by David Ross

Another Tragically Beautiful Day

An interview with Ross Gelbspan (part one)

As special projects editor for The Boston Globe, Ross Gelbspan won aPulitzer Prize in 1984. He's taught at the Columbia University Schoolof Journalism and is the author of one of the most popular books onclimate change, The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth'sThreatened Climate. His website, www.heatisonline.org, was recentlyrated the best climate-related site by the Pacific Institute. Thefollowing has been transcribed from a radio interview which wasconducted by David Ross.

David Ross: This summer in the Northwestern corner of California wehad a drought and some wildfires, and strangely, this fall we haven'thad any rain in September and October, which is very unusual for us,considering we live in a rainforest. Do you think these events arerelated to climate change?

Ross Gelbspan: I think there's no question about it. It seems realclear to me that one of the first consequences of climate change is achange in weather patterns. What happens is that as the air warms up,it accelerates the evaporation of surface water, which expands to holdmore water. It redistributes the moisture in the atmosphere, so youhave much longer droughts, much more severe downpours, and so forth. What you had in California in terms of the wildfires (as we saw outhere in Northeastern Canada which was also subject to some reallyserious wildfires) is consistent with this kind of drought. One-halfof the US was in drought conditions this summer. At the same time, youhad 1000 people die from a heat wave in India, and you had thesehorrendous floods in Russia, the Czech Republic, and in Germany. Allthis is directly related to climate change.

This is the early stage of global warming.

It's also tied up with the spread of disease. One of the mostsensitive systems to temperature fluctuations in nature is insects. Asthe weather warms up, it accelerates the breading rates and the bitingrates of insects, and it allows them to live longer at higheraltitudes and higher latitudes.

We're now seeing mosquitoes, for instance, spreading malaria, the WestNile virus and so forth to populations that have never beforeexperienced it.

We've now seen locally transmitted cases of malaria in northernVirginia.

West Nile virus has spread to 42 states. As well as the weatherchanges, we're also seeing changes in disease patterns, changes inagriculture, and so forth.

Can you explain what the greenhouse effect is?

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps in heat and without it in theatmosphere, this planet would basically be a frozen rock. We've hadthe same amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for 10,000years--about 280 parts per million (ppm)--until about 150 years ago whenthe world began to industrialize using coal and oil. Right now, thelevel of this atmospheric carbon is up to 370 ppm, and that's a levelthis planet has not experienced for 420,000 years. That is basicallyan exaggerated greenhouse effect.

The way it was for 10,000 years gave us the kind of climate that madethis planet hospitable to our civilization. The amount we put up nowis going to be raising temperatures because the normal heating thatusually radiates back out into space is trapped in, because you havethis thicker and thicker carbon dioxide blanket in the atmosphere, andthat is a direct result of our burning fossil fuels.

What are the greenhouse gases, and where do they come from?

There's really one big one, and that's carbon dioxide. There's alsomethane, which comes from landfills, rotting garbage, animal manureand so forth.

Methane and the four other smaller ones are fairly insignificant, butthe most important one is carbon dioxide, and that comes from burningcoal, oil and natural gas. In other words, what nature is telling usis that we have to get off of coal and oil. We have to move to arenewable energy economy, otherwise we're going to see verycatastrophic consequences from it.

What sectors of society put out the most carbon dioxide?

In the United States, it breaks down equally: about one-third fromtransportation, one-third from our electricity generation--more thanhalf of which comes from coal burning power plants--and one-third comesfrom heating and cooling in industrial uses. So we have to change ourenergy sources across the board. It would be a lot easier if it wereonly our transportation or electricity sector. What we have to do isreplace every gas-burning car, coal-burning generating plant, andoil-burning furnace with climate friendly energy sources.

What is the evidence for climate change due to global warming?

There's a lot of evidence. The first, most basic evidence, as Imentioned, is simply the measurable increase in the amount of carbondioxide in the atmosphere. Separate from that, you have this realdramatic increase in weather extremes; the proof of which is reflectedin two places. It's reflected in the increase in government budgetsfor disaster relief, but you can really see it in the losses to theworld's property insurers. The insurance industry lost an average of$2 billion a year in the 1980s to these weather extremes. They lost anaverage of $12 billion a year in the 1990s. That shows that we'rehaving many more severe storms, floods, droughts, heat waves and soforth.

The other body of evidence that I find very compelling--and I'm noteven going to go into computer models--are simply things that areactually happening on the planet from heating. First of all, heatexpands water, so we are seeing rising sea levels right now. We areseeing people being evacuated from their island nation homes in thePacific Ocean, because they're basically going to be submerged byrising sea levels.

Heat changes ecosystems. A little south of where you are, in MontereyBay, California, scientists documented a complete turnover of themarine population with cold water fish moving northward and warm waterfish and sea animals moving in to populate that area. That's due toocean warming of the surface waters.

Atmospheric warming has pushed a whole population of butterflies fromMexico to Vancouver. We're seeing the migration of species, to try tomaintain the same kind of temperatures that they're use to. They'removing northward, or if you're below the equator, southward.

We're also seeing warming in the deep oceans, and that's causing thebreakup of big pieces of Antarctica's ice shelves. There was a piecethe size of Rhode Island that broke off last spring. That's the thirdpiece of that size that's broken off since 1995. Deep water heating isalso changing the patterns of El Ninos that play havoc with weatherall over the world.

For hundreds of years, El Ninos recurred at fairly predictableperiods, but now they're becoming more frequent and intense.

Additionally, the tundra in Alaska, which for thousands of years hasabsorbed carbon dioxide, and methane, is now thawing and releasingthose gases back into the atmosphere.

The final one that I'll mention right now is the change in the timingof the seasons. Because of the buildup of carbon dioxide, spring nowarrives more than two weeks earlier in the northern hemisphere than itdid 20 years ago.

All these events are physical changes that have been documented in thescientific, peer-reviewed literature, and these are all consequencesof the warming of the planet.

Let me run some temperature numbers by you. Sixteen of the hottestseventeen years on record have happened since 1980. The five hottestconsecutive years are 1991-1995. 1998 replaced 1997 as the hottestyear on record. 2001 replaced 1997 as the second hottest year onrecord, and the rate at which this planet is warming is faster thananytime in the last 10,000 years.

It seems pretty clear that the globe is warming. How powerful is theevidence linking global warming to human activities?

The United Nations asked that question in 1988. They put together apanel of more than 2000 scientists from 100 countries called theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These scientists didlots of experiments to distinguish between natural warming andgreenhouse warming. In 1995, they said they had reached a consensus:Human beings are changing the climate and it's because of our burningof fossil fuels. They came out with another report last year thatprojects a very rapid increase in temperature in the coming decades. Basically, the scientific body--it's very important to remember thatthis is rigorously, peer-reviewed science--says that the planet hasonly warmed about one degree in the last century, and it will warmfrom three to ten degrees in this current century. To put that incontext, the last ice age was only around five to nine degrees colderthan our current climate. Each year we're putting about seven billiontons of carbon up into the atmosphere.

What will happen if humanity continues to emit billions of tons ofcarbon dioxide into the atmosphere and global warming continues at itscurrent rate?

We will see some very serious consequences in a relatively shortperiod of time. Let me give you two recent studies. One comes from themajor climate research laboratory in Britain, called the HadleyCenter. What the Hadley Center said in a report they did last year wasthat climate change is happening 50 percent faster than we thoughtbecause when they originally did their computer models, they measuredthe effects of a warming atmosphere on a relatively static biosphere.But when they factored in the warming that has already taken place,they found out that it's compounding. As a result, they're saying thatby 2040, most of the world's forests begin to die.

Instead of absorbing carbon dioxide, they begin to emit it. All these consequences of global warming that we're alreadyseeing--I'm talking about the breakup of the ice shelves, the migrationof species, more intense downpours and severe weather--that's allhappened from one degree of warming and about a 30 percent increase incarbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Another study came out in October 2002 in which 18 scientists saidthat, taking very conservative estimates of the worlds future energyuse, these carbon dioxide levels will surely double and probablytriple before the end of the century. There's no question that wouldbe catastrophic.

We'll be seeing agriculture failures, the drying out of drinkingsupplies, big epidemics of disease, deaths of forests and acceleratingextinctions of species. We will also see lots of political andeconomic consequences from those physical changes.

(To be continued next issue.)

David Ross is a talk show host on KMUD radio in Redway, CA. He'sworked on Ralph Nader's latest presidential campaign, corporateaccountability, US imperialism, and environmental issues. He can bereached at daveross27@hotmail.com.

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