Climate Change Factoid - Patterns of Growth – When Will it Happen? (# 7 of a series)

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Author: Rich Albertson

If it's coming, everyone wants to know when. It couldn't mean climate change itself, because that's been here and growing for nearly five decades now. I think it must mean some sort of plateau in the development of climate change where everything starts to go to hell in a handbasket. Whatever it means, no one really knows the answer because this is our first stroll down this surreal path but, some educated guesswork might just provide some useful insight. The It thing seems like it has a lot to do with how we have organized ourselves into a society. I say that because the interwoven connections of a globalized economy and culture makes it more susceptible to disruption from extreme weather events. An extreme weather event might wreak devastating damage wherever it strikes, but that damage will probably prove minor when compared to what's going to happen when the people in areas getting repeatedly hammered by extreme weather events, give up their last bit of hope that climate change can be stopped and begin to migrate to other parts of the country, by the millions. The place they leave will cease to function for want of their presence and their destination cities will be overwhelmed by their numbers. The Gulf Coast with its hurricanes (87 million) or, the Southwest with its drought and wildfires (28 million) look very susceptible to this scenario. No one really knows when the really hurtful parts of climate change will present themselves. The scientific community continuously modifies its predictions, with the dates always getting nearer as they express surprise at how much faster things have been developing than they had originally thought they would. To do my crystal ball estimates I have used a very simplistic approach (you can find this reproduced on the website). The tops of the lines they have been adding each year to the global temperature graph have established an angle of increase. By placing a straight edge along the tops of those lines, I was able to approximate the angle and extended the line well past the last year shown on the graph. The exercise tells me that if the increase in annual temperature continues to grow at the same rate it has for the past twenty years the increase to date (so far 0.6C) will double to 1.2C by 2026. What that might mean in terms of actual consequences isn't as easy. Tornadoes increased from 7,000 per decade to over 21,000 as that 0.6C increase was developing. Does that mean that doubling the temperature will also double that result to 42,000 tornadoes? Could be. Is 0.6C of additional heat a lot? Yes, it is. It is so much, that reaching that figure guarantees that all of the ice on the planet is going to melt and short of huge, planetary scope engineering programs that could scrub the extra CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it below ground, there's nothing we can do about it but wait for it to happen. Are you feeling skeptical, I understand, but consider the significance of something that has already happened: The temperature graph I have been using to guess the future tells us for sure that its been getting hotter for nearly two decades now (2009) that's long enough to be called a trend. Over the same period of time, the total amount of ice on earth has been declining, since the annual snowfall at the polar caps and glaciers has been insufficient to replace the ice that has melted during that year. That's also a trend. The trend is more heat less ice. Add to that, the fact that the extra CO2 we produce, which is causing this trend, will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years and you have a trend that will continue, indefinitely, well past the time when the last ice cube melts. (Peer reviewed research, supporting the claims made in this factoid, can be found at the website) About the Author:

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Rich Albertson is a retired lawyer, author, builder, building designer, carpenter and long time amateur naturalist. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Albertson's most recent book (2009), The Sky is the Limit A Brief and Easy Explanation of Climate Change for Present and Future Voters (134pp), is an explanation of the science, economics, politics and a discussion of the future of climate change written for people of average experience. Climate Change Factoids are drawn from the book. His first book (1978), The Bio-Conversion of Waste to Resource (4 Vols, 2624pp), was a treatise on methods for the sustainable management of solid and liquid waste in urban society. More about the Sky is the Limit book can be found at http://www.thecircleworks.org

As a Naturalist, Albertson's primary interest is to understand and then explain the conflicts that result from modern human practices that interfere with the operation of the natural world on a planetary scale.

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