Global Warming

April 12, 2007 - Whether you call it climate change, the greenhouse effect or global warming, the implications are all the same. The world is heating up, the ice caps are melting and Mother Nature is in a foul mood about it. In current issue of NEWSWEEK, we take a look at the issue of global warming and the new public interest it has generated over the last year. This February an international panel of top scientists concluded that human-generated greenhouse gases account for most of the global rise in temperatures over the past half-century. With intentionally blunt language, the 21-page report by the United Nations panel declared that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and that the world's poorest will suffer its effects more. Global warming is a new kind of crisis for which neither human experience nor language has quite prepared us: a slow-motion crisis, requiring heroic action now to head off disaster decades down the road. And Americans (a little slower than Europeans) are finally waking up to the potentially catastrophic effects their lifestyle will likely have on future generations if they don't change their ways.

During an hour-long Live Talk on Thursday, April 12,  NEWSWEEK's Jerry Adler talked about global warming and its new place in the American conscience.

Click here to read the cover story

Read Adler's bio

Jerry Adler: Welcome to Live Talk. I'm coming from yesterday's conference on Environmental Leadership at Georgetown University, sponsored by Newsweek and Intel. Gov. Schwarzenegger gave the keynote address and promised to work with both parties to keep California in the forefront of environmental protection. We also heard from Mayor Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City, Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals and Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel, among others. A lot of interesting ideas were kicked around, some of which I hope we can discuss today.

I'm happy to take your questions.

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Amarillo, TX: I am concerned by the progression we are seeing in polar ice melt and continental glacial reductions, so my question is: have we waited too long for concern and action on the matter and if not, is damage reversal even a possibility?

Jerry Adler: Well, that's the big question, isn't it? The consensus of most scientists I speak with is that we have a brief window of a few years to avert the most extreme dangers, but that in almost any scenario present trends are likely to continue for decades, or most of this century, because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for at least that long.

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Davenport, IA: If the glaciers are melting so much and the sea levels are rising, how come the Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and others are experiencing lower levels?

Jerry Adler: To the best of my knowledge, sea levels are increasing worldwide, and low-lying islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are likely to be uninhabitable within this century. I haven't seen anything to suggest otherwise.

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Salvador-Brazil: How will the global warming affect the rivers and the desertregions around the world?

Jerry Adler: It will affect them badly. The report last week from IPCC Working Group II predicted more frequent and intense droughts and expanded deserts in the tropics. Rivers will run higher in the spring (due to earlier snowmelt) and dry up sooner in the summer.

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Anywhere, USA: Do you think it is time to start closing coal fired power plants and replacing them with nuclear power plants. If the US did this, 80% of electricity would be produced by nuclear in this country, similar to that of France, and this would result in about a 40% reduction in US CO2 emmisions.

Jerry Adler: You're not alone in thinking that. James Lovelock, a leading environmentalist, wrote last year in "The Revenge of Gaia" that nuclear power should be adopted as a medium-term strategy to combat global warming, and was promptly booed by his old friends in the mainstream environmental movement. The question came up yesterday at the Newsweek/Intel confrerence on environmental leadership at Georgetown University, and Mayor Anderson of Salt Lake City brought up the issue that always seems to stop consideration of nuclear power plants in the US: what do you do with the waste? This is a big issue in his part of the country, obviously, but as you say, France seems to have figured out a solution to it.

Personally, I tend to agree with you; I think the mainstream environmental groups haven't shown a lot of courage in standing up to their own constituents in this regard.

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Post Falls, ID: Do you think the recent "colony collapse disorder" in which bees are disappearing and baffling scientists, have anything to do with global warming?

Jerry Adler: You know, I've wondered about that myself but I haven't seen any research to suggest it's the case. I think we all may have a tendency to attribute every problem in the world to global warming; this may be one that humanity is NOT responsible for, but — I really don't know.

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Indianapolis, IN: Given that climate change is a human-caused problem, why, in all the suggestions for alleviating the problem, do we never hear anyone suggest adding the long-term solution of curbing human population? ZPG is rarely, if ever, mentioned in these discussions, as the human population nears 7 billion (or are we there already?). Why do we need war, famine and pestilence to limit our numbers?

Jerry Adler: Well, population growth is behind many environmental problems, and global warming certainly would certainly seem to be among them. But with six billion people here already, limiting population growth would seem to be the slow way to tackle carbon emissions; I think most policy makers believe we need a technological fix that would be available sooner.

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Laie, Hi: What do we really know about the human effects on the environment? I mean KNOW, not just bias hypothesis.

Jerry Adler: Well, what degree of confidence are you looking for? I don't think anyone disputes that carbon dioxide (and certain other manmade gases) act to trap heat in the atmosphere, and that the levels of those gases has been rising steadily. Almost no one disputes that the earth is warming. It is true that the exact mechanism of global warming is something climatologists are still investigating, as they work to improve their climate models. There is room for uncertainty about how the various feedback loops work and interact. But the failsafe position, it seems to me, would be to take the consensus of the world's leading climate scientists at face value, and assume the worst. If we wait to take action, it may be too late.

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Davenport, Iowa: If global warming is true how come Norway's glaciers growing at record pace (7.2 inches per day) according to Norwegian daily "Bergens Tidende" and Greeland's largest glaciers has already doubled its rate of advance, moving forward at the rate of 12 Kilometers per year? I could list more.

Jerry Adler: I don't know anything about Norway's glaciers. My understanding is that the glaciers in Greenland are retreating. If global warming is NOT happening, why are the glaciers disappearing from Glacier National Park? Why did the summer ice extent in the Arctic reach an all-time low (since observations began, obviously) in 2005? But in any case, I don't think is a question you can settle with a bunch of isolated examples. There are scientists whose job is to study this stuff. They have spoken, all but unanimously, on the subject. I don't understand the reluctance of some people to accept their conclusions.

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Dearborn, MI: How can I, as a concerned citizen, help stop global warming, such as persuading our mayor to try and conserve energy in our city to combat the effects of global warming?

Jerry Adler: I don't know anything about the political situation in Dearborn but I suspect that's probably an uphill fight. The people I speak with from Detroit indicate the prevalent attitude there is that the American auto industry is being forced to solve this global warming problem all by itself, and I think that's both untrue and unhelpful in this situation. The oil, coal and utility industries are all going to have to pitch in as well, so Detroit is hardly being asked to shoulder a disproportionate burden. And—I know this is a sensitive topic, but I have to say—it's not as if no one could have predicted this. The auto companies have seen this coming for a long time and chose not to adjust their product mix to meet the challenge.

Having said that, I also believe the transition, while painful in the short run, will probably cost a lot less than people fear. I'm old enough to remember when the car companies warned that catalytic converters would ruin their business, and that's hardly happened. I think Detroit needs to have more faith in its own technological ability—and when the transition is made to low-emission vehicles, Dearborn will want to join the other cities that are helping to create a sustainable future.

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Potomac MD: How did the Earth survive and THRIVE during the Medieval Warm Period?

Jerry Adler: Well, for one thing, the Medieval Warm Period eventually ended. If climate scientists are right, the current global warming is just going to continue, and probably accelerate, way past anything we've experienced in human history.

Also, the part of the Earth that was thriving during those centuries is the part we know most about—the temperate and sub-Arctic zones of the Northern Hemisphere. As the IPCC report last week said, a modest temperature rise (1 to 2 degrees C) will probably improve agricultural production in those regions, just as it did a thousand years ago. But there's the rest of the world to consider, and if the IPCC scientists are right, the consequences there will be devastating. And unlike the Medieval Warm Period, we can't ignore what's happening in the rest of the world.

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West Roxbury, MA: Even if we stop all greenhouse gas emissions immediately, the oceans will continue to warm for several hundred years, which means that the Arctic is doomed. All the fresh water from the melting Arctic will stop the thermohaline pump just off Greenland's coast so that the currents in our oceans will stop; our trade winds will stop; and a new Ice Age may begin (which may be our only salvation). Has the IPCC addressed this eventuality? Al Gore touches on it, mentioning that it would be catastrophic. Are we missing the forest for the trees?

Jerry Adler: The Working Group I report of the IPCC http://www.ipcc.ch/press/SPM.pdf
addresses this question, and tentatively concludes that the thermohaline pump (this is the mechanism that drives the Gulf Stream) is not endangered under most of the likely scenarios. It's a theoretical danger, certainly, but less of a medium-term threat than earlier forecasts suggested.

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Lake Zurich, IL: How can we get the major players such as Exxon to make a paradigm shift towards making their money flow in the direction of Renewal Energy and faster reduction of the current pollutants. Please state CONCRETE steps that can and must be taken, beyond JUST rhetoric.

Jerry Adler: My own view is that if they don't begin planning for the shift to sustainable energy, it won't matter, because there are plenty of other companies who are doing it, and they will take the place of the big oil companies in the years to come. And I think they're starting to understand that.

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Jerry Adler: That's all we have time for today, but thank you all for participating. These were some terrific questions and I enjoyed the dialogue; I hope you did too. My email address is if anyone cares to follow up; I will try to answer your questions as my time permits.

—Jerry Adler

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