Local Warming

The blogosphere is full of self-congratulation this week; Time Magazine has recognized us bloggers, video posters, wikipedians, and social networkers as the person of the year.  Two ironies: 1) we’re not supposed to care what TM (traditional media) think; 2) closer to home, the best citizen journalism I read this week was Deborah Laporte Hill’s guest editorial on global warming in The Stowe Reporter, a traditional local weekly which make its content available online.

Deborah is a reservationist at a local inn.  Times are tough here right now with lawns actually green instead of piled high in snow.  There is some downhill skiing thanks to snowmaking but no cross-country or snowshoeing; not the way winter is supposed to be. And this is the second year in a row of poor snow.  When I first moved to Vermont in the early 70s we used to boast about “ten months of winter and two months of damn poor sledding.”

Like lots of locals, Deborah speculates that the lack of snow may be an effect of global warming.  Although she’s seen and been impressed by An Inconvenient Truth and thinks humans are helping to cause global warming, she also knows that “we may be in a natural warming cycle.”

What’s impressive about Deborah’s column is that, after a little speculation about causes, she goes on to say “There are two opportunities here.”  The rest of her column is about dealing with global warming.

She does recommend a more energy efficient life style in a “town full of big houses and SUVs” but then says “Second, we need to prepare for what may be our inevitable future.”  In the case of Stowe, this means looking for recreational activities other than snow skiing, which she correctly points out is a relatively recent mass winter sport.  Her article is full of ideas from the whimsical to the very practical.

The lesson to the rest of us is that we need to be thinking of dealing with the consequences of global warming and NOT be fixated on the unproven premise that we can stop or even delay it.  There is a measure of hubris in assuming that the recent acceleration in the warming trend, which has been going on for the last twelve to fifteen thousand years, is anthropogenic even though it may well be.  Although there are plenty of other good reasons like economics and national security to be energy efficient and it probably won’t HURT to reduce CO2 emissions, it is by no means certain that a reduction now will reverse the trend. Whether pushed by man or not, the climate MAY have been tipped into a warming cycle which it is beyond our ability to stop.  (BTW, do we want global cooling?  If so, how much?)

Given that global warming has accelerated recently and this may be a trend, what are the consequences?  How do we deal with them if warming continues?  How do we think like Deborah?

If we depoliticize the question, we start to ask how can the good effects of global warming in some places be used to counteract the bad effects elsewhere.  Certainly some areas will become farmable which cannot be cultivated now because they are covered with ice.  When Greenland was originally settled by Eric The Red and family around 980 AD, much more of it was green than is today. It is starting to be again.

Earth’s history is that a warmer climate means more precipitation because warm oceans and oceans not covered by ice evaporate more quickly than cold oceans so more moisture is available in the atmosphere.  Shifting weather patterns may mean new deserts; they may also make former deserts fertile.  Do we need a plan to quickly get new land under cultivation to replace land which may become arid or be flooded?

The huge question is whether global warning means that the oceans will rise.  If so, peaceful resettlement of people who live in low lying areas could be man’s greatest challenge – or failure.

The politically correct answer is that, of course the oceans will rise; whatdaya think happens when all that ice melts?  But it’s not that simple.  It doesn’t look like the seas were much higher during the aforementioned thaw when Greenland looked like prime real estate.  It doesn’t matter to the ocean levels whether floating ice like the cap on the North Pole melt; it’s in the water already.  What does matter is the ice on land.  In many places it is melting around the edges and glaciers are retreating horizontally.  If the Greenland icecap were to melt completely, it would add enough water to the oceans to raise seas 23 feet according to Denmark’s Environment Minister.

However, there is evidence that the Greenland icecap is getting thicker at its center even thought it is retreating at the edges.  Moreover, snowfall has increased over many parts of Antarctica which is normally quite dry.  In both cases, warmer weather may be sequestering more evaporated sea water in the interior, perhaps balancing the melt at the edges.

No answers; just questions we need to look at seriously.  Like Deborah, we’ve got to look for the opportunities as well as the catastrophes.

At any rate, Deborah and I both hope that the lack of snow here is short-term phenomenon that we’re reading too much into.  Tuesday’s forecast says we MAY get the first significant snow of the season.  This morning’s rain here in the Hollow (1200 feet elevation) seems to have left snow everywhere about 2000 feet.

Note:  some posts from Fractals of Change also appears in print in The Stowe Reporter.