We All Feel the Increasing Impacts of Global Warming

Summary: All over the world unprecedented weather extremes are occurring, with profound effects on human activities and health.  This post reports some recent climate events.  These instances are consistent with the forecasts that climate scientists have been making for several decades.  The IPCC issued a new, more urgent report in October 2018 specifying that we have to keep the world temperature increase below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, primarily by eliminating all emissions worldwide in about two decades.

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Tidal flooding, Eastern U. S.  Many cities along the Eastern seacoast of the U. S. already suffer fair-weather tidal flooding due to rising sea levels.  According to the U. S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as reported by National Public Radio (NPR), tidal flooding is worsening in more than 40 U. S. coastal cities.  Most of these flood days are not related to storm activity, but rather to rising sea level.  Tides are worst, i.e., highest, when the moon is full or new.  This image

Source: NPR All Things Considered https://www.npr.org/programs/all-things-considered/2019/07/10/740176584

 

shows downtown Annapolis, MD, founded three centuries ago on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, flooded during a high tide in 2017.  As NPR reports, NOAA finds that tidal flooding events in Annapolis have increased by 925% over the last 50 years.  The city is planning a Flood Mitigation Project in conjunction with many agencies including the U. S. Naval Academy, which is located in Annapolis.

Charleston, SC is also suffering from worsening ocean flooding (NPR).  The city is built on a low-lying peninsula, exposed to the sea.  In addition, in recent years flooding has been aggravated by extreme rainfall.  Both of these factors result from worsening global warming.  The city issues flood warnings as frequently as weekly during the summer.  Its officials now understand they must plan for 2-3 feet (0.6-0.9 m) of flooding over the next 50 years.

Temperatures for January-May 2019 for most regions around the globe are warmer than average or set warmest records, whereas only a very few regions were cooler than average (see the following image).

Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, State of the Climate: Global Climate Report for May 2019, published online June 2019, retrieved on July 10, 2019; https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201905 .

The average is for the 30-year reference period from 1981-2010.  It is seen that for the vast majority of global surface pixels the 5-month averages were mildly or much warmer than the 30-year reference period.  In an accompanying graphic NOAA shows land and ocean temperature departures from the 30 year reference period for the January-May interval annually from 1880 to the present (not shown).  Starting about 1976 the departures are all only positive, trending up to 0.8-1.1°C (1.4-2.1°F) above the average between 2015 and 2019.  The full 139-year record shows clearly that, although there are year-to-year variations, the long-term trend in the 5-month global average temperature has been gradually increasing by about 1.3°C (2.3°F) starting at about 1910.

Global warming has been determined to have caused two current climate extremes.  First, a severe heat wave blanketed much of western Europe during the end of June 2019.  It broke heat records across much of the area.  A group of experts in the field of climate attribution examined the temperature data in two ways, as described in a commentary in the journal Nature. 

Attribution science has made great strides in recent years.  In this case, the scientists examined the heat wave in two ways.  First, they compared the actual temperature record with results from climate models for the European region, running cases that included or excluded a man-made greenhouse effect.  They found that the record heat was five times more likely with extra greenhouse gases than without.  Second, they assessed whether historical records going back 100 years are consistent with the actual heat wave data when climate models are used to “hindcast” the data.  They found that global warming and air pollution made the current heat wave 100 times more likely than without those factors. 

More generally, the commentary summarizes that about two-thirds of the 200 attribution inquiries reported to date have positively identified global warming as making the particular event being studied more likely or more severe than without warming.

Second, a report from India describes “Zero Day, the day when a city’s taps dry out and people have to stand in line to collect a daily quota of water.”  This is currently happening in many Indian states because aquifers are being over-drawn and this year’s monsoon rains were 30% less abundant than usual.  The image below exemplifies the disaster:

Women in Rajasthan, India walk long distances to collect drinking water.

Source: Nature India, https://www.natureasia.com/en/nindia/article/10.1038/nindia.2019.84?WT.ec_id=NINDIA-20190710&sap-outbound-id=124373C6B945724353776A88CBC27CF245889A7F&mkt-key=005056B0331B1ED888DF526EE5C22187.

Zero Day has already occurred in the city of Chennai, and is predicted to happen next year in many cities, including the capital, Delhi.  In all 600 million people may be impacted.  Groundwater is the source for most of India’s rural inhabitants and for its agriculture.  The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation states that global warming is one factor contributing to this crisis.

 

Analysis

 

The Paris Agreement of December 2015 pledged 193 members of the United Nations voluntarily to reduce greenhouse gas emission rates sufficiently to keep the planet below a 2°C rise above pre-industrial levels by 2100.  But the Agreement is failing; the rate of emissions is still increasing, raising the total accumulated greenhouse gas burden of the atmosphere.  As a result, the IPCC issued a new, more drastic report in October 2018 specifying that we have to keep that temperature increase below 1.5°C, and to reach a worldwide reduction of emission rates to zero by about 2040, or 21 years from now. 

Failing to achieve this goal will lead to more intense warming, and will contribute to more rapid sea level rise, impacting coastal cities around the world, as discussed above.  It will also contribute to the more intense extremes of heat, such as Europe has experienced, as well as more extreme heat and aridity such as India is experiencing.

The economic harm alone is problematic, since in general our political structures don’t budget for funds to revive the losses, and insurance may be inadequate or nonexistent.  All people of the world have to mobilize individually and politically to eliminate fossil fuel use and develop a renewable energy economy to achieve the goal of zero emissions.

© 2019 Henry Auer

Faster Ocean Warming Means We Need Net Zero Emissions Sooner

The total amount of heat added to the Earth’s oceans since 1991 is about 60% higher than mean values previously measured, according to a new study published in the journal Nature on October 31, 2018.  The authors, Laure Resplandy and a team of coworkers from the U. S., China, France and Germany, made this evaluation using a completely alternative way of measuring how much heat is retained by the oceans (see Details below).

It has been understood for many years that about 90% of the heat retained by the Earth system (ocean, melting glaciers, land and air) is absorbed by the oceans.  This is graphically depicted in the following image, which shows the excess amounts of heat from each of the four main contributors to the total increase in heat content of the entire Earth system since 1971.

 

Accumulation of heat in the Earth system’s components over 1970-2011, referenced to assigning zero for 1971, in zettajoules (where “zetta” signifies 10²¹, i.e., 1 followed by 21 zeros, or one trillion billion joules of heat).  One joule is the amount of heat needed to warm 1 gram of water by 0.24°C (0.43°F).  Following the color code scheme shown at the top, it is seen that the ocean (light gray) accounts for more than 90% of the total incremental heat and that the air (deep red), our atmosphere, accounts for only about 1-2% of the total in 2011.

Source: New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/12/science/earth/ocean-warming-climate-change.html?module=inline

 

 

Now the authors conclude that the rate at which the Earth system has been warming, i.e., the excess rate at which the Earth retains heat from the sun’s radiation instead of re-radiating that heat out into space, is about 60% higher than previously evaluated; a recent such estimate appears in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), issued in 2013-2014.

  

To help understand this result, Dr. Resplandy says “[i]magine if the ocean was only 30 feet deep. Our data shows that it would have warmed by 6.5°C (11.7°F) every decade since 1991. In comparison, the estimate of the last IPCC assessment report would correspond to a warming of only 4°C (7.2°F) every decade.”  This means that the amount of excess heat absorbed by the Earth system because of man-made global warming increases the global average temperature more than earlier estimated. This finding is a warning that Earth’s temperature is more sensitive to absorbed heat, so that humanity has less leeway remaining for limiting the increase in the global average temperature.

  

The latter global average, the surface air global average, is the value commonly broadcast to the public about global warming, not the increasing oceanic heat content.  The Paris Agreement of 2015 set as its goal limiting the increase of the global average air temperature to less than 2.0°C (3.6°F) above the pre-industrial value by the end of this century, with a strong recommendation to be more ambitious by aspiring to limit warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F).   

 

This new finding reported by Resplandy and coworkers provides strong support for the IPCC’s most recent warning to humanity.  In October 2018 it separately reported that our annual rates of emitting greenhouse gases (those that contribute to warming of the planet such as carbon dioxide) are increasing even more rapidly than thought as recently as 2015 when the Paris Agreement was reached.  The IPCC now declares that it is very urgent that, to avoid worse consequences, the countries of the world have to work toward limiting the total global temperature increase to 1.5°C by 2050, which is lower and sooner than the 2.0°C limit originally set as the goal for 2100 in the Paris Agreement.  This has to be accomplished by worldwide reduction of annual emission rates toward zero by that date. 

 

The reason for this urgency is that the global average temperature depends, in almost a straight-line fashion, on the total accumulated atmospheric burden of greenhouse gases.  It does not depend on annual emission rates.  To keep the total greenhouse gas level as low as possible – thus limiting temperature rise – annual emission rates have to fall toward zero as soon as possible.  

 

Conclusion

 

The authors’ results support their conclusion that “ocean warming is at the high end of previous estimates, with implications for policy-relevant measurements of the Earth response to climate change, such as [how rapidly the Earth responds] to greenhouse gases and the thermal component of sea-level rise” (recognizing that part of sea-level rise is due to expansion of the water in the ocean as its temperature increases).   

 

A main policy consideration would be that humanity has to drastically reduce the annual rate at which we emit greenhouse gases, by as much as 25% faster than previously recommended.  Many groups are working to achieve a net emission rate of 0% by 2050, i.e., transforming the world’s entire energy economy to use of only renewable energy (including also other contributions such as increasing forestation and permanently injecting carbon dioxide deep underground).  We all have to transform our individual actions, and subscribe to dramatically different policies, in order to establish this radical new energy economy. 

 

Details

 

The method for obtaining ocean temperature measurements since 2007 uses robotic buoys dispersed across the oceans that directly measure the temperature; they automatically descend to various depths in the ocean for their measurements, then resurface to relay their data to land databases.  Earlier data were gathered from fewer buoys on the surface or at only shallow depths.  Such measurements provide results such as shown in the image above. 

 

Resplandy and coworkers instead relied on measurements of the concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide gases in the air around the globe, evaluating data that had already been collected back to 1991.  Over 78,000 data points were available for use.  These measurements serve as a substitute, or proxy, for ocean temperature because the amount of these gases that can dissolve in water depends on the temperature of the water: the warmer the water, the lower the amount of gases the water can hold and the more the gases are returned to the air.  Measuring the gas amounts in air provides direct information about the temperature of the Earth’s oceans.

 

© 2018 Henry Auer

New Storage Technologies for Renewable Energy

Electric storage batteries based on zinc instead of lithium are now in widespread usage around the world, even though their existence is poorly recognized.  A report in the New York Times describes a zinc-air battery produced by the company NantEnergy.  The company received development grants of US$5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy.  It has already deployed its batteries in Asian and African villages, and in cell towers in the U.S., Latin America and Southeast Asia.  Its founder, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, stated that 110 villages have established local microgrid systems, using electricity generated on site by solar arrays.  Dr. Soon-Shiong anticipates that use of the batteries will expand greatly in telecommunication towers, and expects use to spread to home energy storage and electric vehicles as well.  He foresees a potential market of US$50 billion.

The zinc battery has several advantages over lithium-based batteries.  Zinc has a high abundance in the earth, and is already heavily mined and used in many applications; its ore also includes other metals that are profitably extracted.  Its annual production rate is projected to reach a maximum between 2020 and 2030, with a high projected cumulative production tonnage being possible.  Zinc batteries cost about US$100 per kilowatt-hour of stored electrical energy, whereas lithium batteries cost in the range of US$300-400 per kilowatt-hour, according to the New York Times report.  Elon Musk, the head of Tesla, believes he can get the price down to the same level as the zinc battery.  Lithium likewise is abundantly found around the world, but active lithium mining is limited to a few countries, constraining its price to high values.  Its main demand is limited to batteries for fixed and vehicular electric storage.

An important advantage for zinc is that its batteries contain water-based electrolyte fluids, which are not flammable.  Lithium batteries, in contrast, operate using flammable solvent-based electrolyte solutions.  This is the reason that lithium batteries have been known to ignite and burn, sometimes spontaneously.

Recently an ambitious plan was announced for Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, reported in the New York Times.  The dam, 726 feet high and harboring 17 huge electricity generators that supply power to Los Angeles and much of southern California, holds back a large lake created from the river.  One way of storing electricity is to pump water from a low elevation back up to a higher one, so that the pumped water can be used to generate new electricity on demand.  In the Hoover Dam proposal, massive pipes further downriver from the outflow from the dam and generators would capture some of the water and pump it back up to the reservoir lake behind the dam.  The electricity to drive the pumps would come from renewable sources, solar and wind energy.  Currently the project is expected to provide electricity from the stored water at about 20% higher than current electricity rates, but for 40% less than provided by commercial scale solar electricity, according to the report.  The project’s cost is estimated at US$3 billion.

Analysis

The United Nations-sponsored Paris climate agreement of December 2015 set the goal of keeping Earth’s projected increase in long-term average temperature to less than 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial times by the end of this century.  It also set a preferred more ambitious goal of keeping that temperature increase to less than 1.5°C (2.7°F). 

In order to contribute to achieving these global objectives, many cities in the U.S. have established voluntary or statutory objectives of reducing the annual emission rate of all greenhouse gases to near zero as soon as possible; many cities seek to accomplish this by midcentury.  The movement to adopting these policies has become more urgent since federal policy in the U.S. has actually regressed in the last two years.  The government is actually undoing previously implemented regulations limiting emission rates in electricity generation and passenger vehicles.  That backtracking increases the greenhouse gas emission rate in the U.S.

As noted, the municipal policies strive to reduce annual emission rates to near zero.  This means that electricity must be provided essentially completely from renewable sources, that cars and trucks be powered by electric batteries or by hydrogen fuel cells, and that space heating and cooling in the built environment be provided exclusively by electric-powered heat pumps.  This migration away from coal, natural gas, diesel, fuel oil and gasoline (fossil fuels) will increase the demand for renewable electricity by 2-3 times its present level.

This is the reason that new technologies such as zinc-air batteries and pumped water storage acquire such high significance going forward.  The coming changes in our energy economy will be challenging; indeed they are nothing short of revolutionary.  The unequivocal needs for these changes will provide broad new business opportunities and new jobs for American workers.

© 2018 Henry Auer

Sea Level Rise, Due to Human Activity, Imperils Many

Summary. This post discusses three newspaper articles concerning global warming-induced sea level rise, which all appeared in a one-week period about the third week of April, 2017.

Sea level rise is inexorable, already irreversibly “baked in” to the planet’s climate, because melting of ice in the summer season is not restored by new snow and ice in the winter, and because the melted water flows away into the ocean.

Sea level rise is already causing human societal and economic damage around the world.  It will continue unabated, and likely worsen, in future centuries.  To minimize these harms, the world has to minimize greenhouse gas emissions to near zero as soon as possible.  This process would be significantly advanced by adhering to the Paris climate agreement. 

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From the Washington Post

 

 

The Washington Post reported on April 26, 2017 that the rate of sea level rise now foreseen by scientists is considerably higher than published only four years ago by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Fifth Assessment Report.

The Post article reports that the projections are a collaborative effort among 90 scientists, which was subjected to peer review by 28 other scientists.  Climate models based on two scenarios for continued rates of emission of greenhouse gases to the year 2100 were used for the projections.  One is a moderately stringent policy limiting emission rates.  The second is a scenario based on continued unconstrained emission rates comparable to those that reflect today’s fuel use.  The results are shown in the following table, which also includes the 2013 IPCC projections for comparison.

Scenario	Predicted sea level rise by 2100 [2013 IPCC prediction]
Moderately stringent	At least 52 centimeters (1.7 feet) [32 centimeters (1 foot)]
Unconstrained	At least 74 centimeters (2.4 feet) [45 centimeters (1.5 feet)]

The updated estimates take into account the increased rate of melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and Antarctic ice shelves recently observed, and expansion of the liquid ocean due to its higher temperature, among other contributing sources.

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From the New York Times

This article reports that Tasmania, the island south of the Australian mainland, is already suffering the ravages of sea level rise.  The shoreline is being eroded by rising seas, and trees are being uprooted and falling into the sea.  An abandoned shoreline coal mine is being filled in by the sea.  The article states “The ocean is rising in large part…because people the world over have burned so much coal, pumping planet-warming carbon dioxide into the air. Perhaps a new stone marker [referencing a seaside prisoners’ graveyard] ought to be planted above the eroding mine: Cause, Meet Effect.”  A Tasmanian ecologist stated, with some irony, “It’s a smoking gun for sea-level rise causing an acceleration of erosion.  And it’s coal! Mined for burning!”

The article summarizes manifestations of worsening global warming: “In country after country, managers of national parks and other historic sites are realizing that climate change, with its coastal flooding and erosion, rising temperatures and more intense rainstorms, represents a profound risk to the heritage they are trying to preserve.”  It mentions damage to the Statue of Liberty’s foundation by Hurricane Sandy, loss of most of the glaciers in America’s Glacier National Park, damage to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef due to rising ocean temperature (vindicating a 10-year old prediction), among many other examples.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/magazine/how-singapore-is-creating-more-land-for-itself.html?_r=0

Singapore is an independent island city-nation just off the coast of the southern tip of Malaysia.  It is a thriving metropolis, whose economic base is commerce and the financial industry.  The article notes that Singapore has felt the limitations of its small land area for decades.  This has constrained the ways it can develop additional useful real estate as its fortunes continue to grow. 

In recent years this quandary has been worsened by the encroachment of rising sea levels.  Singapore fortunately has the financial resources artificially to expand its land area by robbing it from the sea.  The image above shows one example.  The city sinks massive ocean-resistant caissons (seen above from the air) into the sea bed surrounding its natural land base, forming void rectangular enclosures.  It then imports huge quantities of sand, or of pulverized rock, and fills in the rectangles to provide new land area which, when completed, will form new surface area for development.  The new land is high enough to withstand sea level rise in the coming years.

The article contrasts the case of affluent Singapore with other, more impoverished, island “micro-nations” that are losing the battle against rising seas.  Solomon Islands is a Pacific Ocean nation on six major islands and several hundred smaller islands, with an area of 11,000 sq. mi.  The article notes that five small islands have already disappeared under rising seas.  Kiribati has bought 6,000 acres of land 1,000 miles away in Fiji for resettlement of its people.  The Maldives is considering a similar purchase in Australia.  Some of the people living on the island micro-nations of Tuvulu, the Marshall Islands and Nauru have already departed.

Discussion

Newspaper reports on sea level rise.  The examples cited in the articles above pinpoint the flooding, and consequent damages, to be expected along coastlines all over the world as sea levels continue rising.  Man-made global warming, the main cause for the rising seas, is unequivocally due to humanity’s burning of carbon-containing fuels for energy, emitting the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  (Other man-made greenhouse gases also contribute to warming.) 

The fundamental problem is that carbon dioxide remains resident in the atmosphere for centuries because there are no natural processes that remove it at the speed and on the massive scale needed to balance the excess amounts that we produce.  As a result, warming will continue worsening until emissions are effectively minimized to near zero. 

Polar melting.  As noted in the Summary, the long-term average temperature of air in contact with the Greenland ice sheet and of ocean water in contact with the Antarctic ice shelves is already warm enough to lead to net melting of these ice reservoirs, raising global sea levels.  We cannot go back to a planetary regime having a lower temperature (which might slow or stop melting of the ice) because of the permanence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  Consequently the sea level is projected to increase for centuries.  Projected higher temperatures will worsen this trend.

The “social cost of carbon” is an economic term for a framework that attempts to place direct financial costs, as well as indirect societal costs, on the consequences of carbon dioxide-induced global warming.  This is necessary because direct costs for the use of carbon-containing fossil fuels stop at the point of sale of the fuel.  The costs incurred as consequences of the resulting global warming are not reckoned in the sale price. 

This may be contrasted, for example, by the costs that residents bear to have their household waste removed by tax-supported services, or the charges that they pay for treatment of their waste water.  The separate expense of handling the waste is directly borne by property owners and/or municipal taxpayers.  No analogous cost for waste treatment is built into the cost structures of fossil fuel-derived energy use.  This is the accounting that enters into pricing the social cost of carbon.

Contributions to the social cost of carbon are seen in the journal snippets presented here.  Singapore is fortunate in having the resources to protect itself from sea level encroachment.  The other oceanic island micro-nations mentioned here do not; they face existential threats in the near future. 

In the U. S., coastal communities in Miami and south Florida, as well as Norfolk, Virginia, now suffer fair weather flooding at high tide, due to higher sea levels, that had not occurred previously.  Their cost of carbon lies in the extensive, expensive barriers they are forced to put in place to minimize the flooding.  Likewise, the New York region is planning to construct similar barriers as a defense against the possibility that future storm surges similar to that of Hurricane Sandy could occur.  All these projects were not foreseen in earlier budgeting processes.  The additional expenses for them become unexpected taxpayer burdens at the state and local levels.  They clearly represent social costs of carbon that are not included in the prices paid for fossil fuels at the time of use.

Conclusion

Three simultaneously published newspaper articles have pointed out the present and future harms to humanity due to sea level rise.  The rising level is due to humanity’s burning of fossil fuels, worsening the carbon dioxide-induced greenhouse effect and producing warmer global average temperatures that melt polar ice caps.

We must work together to minimize future increases in the carbon dioxide burden of the atmosphere in order to slow continued sea level rise.  (The world’s temperature is already too high to stop it outright.)  The Paris climate agreement of 2015 is a good start on this path.  All nations of the world should embrace its provisions, and improve the emission limits it has created.  Rejecting the agreement would be at humanity’s peril.

© 2017 Henry Auer 

The Centennial Celebration of the Paris Agreement Arrives 99 Years Early

Early in 2016, shortly after the United Nations-sponsored meeting that culminated in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015, this writer posted a fable characterizing a fictional centennial commemoration of the 2015 Agreement in a scenario in which use of fossil fuels had continued unabated during that 100-year interval.  The fable is reproduced below:

The Centennial Commemoration of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement

A Fable

It was December 2115, the hundredth anniversary of the agreement to a climate treaty reached among all the members of the United Nations, in Paris.  The members of the Petrex extended family gathered to mark the occasion.  By that time, three to four generations after the event, the clan had grown considerably, and had established for itself a fully self-sufficient environment inside its terradome.  For the occasion the space was opulently fitted out with an artificial lake in which were moored several model oil rigs.  The pipe linking the rigs to shore ended in an internally illuminated fountain gurgling champagne.  Scattered about the artificially-turfed land areas were several working model oil wells erected in mud fields of black caviar, pumping dark chocolate and coffee liqueurs, and other reminders of the black gold that had started the Petrex fortune, more than one hundred years earlier.

Back then, the clan founder, Malvolio Petrex, chairman and chief executive officer of the largest oil company at the time, had come to realize the inconsistencies of his, and his company’s, position.  They were, at one and the same time, using all their financial power and political influence to perpetuate, indeed to expand, the use of the oil they extracted from the ground, while correctly realizing that their exploitative activities were worsening the global warming already well under way.  After all, the Paris agreement itself was reached in response to expert scientific findings, reported for at least the preceding twenty years, that burning oil and other fossil fuels, such as those his company and others were pulling from the ground, added irreversibly to the atmospheric burden of carbon dioxide, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Malvolio Petrex knew that global warming was going to get much worse in the coming years, because his company and others were continuing to produce fossil fuels at ever-increasing rates of growth, year after year.  After all, more and more energy was needed to fuel the demands of economies all over the world, being used to expand their economies and raise the poorest peoples of the world out of poverty. 

He wasn’t too worried about his own welfare, though.  Thanks to his immeasurable wealth, he already had peppered several secure estates around the world, in various climatic and ecological settings.  But as any other dynastic figure that we may encounter throughout history, he was concerned about the wellbeing of his progeny.  He knew that the travesties his business activities were creating would worsen after he was gone, impacting the lives and indeed the safety of his scions.  He understood that worsening warming would lead to economic and political unrest among the impoverished and others less well off than he because they would be suffering the harmful effects of warming: flooding in some regions; droughts, wildfires and famine in others; and inexorable sea level rise driving millions around the world from their traditional homes and livelihoods.

And so he embarked on a program to develop self-contained environments for himself and his family.  The environments would insulate his family from the unpleasantness of dealing with the effects of climate change by keeping the open atmosphere out, and the family’s living quarters and areas for amusing themselves in.  The first models were installed on the grounds of his existing estates, and were relatively modest. 

Now, one hundred years later, after many rounds of development and improvement, this Petrex estate was enveloped in its own protective terradome.  It was a large, fully enclosed environment covering almost one square mile, incorporating the estate’s mansion, its recreational areas, and fields producing much of its food needs.  The terradome insulated the estate from the worst “weird” climate and weather events brought on by the extreme warming that the world had attained by then, as well as keeping a portion of the sun’s warming light from penetrating to the land within it.  The Petrex family had practically no need to travel outside the terradome; it was almost entirely self-sufficient.

As a result, they were insulated as well from the harms and damages induced by the warmer climate that most of the peoples of the world were suffering.  Or maybe they knew and, just like Malvolio Petrex a hundred years earlier, chose to ignore it.  The population at large was subjected to far worse conditions than Petrex’s world had experienced one hundred years earlier: debilitating heat waves and droughts, intense storms bringing on severe flooding, encroaching oceans because of the severe degree of sea level rise, all brought on by the excess global warming that burning fossil fuels induced. 

By the time of the centennial anniversary the opportunity for effective action to combat global warming had long passed.

 

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The fabled centennial celebration of the Paris Agreement has already arrived, 99 years early.  The newly elected U. S. President, Donald Trump, is a man whose wealth could well serve as a model for the patriarch Malvolio Petrex.  He shows his wealth at least partly by erecting palatial residences and developing exclusive golf courses around the globe. 

Mr. Trump has called global warming a hoax.  Now as president he is implementing policies and appointing people to important cabinet positions who share his sentiment.  From the outset, he is reversing important initiatives undertaken by his predecessor, who had set in motion important policies that curb emissions of greenhouse gases.   

Here is a partial list of President Trump’s actions and policy positions:

·        He appointed Scott Pruitt to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Instead of having an interest in protecting the environment, Mr. Pruitt is eliminating rules that preserve our natural world.  In his previous position as the Attorney General of Oklahoma, he repeatedly sued the EPA seeking to overturn its regulations that protect aspects of our environment, including emissions of greenhouse gases. Now he is the Administrator of that selfsame agency.  The Los Angeles Times writes “The Republican dogma of unrestrained economic exploitation drives the president and his EPA chief. As a result, climate science has become a heretical activity.”

·        Among fossil fuels coal emits the most carbon dioxide (per amount of heat obtained) when burned.  So its use should be limited as much as possible in order to reduce emissions.  But Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke ordered that a ban on mining coal on federal lands, put in place by former President Obama, be rescinded.  The order followed through on President Trump’s overall goal of increasing American energy independence.

·        PresidentTrump ordered a review of all policies deemed to interfere with enhancing America’s energy independence.  This includes directing Administrator Pruitt to reconsider the Clean Power Plan, an EPA regulation issued under President Obama that would produce significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from the electric power industry.

·        President Trump issued an order to review the program, issued by EPA and the Department of Transportation under President Obama, significantly increasing automobile Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards by 2025.  The review may lead to weakening the requirements or slowing the timeline for the CAFE regulation.

·        The budget proposal that President Trump outlined for Fiscal Year 2018 seriously cuts scientific research in many agencies of the U.S. government.  Concerning  activities related to curbing global warming, the proposal completely eliminates the Department of Energy’s Advance Research Projects Agency-Energy unit, reduces research support for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration by 52%, and cuts EPA research by 48% and National Aeronautics and Space Administration earth science research by 6%.  These agencies engage in essential research on the state of the planet’s climate and provide seed or venture funding for development of new technologies that lower greenhouse gas emissions.

President Trump, could easily serve as a model for Malvolio Petrex, since he can insulate himself from the ravages of intensified global warming.  His policies, to be implemented 99 years before the centennial of the Paris Climate Agreement, will have major immediate effects and indirect ramifications that worsen greenhouse gas emissions and lead to more severe harmful consequences of warming.  Yet we may imagine that, with the vast resources he controls, his children, grandchildren and further progeny can create environments for themselves that will protect them from harms and damages that global warming brings.  The same can be said for those he selected to implement his policies. 

But the peoples of the earth, considered at large, are not so lucky.  They can’t easily shield themselves from climatic harm.  They could well be defenseless victims of President Trump’s policies.  The climate framework that Mr. Trump is overthrowing, begun under President Obama and implemented worldwide with his leadership, could make significant progress to minimizing those risks. 

It’s not too late for the Trump Administration to reconsider, and rejoin the compact of the world’s nations to lower greenhouse gas emissions. 

      © 2017 Henry Auer