|
September 1, 2007
Global warming talks
By Skip Descant
STARKVILLE - In living rooms, churches, classrooms and other gathering places around the Golden Triangle, a slight, but audible, chatter is catching on.
Maybe it's fueled by humidity and heat or just the slow drone of air conditioners, but conversation is growing around this thing called climate change and global warming.
One a recent Saturday afternoon in West Point at the First Presbyterian Church USA, about 10 people gathered to view the movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Oscar-winning documentary created by former Vice President Al Gore, which offers a compelling case for the quick march global warming is making across the planet, and some of the causes - primarily carbon emissions.
The session was a full afternoon of discussions and presentations by mostly church members.
A week before, about 20 people gathered at the home of John DeFillipo in rural west Lowndes County to hear a presentation on global warming and discuss the phenomenon - or in some cases, debate its validity.
But among skeptics and believers, the thinking seems to be channeled somewhere along the speculation of, could these findings and predictions be true, and what can we do about it?
“What can we do as individuals,” wondered Maridith Geuder of West Point and a member of First Presbyterian.
Or, in DeFillipo's living room after he had completed his presentation, which he picked up after attending Gore's workshop in Tennessee, which trains others to bring the global warming message to their communities - Mark Taylor of Memphis, Tenn., asked, “Well, maybe it is all overblown, but what to do we have to lose by trying?”
Reducing the ‘carbon footprint'
The “trying” refers to the types of suggestions made by Souzen Deavers Steelhammer of West Point, who has dozens of suggestions for how we can all reduce our “carbon footprint.”
Don't let the car idle while you wait in the carpool line at school, she says, or line-dry the laundry, and stop the bottled water insanity.
Americans alone throw away 2.5 million plastic beverage bottles every hour, according to the Container Recycling Institute, a nonprofit group that studies and promotes policies and programs to increase recycling.
“Drink the stuff that comes from your faucet,” says Steelhammer. “There's so much going on; we can all do something.”
“Just think about it, and talk to someone about it, and that's how it moves along,” urged Steelhammer. “But we've got to make the first step forward.”
For those sitting around that little wooden church in downtown West Point, the thinking was that if society does not begin the first steps toward changing the way we live, American will become the proverbial frog in the pot of gradually heating water - one of the scenes in “An Inconvenient truth,” which seemed to inspire some of the most lively discussion.
“One of the most compelling things for me was the frog in the water,” said Geuder, noting the tendency to simply adjust and get used to the changing world, regardless of how ominous those changes might be.
“Who would've thought we would have accepted $3 a gallon for gas, and look, we're getting accustomed to it,” she added.
But just as small groups like First Presbyterian, a tiny congregation of mostly politically left-leaning churchgoers - the church has been somewhat ostracized for its positions on the role of women in the church and its embrace of African American or gay members - along with folks like DeFillipo, a self-described conservationist and environmentalist who works with young people teaching them about endangered species, the climate change banner as it's presented by some of the most vocal environmental crusaders, is not one everyone is out to wave.
Scientists chime in
Dr. Charles Wax, a professor in the Department of Goesciences at Mississippi State University and the state's top climatologist, has questioned some of the motivation, if not the findings, of the climate change community.
“I do have expertise in climate data collection and analyses, so I try to present material on use and abuse of climate data to balance some of the hype given to the GCM (global circulation models) scenarios,” said Wax.
“For all I really know, there may be some truth to the idea of human-induced global warming, but other possibilities are not given much press.
“Some parts of the planet are indeed showing warming, some are not. In the U.S., for example, the Northwest has shown warming for the past several years while the Southeast has not. The cause is not known for sure - either human-caused or natural fluctuation - and the trend over time and space is not known,” Wax added.
Jay Grymes, a climatologist with the Southern Regional Climate Center at Louisiana State University, does not dispute the warming of the planet or the rise in carbon emissions, but as a scientist, he wonders if the discussion of global warming can be summed up so simply.
“Just because the temperature is going up, doesn't mean it has to be CO2, (carbon dioxide,)” said Grymes. “The first thing I tell people all the time is, folks, the climate is always changing.”
“There seems to be this false assumption that the climate has been static,” added Grymes.
Another scientist Dr. Jamie Dyer, a climatologist at MSU, also supports the evidence that the earth is warming, but like some other scientists, believes the issue should be studied more regionally.
“Yes, there is a general trend of rising temperatures worldwide, although this is about as general a statement as one can make,” said Dyer. “The real changes are occurring at the regional scale, especially in the Arctic, where the warming is most prevalent.”
A close and in-depth study of climate is relatively recent, say scientists and what to expect in the next century is still difficult to predict.
“It is entirely possible that temperatures will continue to rise in the near future, but the mechanisms involved in climate processes are extremely complicated, and actually feed back on themselves,” said Dyer, noting scientists are looking strongly at what he calls “feedback mechanisms,” and what role they will play in the climate of the future.
“For example, continued warming may lead to increased evaporation and cloud cover, which will then lead to a decrease in sunlight reaching the surface and a decrease in temperature,” said Dyer.
“On the other hand, continued warming may lead to a decrease in winter snow cover at high latitudes, leading to a darker surface in the winter and a greater absorption of sunlight, leading to higher temperatures.
“All of these scenarios are possible, but exactly which of them will dominate is the big debate,” he added.
Dr. Donald Boesch, a professor of marine science and president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, predicts the Deep South will see a 4-to-8 degree increase in average temperatures by the end of the 21st century, with the sea level rising on the Gulf Coast 12 to 19 inches.
“While the degree of warming is projected to be greater in the Plains states, the increase in the heat index should be greatest in the Southeast and South Central states - not good news,” wrote Boesch in a 2002 essay titled “Consequences of Climate Change in Louisiana,” while he was a professor at LSU.
“It is now increasingly evident that we have entered another period of rapid climate change - this one caused by humankind itself, rather than the wobble of Earth or some other natural phenomenon that has caused the planet‘s climate to change periodically,” Boesch continued.
Dyer takes a calmer approach, saying, yes, humans have certainly caused climate change, particularly on local levels through urbanization, but is less sure about an absolute link between greenhouse gases and rising temperatures.
“On a global scale, it is difficult to say what impact humans have had on the climate,” said Dyer.
“True, an increase in greenhouse gases will lead to higher temperatures, but it is currently debatable as to whether or not humans have caused the warming, are making the warming worse, or have nothing to do with the warming at all,” Dyer added.
“I believe, along with many others, that climate change is a natural process, including the rise in global temperatures. However, I also believe that the warming trend is being augmented by anthropogenic causes. In other words, humans aren't causing the warming, just making it worse,” Dyer continued.
Climate is politics
If world climate, and how it's changing, has become a hotly debated and discussed item seeping into town squares, college campuses and the ever-growing blogosphere, what now seems frustrating to climatologists is the simple black and white paradigms climate change has been reduced to. You either believe it or you don't, say observers.
“It's like this has become some sort of religion,” said Grymes. “Many of the climate scientists have sort of hunkered down and some have been labeled heretics.”
“And this should be a public debate,” added Grymes. “Who and what's the cause, that's where the debate gets fairly contentious.”
Dyer tiptoed tenderly into the subject before he would agree to answer reporter questions.
“As you may have already discovered, climate change is an extremely tricky issue that is being hammered out by both scientists and politicians,” wrote Dyer in an e-mail. “What is fact and what is hypothesis is still up in the air, but we're getting more data each year, and therefore are able to make better judgments.”
And the backlash can be political, with some scientists feeling pressure to downplay global warming, out of the assumption it's too tied to tree-hugging liberal policy-making, which may not play well with many voters, particularly in red states.
“I do know that the global modelers will refer to those who don't buy totally into the human-induced theory as ‘disreputable,' and I don't think that is right,” said Wax.
“I also know that the issue has become more political than scientific in some ways, and I believe policy makers are in a tight spot,” he added.
“The global-warming argument has become the crucifix of the of the environmental group,” remarked Grymes one day recently from WAFB News in Baton Rouge, La., where he serves as the station's chief meteorologist.
“It's the issue to rally around. You're either a believer or you're not,” he added.
Changing rainfall
What often doesn't get much attention is rainfall and rain patterns, said Grymes, adding changes in hydrology could be the biggest piece of the climate change puzzle in the Southeast, and many other parts of the United States.
“Changes in rainfall patterns will have a much greater impact than a one- or two-degree change in temperature,” said Grymes.
“You're going to see the systematic changes. The natural vegetation will change. Crops will change, and agriculture is still a big part of life in the South.”
Temperature changes in the Southeast U.S. will most likely be minimal, but changes in precipitation patterns, although not yet fully understood, could be huge,” said Dyer. “The region relies on such a large amount of precipitation to survive that a decrease could lead to drastic changes in the landscape.”
“This puts the Southeast and Mississippi in a sensitive situation,” added Dyer, but who noted no current research indicates “it's time to panic,” even though the National Weather Service puts rainfall at 30 to 60 percent below normal for eastern, central and southern Mississippi since the first of the year.
Improving the environment takes the world
All scientists stress the need to be good stewards of the earth, and ultimately - to change the way we live - though it's hard to pin down exactly what this means for each person.
“The No. 1 thing we must do is take care of the planet,” said Grymes. “And being environmentally friendly is really the solution, regardless of if the planet is heating or not.”
Even Dr. Wax, who Grymes has described as “to the right” of the climate change debate, stresses good environmental management.
“I do agree that anything we can do as a society to reduce energy use and pollution should be done - but that has been true since the 1960s,” said Wax.
Back at DeFillipo's living room, he used a catchier jingle: “New Habits, plus new technology, equals new optimism.”
DeFillipo like others in the area, believes when people begin to make smarter more environmentally conscious choices, the marketplace will follow. Already, more appliances and other gadgets are more energy efficient.
“You ask what you could do, but if everyone began to change, it could actually change the market climate,” said Dr. Joe Steelhammer, who is married to Souzen Deavers Steelhammer.
Tuesday night about a dozen people showed up at the appropriately named Institute for Clean Energy Technology, an energy research facility at MSU to view Gore's global warming polemic. And afterwards Dr. Ron Palmer, an engineer at ICET, said what's needed is leadership, which he believes is sadly lacking.
“All it takes is people saying, ‘let's change the thermostat, let's ride our bikes to work,' and one person could lead that discussion, but it's not happening,” said Palmer, making a reference to the current occupier of the White House.
“It's the leadership that's not there,” he urged.
And quoting a much-used line from Gore's movie, “political will is a renewable resource,” said Palmer.
http://www.cdispatch.com/articles/2007/09/01/local_news/local02.txt
|
