas partly because of its amount as determined by evaporation from oceans on 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. The small amounts of other trace gases trap an additional amount of heat that slightly warms all of the oceans on 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, yielding large amounts of additional water vapor for heat trapping. 

CO2 importance is due to its yield from power production from burning of fossil fuels. The carbon cycle of CO2 capture in plants and reemission in decay is roughly a century. That is, the atmospheric CO2 lifetime of about a century is due to this cycle. There are additional cycles of capture and emission from the oceans and soils that have a much longer period. The total atmospheric lifetime of CO2 is many centuries; burning fossil fuels today will continue heat trapping for many generations.

Our country has many problems that require good leadership. But global warming leading to general climate change has progressed beyond our ability to return to normal. Present government policies show intention to proceed with an increase in energy imbalance by greenhouse gas heat trapping.

Political debates fail to give significant attention to this most important problem. There is little evidence that our present and potential leaders understand the science. Perhaps the Climate Strike scheduled for September 20, 2019 will give our next generation the tools for correction.

(Originally published in the September 5, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)