Global Warming
The debate on global warming is over. Present levels of carbon dioxide—nearing 400 parts per million (ppm) in the earth's atmosphere—are higher than they have been at any time in the past 650,000 years and could easily surpass 500 ppm by the year 2050 without radical intervention.
Preventing the transformation of the earth's atmosphere from greenhouse to unconstrained hothouse represents arguably the most imposing scientific and technical challenge that humanity has ever faced.
The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame.
The global average surface temperature, compiled from thousands of locations on land and at sea, has risen by 0.74 degrees Celsius in the past century, a little over a degree Fahrenheit. Three-quarters of that increase of that increase happened in the past three decades: 11 of the 12 warmest years on record have occurred since 1995.
Earth is, on average, 1.3 degrees F warmer today than in 1906, with increased surface temperatures recorded on every continent and ocean. The most dramatic changes have been in the Arctic, where temperature have risen 4 degrees to 5 degrees F in the past 50 years.
We're seeing impacts on every continent and every ocean. No geographic region is immune.
More and more land is being devastated by drought. The amount of the earth's surface afflicted by drought has more than doubled since the 1970s.
A recent UN study warned that desertification could displace 50 million people in the next decade, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.
Wildfires in such regions as Indonesia, the western U.S. and even inland Alaska have been increasing as timberlands and forest floors grow more parched. The blazes create a feedback loop of their own, pouring more carbon into the atmosphere and reducing the number of trees, which inhale CO2 and release oxygen.
Rising average temperature puts more heat energy and water vapor into the atmosphere, fueling heavier rainfall, more powerful hurricanes, and more frequent heat waves, while increasing the risk of drought and wildfires.
From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, the global climate seems to be crashing around us. Disasters have always been with us and surely always will be. But when they hit this hard and come this fast—when the emergency becomes commonplace—something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming.
We can be pretty sure that as average temperatures climb, there will be more frequent and longer heat waves of the sort that contribute to the death of at least 20,000 Europeans in August 2003.
The World Health Organization (WHO) believes that even the modest increases in average temperature that have occurred since the 1970s have begun to take a toll. Climate change is responsible for at least 150,000 extra deaths a year—a figure that will double by 2030, according to WHO's conservative estimate.
It gets worse. Higher levels of carbon dioxide favor the growth of ragweed and other pollen producers over other plants, according to Dr. Paul Epstein at Harvard's Center for Health and the Global Environment. In addition, ragweed churns out more pollen as CO2 levels rise. Scientist have tied local spike in asthma and allergy attaches to increases in molds and emissions from diesel engines. Apparently, the molds attach themselves to diesel particles, which deliver them more efficiently deep into the lungs. Add a plentiful helping of dust storms (from, for instance, the desertification of Mongolia or northern Africa) and a rise in drought-driven brushfires, and you had a made-to-order recipe for increasing respiratory distress worldwide.
Flooding
Another predicted consequence of global warming is heavier downpours, leading to more floods. The immediate hazard is drowning, but the larger issue is water quality. To take just one example, more that 700 U.S. cities—most of them older communities in the Northeast, Northwest and Great lakes area—have sewer systems that regularly overflow into water supplies during heavy rainstorms, mixing dirty and clean water and sometimes requiring mandatory boiling to make contaminated tap water safe.
Ocean waters have warmed by a full degree Fahrenheit since 1970, and the warmer water is like rocket fuel for typhoons and hurricanes. Two studies last year found that in the past 35 years the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has doubled while the wind speed and duration of all hurricanes has jumped 50%.
In a warming world, ice melt in itself isn't unexpected. What's surprising is the speed of ice loss. Ice sheet collapse in both Greenland and Antarctica would raise sea level 20 feet, inundating many coastlines.
Arctic temperatures have risen four to five degrees Fahrenheit (two to three degrees Celsius) in just the past 50 years—twice as fast as elsewhere on the globe. Summertime ice in the Arctic Ocean has been declining by more than 7 percent a decade since the 1970s, and dropped a staggering 23 percent between 2005 and 2007 alone.
Researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center predict the Arctic Ocean will likely be ice free in summer by 2030, opening legendary trade routes and sending countries scrambling to claim newly open waters.
If we wait for an ice cap to vanish, it will simply be too late.
Greenland has warmed by 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1991, far more than the rest of the globe; the area of the ice cap on which meltwater lakes form in summer, once a this band along the coast, has been creeping inland at the rate of 12 percent a year. The Arctic Ocean at the end of last summer had 23 percent less permanent ice cover than in September 2006, when the previous record was set. In just two years an area of ice larger than Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Alabama combined has been lost. What will be the ripple effects on Greenland and the planet when all that dark open water, instead of reflecting sunshine back to space the way the ice did, starts absorbing it like blacktop on a summer day?
Icebergs don't raise sea levels when they melt because they're floating, which means they have displaced all the water they're ever going to. But ice on land, like Greenland's, is a different matter. Pour that into oceans that are already rising (because warm water expands), and you deluge shorelines. By some estimates, the entire Greenland ice sheet would be enough to raise global sea level by 23 feet, swallowing up large parts of coastal Florida and most of Bangladesh. The Antarctic holds enough ice to raise sea levels more than 215 feet.
Thirteen of the 20 largest cities in the world happen to be located at sea level.
One of the reasons the loss of the planet's ice cover is accelerating is that as the poles' bright white surface shrinks, it changes the relationship of Earth and the sun. Polar ice is so reflective that 90% of the sunlight that strikes it simply bounces back into space, taking much of its energy with it. Ocean water does just the opposite, absorbing 90% of the energy it receives. The more energy it retains, the warmer it gets, with the result that each mile of ice that melts vanishes faster than the mile that preceded it.
A similar feedback loop is melting permafrost, usually defined as land that has been continuously frozen for two years or more. There's a lot of earthly real estate that qualifies, and much of it has been frozen much longer than two years—since the end of the last ice age, or at least 8,000 years ago. Sealed inside that cryonic time capsule are layers of partially decayed organic matter, rich in carbon. In high-altitude regions of Alaska, Canada and Siberia, the soil is warming and decomposing, releasing gases that will turn into methane and CO2. That, in turn, could lead to more warming and permafrost thaw, says research scientist David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. And how much carbon is socked away in Arctic soils? Lawrence puts the figure at 200 gigatons to 800 gigatons. The total human carbon output is only 7 gigatons a year.
Studies show that some areas of permafrost have already started emitting carbon dioxide and methane as the rich organic matter they contain thaws and starts to decompose. Researchers worry that once the thawing gets going, the permafrost could dump its carbon into the atmosphere relatively quickly, amplifying the effect of human emissions to cause dramatic and unstoppable climate change.
Today, the world's coal, oil, and natural gas industries dig up and pump out about seven billion tons of carbon a year, and society burns nearly all of it, releasing carbon dioxide.
More than people realize, dealing with climate change means addressing the problems posed by emissions from coal-fired power plants. Unless humanity takes prompt action to strictly limit the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere when consuming coal to make electricity, we have little chance of gaining control over global warming.
A global armada of coal plants has helped push carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to levels 36 percent higher than pre-industrial times. Yet coal's low cost and abundance make it the world's choice for meeting growing electricity demand. Coal provides half the electricity in the United States. Worldwide coal plants are responsible for 20 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
- India's greenhouse-gas emissions could rise 70% by 2025.
- The increase in China's emissions from 2000 to 2030 will nearly equal the increase from the entire industrialized world.
- China's total electricity demand will rise an estimated 2,600 gigawatts by 2050, which is the equivalent of adding four 300-megawatt power plants every week for the next 45 years.
- India's energy consumption rose 208% from 1980 to 2001, even faster than China's, and nearly half the population still lacks regular access to electricity.
The torrid economic growth of China and India will elicit calls from industrial nations for restraints on emissions, which will again be met by even more adamant retorts that citizens of Shenzhen and Hyderabad should have the same opportunities to build their economies that those of Detroit and Frankfurt once did.
Coal-fired power plants account for more than two thirds of sulfur dioxide and about one fifth of nitrogen oxide emissions in the U.S. Sulfur dioxide reacts in the atmosphere to form sulfate particles, which in addition to causing acid rain, contribute to fine particulate pollution, a contaminant linked to thousands of premature deaths from lung disease nationwide. Nitrogen oxides combine with hydrocarbons to form smog-causing ground-level ozone.
Coal-burning plants also emit approximately 48 metric tons of mercury a year in American. This highly toxic element persists in the ecosystem. After transforming into methyl mercury, it accumulates in the tissues of fishes. Ingested mercury is particularly detrimental to fetuses and young infants expose during periods of rapid brain growth, causing developmental and neurological damage.
Ending the era of conventional coal-fired power plants is at the very top of the decarbonization agenda.
Oil accounted for 43 percent of global carbon emissions from fossil fuels in 2002, while coal accounted for 37 percent; natural gas made up the remainder. More than half the oil was used for transportation. Transportation, too, must be decarbonized.
High prices for gasoline and home heating oil are here to stay. The U.S. is at war in the Middle East at least in part to protect its foreign oil interests. And as China, India and other nations rapidly increase their demand for fossil fuels, future fighting over energy looms large. In the meantime, power plants that burn coal, oil and natural gas, as well as vehicles everywhere, continue to pour millions of tons of pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere annually, threatening the planet.
Climate change compels a massive restructuring of the world's energy economy. Fossil fuels account for 80 percent of the world's energy usage.
The current view of many scientists is that atmospheric CO2 levels must be kept below 450 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to avoid unacceptable climate changes.
The slim hope for keeping atmospheric carbon below 500 ppm hinges on aggressive programs of energy efficiency instituted by national governments.
Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman have twice been unable to get through the Senate even a mild measure to limit carbon. Senator Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman, both of New Mexico and both ranking members of the chamber's Energy Committee, have made global warming a high-profile matter.
The task of holding global emissions constant would be out of reach, were it not for the fact that all the driving and flying in 2056 will be in vehicles not yet designed, most of the buildings that will be around then are not yet built, the locations of many of the communities that will contain these buildings and determine their inhabitants' commuting patterns have not yet been chosen, and utility owners are only now beginning to plan for the power plants that will be needed to light up those communities. Today's notoriously inefficient energy system can be replaced if the world gives unprecedented attention to energy efficiency. Dramatic changes are plausible over the next 50 years because so much of the energy canvas is still blank.
Well-meaning scientists, engineers, economists and politicians have proposed various steps that could slightly reduce fossil-fuel use and missions. These steps are not enough. The U.S. needs a bold plan to free itself from fossil fuels. Our analysis convinces us that a massive switch to solar power is the logical answer.
In the category of greatest unfulfilled potential, solar-electric power is a technology without rival.
Solar energy's potential is off the chart. The energy in sunlight striking the earth for 40 minutes is equivalent to global energy consumption for a year.
The greatest obstacle to implementing a renewable U.S. energy system is not technology or money, however. It is the lack of public awareness that solar power is a practical alternative—and one that can fuel transportation as well. Forward-looking thinkers should try to inspire U.S. citizen, and their political and scientific leaders, about solar power's incredible potential. Once Americans realize that potential, we believe that desire for energy self-sufficiency and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will prompt them to adopt a national solar plan.
Summary
We're running out of time very quickly. There is no easy fix. There is an old African proverb: “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Using this proverb, Al Gore pointed out that, "We need to go far, quickly." He was speaking at a 2008 TED conference.
The Solar Roadways™ can be implemented in a very short period of time, but it is going to require the cooperation of our government: in particular, the DOE, EPA, DOT, and Homeland Security. It will require legislation and bills that can pass through Congress, the Senate, and the White House. It will take a great amount of cooperation between our political parties. In WWII, it took our country three years and eight months to mobilize and defeat Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany. We refer to the Americans who accomplished this enormous feat as “The Greatest Generation”, and rightfully so. It's time for us to step up to the plate as a nation once again.
One solution rises every morning
Time Magazine Special Report: Global Warming April 3, 2006
National Geographic—Changing Climate June 22, 2008
Scientific American—A Climate Repair Manual September 2006
Scientific American—A Solar Grand Plan December 16, 2007