The Weather Turns Wild
Global warming could cause droughts, disease, and political upheaval
The people of Atlanta can be forgiven for not worrying about global warming as they shivered in the dark last January, their city crippled by a monster ice storm that hit just before the Super Bowl. So can the 15 families in Hilo, Hawaii, whose houses were washed away by the 27 inches of rain that fell in 24 hours last November. And the FBI agents who searched for evidence blown out of their downtown Fort Worth office building, which was destroyed by a tornado last March. Not to mention the baffled residents of Barrow, Alaska, who flooded the local weather office with calls on June 19, as rumbling black clouds descended--a rare Arctic thunderstorm.
But such bizarre weather could soon become more common, and the consequences far more dire, according to a United Nations scientific panel. Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change met in Shanghai and officially released the most definitive--and scary--report yet, declaring that global warming is not only real but man-made. The decade of the '90s was the warmest on record, and most of the rise was likely caused by the burning of oil, coal, and other fuels that release carbon dioxide, as well as other so-called greenhouse gases. What's more, future changes will be twice as severe as predicted just five years ago, the group says. Over the next 100 years, temperatures are projected to rise by 2.5 to 10.4 degrees worldwide, enough to spark floods, epidemics, and millions of "environmental refugees."
By midcentury, the chic Art Deco hotels that now line Miami's South Beach could stand waterlogged and abandoned. Malaria could be a public health threat in Vermont. Nebraska farmers could abandon their fields for lack of water. Outside the United States, the impact would be much more severe. Rising sea levels could contaminate the aquifers that supply drinking water for Caribbean islands, while entire Pacific island nations could simply disappear under the sea. Perhaps the hardest-hit country would be Bangladesh, where thousands of people already die from floods each year. Increased snowmelt in the Himalayas could combine with rising seas to make at least 10 percent of the country uninhabitable. The water level of most of Africa's largest rivers, including the Nile, could plunge, triggering widespread crop failure and idling hydroelectric plants. Higher temperatures and lower rainfall could stunt food production in Mexico and other parts of Latin America.
No more words. "The debate is over," says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, in Oakland, Calif. "No matter what we do to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, we will not be able to avoid some impacts of climate change."
This newest global-warming forecast is backed by data from myriad satellites, weather balloons, ships at sea, and weather stations, and by immense computer models of the global climate system. As scientists have moved toward consensus on warming's inevitability, there has been growing movement to come up with realistic adaptations to blunt the expected effects. Instead of casting blame at polluting SUV drivers, environmentalists and businesses alike are working to create feasible solutions. These range from measures as complex as global carbon-dioxide-emissions taxes to ones as simple as caulking leaks in Russian and Chinese natural gas pipelines. The take-home message: Change is difficult but not impossible, and the sooner we start, the easier it will be. Civilization has adjusted to drastic weather changes in the past (box, Page 52) and is well positioned to do so again. Indeed, while governments squabble over what is to be done, major corporations such as BP Amoco and DuPont are retooling operations to reduce greenhouse gases. "I am very, very optimistic," says Robert Watson, an atmospheric scientist, World Bank official, and leader of the IPCC panel that created the report.
Concern about greenhouse gases is hardly new; as early as the 1700s, scientists were wondering whether atmospheric gases could transmit light but trap heat, much like glass in a greenhouse. By 1860, Irish physicist John Tyndall (the first man to explain why the sky is blue) suggested that ice ages follow a decrease in carbon dioxide. In 1957, Roger Revelle, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, declared that human alteration of the climate amounted to a "large-scale geophysical experiment" with potentially vast consequences.
Such dire predictions had been made before and not come true, and this environmental hysteria emboldened skeptics. But by 1988, the evidence was hard to rebut; when NASA atmospheric scientist James Hansen told a congressional hearing that global warming had arrived, climate change became a hot political topic. At the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, 155 nations, including the United States, signed a treaty to control greenhouse emissions, which also include other gases such as methane. That accord led to the 1997 Kyoto protocol calling for reducing emissions of developed nations below 1990 levels but placing no emissions restrictions on China and other developing nations. In November, talks over the treaty broke down over the issue of how to measure nations' progress in reducing emissions. They are set to resume by midyear, after the Bush administration has formulated its position.
Doubters remain. Some argue that climate is too chaotic and complex to trust to any computerized prediction, or that Earth's climate is too stable to be greatly upset by a little more CO2. "I don't see how the IPCC can say it's going to warm for sure," says Craig Idso, a climatologist and vice president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change in Tempe, Ariz. He calls predictions of drastic warming "a sheer guess" and says that extra carbon dioxide "is going to be nothing but a boon for the biosphere. Plants will grow like gangbusters."
But these skeptics appear to be losing ground. "There are fewer and fewer of them every year," says William Kellogg, former president of the American Meteorological Society and a retired senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "There are very few people in the serious meteorological community who doubt that the warming is taking place."
If the majority view holds up and temperatures keep rising, over the next century global weather patterns will shift enough to affect everyday life on every continent. The effects would vary wildly from one place to the next; what might be good news for one region (warmer winters in Fairbanks, Alaska) would be bad news for another (more avalanches in the Alps). Weather would become more unpredictable and violent, with thunderstorms sparking increased tornadoes and lightning, a major cause of fires. The effects of El Niño, the atmospheric oscillation that causes flooding and mudslides in California and the tropics, would become more severe. Natural disasters already cost plenty; in the 1990s the tab was $608 billion, more than the four previous decades combined, according to Worldwatch Institute. The IPCC will release its tally of anticipated effects on climate and societies on February 19 in Geneva. Key climate scientists say that major points include:
Death and pestilence. Cities in the Northern Hemisphere would very likely become hotter, prompting more deaths from heatstroke in cities such as Chicago and Shanghai. Deaths would also increase from natural disasters, and warmer weather would affect transmission of insect-borne diseases such as malaria and West Nile virus, which made a surprise arrival in the United States in 1999. "We don't know exactly how West Nile was introduced to the U.S., but we do know that drought, warm winter, and heat waves are the conditions that help amplify it," says Paul Epstein, a researcher at Harvard's School of Public Health (box, Page 50).
Wildfires. Rising temperatures and declining rainfall would dry out vegetation, making wildfires like last summer's--which burned nearly 7 million acres in the West and cost $1.65 billion--more common, especially in California, New Mexico, and Florida.
Rain and flooding. Rain would become more frequent and intense in the Northern Hemisphere. Snow would melt faster and earlier in the Rockies and the Himalayas, exacerbating spring flooding and leaving summers drier. "This is the opposite of what we want," says Gleick. "We want to be able to save that water for dry periods."
Rising sea levels. Sea level worldwide has risen 9 inches in the last century, and 46 million people live at risk of flooding due to storm surges. That figure would double if oceans rise 20 inches. The IPCC predicts that seas will rise anywhere from 3.5 inches to 34.6 inches by 2010, largely because of "thermal expansion" (warmer water takes up more space), but also because of melting glaciers and ice caps. A 3-foot rise, at the top range of the forecast, would swamp parts of major cities and islands, including the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific and the Florida Keys.
Water wars. Drought--and an accompanying lack of water--would be the most obvious consequence of warmer temperatures. By 2015, 3 billion people will be living in areas without enough water. The already water-starved Middle East could become the center of conflicts, even war, over water access. Turkey has already diverted water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers with dams and irrigation systems, leaving downstream countries like Iraq and Syria complaining about low river levels. By 2050, such downstream nations could be left without enough water for drinking and irrigation.
Refugees. The United States is the single largest generator of greenhouse gases, contributing one quarter of the global total. But it, and other higher-latitude countries, would be affected less by climate change than would more tropical nations. The developing world will be hit hardest--and least able to cope. "Bangladesh has no prayer," says Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University, noting that flooding there, and in Southeast Asia and China, could dislocate millions of people. "The rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer. That's not a stable situation for the world."
Those daunted by this roster of afflictions will be cheered, a bit, by the United Nations group's report on how to fend off these perils, which will be released March 5 in Ghana. Not only is humanity not helpless in the face of global warming, but we may not even have to give up all the trappings of a First World lifestyle in order to survive--and prosper.
The first question is whether it's possible to slow, or even halt, the rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Scientists and energy policy experts say yes, unequivocally. Much of the needed technology either has already been developed or is in the works. The first step is so simple it's known to every third grader: Conserve energy. Over the past few decades, innovations from higher gas mileage to more efficient refrigerators to compact fluorescent lights have saved billions of kilowatts of energy. The second step is to use less oil and coal, which produce greenhouse gases, and rely more on cleaner energy sources such as natural gas and wind, and later on, solar and hydrogen. In Denmark, 13 percent of electricity now comes from wind power, probably the most economical alternative source. In Britain, a company called Wavegen recently activated the first commercial ocean-wave-energy generator, making enough electricity to power about 400 homes.
Taxing ideas. But despite such promising experiments, fossil fuels remain far cheaper than the alternatives. To reduce this cost advantage, most Western European countries, including Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Austria, and Italy, have levied taxes on carbon emissions or fossil fuels. The taxes also are intended to nudge utilities toward technologies, like coal gasification, that burn fossil fuels more cleanly. In Germany, where "eco-taxes" are being phased in on most fossil fuels, a new carbon levy will add almost 11 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline.
But the United States has always shunned a carbon tax. John Holdren, a professor of environmental policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, says such a tax could stimulate economic growth and help position the United States as a leader in energy technology. "The energy technology sector is worth $300 billion a year, and it'll be $500 to $600 billion by 2010," Holdren says. "The companies and countries that get the biggest chunk of that will be the ones that deliver efficient, clean, inexpensive energy."
A growing number of companies have already figured that out. One of the most advanced large corporations is chemical giant DuPont, which first acknowledged the problem of climate change in 1991. Throughout the past decade, the company worked to cut its carbon dioxide emissions 45 percent from 1990 levels. Last year, it pledged to find at least 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources.
Even more surprising was the dramatic announcement by oil giant BP in 1997 agreeing that climate change was indeed occurring. Even with other oil firms protesting that the evidence was too thin, BP pledged to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 10 percent from 1990 levels by 2010. At the same time, BP Amoco is pouring money into natural gas exploration and investing in renewable energy like solar power and hydrogen.
Even America's largest coal-burning utility company is experimenting. American Electric Power of Columbus, Ohio, is testing "carbon capture," which would separate out carbon dioxide emissions and dispose of them in deep underground saline aquifers, effectively creating carbon-emission-free coal power. Application is at least a decade away. "If we're able to find creative solutions, they're going to place us at a competitive advantage in our industry," says Dale Heydlauff, AEP's senior vice president for environmental affairs.
In automobile manufacturing, there is already a race on for alternatives to fossil fuels. Several automakers like Ford, DaimlerChrysler, and Volkswagen have developed prototypes of cars run by hydrogen fuel cells rather than gasoline. The performance is very similar to that of today's cars, but the cost remains, for now, prohibitive. Fuel-cell vehicles are unlikely to be mass-produced until after 2010, and even then, people will need a push to make the switch. "Climate change is too diffuse to focus people's attention," says C. E. Thomas, a vice president at Directed Technologies, an Arlington, Va., engineering firm working on fuel cells. "But if we have another war in the Middle East or gasoline lines, that will get their attention."
Even with these efforts, and many more, climatologists point out that turning the atmosphere around is much harder than turning a supertanker. Indeed, atmospheric changes already underway may take hundreds of years to change. As a result, some vulnerable countries are already taking preventive, if costly, measures. More than half of the Netherlands lies below sea level and would be threatened by increased storm surges. Last December, the Dutch government outlined an ambitious plan to bolster the sea defenses. Over the next decade, the Netherlands will spend more than $1 billion to build new dikes, bolster the natural sand dunes, and widen and deepen rivers enough to protect the country against a 3-foot rise in ocean levels.
Some of the most successful adaptations to climate change probably won't involve high-tech gizmos or global taxes. They'll be as simple as the strips of cloth distributed to women in Bangladesh, which they use to screen cholera-causing microbes from water. Villages where women strained water have reduced cholera cases by 50 percent.
"Society is more robust than we give it credit for," says Michael Glantz, a political scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Like farmers who gradually change to new crops as wells grow dry, people may learn to live comfortably in a new, warmer world.
The travails of a warmer world
Average worldwide temperatures (in Fahrenheit)
Global climate change may drastically affect human society, directly and indirectly. Scientists forecast a potential 2.5-to-10.4-degree spike in global temperature by the year 2100. The steep rise could set off a cascade of nasty effects, from pestilence and famine to wars and refugee movement.
[Complete chart data are not available.]
1860 56.5 degrees
2100 projection 60.3 degrees low, 68.2 degrees high
Sources: Phil Jones, University of East Anglia; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
[World map is not available]
[Map labels] North America; South America; Africa; Europe; Asia; Australia; Cairo; New Delhi; Shanghai; Philippines; Indonesia; Great Barrier Reef
U.S. East Coast: West Nile virus has already spread from New Hampshire to North Carolina
Mexico: Rising temperatures could cut maize crops by 20 percent to 60 percent.
Brazil: Models project that populous northeastern Brazil could suffer some of the most severe crop setbacks because of drought.
Nigeria: A 3-foot rise in sea level could displace almost 4 million people and leave parts of the capital city, Lagos, underwater.
South Africa: Malaria may surge in areas previously too cold for mosquitoes to inhabit.
Zimbabwe: River flow along the Zambezi could fall steeply, disrupting crop production and possibly producing refugees.
Bangladesh: Faster melting snowpacks in the Himalayas, rising sea levels, and cholera outbreaks could force millions from their homes.
Australia: The Great Barrier Reef could be ruined as a tourist attraction if the water temperature increases by a mere 3.6 degrees.
Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati: Swelling oceans could cover these islands, forcing residents to evacuate.
[World map icons]:
Heat wave: Deaths from heatstroke worldwide may double by 2020.
Crops: Drought and high temperatures could cause crop failure and malnutrition.
Pollution: Sunlight breaks pollution into noxious substances, causing more respiratory problems.
Disease: Warmer, wetter conditions may amplify insect-borne diseases, such as malaria; flooding could spawn more water-borne illness.
Water wars: Droughts may bring on conflicts over scarce water resources, pitting upstream nations against downstream neighbors.
Coral bleaching: Warmer water could bleach coral reefs, leading to their destruction. This may deplete fisheries, disrupting food supplies and tourism.
Refugees: Floods displaced 230 million people in China in the 1998 La Nina rains. Future floods could do similar damage by submerging homes and contaminating water.
Fires: Drier summers and higher temperatures create ideal conditions for wildfires. In 1997, some 40,000 people were treated for smoke inhalation in Southeast Asia.
Floods: Sea levels will rise in the next century, leaving people more vulnerable to storm surges. Earlier melting snow could cause rivers to overflow.
Rod Little, Rob Cady, and Stephen Rountree--USN&WR
Reporting by Rachel K. Sobel and Kevin Whitelaw
Sources: National Center for Atmospheric Research; University of Virginia; Worldwatch Institute; National Climatic Data Center; World Meteorological Organization; and staff reports
With Tom Hayden, Charlie Petit, Rachel Sobel, Kevin J. Whitelaw and David F. Whitman
This story appears in the February 5, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.