Global Warming is Happening

What leads scientists to confirm that Global Warming is happening, to know examples of the warming taking place and to grasp that Global Warming is not contradicted by temporary cold summers or winters.

Scientists were in 1970 able to measure how CO2 was increasing and temperatures rising at a much faster rate than previously thought.

Oil companies, coal mine owners, car producers and others who make a profit when large amounts of CO2 are produced, did not like this news. They argued against Global Warming. After all, the increase of 0.3 degrees over the century from 1870 to 1970 is very small. You hardly notice if your room warms 0.3 degrees. “Do not worry about Global Warming”, they would say.

Politicians, always dependent on those with a lot of money, did little when they got the news. The scientists at first expressed their findings cautiously, because they are by training used to never take any finding for granted until it has been tested and examined over and over again.

This made it easier for politicians to spread doubt about the reality of Global Warming, as some do even to this day. In Kyoto in 1997, a treaty was signed by many countries and by the then US vice president Al Gore, aiming at slowing down the increase in CO2. But in Washington, 100% of the senators voted against the Kyoto protocol, claiming that it was not good for American business and Al Gore’s signature was useless. Since 1997, several countries that did sign the Kyoto protocol have not lived up to their obligations.

Global Warming and climate change has happened many times before in the history of the Earth. 13,000 years ago, ice covered much of Europe and North America, and the world was 5 degrees colder than today.

Since then, however, the temperatures have been relatively stable, giving plants, animals and human societies a mostly predictable and hospitable planet to live on.

Past changes in temperatures have been caused by small changes in the amount of sunlight that reaches the lands and the oceans as the orbit of Earth around the Sun fluctuates slightly over long periods of time. Likewise, the living Earth with its plants and animals influences the temperatures as plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and forest fires, microbes and animals return CO2 to the atmosphere, mostly with the effect of stabilizing temperatures to a level favorable for live.

Global Warming today, however, is caused not by many plants and animals but by one species only, man.

Many scientists have tried to predict how temperatures will change over the next 100 years, and the UN has set up an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC). The IPCC predicted in 2007 that temperatures will rise between 2 and 6 degrees by 2100.

The IPCC, however, was under pressure from politicians to only include in their predictions events and effects they were very sure about. Thus, they did not take into consideration the effect of the melting North Pole ice until after 2080, while the ice will likely be all gone by the summer of 2030. Neither did they include the full effect of deforestation as it happens around the world, because of logging and expansion of farming, nor the fact that the oceans, which absorb and store some of the CO2 from fossil fuel burning, are less and less able to do so as the level of CO2 in the sea water increases. Thus, if we add up all this, it is likely that the highest prediction – plus 6 degrees in 2100 – will come true. This is also confirmed by recent measurements pointing to the fact that temperatures and CO2 levels are increasing faster than in even the most extreme predictions made by the IPCC.

Climate changes caused by Global Warming

The climate of a country is determined not only by average temperatures but by changes in temperature between the seasons, by the amount of rain in different seasons and by winds. The climate determines what plants can grow and which animals can live in an area, and is thus of greater importance to people and communities than the temperature.

If the average temperature of the Earth warms by 2 degrees Celsius by 2040, some areas might get much warmer, while the oceans, which cover 70% of the Earth, may warm only 1 degree. Inland areas of Africa will become 3-4 degrees warmer. When temperatures rise, the land will become much more dry, because the heat evaporates water from the soil and leaves the soil hard baked. A large increase in rainfall is needed for the soil to remain as moist as before. There will be more rain, because more water will evaporate over the oceans. But most of Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America will get a drier and less hospitable climate. More of the rain falling in a warmer world will come in violent storms that result in more flooding and destruction of crops, because higher temperatures will produce stronger winds. Especially South and Southeast Asia, Western South America and Eastern Africa will see many floods. The higher temperatures will melt glaciers on mountains and in polar areas that have been frozen for thousands or millions of years, leading to rising sea levels that will eventually flood low-lying coastal areas.

A cold summer or winter does not contradict Global Warming

It is important to realize that Global Warming must be measured on a global scale and over decades. It is not possible to take the temperatures of a single year in a certain country and say anything about climate change based on this. The climate is measured over many years, since there will always be variations between individual years.

Some people will try to use the situation, and use the cold winter of USA and Europe in 2009-2010, as an argument against Global Warming. They will say that it is getting colder. But one needs to look at the average temperatures during the whole year, and from all over the world. And with such measurements, taken from more than 1,500 weather stations, there is no longer any doubt. The first decade of the 2000s has been the warmest decade since registration of global temperatures started 150 years ago. Five of the years of this decade are among the warmest ever recorded.