It’s too darn hot

Gather together a group of 600 scientists from 40 countries whose six-year work is reviewed by the same number of scientists, give them a room with a long table and a microphone and what do they say: "It’s too darn hot!" It is also an assessment that is darn hard to refute with counter evidence.

So whether or not you agree with the pizzazz by which Al Gore has put forth the case of climate change in his An Inconvenient Truth, the data is incontrovertible — climate change is here to stay. And for those who keep finding an excuse, saying that the warming of the Earth is just as "natural" as any change in nature — that is just like saying having carbon monoxide regularly is okay at any amount since it is "organic" because it has "carbon" in it (carbon is the stuff of life). Besides, science is not a game of authority or popularity but evidence. If Michael Crichton (who has in the past released works of fiction arguing against climate change) is more known to you because he dazzled you with his science fiction, that does not make him a worthy counter-opinion to the amount of peer-reviewed evidence presented here.

These are the hard truths that the 600-man International Panel on Climate Change revealed that we now swallow:

1. Global warming is indeed happening based on data from widespread melting of snow and ice, rising sea levels and increase in global ocean and sea temperatures;

2. Greenhouse gases have far exceeded pre-industrial levels with increases in carbon dioxide due to fossil fuel use and land-use change (burning of forests) and increases in methane and nitrous oxide from increased agriculture.

3. Climate change has been observed in the form of extreme weather — heavy rains, droughts, intensity of heat waves, cyclones and hurricanes.

4. It is "virtually certain" that it is just going to be warmer for our days and nights and for longer periods of time and it is "very likely" heavier rains will fall in the places we call home.

5. The warmth in the last 50 years is unusual compared to the last 1,300 years in recorded history.

6. Global temperatures would rise at about .2 degrees C per decade, making the Earth about 2 degrees Centigrade warmer by the end of this century.

7. Even if by some miracle we are able to maintain our lifestyles at 2000 levels, global warming and sea levels will still rise because we have set it into motion and it will not simply stop as soon as we stop.

In case you missed it, the key finding is that "we" caused global warming. It means the Earth would have probably warmed BUT not this widespread and not at so short a period in history. We ourselves egged it on with our mistaken notion that a love affair with fossil fuel will not carry such heavy costs to the very lives who have discovered its powers and built cultures and civilizations upon it.

The seasons that have shaped our notion of home are drastically changing, not by themselves at their own bidding but because we caused them to. The stories that have been molded in the memory of only a generation or two ago would be markedly different from the way we recognize and stake our place in the places we hold dear. The creatures that could not adapt to the swift changes in climate will disappear — hordes of them and as of the last count, probably about 37 percent by 2050. With the loss of those creatures, the landscape will change and our stories will change. There will be more stories of loss and increasingly, succeeding generations who will not even remember or understand the loss.

Six hundred scientists needed to present mountains of data to remain true to what the role of science is. They have done their part. Now, translate the scientific evidence into the story of your lives by reflecting on how the biographies of your own landscape, now melting away, have shaped the character of your own lives and then ask yourselves: Will the rain be as cozy and intimate if they go on for weeks more? Will you paint your mountain the same way? Find the same elusive animal that has captured your childhood’s fancy? Perch on the same rock that sits at the sinking coastline of your secluded beach? Will you sing the same song about home?

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