Earth's climate is a vast, highly complex thermodynamic system; no wonder its future course cannot be fully predicted by even the most sophisticated climate models. During the past 100 years the earth has warmed by about 1.6 degrees F, largely attributed to manmade emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, primarily from burning fossil fules. According to a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the rate of warming during the last fifteen years was about 0.09 degrees F per decade, a minor change that can be dismissed as insignificnt. Although evidence of the consequences of global warming are all around us in the form of extreme weather events, such as world wide droughts, heat waves and severe storms, this fact of a minor temperature rise of 0.09 degrees F in the past fifteen years actually should give one pause. How can we reconcile the overwhelming evidence of climate warming with even a minor change in global temperature?
There are natural processes in which heat energy can be absorbed without an increase in temperature. For example, one gram of ice at 0 degrees F can melt to give one gram of water at 0 degrees F absorbing 80 calories of heat with no change in temperature. Also, one gram of water can vaporize absorbing 539 calories of heat without rising the temperature. Huge quantities of Arctic and Antarctic ice have been steadily melting, while large amounts of water vapor have been introduced into earth's atmosphere as well. These factors, along with the vast heat sink of warming layers of deep-ocean can explain absorption of heat without a significant decadal rise in earth's average temperature.
When most of the permanent ice is depleted and the atmospheric water vapor reaches saturation point (saturation being the mazimum amount of vapor air can hold at a given temperature) a rise in temperature will occur. That will aslo be the state of the earth's climate when little snow will fall on the mountains, because of the atmosphere's high heat content, and there will be frequent and violent run-off in rain downpours, due to this accumulation of excess atmospheric water vapor and heat energy. There is already some evidence of earth's future climate course; recent examples being Colorado's rain storms and mega storm Sandy in the northeastern United States.
Climate warming is a huge problem confronting the entirety of humanity; one accentuated by the accumulation of greenhouse gases from the combustion of fossil fuels. Economic progress and society's well-being requires the use of vast (and growing) quantities of energy that comes mostly from fossil fuels. The International Energy Outlook 2013, a publication of the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that world energy consumption will grow by 56% between 2010 and 2040. Fossil fuels, the mainsty of greenhouse emissions, will supply 80% of world energy use through 2040. There is zero probability that we will stop burning fossil fuels in the near term. Given that stark reality, it is easy to predict the future course of world climate change.
Copyright 2013 by H.S. Sandhu; All Rights Reserved.
It's an uphill battle asking everyone to change rapidly from fossil fuels (including natural gas and so-called, biofuels) to those with a zero emissions. It may take many disasters for that to happen.
Ron