Accents
Stop global warming
I yield today's column to the e-mail shared by my friend, Dr. Delia D. Aguilar, an environmental activist. If you feel the heat going towards Lent is more scorching than ever and you are soaked up in perspiration more profuse now than never before, then this article is for you. Because global warming is upon us all. Because we, you and I, can do something about it. Because global warming and "its harmful consequences could be substantially blunted by prompt action."
Offhand, there's the mantra: REDUCE. RE-USE. RECYCLE. That's our environment's highest decree--never to be forgotten and always to be put into action. And the directive from the environmentalists: Think globally. Act locally. We are on planet Earth all together. High-tech has transformed our planet into a global village where interconnectedness has become so overwhelming. Centuries ago, John Donne already said it: "No man is an island entire of itself." We are all part of the main. Panay Island, the Philippines, Asia, each in its entirety, is affected by global warming. To extrapolate further--global warming affects the vast expanse of countries from North to South Pole, no exceptions.
In many small ways, it is within us to help halt global warming. Firstly, cut down on consumables as much as possible. Know when less is more. I don't want to dwell on the philosophical underpinnings of that one for the moment, but I do believe that excess baggage in whatever form has a way of eating up into the body, mind, and spirit. Meantime, may I ask how you fared with The Earth's Ten Commandments that I have reiterated in two previous columns? And meanwhile, these excerpts from Delia's e-mail on what scientists have to say:
Science Panel Calls Global Warming 'Unequivocal'
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL and ANDREW C. REVKIN
PARIS, Feb. 2 -- In a grim and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is "unequivocal" and that human activity is the main driver, "very likely" causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.
They said the world was in for centuries of climbing temperatures, rising seas and shifting weather patterns -- unavoidable results of the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.
But their report, released here on Friday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said warming and its harmful consequences could be substantially blunted by prompt action.
While the report provided scant new evidence of a climate apocalypse now, and while it expressly avoided recommending courses of action, officials from the United Nations agencies that created the panel in 1988 said it spoke of the urgent need to limit looming and momentous risks.
"In our daily lives we all respond urgently to dangers that are much less likely than climate change to affect the future of our children," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, which administers the panel along with the World Meteorological Organization.
"Feb. 2 will be remembered as the date when uncertainty was removed as to whether humans had anything to do with climate change on this planet," he went on. "The evidence is on the table." (Underscoring supplied)
The report is the panel's fourth assessment since 1990 on the causes and consequences of climate change, but it is the first in which the group asserts with near certainty -- more than 90 percent confidence -- that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human activities have been the main causes of warming in the past half century.
The new report says the global climate is likely to warm 3.5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit if carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reach twice the levels of 1750, before the Industrial Revolution.
Many energy and environment experts see such a doubling, or worse, as a foregone conclusion after 2050 unless there is a prompt and sustained shift away from the 20th-century pattern of unfettered burning of coal and oil, the main sources of carbon dioxide, and an aggressive expansion of nonpolluting sources of energy.
And the report says there is a more than a 1-in-10 chance of much greater warming, a risk that many experts say is far too high to ignore.
Even a level of warming that falls in the middle of the group's range of projections would be likely to cause significant stress to ecosystems, according to many climate experts and biologists. And it would alter longstanding climate patterns that shape water supplies and agricultural production.
Moreover, the warming has set in motion a rise in global sea levels, the report says. It forecasts a rise of 7 to 23 inches by 2100 and concludes that seas will continue to rise for at least 1,000 years to come. By comparison, seas rose about 6 to 9 inches in the 20th century.
John P. Holdren, an energy and climate expert at Harvard, said the report "powerfully underscores the need for a massive effort to slow the pace of global climatic disruption before intolerable consequences become inevitable."
"Since 2001, there has been a torrent of new scientific evidence on the magnitude, human origins and growing impacts of the climatic changes that are under way," said Mr. Holdren, who is the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "In overwhelming proportions, this evidence has been in the direction of showing faster change, more danger and greater confidence about the dominant role of fossil-fuel burning and tropical deforestation in causing the changes that are being observed."
The conclusions came after a three-year review of hundreds of studies of past climate shifts; observations of retreating ice, warming and rising seas, and other changes around the planet; and a greatly expanded suite of supercomputer simulations used to test how the earth will respond to a growing blanket of gases that hold heat in the atmosphere.
And for the last word or words, let me bring you back to the mantra. In everyday chores, always remember to REDUCE, RE-USE, RECYCLE.
(Comments to lagoc@hargray.com)