What is this climate change thing, anyway?

We do have a crisis called climate change, in Alaska and elsewhere. For decades, scientists all over the world, using evidence as diverse as tree rings, ice cores, lake sediments, and direct measurements, have seen their data converge: human activities are radically changing the climate, with a huge range of adverse impacts.

The basic science has been known since the 1800s. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, trap heat. Adding more of them causes more heat to build up. That’s what we humans have been doing. In 1988, James Hansen and colleagues at NASA stated, “The [predicted] temperature changes are sufficiently large to have major impacts on people and other parts of the biosphere.” This is the government agency that took us to the moon. They know what they are talking about. The scientific research continues, and none of it casts any doubt on the problem.

In the Frontiersman (December 2), Tom Brennan says, “a lot of thoughtful people have reservations” about the recent National Climate Assessment. Who are these “thoughtful people”? Not scientists who work in this area. Not doctors or public health professionals: the Lancet Countdown has called climate change “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” Not the military: the Pentagon has called it a “threat multiplier.”

More heat causes the air over the oceans to hold more water, fueling more intense rainfall and hurricanes. More heat on land fuels more intentse wildfires and drought. Alaskan villages are having to relocate, as they are battered by storms without protection from the usual sea ice. We see mid-winter temperatures in the 40s in Alaska, and arctic conditions in the Midwest, as ocean and air currents change.

Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has already led to the oceans becoming more acidic. If we keep increasing our carbon dioxide emissions, we’re on track to make them 150% more acidic by 2100 compared to pre-industrial levels. Scientists don’t yet know which species will go extinct, and which will be able to adapt. However, NOAA (Alaska Fisheries Science Center) anticipates that Alaska will lose our king crab industry by about 2100. Globally, great numbers of people are already becoming “climate refugees” as their lands can no longer produce food. In the near future, rising sea levels are on track to drive millions from their homes in low-lying areas like Bangladesh, adding to the refugee crisis.

In Alaska, streams are warming; some will become too warm to support salmon. We are facing another outbreak of spruce bark beetles, which has killed hundreds of thousands of trees in the MatSu Borough. A lot of our infrastructure is built on permafrost, which has begun to thaw. Even worse, when permafrost thaws, it releases methane, another greenhouse gas. Biologists fear that with continued warm winters, ticks will begin to infest and kill our moose (this is already happening in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine). So, the predicted temperature changes and their impacts are progressing rapidly. Unfortunately, this is a one-way street. There is no way, at present, to take greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere on a large enough scale to “turn back” global warming. If we keep postponing serious action, we face consequences which we cannot undo. Extinct species will not come back, and many other impacts will be irreversible. The time to act, and urgently, is now. The effects of not acting are so destructive and costly that we really have no choice. .

Why is the nature of the problem still widely denied, when the scientific consensus is so solid? Perhaps it is because people aren’t familiar with the reports, or how they were developed. Reports like the Fourth National Climate Assessment and the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are built from dozens of thoroughly vetted studies, reviewed by experts in the field before publication. Perhaps it is because scientists are leery of sounding alarmist, and often don’t communicate well to the public. Perhaps it is the lobbying power of some who have a vested interest in denying the evidence, spreading doubt, and attacking scientists’ integrity.

It’s true that oil and gas have been foundations of our Alaskan economy. And yet, this has only been true for about 50 years. We are at another turning point: we need to transition away from them. A transition to renewables, along with better energy efficiency, will create many more jobs than oil and gas, while protecting our salmon, our crab, and other economic and subsistence resources.

There is no reason for the nature of the problem to be politicized; it threatens all of us. Only the question of how to solve it should be political. But not all solutions need to be “partisan.” And there are solutions that would benefit our economy, and create more jobs than we have now. These are the ones to start with. The organization that I volunteer for, the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, includes a conservative caucus, and our proposed solution is bipartisan and market-based. Meanwhile, a bipartisan group in the US House of Representatives has introduced the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividends Act (HR 763). The bill is similar to CCL’s proposal: it will levy a fee on carbon-based fuels, at the source (at the wellhead, etc.). The resulting revenue is sent to all households on a per-capita basis – like the PFD, on a national scale. This will encourage a transition to more efficient and cheaper energy sources. Economic analysis of this kind of system shows net benefits in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, jobs and the economy overall. The bill deserves our support, through letters and calls to Congressman Young.

For information about the bill, see https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/763. For the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, see citizensclimatelobby.org. Watch this space for details in coming weeks.