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The Lessons of Mild Winter Nights

Professor Bruce E. Johansen

When I was first invited to write about global warming for Nebraskans for Peace a few months ago, a thought struck me. When the biggest threat to the human race was nuclear war, something had to be done to consummate the disaster — a fit of international anger, a button pushed, missiles sent on their way. The scariest thing about global warming is that all we have to do to destroy the world that nurtures us is carry on business as usual.

The onset of such an apocalypse may even be pleasant at times, as with a collection of bright, dry, mild winter days. The end of our climatic world may not even be notable for its nasty storms as much as utter boredom, as the fingers of intensifying drought wrap around us.“Nice day,” is a phrase I have heard a lot during these days of Nebraska winters that seem to have evolved into long thaws punctuated by short freezes.

Some of us are old enough to remember local winters that began in November and ended in April, broken only by occasional (and sometimes dramatic) mid-winter thaws. So who will begrudge us long strings of mild, dry winter days with warnings that this is only the beginning of a natural catalogue of weather weirdness that will turn the natural world on its head, and of feedback loops that will accelerate warmth beyond the survival tolerance of many plants and animals? One might as well save the climatic sermon for especially hot and humid summer afternoons, with the caveat that, well, weather happens, especially in Nebraska. The problem with this line of reasoning is that the most dramatic warming is taking place during the coldest periods — that is, winter nights, here, as well as in the Arctic, where cold-season warming is much more dramatic, and dangerous.

Many climate scientists believe that the middle of the twentyfirst century will witness dramatic acceleration in global warming. Various feedback loops are expected to accelerate increases in atmospheric greenhouse-gas levels and, consequently, worldwide temperatures. These include several natural processes that add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, such as melting permafrost in the Arctic and eventual gasification of solid methane deposits (clathrates) in the oceans. These compound existing problems like a bank account drawing an environmentally dangerous form of compound interest. Evidence is accumulating that these processes already have begun. Parts of the Trans-Siberian Railway’s track has twisted and sunk due to melting of permafrost, causing delays of service of several days at a time. Scientists in Siberia report methane and carbon dioxide bubbling out of melting permafrost that refuses to freeze even during colder seasons. The danger, according to many people who are familiar with the paleoclimatic record is: once this journey has begun in earnest, any return trip may become a matter of many centuries as well as copious human pain and suffering. Sir John Houghton, one of the world’s leading experts on global warming, told the UK Independent: “We are getting almost to the point of irreversible meltdown, and will pass it soon if we are not careful.”

The ultimate feedback is the so-called “methane burp,” in which solid methane in the oceans turns to gas in the atmosphere, breaks down into carbon dioxide, and accelerates greenhouse warming. During past periods of rapid warming, methane in gaseous form has been released from the seafloor in intense eruptions. An explosive rise in temperatures on the order of about 8 degrees C. during a few thousand years accompanied a methane release 55 million years ago, called the Palaeocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum. The “methane” burp will not be tomorrow’s news, but climate scientists pay attention to such things because rising greenhouse-gas emissions could be taking us down a similar path. James Hansen believes that a 2 degree C. worldwide temperature increase could “whipsaw” the Earth into a climate regime, via feedbacks, that would constitute “a different planet.” At that point, increases in greenhouse gases would engage a self-perpetuating feedback loop that cannot be stopped. “We live on a planet whose climate is dominated by positive feedbacks, which are capable of taking us to dramatically different conditions.”

Hansen told the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in San Francisco December 14, 2006. “The problem,” said Hansen, is “is that many feedbacks that came into play slowly in the past, driven by slowly changing forcings, will come into play rapidly now, at the pace of our humanmade forcings, tempered a few decades by the oceans’ thermal response time.” Hansen hastened to tell his audience of scientists that he was speaking as a private citizen under the protection of the First Amendment. In his official capacity as director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York City, Hansen often has been forbidden to disseminate his findings by the Bush White House, where the usual line on the future is, as Bush himself once told Bob Woodward: Who cares about the future? We’ll all be dead then. Hansen added: “The semi-arid part of the United States, stretching from West Texas through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas is likely to have more extensive droughts and be less suitable for agriculture.” (The droughts also may intensify as the Ogalalla aquifer is depleted.) This is the ultimate destination on a journey that begins with all those “nice day, eh?” winter salutations.

Read papers and articles by James E. Hansen.