Recent Articles from BRMC Newsletters

Climate Change

Climate change: is it a fact or is it fiction? As a naturalist I want to feel I am in tune with the daily, seasonal, and yearly rhythms of the life that surrounds us, be it plant, animal, or fungi. The problem with my perceptions is the limited time, in years, over which I can compare my observations. Even if I take the approach Thoreau took and remain in one regional location most of my life, the lifetime of a human is almost nonexistent in a geologic sense. For thousands of years, climate has moved on a geologic scale–not a human scale. How are we to tell if the weather we experience is within the natural/normal range of climate variability?

There are hundreds of studies that demonstrate an overall increase in average temperatures throughout the twentieth century, especially in the last 50 years. For most of the developed world, climate change is a reality and for the undeveloped world it is just another obstacle to survive. But for those that still doubt a real change there is one recent study published in Nature that is an enjoyable read for anyone, regardless of whether you have a short attention span or think of yourself as a wine connoisseur–and it is less than a page long.

Europeans have kept grape-harvest dates that are tightly related to temperature for hundreds of years. In 2003, much of Europe experienced the warmest summer in recent memory. In an attempt to determine whether this extreme heat had been experienced before, a team of scientists reconstructed springsummer temperatures from 1370 to 2003 using French records of grape harvests in Burgundy. Their results revealed that temperatures as high as those of the 1990s had occurred several times in the past, but the summer of 2003 appeared to be higher than any other year on record. In the entire time period analyzed, 2003 was 5.86 º C warmer than the reference period, whereas the next highest anomaly was +4.10º C in 1523. Statistically that is quite a difference between the second-highest average temperature and highest average temperature in a 633-year time span (Chuine et al. 2004).

There is another interesting study that came out of the 2003 heat wave. In this study, the premise was that any such weather event might have occurred by chance in an unmodified climate. But, the study asked, was it possible to estimate how much human activities may have increased the risk of the occurrence of such a heat wave? In essence, have we stacked the deck? Their conclusion: since the start of instrumental records in 1851 they estimate (confidence level >90%) that human influence has at least doubled the risk of a heat wave exceeding this threshold magnitude, with the likelihood of such events projected to increase 100-fold over the next four decades (Stott et al. 2004).

Now, let's assume all readers are convinced that human-induced climate change is a reality. In the same summer of 2003 France, Germany, and Italy reported unusually large numbers of heat-related deaths. Is someone or some industry responsible for these deaths? If industry has loaded the dice are they responsible for the damages? In English law there was a case in the House of Lords (Fairchild v. Glenhaven) suggesting that "material increase in risk" may sometimes be an appropriate test for liability (Allen et al. 2004). Court cases over climate change liability are in the distant horizon, but the concept is closer than ever to becoming a reality thanks to studies such as Stott's.

What does this debate/reality mean to you? Why does it matter if the world is changing, hasn't it been changing for millions of years? After all who am I to complain if Buffalo becomes the “hottest” place to live? Beloved Buffalonians have suffered a depressed economy for decades, and maybe climate change is the break they need.

The concept that I find resonates with most people is that we do not know what will happen. A drastic change in the global climate in a span of a human lifetime may not destroy ecosystems as we know it, but it might. If you have most of the pieces to a puzzle is it not better to keep them and put together the puzzle before you begin to discard and/or disregard it? The one thing we do know is things will change more rapidly than ever before in the history of the earth. As adaptable as the human race is, we will, in all probability, end up on top, but at what cost and for what reason?

The greatest problem I see with our actions is that our children and their children’s children will not be afforded the beauty that we can experience today, just as our ancestors did not afford us the right to see passenger pigeons, bison, and clear-flowing streams. The Iroquois Federation made land use decisions with the seventh generation's welfare in mind. The U.S. modeled its federal government in many ways around the Iroquois Federation, but we have failed to carry the most important principal.

For all other life, we have changed the playing field and can only hope that they can hang on. For ourselves, we have gained climate-controlled work space to go along with climate-controlled travel and homes along with myriad other luxuries. Are we happy with the goods we have? Do we need to strive for more trinkets? Or could we possibly be happier with less? We as a race have the power to change the global climate with a massive effort, but do we have the power to change ourselves?

References:

Chuine, Isabelle et al. Grape ripening as a past climate indicator. Nature. 432, 289 (2004).

Stott, Peter A. et al. Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003. Nature. 432, 610-613 (2004).

Allen, Myles R. et al. The blame game. Nature. 432, 551-552 (2004).