Clyde Burnett, Peak to Peak. We have increased CO2 concentrations from 280 ppm to 410 ppm with temperatures approaching the 2-degree warming at 450 ppm. Much of the Arctic Sea ice is gone, and Greenland and Antarctica ice caps are disappearing as the warmed oceans erode. Sea levels have covered Kiribati and other Pacific islands.

It required 79 calories / gm of water to melt our glaciers; that’s the amount of trapped heat to warm the same amount of water three-quarters of the way to boiling. The continuing trapped heat is now available for extreme weather.

We’ve adapted to Katrina, Harvey, Florence, Irma and Michael. And we’re rebuilding Tuscaloosa and Joplin. Some of our more vulnerable folks are out of their homes. Homes in Paradise, California are gone. Abnormally high temperatures are ravaging Australia.

There is a war between Mother Earth and the fossil fuel industries. Humans are the foot soldiers. The damage is huge. Last year’s wildfires did 24 billion dollars of damage, Michael cost 25 billion, Florence cost 24 billion. The last few years have been the hottest. There is no question; Mother Earth will eventually win.

Question: What is required for movement to end the fighting? How did we get into this mess?

Answer: Our science education was not adequate to answer the economic propaganda from the fossil fuel industries. We have tried to correct this with an update of the universal laws of heat radiation and the greenhouse effect. We now understand the greenhouse complication of the control of the water greenhouse gas by trace atmospheric constituents like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). We appreciate the benign water cycle of evaporation and precipitation that keeps the greenhouse effect from a runaway situation. And we understand our human control of atmospheric amounts of these gases and the complication of things such as the carbon cycle which interferes with the stability of our environment. We now recognize climate change with new extreme weather.

But the time scale of this science is not a part of human behavior. We do not respond to matters in the distant future. It was more important to have peace-in-our-time than to respond to the dangers of Nazi aggression until the tanks rolled into the European cities or the Japanese bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor.

We have not worried about temperatures beyond 2C, but now we have extreme weather. And we try to mitigate the causes of global warming. Warren Washington, longtime of NCAR, and Michael Mann of Penn State have just been awarded the $200,000 Tyson Prize. Washington pioneered the computer modeling of the atmosphere with application to climate change. Mann is known for documenting the Hockey Stick record of global warming temperature change. Both have continued actively in communicating the problem of climate change.

Question: But can we not adapt?

Answer: The centuries long CO2 lifetime makes it difficult. In China and India, newly planted trees show as green on satellite photos; these will sequester some of the CO2. But it will be difficult to bring the CO2 back from 450 ppm to the stable 350 ppm recommended by Jim Hansen.

(Originally published in the March 7, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)