Clyde Burnett, Peak to Peak. A very long time ago, planet Earth with its 70% surface of water found itself with a stable climate with a particular combination of atmospheric constituents that yielded a greenhouse effect producing an average global surface temperature that we measure to be 59 Fahrenheit. That required a certain amount of greenhouse gas water vapor and a few little helpers like carbon dioxide and methane. And that in turn required a certain balance of ocean evaporation, atmospheric transport, and precipitation. It’s called the 10-day water cycle. It’s a complicated system, this climate.

Then along came humans and their support system of animals and plants to evolve with this benign climate. These humans were a mixed bag, some intelligent with desire to learn of their environment, some with a religion to care for their home, and some with a selfish ambition for power and wealth. Not a problem until the population approached 8 billion when their behavior became part of Nature.

Those who learned of Big Mother’s universal laws understood the effects of increased CO2 greenhouse gas on the environment and their descendants. A few humans were sufficiently intelligent and felt responsible to correct the situation. And a fraction continued to concentrate only on accumulating wealth.

It is the personal desire for wealth of a few and a general contentment of the rest of us with our good life with power generated with CO2 producing fossil fuels that has increased our planet’s energy imbalance. Much of the trapped heat has melted the ice of our glaciers, the Greenland, and Antarctic ice. That meltwater and the expansion of ocean water is causing sea level rise problems along our coasts. 

We’ve now moved to triple digit summer temperatures that can cause heat illness to any human. But we can adapt with hospitals and air conditioning—if the power is on.  We also have heavy precipitation and disastrous floods from Earth’s transport mechanism working to maintain the 10-day water cycle. But our economic policies are pushing things out of control. The CO2 control knob increases the water vapor trapping. Then the warmer ocean makes more evaporation and that water vapor traps more heat. The hot air holds more heat trapping vapor. It’s getting hot. These floods are at best a transport and home nuisance, and at worst a complete loss for less fortunate families. And I see little indication of intelligence or education to understand what is happening.  And those who do have the intelligence and education have not shown the responsibility to form a consensus for correction. 

 When our stratospheric ozone was in danger, we responded with national and international regulations. But with heat trapping we sit on our hands!  

Now the Weather Channel climate expert guest, Penn State’s Michael Mann, reminds us that the warmed Arctic gives us polar air masses whose structural difference from the tropic air mass makes for a slower jet stream and sluggish weather systems. That suggests the possible lengthening of the 10-day water cycle with even more heat trapping. 

(Originally published in the August 8, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)