Until recently, the UN Intergovernmental Panel of Experts on Climate Change was an organization known only among specialists. But recently there was an environmental sensation based on her next report.
Sensational report
This report attracted the attention of the world community with the conclusions that the man did not prevent, but brought the next climatic catastrophe closer. The current generation, living in relatively normal conditions, is likely to see only the beginning of climate change. But the next generation will have to adapt to life in different climatic realities.
One of the most controversial conclusions is based on calculations showing that even the cessation of greenhouse gas emissions will not change the environmental situation. The average air temperature will continue to rise for at least another three decades. Thus, by the middle of this century, weather anomalies in the summer of 2003 will become the norm and will be repeated more and more often. Then temperature anomalies, quite possibly, will provoke a new ice age!
Another object of research of the Intergovernmental Group was the famous "critical two degrees". It is beyond this temperature limit, according to experts, that the first stage of a climatic catastrophe may begin. Strikingly, despite decreasing emissions in recent years, the rate of climate change is only accelerating.
It will be possible to maintain the two-degree temperature bar until the concentration of carbon monoxide (carbon dioxide CO2) in the air is below 450 ppm. Now this figure is hovering around 400 parts, so there are only a few steps left before the climate catastrophe.
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Why is there no glaciation?
According to ecologists, the expert report should serve as an impetus for the development of a new international climate treaty. But the conclusions of the UN experts only stirred up a new discussion around the very phenomenon of global warming.
For a long time, it was believed that human activities began to affect nature from the second half of the 19th century. It was then that the industrial revolution began, steam engines appeared, the streets began to be illuminated by gas lanterns, and streams of carbon dioxide (the result of fuel combustion) poured into the atmosphere. But some climatologists argue that human impact on nature began several millennia ago. Moreover, it is thanks to ancient mankind and the first anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases that the climate of our planet has remained warm, and the onset of a new ice age was delayed indefinitely.
Interglacial periods last about 10 thousand years, and the modern period - the Holocene - is already 11 thousand years old, and signs of the onset of global glaciation have not yet been observed. If we analyze the climate of past eras, then by the beginning of industrialization, that is, in the middle of the 19th century, the average temperature should have been three degrees lower! And then the formation of glaciers could begin.
Why didn't the glaciation come? The study of air bubbles, preserved from ancient times in the ice cores of Antarctica, shows that at first the carbon dioxide content gradually decreased, but at the border of the 8th millennium BC. e. it suddenly stabilized and then began to increase. After several millennia, the concentration of methane also increased.
Climatologists believe that this was due to the beginning of intensive agricultural human activity. It was 8 thousand years ago that people learned to grow barley, wheat and other types of cereals. Plowing the fields, farmers destroyed forests, the layers of charcoal increased, and this provoked an increase in the concentration of carbon monoxide. And with the beginning of the Bronze Age, 5 thousand years ago, the widespread cultivation of rice began, which required swamping of land, and as a result, the area of marshlands, a source of methane, increased.
So the agricultural activity of our ancestors could give the very same 2-3 degrees of heat that prevented the beginning of the ice age and ultimately allowed humanity to achieve the current scientific and technological progress.
Why is it that expert assessments of even such an authoritative organization as the UN cannot bring the necessary clarity into the forecasts of climate change? Perhaps the conspiracy theory of events is to blame for this, which resulted in another environmental scandal, which received the biting name "Climatgate".
Climatgeitis
It all started with an unknown computer hacker gaining access to emails and documents from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Group. The correspondence was so interesting that he forwarded some of the letters to environmental journalists.
It was then that it turned out that well-known climate researchers are adjusting the available data to the theory of "catastrophic global warming" they need. Some took this as proof of a kind of scientific scam launched by supporters of global warming, while others began to draw conclusions about a conspiracy between Western governments and transnational monopolies.
So the theory of global warming was damaged, and now any data on a new manifestation of the greenhouse effect can be perceived by the public as a conspiracy theory.
The explosion of the Climategate media bomb has significantly influenced the position of a number of countries on the adoption of measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, long before Climategate, authoritative opinions were voiced that the threat of global warming was not only greatly exaggerated, but also justified by incorrect methods.
The chain of scientific research leading to the conclusion that global warming is caused by human activity, inevitably falls into the hands of politicians and financiers, who make further fateful decisions. This is how public opinion is formed that in order to avoid catastrophic consequences, humanity around the world must spend trillions of dollars to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Such decisions always affect many commercial and industrial groups, from gas and oil corporations to refrigeration equipment manufacturers, and it would be naive to believe that each of them will not lobby for their economic interests.
It is not surprising that it is very difficult for the average person to understand the intricacies of climatology, ecology and politics. One of the most unpleasant consequences of "Climategate" is that a negative attitude towards climatologists is beginning to form in society. Scientific arguments are losing weight, and supporters and opponents of global warming resemble ordinary religious sectarians who believe only in a set of their own far from perfect arguments.
What can we expect?
Undoubtedly, the Climategate scandal has greatly shaken the position of the "climate extremists" who believe that in a few years hurricanes will fall on temperate latitudes, carrying the hot air of tropical deserts and highlands.
Today, the prevailing point of view, contained in the last part of the report of the Intergovernmental Group to the UN, that humanity seems to greatly exaggerate its ability to influence the climate.
So what happens in nature? Global warming, the onset of a new ice age, or minor changes in weather conditions?
The storyline with a mysterious computer hacker who revealed to the world a secret clique of sinister scientists and corrupt politicians has long been included in conspiracy bestsellers and Hollywood blockbusters. However, in the end, it all boiled down to a report with alternative explanations for the actually observed increase in average annual temperatures. As before, no one gives us long-term forecasts …
Oleg FAYG