Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Most journalists keep missing the important angles on global warming. So says Tom Yulsman, a leading Western professor of environmental journalism. The angles, in his words:

… Even if we were to stop emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, we would face significant climate change. … So why is no one talking about adaptation (to the huge changes that are coming)? Politically incorrect, I guess.

Yulsman, co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, made his criticism in e-mail chat conducted by the national Society of Environmental Journalists. He agreed to share it with GOAT readers.

Yulsman points to climate scientists who say, the emissions limits in the multinational Kyoto Treaty don’t do enough. He paints a bleak picture of the future and most news coverage:

… The news media have been hung up on Kyoto for a long while. And we’ve missed the boat … Modeling by Tom Wigley (at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder) shows that even if Kyoto were fully implemented, including by the U.S., and all countries met their goals out to the year 2100, the impact on climate change would be minimal. So Kyoto is not nearly enough. At best, it’s a first step.

Also consider that the carbon dioxide we’ve already put into the atmosphere will stay there for 100 years. Moreover, much of our CO2 emissions have been absorbed by the oceans, which will eventually give some of it up (venting it back to the atmosphere, adding to the warming trend).

Yulsman also cites a recent talk by James White, a renown paleoclimatologist at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, in White’s words:

“The bad news is that climate change is on its way. And the really bad news is that you can’t stop it. It’s like a freight train. … So for the next 50 years or so, the Earth is going to warm up. … In the last few years it has become very apparent to me that simply not emitting greenhouse gases won’t work. The point of no return for climate change has passed.”

Yulsman goes on:

(Jim White) says … not only will we have to remove carbon dioxide from flue gases, become much more efficient, use biofuels, switch to solar energy, etc., but we will also have to remove carbon dioxide that we’ve already put into the atmosphere.

Jim is a level-headed, serious scientist who is not prone to over-dramatization. So when someone like him says we should think about ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere — a kind of super sequestration — then you know we’ve got a problem.

Jim joins Tom Wigley in advocating what some might regard as radical and fuzzy-headed responses. Wigley, a respected climate modeler, recently suggested that we consider adding aerosols to the atmosphere to block incoming solar radiation as a way to combat global warming. (Talk about risking unintended consequences!) I took this as an indication of the seriousness with which he views the situation. … There is an array of responses we could consider, including some that might have seemed crazy just a year or so ago.

The amazing thing is that this message has not gotten through at all. People do seem to have accepted the reality of climate change. In a Pew poll this past summer, nearly 70 percent said the government should take “immediate action” to curb climate change. But I don’t think the public — or many non specialist reporters — are aware that we’re in for an interesting ride no matter what we do now. And what’s most extraordinary is that hardly anyone wants to talk about adaptation.

By adaptation, I think Yulsman means, we need to start developing new agriculture to replace whole regions that become unfarmable, and better vaccines for tropical diseases that spread to temperate latitudes, and planning for large-scale dislocations of populations, and so global forth.