by Olivier Simon
Daily Lobo columnist
The first installment of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was released Feb. 2. Painstakingly assembled and vetted by more than 1,200 scientists and policy experts from 113 countries, it's an 18-page rundown of the meatiest observations, projections and uncertainties in modern climate change science - a preview of the findings of the larger report, which will be hundreds of pages long and released in sections throughout the year.
The summary is not daunting to understand; it's designed that way so nonexperts can easily get the drift. All you need is basic literacy with numbers and the ability to understand a graph. Conclusions are given in a methodical, point-by-point, bulleted format. You can download a PDF of it at Ipcc.ch.
What's most encouraging about it, oddly enough, is that it's unambiguously alarming, leaving virtually no doubt about a number of important points. First, the climate system is changing. The report reads,
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" ... warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from increases of global average air and ocean temperatures." Second, the report asserts that humans are the main cause of this change, stating there is
" ... very high confidence (greater than 90 percent certainty) that the globally averaged net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming." This is a big change over 2001's third assessment, which offered only a 66 percent certainty that climate change was anthropogenic.
The report also puts warming to date at 0.8 degrees Celsius and predicts global temperature to rise from 1.8 to 4 degrees Celsius this century - enough to shift climate zones hundreds of miles poleward.
Why do I say this is encouraging? Because we finally have a verdict: Global warming is our responsibility to stop. This comes from a source too authoritative for anyone in his or her right mind - forget about the Wall Street Journal editorial page - to ignore. This report is a broad-based finding from a huge, global, official group with extensive review mechanisms to guard against conflicts of interest, falsified data or interference from individual or national ideologies. If people in power will listen to anything, they'll listen to this.
Of course, we had a good idea in advance as to what most of its conclusions would be. There have been more than enough individual findings to make a strong case that global warming is happening and worth serious global action. But these were small, uncoordinated voices. Now, a huge chorus has spoken as one.
Actually, the monolithic quality of the report means some recent findings that would have made the message even more dire did not make it in. For example, the report does not take into account the release of methane - a greenhouse gas more than 20 times stronger than carbon dioxide - from now-melting tundra. Nor does it incorporate new evidence that Greenland's ice sheet is melting faster than expected.
The world can no longer deny what must be done and neither can individuals.
But meaningful action will take a lot more than following the energy-saving tips at the end of "An Inconvenient Truth." Changing all the light bulbs in the world to compact fluorescent and turning thermostats down 2 degrees will make only a small dent. Even if we traded in all the 245 million vehicles in the U.S. for Priuses, it would reduce global emissions a mere 3 percent, when an 80 percent cut is needed.
This problem is frankly too big to be dealt with by piecemeal changes in individual lifestyles, however virtuous. Without regulatory action backed by the government's power of enforcement, wasteful individuals and companies will not go to the trouble of changing their ways, instead sucking up the benefits created by those who do.
Now that global warming's human origin is mainstream knowledge, we have to hope that we the people can put enough collective pressure on our leaders to make them transform our economy and lifestyle toward low carbon
intensity.
That transformation won't be just about what we do in our own backyard. The greatest challenge - and the greatest opportunity - that global warming presents can be found in its name. In order to tackle the problem, all nations and peoples will have to cooperate. We will have to communicate, trust and strive together toward this huge goal. If we can pull that off, a long promising future awaits our species. If we fail, it might be proof that we're too immature to responsibly wield the vast powers we've
accumulated.
Olivier Simon is a senior majoring in biochemistry and president of the College Greens at UNM.
