119 Effects of Climate Change

Climate:

• Northern Canada and Eastern Europe may be more productive.

• Lands closer to equator become more arid.

• Violent storms may intensify

• Warmer oceans provide more energy to fuel hurricanes.

• Increased sea surface temperature

• Increased precipitation in polar and temperate regions

• Decreased precipitation in tropical and subtropical regions

Oceans:

• Rising sea level

• Thermal expansion of ocean

• Melting glaciers

• Increases coastal erosion

• Increases vulnerability of structures to larger waves and storm surges

• Flood low-lying Pacific and Indian Ocean islands

• Flood coastal cities, New York, Boston, Tampa, Washington, D.C.

• Global warming effects occur more rapidly in Arctic and regions covered by glaciers

• Shrinking permafrost, coastal erosion, landslides

• Decreased Arctic Ice cap, ice sheets, and glaciers

• Affects communities dependent on snowmelt for water supply

• People in Arctic areas need to relocate

Biosphere:

• Shifts in range of plants and animals

• Changes in plant and animal habitat

• Mosquitoes are moving to higher elevations.

• Northward movement of butterflies in Europe and birds in U.K.

• Expansion of sub-alpine forests in Cascades.

• Sea ice melting stresses seabirds, walruses, and polar bears.

• Warming in Florida Keys bleaching coral reefs.

• Seawater increasing in acidity, threatening coral animals and algae. Corals are areas of extreme animal diversity.

Agriculture:

• Climate change increases human induced conversion of land to desert

• Causes soil and natural vegetation degradation

• Long-term loses for agriculture and grazing

• Increase in drought events

• Wildfire events will increase due to global warming.

• Both in in frequency and intensity

Reduction in greenhouse gases:

• Most scientists believe that we have a decade to reduce gas emissions to avoid catastrophe.

• Reduction of gasses must be done on an individual, community, national, and international level.

• Carbon sequestration

• Necessary as we make transition to new energies

Carbon Sequestration

• Capture and store carbon dioxide before it enters atmosphere

• Planting more trees

• lnjecting CO2 into oceans

• Geologic sequestration

• Power plants capture CO2

• Inject it, under pressure into wells in the earth

Personal Actions:

Main action is to change life habits that draw energy resources: heating (use sweaters, warm clothes). cooling (less air conditioners), waste management (recycle, consume conscientiously), consumption of food (less meat and dairy), travel (less flying, less car use).

See this link: https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2023/08/04/pennsylvania-climate-change-solutions-tips-to-get-started/

Few comments on human actions:

• Geology teaches us that Earth experienced glacial fluctuations (glaciations and interglacial periods) in the past. We can’t break this pattern! But we can adjust/adapt to it just like our ancestors did!

• Getting rid of air pollution, fossil fuels, emissions is a great benefit to our health, environment and political stability. Will it reverse climate change? I am not sure. It might offset atmospheric chemistry, but not likely the course of current interglacial period we live in.

• Providing clean water to rural areas and make water supply sustainable is a great benefit to our social and economical sectors. Will this reverse climate change? I am not sure, but it will help adaptation process, especially for dry areas.

• Planting trees is a landscaping measure, not a fight with climate change. Should we continue doing this? Of course! This helps carbon sequestration, avoiding flooding, soil erosion, increasing groundwater input.

• We should stop using effects of climate change (e.g. sea-level rise) to cover up our own disastrous actions during the past 140 years such as: modifications of coastlines around the world, inability to implement “managed retreat solution”, i.e. avoid building in hazardous coastal areas and relocate threatened buildings and people, declare land as “conservation easements”, etc. Same refers to informal settlements (e.g. favelas in Brazil or fishing villages along coastlines in Asia); These are political and social issues caused by humans, not the Earth! For example, “chaining” indigenous communities in Alaska to hazardous locations in 1950s was a governmental mistake, not a climate change issue. Now we spend millions of dollars to address this problem by coastal engineering and relocation measures.

• Because climate change is a global hazard we need to address it globally; blaming individual large industrial countries or implementing carbon taxes in selected countries is not productive. Because economical factors prevail in everything we do, they should be used as leverages. How? I do not know. But don’t we have enough Nobel Prize laureates in economics?

• Gradual or selective adaptation is what I would propose as a preliminary solution. To design it we need to change our habits, education, economic views and political attitudes.