I’m calling from Alaska this week and I think I must be one of only ten people up here who is not looking for oil. You may remember a few weeks ago I spoke about Bill Clinton and Al Gore obstructing progress on climate change. The reason I think that has much to do with Alaska and some math called carbon logic.
Contrary to what you read in ads sponsored by Mobil Oil Corporation, global warming is a real phenomenon. It’s measurable. The real questions are two: how far can we let it go before it causes irreparable harm? And what can we do to stop heating the planet? The answers are straightforward, if not pleasant. Let me apologize in advance for all the numbers I’m about to throw at you.
The United Nations Environmental Programme – or UNEP – estimates ecosystems and human systems can tolerate a maximum increase of one degree – Celsius – in Earth’s temperature and a 20-centimeter rise in sea levels. Anything beyond that and – as they say on Oprah – you don’t want to go there. That answers question one, how far can global warming go? But what do the numbers mean? The global mean temperature has risen between .3 and .6 degrees since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and we are currently warming the earth at about .2 degrees per decade. Since 1860, humans have burned about 240 billion metric tons of carbon. That’s what’s caused the rise in temperature I’ve been talking about. We’ve burned 240 billion metric tons of carbon and we’ve raised the earth’s temperature by half a degree.
The other factor that comes into play here is deforestation. Plants, especially trees, breathe in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. As we cut down forests, we speed the rate of global warming. So if you want to know how long we’ve got until global warming gets us into trouble, you have to look at how fast we’re burning carbon and cutting down trees. If we keep on cutting down trees at the rate we’re cutting them today, then another 150 billion metric tons of carbon will put us over the top on global warming. At current rates of consumption, we’ll be there in less than 30 years. If we stop cutting forests and get busy replanting them in those places we have already cut, we can probably go ahead and burn up to 270 billion metric tons of carbon, but at current rates of consumption, we’ll be there in 40 years.
So, if you’ve been following these numbers, it’s plain to see that we have to switch from fossil fuels NOW if we’re going to avoid either environmental catastrophe, economic dislocation, or both. What has all of this got to do with Bill Clinton, Al Gore or Alaska? As I said, everyone and his brother is up here, poking holes in the ground, looking for more oil. The federal government is selling leases in the Arctic Ocean, to look for more oil. As I said earlier, even under the best of circumstances, we can only burn another 270 billion metric tons of carbon. The oil, coal and gas – that is to say, carbon – already on hand amounts to one trillion metric tons, or four times as much as we need to fry ourselves off the planet. Meanwhile, Clinton, Gore and company are subsidizing the oil companies to come up to Alaska and look for more.
Carbon Logic
I’m calling from Alaska this week and I think I must be one of only ten people up here who is not looking for oil. You may remember a few weeks ago I spoke about Bill Clinton and Al Gore obstructing progress on climate change. The reason I think that has much to do with Alaska and some math called carbon logic.
Contrary to what you read in ads sponsored by Mobil Oil Corporation, global warming is a real phenomenon. It’s measurable. The real questions are two: how far can we let it go before it causes irreparable harm? And what can we do to stop heating the planet? The answers are straightforward, if not pleasant. Let me apologize in advance for all the numbers I’m about to throw at you.
The United Nations Environmental Programme – or UNEP – estimates ecosystems and human systems can tolerate a maximum increase of one degree – Celsius – in Earth’s temperature and a 20-centimeter rise in sea levels. Anything beyond that and – as they say on Oprah – you don’t want to go there. That answers question one, how far can global warming go? But what do the numbers mean? The global mean temperature has risen between .3 and .6 degrees since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and we are currently warming the earth at about .2 degrees per decade. Since 1860, humans have burned about 240 billion metric tons of carbon. That’s what’s caused the rise in temperature I’ve been talking about. We’ve burned 240 billion metric tons of carbon and we’ve raised the earth’s temperature by half a degree.
The other factor that comes into play here is deforestation. Plants, especially trees, breathe in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. As we cut down forests, we speed the rate of global warming. So if you want to know how long we’ve got until global warming gets us into trouble, you have to look at how fast we’re burning carbon and cutting down trees. If we keep on cutting down trees at the rate we’re cutting them today, then another 150 billion metric tons of carbon will put us over the top on global warming. At current rates of consumption, we’ll be there in less than 30 years. If we stop cutting forests and get busy replanting them in those places we have already cut, we can probably go ahead and burn up to 270 billion metric tons of carbon, but at current rates of consumption, we’ll be there in 40 years.
So, if you’ve been following these numbers, it’s plain to see that we have to switch from fossil fuels NOW if we’re going to avoid either environmental catastrophe, economic dislocation, or both. What has all of this got to do with Bill Clinton, Al Gore or Alaska? As I said, everyone and his brother is up here, poking holes in the ground, looking for more oil. The federal government is selling leases in the Arctic Ocean, to look for more oil. As I said earlier, even under the best of circumstances, we can only burn another 270 billion metric tons of carbon. The oil, coal and gas – that is to say, carbon – already on hand amounts to one trillion metric tons, or four times as much as we need to fry ourselves off the planet. Meanwhile, Clinton, Gore and company are subsidizing the oil companies to come up to Alaska and look for more.