Earth could 'flip' into environmental disaster

20 Jun 2007 – NZ Herald: New Zealand National news
19 June 2007 – The Independent

The 29-page scientific paper, Climate Change and Trace Gases, is the product of James Hansen, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha, and Gary Russell, also of the Goddard Institute, David Lea of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Mark Siddall of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York.

They say: “Recent greenhouse gas emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate change that could run out of control, with great dangers for humans and other creatures.”

Only intense efforts to curb man-made emissions of CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases can keep the climate near the range of the past one million years.

The unnatural “forcing” of the climate as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threatens to generate a “flip” in the climate that could “spark a cataclysm” in the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland.

The end result is a rise of sea levels by several metres within the next hundred years, if not the next few decades. Large areas of densely populated land in both the developed and developing countries will be under water and a billion people displaced from their homes.

As much as “drastic action” is called for with the introduction of punative measures for people who have a large carbon footprint, we have to answer the real questions behind this call for action.

For example, if people continue to maintain a large carbon footprint, the impending disaster will inevitably come sooner rather than later, but what will happen to the money (tax) raised from those who maintained the large carbon footprint? Alternatively, we have to maintain a negative carbon footprint and rebalance the damage that has been done to avoid (or at least avert) the impending disaster. The question is then how do we do this NOW given the limited alternatives available?

One option would be to channel the taxes raised from being “forced” to maintain a positive carbon footprint into redevelopment projects such as atmosphere processing to remove greenhouse gases, and building new cities and biodomes to house and protect future generations from the very real possibility of an environmental disaster.

At one level, the increasing rise in temperatures is changing the balance of when different species come out of hibernation meaning that the food some species rely upon is not yet awake and available, leading to a reduction in numbers and long-term possible extinction. This base-level disruption in natural food chains has a ripple effect on the human population which should not be ignored (unless of course we manage to isolate our food supplies from these natural effects).

To face the reality of the situation, we need to prepare for food chain disruption, crop failures, water pollution, further extreme weather and much more. This might seem a little “extreme” to some people, but is it not better to be prepared for the worst in order to preserve humanity? Or should we simply allow Nature to do her thing and rebalance the system by potentially wiping out a billion or more people when the waters rise?