Climate of change

New readings on global warming

Steve Ruskin, Special to the News

Published March 17, 2006 at midnight

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In February, an article in the journal Science suggested more evidence of rapid global warming: Greenland's southern glaciers are dumping their ice into the Atlantic at twice the rate of just a decade ago. As the data supporting global warming continues to mount, the need for greater awareness of the human contribution to the problem becomes more acute.

Two new books, both of which agree that global warming is occurring - but present the facts with far different results - describe the past and present of extreme climate change from different perspectives.

In the first, The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather and the Destruction of Civilizations, journalist Eugene Linden casts his argument as if putting the issue on trial. Linden is the author of the 1998 best-seller, The Future in Plain Sight (in which climate change was one clue to a "coming instability" of economic, political, and social upheaval). He likens climate change to a serial killer that has destroyed societies and erased centuries of cultural development. With intense, alarmist prose, he marshalls his evidence. Exhibit A: Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed much of New Orleans last August.

Combining historical research and data collected from years of reporting on the earth's climate, Linden suggests that climate change is an important variable in the equations historians have used to explain the fall of civilizations. Chapter five, "Weapons of Mass Destruction: Disease, Migration, Conflict and Famine," connects the well-documented but mysterious darkening of the sun in 536 A.D. to the fall of the Roman Empire, for example.

Other chapters dig into the science of climate change. Chapter nine, for example, provides an informative discussion of the major systems that govern the earth's climate, and how minor changes in any of those systems can lead to major climatic shifts. The book ends with a chronological summary of the increasing pace of climate change, beginning in the 1950s with initial fears of global warming, and ending with Hurricane Katrina.

Is all of this enough for Linden to make a conviction? In short, no - at least not beyond a reasonable doubt.

Climate change alone does not provide a satisfactory explanation for the fall of any civilization. War, political corruption, and failed technologies (to name but a few) have played their part, and history provides examples of civilizations that did adapt to major climate shifts. Linden's case relies on a lot of circumstantial evidence, and though much of it is compelling, it's not ultimately convincing.

A far more effective assessment of climate change is found in scientist Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change. Flannery provides is with a more informative and objective account of the effects of climate change, proving to be an expert, entertaining guide to the science behind climate change.

Flannery is an acclaimed scientist who has taught at Harvard and is currently a professor at the university of Adelaide in Australia. Recognizing that global warming has become a highly politicized issue, his explanations of the phenomena are disarming enough to satisfy readers on both sides, yet his science is so solid as to compel readers to pay attention. This is the first of many strengths of The Weather Makers.

If The Weather Makers has a key message, it's that major climactic events can have sudden and irreversible consequences. If we continue to pump the atmosphere full of greenhouse gases, writes Flannery, we may reach a point of no return: "Global warming changes climate in jerks, during which climate patterns jump from one stable state to another. Because of the atmosphere's telekinetic nature, these changes can manifest themselves instantaneously across the globe. The best analogy is perhaps that of a finger on a light switch. Nothing happens for a while, but if you slowly increase the pressure a certain point is reached, a sudden change occurs, and conditions swiftly alter from one state to another."

Among the facts that disturb Flannery:

• The current rate of global warming is thirty times faster than at the end of the last ice age.

• Globally, the increase in flood damage over recent decades has been profound. In the 1960s, around 7 million people were affected by flooding annually. Today, that figure stands at about 150 million.

• Climate change is increasingly costly: between 1998 and 2002, the National Climate Data Center listed 17 weather-related events (droughts, floods, fire seasons, etc.) that each cost over a billion dollars in damage.

Flannery loves this subject, and the reader can't help but be drawn excitedly into each of his short, pithy chapters. His explanation of the carbon cycle, for example, is one of the best descriptions of this phenomenon found anywhere.

The carbon cycle is the mechanism that governs the release and recycling of carbon. It's important because it helps prevent the release of too much carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide - CO2, the most egregious of greenhouse gases - into our atmosphere. But since the onset of the industrial revolution and the burning of fossil fuels on a grand scale, more CO2 has been released into our atmosphere than the natural carbon cycle has been able to remove from it - the atmosphere has gone from 280 parts per million CO2 to 380 ppm in just 200 years.

Flannery avoids the usual tactic of making us feel guilty about our addiction to fossil fuels in order to get our attention. He respects his readers' intelligence, and simply wants us to understand the dire consequences of continued greenhouse gas emissions.

"When we consider the fate of the planet as a whole, we must be under no illusions as to what is at stake. Earth's average temperature is around 15 C \[about 59 F], and whether we allow it to rise by a single degree, or 3 C, will decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of species, and most probably billions of people. Never in the history of humanity has there been a cost-benefit analysis that demands greater scrutiny."

If global warming continues unchecked, we also risk losing countless plant and animal species. In our planet's history, there have been five periods of massive biodiversity loss, when as much as 95 percent of all species vanished. The last time this happened was 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were wiped out. This time around, it appears to be human instigated.

Evidence of this is already beginning: In 1987, in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica, the year was so dry that 30 of the 50 known species of frogs vanished forever. If global warming continues unabated, we risk pushing many more species into extinction. And among other consequences, the loss of certain species can encourage the emergence and spread of infectious diseases, as when the loss of predators enables the rapid spread of mosquitoes, ticks, and rodents who in turn act as disease carriers.

This is fervent writing, but not political ranting. Flannery opposes those who claim that global warming is not occurring, or that it's due to a natural cycle rather than any human action. But his opposition is that of an author in command of his facts.

Flannery supports the Kyoto Protocol - not blindly, but rationally.

It's not necessarily the best plan for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, he notes, but it has wide international consent, and we may be running out of time to come up with an alternative: "For those who urge abandonment or who criticize Kyoto, there are two questions: What do you propose to replace Kyoto with, and how do you propose to secure international agreement for your alternative?"

Whatever your perspective on global warming, Flannery's The Weather Makers is perhaps the best introduction to the subject to come along in a decade.

For the reader seeking to better understand the history and science of global warming, The Weather Makers has been worth the wait, and may have come just in time.

The Winds of Change:

Climate, Weather and the Destruction of Civilizations

• By Eugene Linden. Simon & Schuster, 320 pages, $26.

• Grade: C+

The Weather Makers:

The History and Future Impact of Climate Change

• By Tim Flannery. Atlantic Monthly Press, 332 pages, $24.

• Grade: A

Steve Ruskin has a doctoral degree in science and technology studies. He lives in Colorado Springs.

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