Global warming warning

This past week was a busy one on the global- warming, climatechange news front with at least three big stories we should all have known about.

The one that actually made the top, on- line headlines at the beginning of the week was about more than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries signing a “second notice” to the world about the inevitably disastrous consequences of failing to meet the challenge of climate change. Close to 500 scientists from Canada were among those who signed the mostly grim outlook if humanity continues to emit massive amounts of so- called greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide ( CO2) into the atmosphere. That’s mostly, but not only, from the burning of fossil fuels.

It’s reassuringly ironic that the initiative for this second warning on the 25th anniversary of the first came from one person, an American, William J. Ripple, a Distinguished Professor of Ecology at Oregon State University in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society. He and graduate student, Christopher Wolf, started looking at key data to see what, if any, progress had been made since the first group of 1,700 scientists signed the first warning in 1992.

What they found was that the climate- change continuum has gotten much worse, with just one exception: the depletion of the ozone layer in the earth’s upper atmosphere as a result of pollution appears to be on the mend. After many worrisome years of expansion the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is getting smaller.

That, the new “notice” says, should be an example to the world of what humanity is capable of doing if we put our collective hearts and minds to the task of changing the way we live and work, from grass roots of communitybased human society to the highest levels of government and global leadership.

The notice, published Monday in the scientific journal BioScience, cites many scientific study references and doesn’t pull any punches about the urgency of the climate- change challenge:

“Since 1992, with the exception of stabilizing the stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to make sufficient progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse. Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic climate change due to rising ( greenhouse gases) from burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and agricultural production -- particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption,” it says.

That is followed by the comment that most news venues pulled out to highlight:

“Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century.”

That led to this warning: “To prevent widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss, humanity must practice a more environmentally sustainable alternative to business as usual. This prescription was well articulated by the world’s leading scientists 25 years ago, but in most respects, we have not heeded their warning. Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out. We must recognize, in our daytoday lives and in our governing institutions, that Earth with all its life is our only home.”

A similar “time is running out” message came up at the 12- day, UN climate talks that wrapped up recently in Bonn, Germany. They were the continuation of negotiations that led to the 196- country Paris Agreement in 2015. It was regarded at the time as a big step forward in the fight against globalwarming and climate- change.

But then came a discouraging step backward when the newly elected administration of President Donald Trump withdrew the U. S. from the agreement. He called it a bad deal for his country, which is now the only one on the planet not in the agreement.

An apparent pause in the continued increase of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere over three years, up to 2016, helped fuel and justify the U. S. administration’s renewed encouragement of fossilfuel use. Trump’s approval of the Keystone pipeline, to bring more Alberta tar- sands oil to U. S. refineries from Canada is an example of that. So are efforts to rekindle the U. S. coal industry.

But new research says CO2 emissions are on the rise again and expected to hit 41 billion tonnes by the end of this year. That’s a new record high, the Bonn conference was told, according to a report in Digital Journal.

A policy advisor to now- former U. S. President Barack Obama, and executive director of Future Earth, Amy Luers, called that “a giant leap backward for humankind.”

Cries of “you’re liars!” and “there’s no clean coal!” were heard at the Bonn talks when George David Banks, a “special energy and environment assistant to the U. S. President,” tried to make a case for the use of cleaner and more efficient fossil fuels to limit climate change.

Every little bit helps. But clean coal, if there is such a thing, can’t hide the reality that the U. S. position on climate change is a terrible mistake.

Here, in my little corner of the world in the midst of the Hope Bay Nature Reserve I’m taking an inventory of my fossil fuel use. And it gives me pause, so it does: two lawn mowers, a chainsaw, a propane furnace and stove, a 50- yearold diesel powered tractor, and a van that uses way too much gas to get an old guy around.

It won’t be easy, but there must be changes.