Global Warming - A Frightening Thought

Things on the global warming front have changed rather dramatically over the last five years. We have moved from a crisis that might culminate some time in the 22nd century to one that is creeping into this one. If I am reading the various alarms correctly, then we may have already hit the runaway point. Others seem to think it is still a few years in the future.

Every report is characterized by the alarm at the speed that things are warming up. There is alarm expressed at the massive and accelerating melting at both poles. Anecdotally, it looks to me that in the last 5 years or so, the warming and melting process has approximately doubled. Most scientists are now hedging their bets on what global warming is going to do -- and when.

This is really not surprising if we have moved from a steady deterioration to an exponential deterioration. For example, from say a .2 degree change every 10 years - a geometric process - to a say 1% increase every year. In the first case, we would see a 2 degree change in ten years. In the second, we would see 10% increase in roughly seven years. That 10% would be approximately a 4 degree increase in seven years.

However, exponential growth requires a constant factor, and what appears to be happening is that not enough of the warming process is understood to identify that constant. There are chemical processes happening on their own in the atmosphere. There are odd responses of melting at the poles which seem to be in part melting from below rather than simply above. There is increasingly less oxygen in the atmosphere. There are too many variables unknown to predict a constant for even an exponential increase in warming.

Studies of arctic and Antarctic ice cores are underway to look at geologic concentrations of atmospheric gases leading up to warming, cooling, and catastrophic climate change events. This may help in predictions except that never before have humans been the drivers of climatic events. The types and compositions of both gases and toxins are not comparable to anything the planet has seen before. So we have a scenario where the rate of global warming is erratically increasing. Past climatic tipping points offer only a rough guide. Apparently there is little predicting of when global warming become "catastrophic," nor when that warming might trigger a cooling response - an ice age.

We are in the realm of the unknown, but what we do know is not good. Personally, it seems to me that all predictions are out the window, but then I am not a climatologist.