Extremes

Few topics in recent years have been as hotly debated — or coldly dismissed — as the issue of global warming. Those who insist on the negative effects of climate change point to the erratic weather patterns and natural calamities which besiege us year after year as proof that global warming is real. On the other hand, there are those who insist that there is a lack of adequate scientific evidence to prove a causal link between so-called global warming causing factors and global warming itself.

The idea of global warming is such an alarming phenomenon that it has already become a commonplace term. As such, most people are at least passingly familiar with the phrase, yet this familiarity typically manifests itself in a clean-as-you-go, reduce-reuse-recycle, and minimize-your-carbon-footprint attitude. However, beyond this, most people are at a loss as to what to really believe or do.

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Case in point: Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. When it aired in ’06, people’s collective panic level rose by several notches. It seemed as though a complete environmental meltdown was imminent and unless immediate action was taken, the runaway train that is global warming would consume the planet. Then, in ’07, a British lorry driver filed a lawsuit in court to prevent the airing of An Inconvenient Truth in England’s public schools, claiming that it violated Great Britain’s law prohibiting the “promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school.” The result — to Gore’s undoubted chagrin—was that the British court identified 11 material falsehoods in the documentary. For instance, the film claims that melting snow on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming… a statement which was later conceded to be false. Also, the film suggests that the Antarctic ice cover is melting whereas data revealed that it was, in fact, increasing. Furthermore, the movie pointed to evidence from ice cores which allegedly proved that rising carbon dioxide (CO2) causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. This was also disproved when the court found that over the same period, the rise in CO2 lagged behind the temperature increases by 800-2000 years.

As a result, many well-meaning citizens were left bewildered as to what to believe. Is global warming a real phenomenon or merely a myth? If the latter, how does one explain seemingly increased instances of natural calamities? Take for instance the record temperature drops over North America in the first two weeks of 2014. Last January 7, temperatures dipped below freezing across all US States except Hawaii. As the polar vortex brought down from the Arctic swept across the Midwest, temperatures dropped as low as -37 degrees Celsius. So cold that an escaped convict in Kentucky begged to be let back into prison after nearly freezing to death in an abandoned house where he was hiding. Conversely, Australians have been suffering under a sweltering heat wave. Indeed, heat records are being set in Australia with certain regions approaching 50 degrees Celsius (that’s 122 degrees Fahrenheit) last Thursday.

Again, global warming skeptics point to records which show that polar vortexes in North America are nothing new. In March 1921, a polar vortex caused temperatures in Central Park to plummet from 82 degrees to 26 degrees in 14 hours. Meteorologists, however, counter that changes to the polar vortex have become more common in recent years. Severe weather conditions which used to occur infrequently (approximately once a century) now happen more frequently and more violently.

Interestingly, a report by Forbes magazine claims the increase in global temperatures since the late 19th century merely reflects the end of the Little Ice Age, which began around 1250 A.D. In fact, their research claims that global temperature trends have since followed the ocean temperature cycles of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) rather than rising CO2 trends. Simply put, every 20 to 30 years, ice cold water near the bottom of the oceans cycles up to the top, causing a cooling effect on global temperatures until the sun warms the water again. The warmed water then contributes to slightly warmer global temperatures until the whole process repeats itself. According to the March 2013 issue of Economist magazine, “The world added roughly 100 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO2 put there by humanity since 1750.” Yet research reveals no global warming during that period. The inference here is that CO2 greenhouse gas effects are weak and marginal compared to the natural causes of global temperature changes such as PDO and AMO.

Confused yet? Well, join the club. The fact is, even the scientists and meteorologists themselves are confused and clash on the issues. Each side of the argument can present an equal number of “experts” absolutely convinced about their take on global warming. In my opinion, the bigger question here is that, assuming arguendo that global warming is mere fabrication, what then accounts for the strange weather and increased occurrence of natural disasters we’ve been experiencing? If nothing we are doing as a species is causing this, then it must be part of a natural cycle we have yet to fully understand. If that is so, then things could very well continue to worsen before they improve, and there may be little we can do to prevent it. Now there’s a cold thought.

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Back home, our weather has similarly remained predictable in its unpredictability. Last Sunday, the temperature in Baguio City plummeted to 9.5 degrees Celsius, a record low for this year and only 3.4 degrees away from the coldest temperature ever recorded: 6.1 degrees in January 1961. And what about the 195 miles per hour Yolanda which was the strongest landed storm in recorded history? Whether you believe this is a sign of mankind’s abuse of the environment or mere nature at work, there’s no argument that weather like this is alarming. Perhaps it would not therefore hurt to err on the side of caution, and resolve to be more conscious of our environmental footprint throughout the day. 

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“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.” — Mark Twain

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