[Vision2020] Woods Hole Reseach Center: The Warming of the Earth: A Beginner's Guide to Understanding the Issue of Global Warming

[Ted Moffett]

The following document (Microsoft PowerPoint presentation) is 82 pages long,
covering a wide variety of scientific and economic issues regarding climate
change, with considerable relevant scientific research presented in numerous
graphs.  The first few pages are pasted in below, which state clearly that
anthropogenic climate change is already happening; and limited time remains
to address the problem before "catastrophic" outcomes become more probable:


http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications/warming_earth/index.htm

Meeting the                              Climate-Change Challenge




John P. Holdren

Director, The Woods Hole Research Center

Teresa & John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy,             Harvard
University

President, American Association for the Advancement of Science









SES Distinguished Scientist Seminar
Marine Biological Laboratory                                     Woods
Hole
3 November 2006



In this talk I will argue that…


•Climate change is coming at us *faster*, with *larger impacts* and *bigger
risks*, than even most climate scientists expected as recently as a few
years ago.
•The stated goal of the UNFCCC – avoiding dangerous anthropogenic
interference in the climate – is in fact unattainable, because today we are
*already* experiencing dangerous anthropogenic interference. The real
question now is whether we can still avoid *catastrophic*
anthro-pogenicinterference in climate.
•There is *no guarantee* that catastrophe can be avoided even we start
taking serious evasive action immediately;  but if we wait even one more
decade before starting, the chance of avoiding catastrophe will get *very
much smaller*.

And I will talk about what, specifically, we need to do.



What climate change means



Climate consists of averages & extremes of
•hot & cold
•wet & dry
•snowpack & snowmelt
•winds & storm tracks
•ocean currents & upwellings

and the *patterns* of these in space and time.

  Small changes in global-average surface T entail large & consequential
changes in climatic patterns.  Difference between an ice age & an
interglacial is ~5°C.

The stakes in climate change



Climate governs, so climate change alters,
•productivity of farms, forests, & fisheries
•prevalence of oppressive heat &humidity
•geography of disease
•damages from storms, floods, droughts, wildfires
•property losses from sea-level rise
•expenditures on engineered environments
•distribution & abundance of species
What is the evidence that climate is now changing in unusual & threatening
ways?

•We know -- from thermometer records in the atmosphere and the oceans, and
from ice cores, bore holes, tree rings, corals, pollens, sediments, and more
-- that Earth’s climate is now changing at a pace far outside the range of
expected natural variation, and in the opposite direction from what the
known, natural, cyclic influences on climate would otherwise be causing at
this time.
•We should be cooling, but we are warming up: by ~0.8 C in Tavg in the last
125 years, more over the continents, several times that over the continents
at high latitudes.
•On a worldwide average, the 12 warmest years of the last 125 have all
occurred since 1990, 20 of the 21 warmest since 1980.   The last 50 years
appear to have been the warmest half century in 6000 years.
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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