Global Warming — seeing, will hopefully, bring belief
When I was reading CNN this morning, I saw a link to a science article called “Meltdown: A global warming travelog“. I’ve always heard the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. I believe in it mostly because there’s so many times that I just can’t express what I want but if I show it to someone they “get it” immediately.
Global warming is, next to the economy and health care, one of the most important problems facing our country and the world. Global warming effects the world — not just the US. Even more important, because it does effect the entire world (remember it’s global), it will effect us here in the US whether we believe in it or not — no matter how much our politicians pretend it’s not important.
Well, I went the CNN article which was basically a short paragraph description and a short narrated slide show of photos. I found the slide show to be so jaw-dropping in images. I’m talking about the before and after glacier photos:
- The Pasterze Glacier in the Austrian Alps, in 1875 and then in 2004.
The Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park, Canada, in a 1917 and again in 2005
The difference between the two photos shows more clearly and concisely than any million words just how much trouble our Earth is in.
I haven’t read the entire book, What Matters by David Elliot Cohen and photography by Gary Braasch. But you can check the book out at its website where there is a e-version available that appears to be free. Here’s the book description from Amazon:
For more than a century, photography has revealed truths, exposed lies, advanced the public discourse, and inspired people to demand change. Socially conscious pioneers with cameras transformed the world—and that legacy lives on in this eye-opening, thought-provoking, and (we hope) action-inducing book. Like Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth before it, we believe that What Matters will fundamentally alter the way we see and understand the human race and our planet.
What Matters asks: What are the essential issues of our time? What are the pictures that will spark public outrage and spur reform? The answer appears in 18 powerful, page-turning stories by the foremost photojournalists of our age, edited by The New York Times best-selling author/editor David Elliot Cohen (A Day in the Life and America 24/7 series), and featuring trenchant commentary from well-recognized experts and thinkers in appropriate fields. Photographer Gary Braasch and climate-change guru Bill McKibben provide “A Global Warming Travelogue” that takes us from ice caves in Antarctica to smoke-spewing coal plants in Beijing. Brent Stirton and Peter A. Glick examine a “Thirsty World,” chronicling the daily search for clean water in non-developed countries. James Nachtwey and bestselling poverty expert Jeffrey D. Sachs look at the causes of, and cures for, global poverty in “The Bottom Billion.” Stephanie Sinclair and Judith Bruce present the preteen brides of Afghanistan, Nepal, and Ethiopia.
Sometimes the juxtaposition of photographs can be startling: “Shop ’til We Drop,” Lauren Greenfield’s images of upscale consumer culture, starkly contrast with Shehzad Noorani’s “Children of the Black Dust”—child laborers in Bangladesh, their faces blackened with carbon dust from recycled batteries.
The combination of compelling photographs and insightful writing make this a highly relevant, widely discussed book bound to appeal to anyone concerned about the crucial issues shaping our world. What Matters is, in effect, a 336-page illustrated letter to the next American president about the issues that count. It will inspire readers to do their part—however small—to make a difference: to help, the volume includes extensive “What You Can Do” sections with a menu of web links and effective actions readers can take now. This year give What Matters.
It looks from what I read of the e-version (sampling some chapters), that this might be a book that can get people talking about global warming beyond the usual response of “if global warming exists it wouldn’t be so cold in the winter”. Our climate is changing and it’s changing far more rapidly than scientists have predicted. There’s now an almost clear passage at the north pole. Antarctica is losing huge chunks of its iceshelf and other areas are degrading. There was a recent report that the nitrogen is now being released from the northern ice where its been sequestered. The Earth is in trouble and it’s time to stop talking about whether the problem exists and talk about what to do to adapt to the changes that global warming is going to make in our lives — I think we’re beyond talking about how to stop it. Now we need to deal with the repercussions and this book might, with it’s wonderful photographs be a way of explaining it to those who need to see to believe.
October 7th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I too saw the pictures on CNN. The problem with the pictures was that they can be very deceptive. If you will notice the cooling towers from a power plant. That is steam. Not some harmful smog or earth destoying toxin. Just pure water vapor. And I’m sure everyone can find pictures when they were young when there was snow or no snow on the ground, then years later have a contrasting photo. Even if the photos were a direct representation of twhat is happening, can everyone not except the world goes through cycles. It hasn’t been too long ago they were saying global cooling. The environmental kick has put a beating on this country because of unnecessary regulations and those regulations only add to the problem. For instance, adding 10% ethenol to gas. This has caused the corn prices to skyrocket, causing small farmers that raise cattle to pay more for feed and get less money when they go to sell them. The feedlots that buy them don’t want to take a cut so they screw the little man. And to beat all, the ethynol in gas causes a decreased gas milage that inturn causes us to have to buy more. Forests are being cut down to grow alternative fuels and put up windfarms. All of this because Al Gore and his buddies have some stock in alternative energy sources that he needs to make some money on.
October 7th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Yes, climate does change over time in a cyclical manner. However, it changes rather slowly with mild peaks and valleys in measured indices such as temperture, rainfall, etc…. The pictures of the melting glaciers are striking because they don’t melt that fast. On the geological scale of temperture change the melt in those glaciers are horrendous — that is not cyclical melt off.
Your other claimi about ethanol and corn prices being harder on people than it is good for the environment is true. The facts are that some grasses, which grow in areas not acceptable for gardening or commercial food production, produce more ethanol per metric weight of raw material than corn. The corn lobby managed to talk Congress into passing laws to that ONLY corn may be used to produce ethanol (in order to get funding) — so the more useful grasses that could be used and not effect food supplies for people and animals is ignored.
Global warming and those who point out the dangers are not the problem in society it’s that most of us (I’m not excuding myself from this) just don’t pay enough attention to our government and what it does. We also don’t dig deeper than the surface of news or science reports — we rely on the sound bites and seldom dig deeper to read what is really being said or done.
We tend not to speak up until it effects us and by then its usually too late.
October 7th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Have we fed all the hungry and provided all people with sanitation on this planet yet, so that we can now afford to worry about climate change?
Recent discoveries underneath Antarctica and Sahara shows they once had luscious vegetation thousands of years before the industrial revolution and coal power plants!!
If you climate cult people would just open your eyes and steer them away from the junk science that is replacing demonstrable classical science, you would remember that we get our light from the sun which is the main cause of climate change on the earth.
Yes the sun is a huge ball of nuclear reactions. The earth has been cooling and warming cyclically and it can only be expected to continue to do the same.
By the way, if we invest about 100 trillion over the next 100 years in climate initiatives we will only delay the catastrophe by 5 or 6 years, assuming the Gore’s exaggerated hogwash scenarios actually come to pass.
In consequence, we will never solve all problems and we never have so MAYBE WE SHOULD INVEST MONEY IN LEAVING THIS WORLD A BETTER PLACE FOR HUMANS BY MAKING SURE THEY CAN ALL EAT AND HAVE SANITATION.
How about this for saving the planet?? By the way you people in the climate cult or religion need to go back to the ancient religious texts if you need something to believe in and quit twisting science to fit your narcissist humanity-hating feelings.
October 7th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
First, climate change is NOT a cult, a religion or anything else. It’s a fact. There are no doubts among the scientific community about the validity of global climate change. Here in the US there is a lot of doubt but that’s fueled by the fact that our current administration has gagged the scientists — meaning scientists funded or paid by the US Government are not allowed to talk about climate change unless they agree with the governments policy. Science doesn’t work like that — something is or is not. It doesn’t change based on wishful thinking.
Personally, my belief is that it’s too late to stop climate change. It’s gone to far. Things are changing faster than predicted. With sea water rise we’re going to lose most of the US Coastal cities (Boston, New York). We’ll loose big parts of Florida and the southern gulf state coastal areas and parts of Texas. The bigger hurricanes and storms over the last several years are just the tip of the iceberg and a warnming of what will be coming.
As to feeding the worlds population and giving them basic clean water and health care. It’s not going to happen. Not because we can’t do it, but because people don’t want to do it. To make it happen write to your representatives. Follow up on their votes, make them responsive to the people they represent. We can do anything if we make ourselves part of the solution. And yes, I do write my representative often on may issues — not that it’s done a lot of good. In this country we stigmatize and denigrate the poor and needy, the Republican party has ridden to power more than once by make the poor the problem and themselves the solution. Over the last eight years the budgets for Health and Welfare, Education, and Housing have been severely cut at a time when more and more people are out of work and homeless. Yes, it’s a terrible problem but attacking global warming as taking away awareness of these problems won’t solve the problems of the hungry people of this country or the world.
Was Antartica once green and fertile. Most probably but that was mostly likely when it was connected to the rest of the continents too. The Earth changes. It always has and it always will change but that doesn’t make what’s happening now just minor cyclical change. This is catastrophic change on a geologic time scale. We cannot deny the problem — we must learn to adapt.
October 8th, 2008 at 7:59 am
I like how you say a “statistical anomaly” in the title, because if you new anything about statistics you would realize that given the earth’s age (4.6 billion years) the amount of data that we have today is statistically insignificant. Even if we had 10000 years of data that would only be .0002% of the total time since the earth’s inception. How can anyone say that we as humans impact the changes wrought on earth, when we have so little information? If you’ll remember back just back to the 1500s the grapes used in wine were harvested from England, not France. At least they were until an overall drop in the earth’s temperature. Frankly the whole global warming thing is a fad, “It’s cool to be green”. Whatever happened to the hole in the ozone layer that was going to kill us several decades ago? What a bunch of B/S. Even if temperatures are rising or ice is melting faster than what “scientist” (whoever they may be) predicted that only shows one thing, they were wrong about their predictions. How do we know glaciers don’t melt that fast? “Because we’ve never seen them melt that fast before”, since humans have only been on earth for at the most 250,000 years out of 4,600,000,000 years. Just because people start talking about how to fix a problem doesn’t mean there is one. Like that of the flu virus H5N!, there are already protocols on how to deal with this virus that has yet to cause damage. Why can’t we focus on more important problems in the world? In all reality global warming just feeds off of people neurotic paranoia.
October 8th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Ok lets look at this scientifically. We know water freezes at 0 degrees C, right. Let’s say the area that the pictures were taken was a place that seldom got above 0 degrees but stayed pretty close to that average temperature. Years after years of ice form on top of each other, creating huge glaciers. Ok now lets say the temperature raises 1-2 degrees due to normal cycle of the earth. Not a big change in temperature, but that is enough to melt years of formed glaciers. Even if they all melted, I really doubt we would see that much difference in sea level. I’m sure whoever came up with that skewed the data to exclude evaporation. Take a Glass filled with ice water. Let the ice extend way beyond the top of the glass. Now let it melt. The glass does not overflow. You might end up with less in the glass than you started with.
People like Al Gore saw dollar signs. hey if I can get a few scientists to back me up we can create a scare of wiping out New York, Boston and other coastal cities. Voters will demand the goverment to do something. I can write a book and be an expert (the only qualification to be an expert it seems). My stocks will soar and by the time people realize it was all a big hoax I will be dead and gone.
I like the environment as much as the next guy, but it just bothers me that some people are creating scare tactics to make a fortune. Even though you say Gore is just a messenger, I feel he is more of a twister of the truth for profit. If he was really concerned he would be living green instead of just talking about it. Must not be too concerned.
October 10th, 2008 at 3:09 am
The problem with the comments on this post is that they show an appalling lack of knowledge of even the most basic science being done in this area, or in some cases, the most basic science period. The pictures of the differences in the glaciers is astounding because we’re talking about tons of ice, laid down over ten’s of thousands of years, all vanishing in a century. Get that straight. It took tens of thousands of years to be put down; but only one century to be removed. This is not a feature of a warm summer’s day; this is a drastic change in climate. How do we know how fast glaciers melt so that we can tell this is astounding? Because scientists take core samples and can measure the ages of the ice strata. And they do this because scientists are required to actually back up their statements with hard evidence. Scientists from all over the planet and from every scientific discipline have seen the evidence and sounded the warning … and been ignored (or gagged) by the powers-the-be for the last several decades. Why? Because stopping the global shift would cost existing businesses money. Yes, in the end, it’s always about money. Well it’s going to cost a hell of a lot more money to reverse it now that it would have in the 70s. If, that is, it can be reversed.
Because it’s looking like we’re stuck with it. You want to save the hungry? Great, you’re going to have ten’s of millions more to worry about in the coming decades, hundreds of millions over the next couple of centuries. Worried about clean water? Too bad; that’s drying up too. Just imagine the problems that the world will face from tens of millions of people being forced to flee over the next couple of centuries from the marginally productive tracts of this planet that are suddenly going to dry up and become unproductive. Those people will need to go somewhere. I’m sure they’ll be welcomed by their industrialized neighbors with open arms. There have always been people that want to help the sick, hungry, diseased, and otherwise helpless populations of the world. These people are worthy of great respect. But one reason they can’t seem to make any headway is that those with the power and the money don’t see any percentage in doing anything about the situation beyond token gestures to gain a snippet on the news and a boost in the charity stocks. In fact, doing something about it would force them to change their behaviors, which is hardly ever good for business. Another is the fact that those who seek to help the downtrodden are so easy to set at each other’s throats over the limited amount of money that is made available. It’s like tossing a bone to two starving dogs and watching them kill each other over the scraps. We’re spending 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq. Money is not the problem. Political will is the problem. Attacking global warming research won’t get you one single dime of extra money. But global warming is going to give you a lot more people that need taking care of. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
As for sea level rise: Folks, when you melt ice in water, it has no effect on sea level. No scientist would tell you otherwise. But that’s a strawman argument, because the glaciers that are of concern aren’t in the water, they’re on land. And when they melt, the sea does rise. As a matter of fact it’s been rising between .1 and .3 mm per year for the last century and the rate is increasing rapidly. This is not opinion. This is not guesswork. This is not fear-mongering. This is solid, measurable fact, accepted by 90%+ of all scientists in the climatology disciplines based on actual on the ground measurements. The disintegration of the Antarctic ice sheet has not raised sea level appreciably so far, because an overwhelming percentage of that ice was floating to start with. However, the glaciers behind it, which are now flowing faster, will add to sea level rise because they’re flowing down off the continent itself and into the water which has now been cleared of the pre-existing ice sheets. The disintegration of the Greenland glaciers will raise sea levels. Both of these are solid accepted facts. The fighting is not over whether or not it’s happening, but how fast is it happening, where is it happening, and exactly what is causing it. Scientists love to argue about details. But they’re not arguing about the basics. Global warming is here, it’s accelerating, and it’s being, if not caused, then greatly exacerbated by human actions. And sadly, the things they’ve been most wrong about is just how fast it’s actually happening. Just a few years ago, the “alarmists” where predicting that the Arctic Ocean might be ice free in the summer by 2100. Now it looks like it’s going to be happening within the next 30 years instead. And don’t forget that a fair chunk of that ice is on various Canadian Islands and on the north part of Siberia, and hence will contribute some small amount to sea level rise. In fact even moderate scientists are now predicting anything between half a meter and three meters of sea level rise by 2100 base on thermal expansion and glacial contributions. And while the most accepted number is still below a meter, that’s still nearly three feet of vertical rise. In areas where the coasts have relatively gentle slopes, that translates into hundreds of feet of horizontal intrusion, especially when that rise is matched with storm surges. That’s not an insignificant slice of populated terrain.
Science doesn’t care what you believe, or what you want to be true, or what makes sense to you. Science is the study of what actual is. And while scientists, like any other human beings, can be flawed, greedy, and egotistical, the scientific method does not allow any individual, or any group to tell lies for long. Every statement must be backed up with repeatable experiments. If they’re not, they end up soon enough on the garbage heap of theories that didn’t pan out. That’s what I personally love about science. Even being proven wrong is still an advancement.
Are some people greedy? Yes. Do some people lie? You bet.
Does any of that mean that the climate isn’t warming, the sea levels aren’t rising, the American southwest isn’t drying out, or that the arctic methane and carbon dioxide reserves aren’t being released as the tundra warms? No. The facts are the facts. You aren’t required to believe them, but the planet will keep right on warming regardless of what you believe. So stick your fingers in your ears and hum really really loudly. It won’t make one whit of difference.
Science isn’t about what’s most popular. Science is about what is.
It doesn’t actually matter if it’s natural, or man-made. It doesn’t actually matter if things use to be worse in the prehistoric past. What matters is the fact that the climate is undergoing a rapid shift NOW, and the time for head shaking, poo pooing, and finger pointing is over. There are seven billion people on the planet that are going to have to either do what they can to stop it, or try and find a way to live with what comes next.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Apparently all of this water that formed the glaciers was previously on this earth in liquid form, as you said the glaciers were formed over many years. Unless you are suggesting that water enters from somewhere in space to add more water to the earth than was previously here. Like I said before, only a few degees change can melt ice at a rate that is exponential to that of which it was formed.
Forcing people to watch the environment only makes people despise it, especially when it takes food out of their families mouth to pay for regulations that get forced upon them. Only way to make all people switch to more environmentaly friendly things is to make it cheaper than the alternative. THe problem now is that it is not.
I do believe the climate is warming, but I do not feel it is entirely the falt of the human race. Just like it is not our fault if it snows in the Alaska. And all the regulations in the world will not be able to control the weather. If the waters rise too much, I guess some rich oceanfront homeowner will have to move a few feet back.