Introduction

The science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein said, “Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get.”

To fully understand how the earth’s climate is changing, it is important to maintain a global perspective. Conclusions about the earth’s climate are based on small changes to global averages viewed in the context of the entire history of the earth.

Collecting the data is a massive effort requiring the collaboration of many scientists around the world. It is understandable how people looking at parts of this data in isolation, can arrive at different conclusions.

The temperature outside easily may have changed by more than the total average global temperature increase for the entire past century. The rise and fall of the ocean during any given hour far exceeds the overall average global increase in sea level for an entire decade. Over the last hundred   years, the earth’s average temperature has increased by about three quarters of a degree Centigrade (1.3°F). This seemingly minor change may strike some people as inconsequential.

However, if global warming adds just another 4°C (7°F) or so to the atmospheric temperature, both Greenland and Antarctica could be well on their way to meltdown. A far more conspicuous confirmation that the earth’s climate is changing can be seen around the world in the rapid melting of glaciers and ice sheets that had been around for thousands of years.

It is like the scene from the movie, Jurassic Park, where the tour guide notices the very first tremors in a glass of water caused by the approaching Tyrannosaurus Rex. The tremors in the earth’s climate may be barely detectable at first, but have the potential to reshape our entire planet. How should we respond to these early warning signs? If the earth were a machine shop in Osaka, or a semiconductor processing line in Palo Alto, it would be shut down for being statistically out of control.

The sky is not falling just yet; but there may be a very small window of opportunity between when we detect the early warning signs and when it is too late to respond effectively.One way to define progress is how the world deals with what it needs to dispose of. The industrialized world has progressed in how it has handled sewage treatment, recycling, and reducing sulfur emissions that cause acid rain. Lead was removed from gasoline. Mercury is being captured from smokestacks. Chemicals that destroy ozone were replaced.

The American eagle, once threatened by pesticides, was just taken off the endangered species list in 2007. With each success story, there was no doubt someone who insisted that the solutions were unnecessary and would be too expensive. Greenhouse gases are the world’s next challenge.

The key questions are: In whose backyard will the solutions be located and how much will it cost? Costs can also be put in perspective and weighed against the prospect of living on a planet where greenhouse gas levels continue to be driven off the charts. Many of the insights about climate change described are the result of work performed by scientists working with “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)”. The IPCC, along with Al Gore, won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

This choice by the Nobel committee reflects the belief that the consequences of drastic climate change could lead to instability around the world with an increased risk of conflict. The starting point for understanding climate change comes from the basic scientific processes of measurement and observation. Scientists around the world have painstakingly collected data from weather instruments, satellite telemetry, ice cores, and coral sections and analyze. The temperature of the earth is the result of well-understood physical processes.

Nature is responsible for many climate changes. However, the carbon dioxide that humans have generated from fossil fuel combustion can be considered is a natural atmospheric component at unnatural levels. Greenhouse gas concentrations have never been this high before, and their impact so strong.

No single country is responsible for the climate changes that are occurring, and no single country can reverse them single-handedly. However, to stabilize the earth’s temperature, countries around the world may need to fundamentally rethink how they use energy-a process that, for several reasons, may be long overdue.