As human-caused
climate disruption progresses, sea level rise is happening far faster than
previously expected. (Photo: Iceberg via Shutterstock)
Recently,
two friends and I attempted to climb Washington State's beautiful, glacier-clad
Mount Baker. Roped up while climbing up a glacier, roughly 1,500 feet below the
summit, our route reached an impasse.
Given
that it was technically early in the climbing season, and that we were on the
standard route, we were dismayed to find a snow bridge spanning a 10-foot wide
crevasse about to collapse. Finding no other way around the gaping void, we
agreed to turn back and return another day.
After
breaking down our camp and hiking out, we stopped off for a bite to eat in the
nearby small town of Glacier, Washington. Our waitress told us of a friend of
hers who worked in the Forest Service there, who told her that the area had, in
the past year, "received the least amount of precipitation [that] it had for
over 100 years."
Sea
level rise is now happening much faster than anyone had expected.
While
planning our next trip to Mount Baker, one of my climbing partners spoke with a
local guide who informed him that, despite the fact that it was only mid-May,
"climbing conditions are already equivalent to what they usually are in mid- to
late July ... crevasses are opening up, and snow bridges are already melting out
like it's late season."
Mountaineering in the throes of anthropogenic climate disruption
(ACD), like the rest of life, is becoming increasingly challenging - as well as
more dangerous.
The
signs are all around us, every day now. All we need to do is open our eyes to
the changes occurring in our regions. We need to look closely, and think about
what is happening to the planet.
Now,
zoom out with me for the bigger picture in this month's Climate Disruption
Dispatch, and brace yourself for some difficult news.
Changes
in the Arctic Ocean have now become so profound that the region is entering what
Norwegian
scientists are calling "a new era." They warn of "far-reaching
implications" due to the switch from a permanent cover of thick ice to a new
state in which thinner ice vanishes in the summer.
Meanwhile,
sea level rise is now happening much faster than anyone had expected, according
to a recently published
study from climate scientists in Australia. The study showed
that sea level rise has been accelerating over the last two decades.
NASA
recently released a
study that reveals that the planet's polar regions are in the
midst of a stunning transformation, and showed that the massive 10,000-year-old
Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica will soon completely collapse - perhaps as soon
as 2020.
And
these trends are on track to speed up, as March saw the global monthly average
for atmospheric carbon dioxide hit 400.83 parts per million. According to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it was the
first time the average surpassed 400 parts per million for an
entire month since such measurements began in the late 1950s.
Earth
Starting
on the earth and land front, the changes are coming fast and furiously.
A
study released by researchers in Sweden and China revealed how
ACD can seriously alter the prospects of survival for pretty much every living
thing on the planet, and in particular birds. The researchers showed how in the
last ice age there was a severe decline in the vast majority of the species
studied, which is precisely what we are seeing currently. Massive numbers of
species of birds are currently in dramatic decline.
A
recent stark example of this is happening in Ohio, where birds are being
devastated from the impacts of ACD, according to the Audubon Society's top
scientist, who expects things to get far worse.
Greenhouse
gases are billowing out of California's forests faster than they are being
sucked back in.
In
California, the ongoing megadrought is already responsible for having killed
12.5 million trees in that state's national forests,
according to scientists with the US Forest Service. The
scientists expect the die-off to continue. "It is almost certain that millions
more trees will die over the course of the upcoming summer as the drought
situation continues and becomes ever more long term," said biologist Jeffrey
Moore, acting regional aerial survey program manager for the US Forest
Service.
Recent research out of California also shows that forests
there have actually become climate polluters, rather than carbon dioxide
reducers, again due to ACD impacts. The study shows that greenhouse gases are
billowing out of the state's forests faster than they are being sucked back in,
with
ACD-amplified wildfires mostly to blame.
Across
most of the drought-stricken western United States, wild animals are literally
dying for water to drink, as they are now being forced to seek
water and food in areas far outside their normal range, leading to large
increases in deaths.
Another
recent
study shows that as ACD progresses, expanses of majestic
forests across the planet will become short and scrubby, due to changes of fluid
flow to the inner workings of vegetation.
Meanwhile,
rising carbon dioxide levels and other ACD impacts are having a
massive impact on Native peoples' ability to provide for their
own health care, as medicinal plants are on the wane. This issue extends beyond
the United States: Of the 7.3 billion people alive on earth right now,
approximately 5 billion of them don't go to a pharmacy to get their
prescriptions filled.
On
that note, a troubling recent study in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that a
warming climate is already driving down wheat yields in the United States, and
likely elsewhere around the globe. Hence, feeding the 7.3 billion humans (and
counting) is only going to become increasingly challenging.
More
broadly, a recent
report from doctors and scientists in Australia warned that
ACD will lead to more disease, death and violent conflicts as countries fight
more for food and water resources.
Water
As
usual, some of the most glaringly obvious impacts of ACD are making themselves
known on the waterfront, both in the form of too little or too much water.
With
the former, Nevada's Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, has
now dropped to its lowest water level in
recorded history.
Up
in the Pacific Northwest - not the region one tends to think about when
considering droughts - a recent study found that more mountains there were
snow-free earlier in the year than ever, since the region had
a largely snow-free winter with many of the snowpacks at record lows. Water
managers there had hoped late season snows or heavy spring rains would fill
reservoirs, but they didn't come. Instead, of the 98 sites monitored in
Washington, 66 were snow-free by early May, and "76 percent of Oregon's
long-term snow monitoring sites were at the
lowest snowpack levels on record" in April. In a typical year
at that time, most sites would be near their peak snowpack.
Up
in the Arctic, our canary in the coal mine for ACD impacts, circumstances are
growing increasingly dire.
Things
are bad enough in the region that by mid-May Washington Gov. Jay Inslee declared
a
statewide drought emergency, as mountain snowpack in that
state reached only 16 percent of average and water levels in rivers and streams
dried to a trickle not seen since the 1950s. Inslee warned that "residents
should also be prepared for an early and active fire season that could reach
higher elevations in the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges, where many spots
are already completely clear of snow."
Looking
further north, this past winter was also the
least snowy on record for Anchorage, Alaska, according to the
National Weather Service.
Moving
across the Pacific to Taiwan, not a country one usually thinks about being
impacted by drought, that nation is currently experiencing one of its
most severe droughts in decades. Residents living on the
country's heavily populated western coast must ration their water use.
An
international team of scientists
recently confirmed a longstanding fear: The vast amounts of
carbon currently preserved in the frozen soils and tundra of the Arctic will,
thanks to melting of the permafrost, eventually all get back into the
atmosphere. This is evidence of a positive feedback loop: Warming temperatures
melt the permafrost, releasing stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which
further warms temperatures, which melts more permafrost, and on and on.
As
though performing an Arctic version of the post-apocalyptic action movie
Mad
Max, the thawing of the northern polar ice cap has several Western powers
and Russia
rushing to stake and safeguard their claims of newly opening
shipping routes and offshore drilling sites. In other words, the latest
iteration of the Cold War is heating up, rapidly.
Down
in the Antarctic, this dispatch finds some equally disturbing developments.
The
Larsen C ice shelf, which is dramatically larger than Larsen A and B and about
two and a half times the size of Wales, is now looking as though it could
collapse. A recently published
study reported that mechanisms exist that "could pose an
imminent risk" to the ice shelf.
In
an example of yet another runaway feedback loop, a recent report shows that
accelerating
sea level rise is occurring, as the planet's ice sheets melt
at ever-increasing speeds.
On
that note, Caribbean political leaders, whose 14 island countries are being
hammered by increasing ocean acidification, rising sea levels and increasingly
intense hurricane seasons, are
pinning their hopes on the upcoming Paris Climate Summit later
this year for their very survival.
Fire
California's
ongoing drought is turning the entire state into a tinderbox, where several
years of hyper-dry conditions have led
experts to warn that the drought and current conditions are "a
recipe for disaster." California is already spending more money on fighting
wildfires than the other 10 western states combined, and the state's tally of
fires so far this year is 967, which is 38 percent higher than the average for
this date since 2005. The number of acres burned is already nearly double what
it was this time last year, and 81 percent above the average since 2005.
Throughout
the rest of the western United States, the upcoming wildfire season is looking
grim as well. As drought continues to worsen across the West and upper
Midwestern United States, the Forest Service
expects to spend up to $1.6 billion on fighting wildfires in
2015, during a fire season that is expected to be far worse than "normal."
A
recently released
study by researchers from the National Park Service, the
University of California, Berkeley, and other institutions has confirmed what we
already know: When drought-parched forested land goes up in flames, the fire
contributes to ACD, causing yet another runaway feedback loop.
Air
A
recent
paper published in Nature Climate Change has revealed that 75
percent of the world's abnormally hot days and 18 percent of its extreme snow
and rain events are directly attributable to ACD.
Two reports recently published by scientists at UCLA showed
that by 2050, portions of Los Angeles County are forecast to experience triple
or even quadruple the number of days of extreme heat (days over 95 degrees) that
they currently do.
On
that note, another recently published
study showed that Americans' exposure to heat extremes will
likely rise sixfold by 2050, due to a combination of rising temperatures and
rapid population growth across the South and West.
Across
the Atlantic,
scientists have warned that record-breaking hot years in
England have officially become at least 13 times more likely due to ACD.
Another
recent
report shows that, due to ACD, hurricanes, globally, are now
expected to come in bunches and be far stronger than in the past.
Denial
and Reality
There
seems to never be a dull moment in the ACD-denial camp in the United States. The
US House committee that is tasked with authorizing NASA spending has taken aim
recently at a key Obama administration priority with a party line vote
slashing spending on "earth science": the missions that study
ACD. The opponents aim to shift funding away from environmental and earth
science research that can help policy makers assess how to regulate pollution
and plan for the effects of ACD.
In
Alaska, hawkish anti-environmental Sen. Lisa Murkowski is
urging the Environmental Protection Agency to drop her state
from that agency's ACD rule that regulates power plant emissions - and it
appears as though she might get her way.
Down
in Florida, although rising sea levels bring a greater threat to that state's
coastline with each passing day, there remains
no statewide plan on how to mitigate this particular ACD
impact.
President
Obama, who has green-lit offshore drilling, has pushed for urgent climate action
as a national security imperative.
The
United States isn't the only country with a strong fossil-fuel-funded ACD denial
movement. In Australia, the former head of Australia's respected Climate
Commission, which was disbanded by conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott in
2013, recently challenged the government to explain why it is
funding a "research institute" that supports ACD denial.
I'm
unsure whether this next item fits into the category of "denial" or "reality":
Back in the US, President Obama, who has green-lit offshore drilling in both the
Arctic and off the Atlantic coast,
has argued that ACD poses an "immediate risk" to the US, and
has pushed for urgent action as a national security imperative.
Fully
on the reality front, the chief of the World Bank
recently stated that ACD is a "fundamental threat" to
development, acknowledging how far the dangers have progressed.
The
US Department of Defense, not known for being concerned about the environment,
is now
taking large
steps toward adapting to and preparing for ACD.
Also
not known for being overly worried about ACD, Saudi Arabia's oil minister, Ali
al-Naimi,
recently announced his country's intentions to switch entirely
over to solar power by 2040-2050: "We have embarked on a program to develop
solar energy. Hopefully, one of these days, instead of exporting fossil fuels,
we will be exporting gigawatts, electric ones. Does that sound good?"
Yes
minister, it does, albeit a little late in the game.
Also
on the reality front, the UN and Vatican have
teamed up against ACD deniers, warning the world about the
impacts of ACD while coming down firmly against the "skeptics." Former UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan came out and
said, "We must challenge climate-change skeptics who deny the
facts." And Pope Francis has instructed Catholic Church leaders to join with
politicians, scientists and economists to
draft a statement that declares not only that ACD is a
"scientific reality," but also that there is a moral and religious
responsibility to do something about it.
All
of this is good, but we cannot rest easy. We do not have a moment to waste: A
recently published analysis in the prestigious journal
Science
shows that one in six of the world's species now faces extinction due to
ACD.
