Climate change is too serious for jokes | Letter
Published 10:25 am Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Roger Clarke-Johnson calls our attention to the observation that the rate of global warming, more specifically the global mean surface temperature, has slowed since 1998 as noted in the current IPCC report. Depending on the choice of the start of the decades, the rate for the current decade is almost one-half the rate for the previous decade, not zero.
But focusing on this statistic misleads for an additional, even more significant reason. Of the extra solar radiation retained by the earth since 1970, 93 percent warmed the full ocean depth, 3 percent melted arctic sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers, 3 percent warmed the continents and 1 percent warmed the atmosphere, according to the IPCC report. So long as the carbon dioxide, and certain other air pollutants persist, excess solar radiative energy will continue to be trapped.
Examples of effects associated with extra energy continuing to be absorbed by the oceans, ice, land and air include rising sea levels with inundation of low-lying coastal areas and disruptions of the water cycle, all happening now.
If we only had to worry about the consequences of 1 percent of the amount of the excess energy we are getting, or if there wasn’t something we could do about it, then it might be useful to make jokes. But that is not where we are and there are things we can do to solve the problem.
