Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
lower than earlier predicted levels, which is attributed not to the effects of the cur-
rent solar minimum, but to stronger trade winds in the eastern Pacific which have
been twice as strong in the last two decades compared to most of the previous cen-
tury. This has driven surface warmer water to the depths, thereby reducing ocean
warming (England et al.
2014
). This seems to be only a temporary reprieve, which
will be followed by the type of rapid warming seen in previous decades once this
ocean effect wears off.
There is still a lot of debate about the rate of greenhouse gas build-up and wheth-
er there is a critical level above which a series of feedback loops in what is a com-
plex atmospheric system will create irreversible changes in climate. Despite regular
international conferences and the impact of Gore's film,
An Inconvenient Truth
, that
publicized the problem, albeit with limitations, little progress has been reached on
reducing the levels of greenhouse gas build-up through international agreements.
In addition, there are still some climate deniers—individuals who deny that climate
change is taking place as a result of human-created carbon dioxide emissions. This
led the Canadian National Post newspaper to run a series of articles supporting these
views from Nov. 2006 through 2007, which led to a summary and extension of the
ideas in a topic (Solomon
2008
). Some of these climate deniers are in influential
posts, such as those in the Republican ranks in the U.S. Congress. But many of the
scientists whose opinions have been quoted by the climate deniers have rigorously
argued that they were misquoted (EEEC 2007). Other initial well known sceptics,
such as the physicist R.A. Muller (
2012
) at the University of California at Berke-
ley, created his own climate group to look into climate warming, based on detailed
measurements of the changes in earth temperatures from stations around the world,
rather than depending on climate modelling. He has confirmed the warming trend
and link to atmospheric carbon concentrations. So it is becoming harder and harder
to accept the opinions of climate change deniers, given the accumulating evidence
from so many studies and especially the warming seen in glacial and Arctic ice cap
retreat, although it must be noted that the climate system is too complex to attribute
one storm or climate event to this general conclusion. The evidence from hundreds
of studies led the IPCC panel (Sept. 2013, p. 2) to state their conclusion in blunt
terms in a recent report:
warming of the climate system is unequivocal, many of the observed changes are unprec-
edented over decades to millennia
.
The combination of the problems created by climate warming with many other
negative changes that affect sustainability mean that humans seem to have created
a scale and type of development that is not just affecting cities and regions but is
threatening to negatively transform the planet. This is the very environment that sus-
tains us, as well as other life forms. Of course, our activity is not the first life-form to
have altered the planet. The Gaia movement, pioneered by the atmospheric scientist
James Lovelock (
1979
,
2009
) and the microbiologist Lynn Margulis (
1999
), showed
that our planet is not the simple, inert result of the endowment of the lithosphere
and the physical processes upon it. Instead, it has been the generation of life itself
which has altered the physical basis of the planet by changing the gas balance in the
atmosphere, especially by plants that create the very oxygen we breathe and which
