About That Global Warming Thing

Global warming has, to some extent, wound up at the back of the bus lately due to a focus on economic and health-care issues. But it hasn't completely disappeared. Saturday October 24 is scheduled as a global day of action on climate change, and then of course there is that upcoming summit in Copenhagen. We'll see if the world's leaders mean it when they talk about tackling global warming or if it's mostly lip service. I don't have high hopes.

I'm not going to waste time arguing whether or not climate change is real or not, or what's causing it. It's real enough. It's said by many of those who don't out and out deny warming but refuse to accept a human role in it that we're seeing a natural cyclical fluctuation in global temperatures, there isn't a 'damn thing' we can do about it, and we'll have to adapt. Well, that's all likely true up to a point -- we could well be, and probably are in a natural cycle, there's nothing we can do about those, and we -- we as in life on earth -- will have to adapt. But it's also true that we are contributing to those changes and accelerating them in a massive way. We are pumping millions of tons of greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, into the atmosphere 24/7. CO2 is known to trap heat. There's no question about that. It also dissipates at a snail's pace. The parts per million in the atmosphere are approaching extreme levels that may trigger tipping points we can't even imagine yet. Changes are happening faster than were projected even a couple of short years ago. Our growing emissions are something we can do a 'damn thing' about if we'll get off our collective asses and do it.

Is there a compelling reason to do so? You damn betcha there is. It can buy time. Maybe plenty of time. Whether the changes are cyclical or human caused or both, cutting our emissions big-time now, while we still have a small window of time to do it, might make all the difference in our ability to adapt. Humans no doubt can adapt, and probably have before, to natural fluctuations. They tend to happen more slowly. But to keep altering the atmosphere at the rate we're doing it could lead to rapid-fire changes that we won't have time to adjust to and won't have any defenses against. Should that happen, life on this planet, at least as we know it, could be screwed.

Copenhagen will be a strong indicator of whether 'Industrial Man' (homo sapiens industrialis) has the will and the wisdom to roll up his sleeves and tackle that or not.