Global warming naysayers will disagree, but there is mounting evidence that climate change already is underway. Support for that view is everywhere: Devastating floods in Pakistan, China and the United States, fires and drought in Russia, an Arctic so warm that huge chunks of glaciers are breaking off into the sea, and what is likely to be the warmest year on record since reliable reports have been kept. To argue that these events are not markers of global warming conveniently overlooks both the realities of July and August and long-term climate trends around the world.
Climatologists, to be sure, are understandably reluctant to tie a single event – the current drought in Russia, for example – directly to global warming. They have no such reluctance in saying that the rising number and persistence of abnormal weather events bears out long-standing predictions about climate change. Most scientists, in fact, now agree that the warming is directly related to the release into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases produced by the use of fossil fuels.
Though diplomatic and economic forums aimed at reducing emissions and forestalling additional climate change have been under way for years, there is little to show for them. Action must be expedited. “There is no time to waste,” Peter Stott, a British climatologist says, “because societies must be equipped to deal with global warming” and the frightening by-products of the phenomenon.
About 14 million Pakistanis have been displaced by flooding prompted by heavy rains during the current monsoon season. It’s not a stretch, scientists say, to link the downpours with a warmer climate. A warmer atmosphere holds – and can release – more water than a cooler or a temperate one. The situation in Pakistan is dire: It is the nation’s “worst natural disaster,” a government officials says. That’s not a understatement.
The current flooding in Pakistan has impacted more people than those affected by the Asian tsunami in 2005 and the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Asia combined. Pakistan can’t cope with disaster on that scale alone. The United Nations has appealed for nearly $460 million in immediate aid. Untold millions more will be needed when waters recede and rebuilding commences.
The situation is almost as alarming in Russia. There, record-breaking heat has spawned drought, fires that are spreading a toxic smog, and immense crop losses. Moscow officials report that the death rate in the city has doubled during the crisis. Such weather extremes around the world argue persuasively that global warming is a fact and that it is bringing significant and dangerous changes to the Earth’s climate.
It will be difficult to reverse the buildup of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels. Still it must be done, the sooner the better. If it is not, extremes in weather will become commonplace and the long-term, detrimental impact on all mankind will be incalculable.