Gambling with the Future

by Chuck Hall

In his State of the Union address on January 31, President Bush stated, "America is addicted to oil."  Although the United States makes up only five percent of the world¹s population, we use an estimated 25% of the world¹s energy resources. A large percentage of this is oil and other fossil fuels. Clearly there is some truth to the President¹s words. We are addicted.

One of the characteristics common to addiction is denial. An addict does not want to admit he has a problem, so he finds creative ways to rationalize his addictive behavior. This may be the case with people who deny that humans are playing any significant part in global warming. Increasingly, scientific evidence demonstrates that human activities are having a considerable impact.

On February 5, 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its latest findings on global warming and climate change. You may read the entire report for yourself at: http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf . The study compared atmospheric samples with ice core samples up to 650,000 years ago. The contents of the atmosphere are trapped in polar ice caps, and by studying ice core samples, the atmosphere may be analyzed for thousands of years in the past. The study concluded that, "The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in 2005 exceeds by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years (180 parts per million to 300 parts per million) as determined from ice cores. The annual carbon dioxide concentration growth-rate was larger during the last 10 years than it has been since the beginning of continuous direct atmospheric measurements."

The report also concluded that it is more likely than not that man-made factors are contributing substantially to the increase in average global temperatures, and that it is very unlikely that the changes in climate during the past seven centuries were caused by natural climate variability alone. In other words, human activities are contributing significantly to global warming.

In the section of the IPCC report on predictions (based on climate modeling), the study concluded that it is very likely that in the future we will experience more frequent heat waves, periods of heavier precipitation, more intense hurricanes and cyclones, major changes in wind, precipitation and weather patterns, and constant rise in sea levels. Even if carbon dioxide emissions were stabilized today, the damaging effects could continue for up to 1000 years.

The IPCC is made up of top scientists in the fields of meteorology, climatology and other related sciences from 113 countries worldwide. Over 90% of the scientists who work with the IPCC are in agreement that human activities are playing a significant part in climate change.

Those who deny that man-made greenhouse gases are making an impact are therefore considerably in the minority. It may be that the majority of scientists in the field are mistaken, and that this small minority is correct in their assessment that humans aren¹t contributing to global warming. The majority is sometimes wrong; however, with the world literally at stake, are you willing to bet your children¹s future on the outcome?