2013: Recent strong evidence for climate change,
efforts to deny climate change, & apathy by the public

Background:

There is a very strong and well financed climate change denial movement, particularly in North America. Some of their efforts are directed at denying that climate change is actually happening; the rest admits that climate change is a reality but denies that human factors are causing it. Countering this are many findings of climate researchers who are measuring hard data related to ongoing climate change worldwide.

A survey of almost 12,000 abstracts of peer-reviewed scientific papers papers on global warming was published in 2013-JAN. ₂ Jason Samenow reported:

"... there is strong scientific consensus that human activities are causing the planet to warm.  97 percent of those scientific papers that take a stance on the issue agree." ₈

Deceptive t-shirt ad.

(Actually, it should say that 97% of scientific articles on climate change
that mention its cause agree that it is primarily caused by human activity.)

The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication has conducted eight surveys of public opinion about climate change and global warming since late 2008. During 2013-APR, they surveyed 1045 randomly selected American adults. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points. They found:

• 63% of those sampled believe that global warming is happening; 16% deny it.
• 49% believe that if global warming is happening, it is caused by mostly human activities.
• 42% believe that "most scientists think global warming is happening;" 33% believe that there is widespread disagreement among scientists.
• 51% say they are "somewhat" or "very worried" about global warming.
• 55% believe that global warming is a threat to persons in developing countries.
• 38% believe that people around the world are being harmed by climate change.
• 34% believe that fellow Americans are being harmed.
• 63% believe that global warming will negatively affect future generations of people.

Their report concluded:

"Over many years of research, we have consistently found that, on average, Americans view climate change as a threat distant in space and time -– a risk that will affect far away places, other species, or future generations more than people here and now." ₉

One cause of the sluggishness of the public to demand action is found in our brain circuitry. Over most of the history of the human race, people were programmed to react instantly to immediate threats. However, they learned to pay much less attention to future, slowly approaching threats. Today, this conditioning may be working to our disadvantage.

Of particular concern to researchers are data showing the existence of what are called positive feedback loops. This is a phenomenon in which a change in the environment will produce some effect, which will in turn feed back to increase the rate of change of the original event. For example:

1. Warming in the polar regions is producing a reduction of arctic sea ice.
2. Less sea ice increases the area of open water in the Arctic.
3. More open water adsorbs increasing amounts of heat from the sun.
4. This added heat increases the rate at which warming occurs.
5. Back to step 1.

We opened this section of the web site in 2013-MAR in order to document a selected few of the strongest observations of climate change. Surprisingly, not all of the findings are necessarily negative.

Climate change solves international conflict in the Bay of Bengal:

From about 1980 to 2010, India and Bangladesh had been in conflict over the control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. It is called New Moore Island by India and South Talpatti by Bangladesh. It is one of the Sunderbans chain of islands.

In the decades before the year 2000, the sea level in the Bay had been rising about 3 millimeters (0.12 inches) a year. During the next decade, the rate of rise has been accelerating and has reached about 5 millimeters (0.3 inches) a year. As a result, the land is now completely submerged and New Moore Island is no longer an island.

Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta commented:

"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming."

He noted that Lohachara island in the same chain became completely submerged in 1996, forcing its residents to move to the mainland. Also about half of the land area of Ghoramara Island is currently underwater. Ten or more other islands in the area are at risk.

Hazara said:

"We will have ever larger numbers of people displaced from the Sunderbans as more island areas come under water."

Some mathematical models predict that sea levels worldwide will rise about 1 meter (3.3 feet) by the year 2050. This will submerge about 18% of Bangladesh's costal area under water and displace about 20 million people. ₁

The National Snow and Ice Data Center shows conclusive decline in arctic sea ice extent:

₂

The blue line shows a linear decline of 2.9 percent per decade. As noted in the Background topic above, this rate is probably going to accelerate in the future.

"Canada losing its seasons:"

Canadians used to say that "Canada is not a country, its winter." Others suggest that Canada has two seasons: Winter and road construction. However, winters are now significantly warmer and shorter than they were in the early 1980's. This means a lengthening of the growing season, which is causing the northern boundary at which species of plants can grow to move more than 700 kilometers (440 miles) northward. ₂

Ranga Myneni of the Department of Earth and Environment, at Boston University ₃ is a co-author of the paper" "Temperature and vegetation seasonality diminishment over northern lands." ₄ It claims that by 2091, the north will have seasons, temperatures and possibly vegetation comparable to those found today 20 to 25 degrees of latitude further south. He said:

"If we don’t curb carbon emissions, Arctic Sweden might be more like the south of France by the end of the century. ... We are changing seasonality…. The north is becoming like the south, losing its sharp contrasts ... [among] the four seasons."

He predicts that seasons and temperatures in Alaska and Canada’s Baffin Island by 2099 may be similar to those found currently in Oregon and southern Ontario. Plant species that could grow only up to 57º north in the early 1980's can now grow at 64º north.

Co-author of the report, Terry Callaghan of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the University of Sheffield, UK. said that the change is:

"... easily visible on the ground as an increasing abundance of tall shrubs and tree incursions in several locations all over the circumpolar Arctic."

Scott Goetz, deputy director and senior scientist, at Woods Hole Research Center, in Falmouth, MA, said:

"The way of life of many organisms on Earth is tightly linked to seasonal changes in temperature and availability of food, and all food on land comes first from plants. ... Think of migration of birds to the Arctic in the summer and hibernation of bears in the winter: Any significant alterations to temperature and vegetation seasonality are likely to impact life not only in the north but elsewhere in ways that we do not yet know."

Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, notes that sea ice in the Arctic Ocean does not normally begin to break up until at least April. However, satellite images taken in 2013-FEB show large fractures in the sea ice.

A paper titled "Superstorm Sandy: A Series of Unfortunate Events?" published in the Journal of Oceanography for 2013-MAR showed that because the loss of summertime Arctic sea ice affects the jet stream, the latter "... helped Hurricane Sandy take a powerful turn west instead of steering northeast and out to sea like most October hurricanes. Loss of sea ice is not simply an interesting statistic; in the case of Hurricane Sandy, it cost $65 billion over a few days and was the most serious natural disaster in the world during 2012. _5,6

Researchers from the Netherlands and the United States wrote in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that if the climate change continues:

"We believe that the mass loss [of sea ice] is irreversible in the foreseeable future.". ₂

References used:

The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.

1. "New Moore Island DISAPPEARS into the sea," Huffington Post, 2010-MAR-24, at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
2. Stephen Leahy, "Canada losing its seasons," Inter Press Service, 2013-MAR-11, at: http://www.ipsnews.net/
3. "Climate and vegetation research group," Boston University, at: http://cybele.bu.edu
4. "Temperature and vegetation seasonality diminishment over northern lands," Nature Publishing Group, 2013-MAR-10, at: http://www.nature.com/
5. Blaine Friedlander, "Arctic ice loss amplified Superstorm Sandy violence," ChronicleOnline, Cornell University, 2012-MAR-04, at: http://www.news.cornell.edu/
6. Charles H. Greene, et al., "Superstorm Sandy: A Series of Unfortunate Events?," Oceanography journal, 2013-MAR.
7. John Cook, et. al, "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature," Environmental Research Letters, Volume 8 , #2, 2013-MAY-15, at: http://iopscience.iop.org/
8. Jason Samenow, "97 percent of scientific studies agree on manmade global warming, so what now?," Washington Post, 2013-MAY-17, at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
9. Anthony Leiserowitz, et. al, "Climate Change in the American Mind," Center for Climate Change Communication (CCCC; 4C), 2013-APR, at http://environment.yale.edu/

Copyright © 2013 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Originally posted: 2013-MAR-15
Latest update: 2013-JUN-10
Author: B.A. Robinson

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