Global Warming Impacting Humanity

Australia’s State of Victoria (capital Melbourne), has just suffered record-breaking heat wave temperatures and a tragic bushfire disaster (over 180 people dead, over 1,000 homes destroyed, over 300,000 hectares burnt). This tragedy has occurred on top of a background of sustained drought, man-made global warming and global government inaction.

An otherwise relatively cool summer was transformed 2 weeks ago when the temperature in Melbourne soared to over 43 oC (109.4 oF) for 3 days (28-30 January, 2009). A week later the temperature soared to 46.4 oC (115.5 oF) in Melbourne - about 47 oC (116.6 oF) where I live in Macleod, north of the city, and 47.8 oC (118 oF) at Avalon, the site of Melbourne’s second major passenger jet airport. However this horrendous heat was associated with strong winds that turned fires from lightning strikes and from psychopathic arsonists into rapidly moving firestorms.

People living adjacent to highly-inflammable Eucalyptus forests to the north and east of Melbourne were advised to have “fire plans” and to decide whether to stay and protect their property or to leave in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, a combination of tinder-dry bush, high temperatures and high winds created high speed fire storms that gave people little chance to escape when they finally realized the enormity of what they were facing.

There has been great outpouring of support for the thousands of surviving refugees and praise for the heroic fire fighters. In these circumstances one feels constrained not to diminish such national unity but the harsh reality is that man-made climate change has contributed to this catastrophe, Australia is a world leader in annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution and both the Federal Government and Opposition are united in support for “business as usual” GHG pollution and Australia’s world-leading coal exports.

I sought the opinion of several friends who had luckily escaped the conflagration and whose house in one of the worst areas had miraculously survived – should one be circumspect in these circumstances or publicly raise the issue of the climate change underlying this disaster? Their answer to my repeated questioning was unequivocally yes – speak out,  because ignoring the Climate Emergency has helped create this disaster. Below I have summarized the expert testimony from Australian and US scientists on the climate change and the severity of forest fires.

According to a key 2006 paper in the top journal Science  by Dr A.L. Westerling and colleagues.: “We compiled a comprehensive database of large wildfires in western United States forests since 1970 and compared it with hydroclimatic and land-surface data. Here, we show that large wildfire activity increased suddenly and markedly in the mid-1980s, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons. The greatest increases occurred in mid-elevation, Northern Rockies forests, where land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks and are strongly associated with increased spring and summer temperatures and an earlier spring snowmelt … We found that the incidence of large wildfires in western forests increased in the mid-1980s (Fig. 1) [hereafter, "wildfires" refers to large-fire events (>400 ha) within forested areas only]. Subsequently, wildfire frequency was nearly four times the average of 1970 to 1986, and the total area burned by these fires was more than six and a half times its previous level”. [1] .

According to Professor John Holdren (Harvard University, former Chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Director of the Woods Hole Research Center, and President Obama’s chief scientific adviser) in a recent lecture entitled “The Science of Climatic Disruption”, forest fires are being exacerbated by drought and elevated temperatures in America and Europe; the annual acres burned in the Western USA have now increased from about 0.5 million (1960-1980) to 2.5- 4.5 million (21st century); and the 14 hottest years on record have been since 1990. [2] .

According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) the global mean surface temperature increase since about 1970 has been about 0.6 oC (the temperature increase since about 1890 has been about 0.8 oC) . [3] .

In response to a record heat wave in the State of Victoria, Australia, and its capital Melbourne (on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, January 28-30, 2009,   the Melbourne temperature was unprecedently in excess of 43 oC), Professor David Karoly (meteorologist, University of Melbourne;  chairman of the Victorian government's climate change reference group; shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with others connected with the IPCC) stated: "This week is unusual but it (the heat) will become much more like the normal experience, in the range of normal heatwaves, in 10-20 years … It is clear that the current (Victorian) public transport system [train network] is not able to cope and it is also clear that the water supply system is stretched ... The health services and the road system are also obviously stretched to their limits… The system can't cope now, and it is just going to get much worse”. [4] .

For societal reasons alluded to above, expert comment connecting this disaster with climate change has been limited although there has been much comment on other aspects such as risk management  and preparedness (e.g. fight or flee, bunkers, fuel reduction, tree reduction around homes, warning sirens etc).

Thus according to some leading Australian bushfire researchers (psychologist Professor Douglas Paton of the University of Tasmania  and the  Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), Bushfire CRC chief executive officer Gary Morgan, and bushfire and  urban design expert Justin Leonard of the CSIRO,  Australians need to be better educated about how to deal with bushfires. The current “prepare, stay and defend” or “leave early” policy may have to be modified in view of this latest tragedy and global warming. [5] .

However  Professor Will Steffen (director, Climate Change Institute, Australian National University , ANU) has commented : "Events like this, severe heatwaves and severe fires, become more likely with an underlying change in climate …People better prepare for the fact that the risk is increasing ... (for) more frequent extreme events that are related to temperature, like heatwaves, like bushfires … Our climate is getting warmer, as it is in the rest of the world, and I think there's no doubt about that”. [6] .

Australian Greens Senator Dr Bob  Brown : “Global warming is predicted to make this sort of event happen 25 per cent, 50 per cent more". [6] .

Greenpeace climate campaigner Trish Harrup: “The scale of this catastrophe, coupled with severe floods in Queensland, should be a clarion call to politicians for the need to begin treating climate change as a national emergency”. [6].

Climatologist Professor David Karoly (University of Melbourne) (ABC Lateline interview): “[hot temperatures] unprecedented .... The records were broken by a large amount and you cannot explain that just by natural variability … What we are seeing now is that the chances of these sorts of extreme fire weather situations are occurring much more rapidly in the last ten years due to climate change." [7].

Scientist Dr Greg Holland (US National Center for Atmospheric Research): “[high levels of greenhouse gases would] be with us for decades …We definitely need to change our habits so that we can leave our children and our children's children with a better world to live in … In the meantime we are going to have to adapt, we are going to have to accept that it is not going to be six days per summer of extreme temperatures. It may be 20 days per summer of extreme temperatures. And we have to take the appropriate actions to actually live with those conditions." [7].

The following is a statement from 200 intellectual and scientist delegates to the  June 2008 Manning Clark House Conference: “Imagining the Real Life on a Greenhouse Earth”, 11-12 June, Australian National University, Canberra (e.g. climate scientists:

Prof Barry Brook, Prof Ian Enting, Prof Janette Lindesay, Prof Graeme Pearman, Dr Barrie Pittock, Prof Will Steffen; Earth and prehistory scientists Dr Geoff Davies, Dr David Denham, Dr Andrew Glikson (conference convenor), Dr Geoffrey Hope, Prof Malcolm McCulloch, Dr Bradley Opdyke; health and population experts Prof Stephen Boyden, Dr Bryan Furnass (conference co-convenor), Prof Tony McMichael, Dr Sue Wareham) and Mark O’Connor).

“Global warming is accelerating. The Arctic summer sea ice is expected to melt entirely within the next five years, - decades earlier than predicted in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report.

Scientists judge the risks to humanity of dangerous global warming to be high. The Great Barrier Reef faces devastation. Extreme weather events, such as storm surges adding to rising sea levels and threatening coastal cities, will become increasingly frequent.

There is a real danger that we have reached or will soon reach critical tipping points and the future will be taken out of our hands. The melting Arctic sea ice could be the first such tipping point.

Beyond 2ºC of warming, seemingly inevitable unless greenhouse gas reduction targets are tightened, we risk huge human and societal costs and perhaps even the effective end of industrial civilisation. We need to cease our assault on our own life support system, and that of millions of species. Global warming is only one of many symptoms of that assault.

Peak oil, global warming and long term sustainability pressures all require that we reduce energy needs and switch to alternative energy sources. Many credible studies show that Australia can quickly and cost-effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions through dramatic improvements in energy efficiency and by increasing our investment in solar, wind and other renewable sources.

The need for action is extremely urgent and our window of opportunity for avoiding severe impacts is rapidly closing. Yet the obstacles to change are not technical or economic, they are political and social.

We know democratic societies have responded successfully to dire and immediate threats, as was demonstrated in World War II. This is a last call for an effective response to global warming.” [8].