“To tackle climate change, you don’t have to reduce your quality of life,
but you do have to change the way you live.”—Ken Livingstone
***
“Climate change-related calamities test our resilience and readiness as families, as communities, and as a nation,” said Vice President Sara Duterte recently in a video message to commemorate Global Warming and Climate Change Consciousness Month.
Data released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) just before the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan last year indicated that greenhouse gases have hit a record high.
WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett told journalists that carbon dioxide – one of the three main greenhouse gases, along with methane and nitrous oxide – is now accumulating in the atmosphere “faster than at any time experienced during human existence.”
Because of the extremely long lifetime of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, “we are committed to rising temperatures for many, many years to come,” she added.
“Climate crunch time is here,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). “We need global mobilization on a scale and pace never seen before, starting right now…”
If not, she warned, the 1.5°C goal to cap rising temperatures set in the Paris Agreement on climate change “will soon be dead, and well below two degrees Celsius will take its place in the intensive care unit.”
The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted by 196 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, France, in 2015. Its overarching goal is to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”
“As long as emissions continue, greenhouse gases will continue accumulating in the atmosphere leading to global temperature rise,” the WMO said. “Given the extremely long life of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the temperature level already observed will persist for several decades even if emissions are rapidly reduced to net zero.”
It was Dr. James E. Hansen of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration who first raised the problem of climate change. In 1988, he told an American Senate hearing that the greenhouse effect “is changing our climate now.”
The greenhouse effect is a natural warming process. During the Climate Change Media Workshop held in Davao City some years back, Dr. Rosa T. Perez said that carbon dioxide and certain other gases are always present in the atmosphere. These gases create a warming effect that has some similarity to the warming inside a greenhouse, hence the name “greenhouse effect.”
Here’s what happens: “Visible sunlight passes through the atmosphere without being absorbed; some are back-scattered. Some of the sunlight striking the earth is absorbed and converted to heat, which warms the surface. The surface emits heat to the atmosphere, where some of it is absorbed by greenhouse gases and re-emitted toward the surface. Some of the heat is not trapped by greenhouse gases and escapes into space.”
According to Dr. Perez, human activities that emit additional greenhouse gases to the atmosphere increase the amount of heat that gets absorbed before escaping to space, thus enhancing the greenhouse effect and amplifying the warming of the earth.
“Although the Earth’s climate has changed many times throughout its history, the rapid warming seen today cannot be explained by natural processes alone,” points out Dr. Perez, who has a PhD in Meteorology from the University of the Philippines.
“Climate change is very simple,” noted Dr. Robert Watson, who was the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “We are increasing emissions of greenhouse gases and thus their concentrations in the atmosphere are going up. As these concentrations increase, the temperature of the earth rises.”
Aside from carbon dioxide, the following are also considered greenhouse gases: water vapor, methane, and nitrous oxide. There are also those man-made gases generated during industrial processes like sulfur hexaflouride, hydrofluorocarbons, and perfluorocarbons.
“Our lifestyle has led to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” notes the fact sheet circulated during the workshop mentioned earlier. “These gases trap heat from the sun, making the earth warmer. Manifestations of a warmer world include rising mean temperatures, sea level rise and increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events like droughts and greater rainfall.”
“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” contends the new IPCC report.
Dr. Perez says that the current carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is about 40% more than pre-industrial levels. “We are emitting a lot of carbon dioxide faster than the Earth can absorb any excess,” she deplores.
—###
