After the devastation of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, many have asked whether the severity of these storms is due to climate change. Scientists shy away from linking individual storms to climate change, but for all practical purposes the answer is a definite yes.
For over a decade, climate scientists have told us that the burning of fossil fuels is creating a global climate which is “warmer, wetter and wilder.” The science is simple – human burning of fossil fuels upsets the natural balance of gasses in the atmosphere by adding approximately 38 billion tons of extra carbon dioxide and 18 billion tons of extra water vapor to the atmosphere annually. As one might guess, all this extra gas creates problems. The extra carbon dioxide traps the suns heat (greenhouse effect) resulting in higher ocean temperatures, arctic melting and sea level rise. The extra water vapor saturates the atmosphere like a wet sponge.
Together, the warmer water and wetter atmosphere create the perfect conditions for stronger hurricanes/typhoons in the oceans and tornadoes/thunder storms over land areas. Data shows that 7 of the 10 strongest cyclones in recorded history have occurred in the last decade and that the average number of tornadoes in the U.S. has steadily climbed from about 250 per year in the early 1950’s to over 1,000 per year in the past decade.
As hurricanes and tornadoes are teaching us, the cost of these storms in human lives and property damage is “mind boggling.” Our leaders may deny climate change, but we pay the consequences. At the state and national level, we must demand that our leaders educate themselves about and then act on this critical issue. Climate change will only get worse until we accept its reality and take intelligent decisive action. As with all environmental issues, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Ken Sawyer, a Wilton resident, is a retired science teacher and former oceanographer for the U.S. Navy.
Hmmm? Let’s see…after about 5 billion years, (give or take a few 100 million years + /-) the earth has survived violent explosions many times in magnitude more than our most powerful bombs combined, gigantic volcanoes and lava flows that make the ones humans have experienced since recorded time seem like little streams, CO2 rising from the ocean floor in volumes the pale our worst Industrial Age, and the billions of years of solar flare blasts and UV rays bombarded onto our planets from that really huuge yellow meanie. And still after all that carnage the earth and its inhabitants are still here and doing just fine…
Nuff Said…
Oh! And btw…also a retired resident of the beautiful western mountains of Maine with an upper level academic background in the science arena…
Nuff Said…
“Doing just fine”?! Just goes to show that some people are OBLIVIOUS, no matter how much SCIENCE aids our uderstanding.
JL:
Sure The Earth has survived extinction events and drastic climate change. It’s the particular species that tend not to do “just fine” when these cataclysms occur. Go ask the dinosaurs or anyone in Houston, the Keys, the Virgin Islands, or Puerto Rico. Willful ignorance is not a reasonable response to this possible global catastrophe becoming more manifest..
Here is a fact that any scientist will agree, with the population of the world is approaching 8 billion Fact.
Here’s another Fact if we removed, outlawed, banished the use of all fossil fuels today the population would within a single year go back to pre industrial revolution era population of 1 billion.
Nuff said? In whose opinion is it nuff said?
If people would listen to educated folks and then try to form a productive argument, rather than just spouting out their own opinion and justifying it by “Nuff said” they might eventually understand what is taking place!
What is really OBLIVIOUS and stunning is at the level people get without any REAL knowledge and call out in outrage. No factual rebuttal or fact-based comments? OBVIOUSLY, after your hair pulling tantrum, you failed to grasp my satirical comments??? My point was not about the natural processes, but our meager insignificant contribution to the planet and in a true perspective as compared to the view falsely tautology from the “An Inconvenient Truth” fib-umentary. Your fearless leader Mr. G now a rehashed 10 year old predictions when it turned out that predicted warming wasn’t happening and would cause catastrophic weather damage didn’t panned out, first as“climate change” and now as the rebranding of “global warming.”
Nuff Said…
@Chairman of the Board of Reality
Many countries are on track to be completely free from their fossil fuel dependency. Paraguay, Iceland, and Albania are already there. Norway is almost there (96%) and Costa Rica is close (90%). Highly populated India is actively phasing out fossil fuels and they’re well on track to accomplish it. Bans on the sale of non-electric cars are scheduled to gradually go into effect in several countries. We haven’t embraced renewable energy like other places have. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t. It would be disastrous for us to go no-fossil fuels overnight, but we have the technology and means to make a total switch pretty quickly. Motivation (and allocation of tax dollars) is the problem.
i guess if i add “fact!” or “nuff said!” to the end of a statement, i don’t need to bother citing sources or even making a rational argument. fact: 97 percent of bulldog commenters don’t know their knees from a knot in a log. nuff said!
-professor (of what isn’t relevant) myopc
Facts seem to get in the way of the above opinion piece.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-28/inconvenient-record-arctic-sea-ice-growth-september
Let’s play by the theories of science for a moment, no matter how flawed they may be. Science says the Earth is billions of years old, and that life has been here for 300 million years, never been successfully proven. Jump ahead to 15,000 years ago, science claims an ice sheet 5 miles thick covered most of the northern hemisphere. Jump ahead to the early 1600s we started the colonization of the new world, yet science says humans have been here for 11,000 years, nobody has ice sheets in their history. Modern humans have been using fossil fuels for an extremely short period of time, if the use of fossil fuels is causing global warming, where did the 5 mile thick sheet of ice go? Surely somebody would have noticed a massive sheet of ice.
@JL
Huh?
Morna Nuff said
Finally! A sensible and well presented thoughtful comment…HB while I agree with your way of thinking and you layout the basic timeline of how the planet “evolved ” I respectfully disagreed with your “evolved ” premise.
Like I colorfully stated before…we are in a point in time that is so small that can not be accurately shown on a graph. It wouldn’t fit on a sheet of paper or a wall. Following me ? Therefore, as I mentioned before in simple terms board terms, we are talking about natural processes that “evolved ” over billions of years and at a minimum millions of years. And in natural processes and actions/reactions of a magnitude that our tiny contribution doesn’t even register as a bleep on any scale of time or scale. As much as we want to think of ourselves, we are not the center of the universe nor are we so powerful as humans to take on the whole planet or solar system. So when you have someone like Mr. Gore come out and “predict ” the islands will disappear because the seas will rise in 10 years and the earth will be parched and catastrophic storms, etc etc etc. And btw his first film, the one lots of kids are forced to watch, was challenged in court and found to have at least 9 false statements and seriously misleading. So you have to ask yourself????what is the real motivation for pushing this false “religion “.
PS. Do your own homework and stop being a sheepeople.
Nuff Said…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
Top scientist agree that there is not enough data to predict the climate. Yes climate change is real, but “global warming” has not been proven. BTW we used to call it “Global Warming” until it was realized there was too much opposition to the theory. It was then called “Climate Change” so people would believe it base on the title. Kinda like “Affordable Health Care” or “The Clean Elections Act”. We only have 100 or so years data and modern man has walked the earth for about 200,000 years that’s 5/10,000th of our time here. In the 1930’s all the hype was around a second ice age looming. So as JL said stop being sheep.
Also, how many years have teachers been educating our general population based on their liberal bias? No offense to Ken.
P.S. Abolish the 2 parties.
@Tim
We don’t “only have 100 or so years data”. Geology provides millions of years of data. Being able to predict the future with 100% certainty isn’t possible and no respectable scientist would claim that. However, they can predict the most likely outcome based on millions of years of data. There will be some minor variations, but the general consensus points to our planet getting warmer in the future.
Certain groups have a vested interest in promoting that scientists are part of a giant conspiracy theory. There are rich/powerful people who depend on exploiting fossil fuels to continue amassing more wealth and power for themselves. This isn’t about liberal vs conservative. It’s about people making money at the cost of our children’s futures. I don’t consider it a bad thing if teachers teach science – instead of political talking points paid for by oil tycoons.
A silver lining to all this is snowflakes will eventually have to melt away.
Guppy…
Please tell me you understand that there are rich and powerful people who depend on exploiting “Green” energy to continue amassing more wealth and power for themselves.
And yes teachers should continue to teach “proven” science…
@Captain Planet
I wish people would stick to facts and figures instead of trying to inflame the situation with insults. I’m not even sure why “snowflake” has become so popular as an insult. Do you hate winter? When I hear “snowflake” used as an insult, it’s an instant indicator that the person is parroting another person’s words – instead of thinking for themselves.
@backcast
“And yes teachers should continue to teach “proven” science…”
Agreed. I don’t get why people don’t trust scientists data. The methods they use gave us medicine, computers, internet, and a myriad of things our ancestors would consider “magic”. Why reject those proven methods at this point?
Since it is settled science that things started billions of years ago and it took millions of years for humans to evolve to where we are now, how arrogant is it to think that we have a responsibility to save the human race or the planet ? Even if we succeed in eradicating all human life I doubt we are capable of destroying ALL life and the remaining life forms will have their shot at evolving into something better than us humans. There is scientific evidence that shows that CO2 is good for the planet and my personal preference is for us humans to be usurped by dolphins.
Yup Gup, I do hate winter! And now I’m extra depressed knowing the US doesn’t measure up to even Albania. You keep grasping at your intangible straws, I’ll continue to worry about actual threats like terrorism and ‘Rocket Man’. JL got it right, we are not even a footnote in world history.
” Snowflakes” are those without the courage or integrity to sign their letters according to Bill O’Reilly, master snowflake.
May be worth reading, if you are interested in some of the science going on with climate study…
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/news/campus/article_46e1c1ba-d99b-11e4-8523-eb5efe6a076f.html
and one of its scientists….Ice core anyone?