A campaign to raise awareness, change the numbers

As I write, satellite images from the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center show that a 5,282 square mile piece of ocean ice about the size of Connecticut is disintegrating.
Apparently, the disintegration of Antarctica’s Wilkins Ice Shelf was initiated by the breaking off of a 25.5 mile long by 1.5 mile wide shard of its edge at the end of last February. This was followed by today’s images of a 160 square mile collapse of the shelf.

For the remaining global warming skeptics that believe the earth’s warming is part of a cyclical trend, the unprecedented speed at which these changes are occurring is becoming harder to contradict. Climate models, conservative by design, are showing that predicted changes in our environment are happening at an unforeseen rate.

This theme that climate changes are taking place at rates never before seen ran throughout the 13th annual symposium entitled Alternative Energy: Seeking Climate Change Solutions, sponsored by the Wallace Stegner Center for Land Resources and the Environment, in Salt Lake City (7-8 March, 2008). After almost two days of non-stop presentations, the final and keynote address was given by environmentalist Bill McKibben. McKibben is a writer who has been championing the cause to stop global warming since his first book, The End of Nature (1989). He was one of the founders of the nationwide Step it Up 2007, a climate change demonstration, simultaneously held in all 50 states. Now, he is focusing his attention on slowing down what appears to be the irreversible consequences of the rise of carbon dioxide, ergo www.350.org.

At the end of the pre-industrial revolution, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been estimated to be about 275 parts per million (ppm). So McKibben states, “scientists and policymakers focused on what would happen if that number doubled – 550 ppm was a crude and mythical red line, but politicians and economists set about trying to see if we could stop short of that point.”

What has happened since 2000 is clear: the earth is reacting to the changes in carbon dioxide much faster than anticipated. Consequently, various groups throughout the world are moving to lower the target level of 550 ppm to 450 ppm. As discussions across the globe focus attention on lowering the CO2 ppm threshold, new data shows that even 450 ppm has little chance of stopping the devastating effects of climate change. Quoting NASA’s climatologist and arguably, the world’s preeminent climate expert, James Hansen (et al), “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm … If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.”

Today’s disintegration of 160 square miles of ice shelf reminds us that we do not have time to languish in our decisions to act on behalf of our planet.

As McKibben said in his 28 December 2007 op ed piece in the Washington Post, “It's the number (350ppm) that may define our future.”

For more information, go to http://www.350.org/. And check out the video directly below.

-Ernest Shiwanov