democratizing GIS
Home   Store   Free GIS   Education   Free Shapefiles   Census   Weather   Energy   Climate Change   News   Maps   TOPO   Aerial   GPS   Learn GIS

DOWNLOAD SHAPEFILES: Canada FSA Postal - Zip Code - U.S. Waterbodies & Wetlands - Geographic Names - School Districts - Indian Federal Lands
Zip Code/Demographics - Climate Change - U.S. Streams, Rivers & Waterways - Tornadoes - Nuclear Facilities - Dams & Risk - 2013 Toxic Release Inventory TRI

ANWR Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; What is at stake; removed USFWS website; photos, maps, descriptions

tools for survival plans Maps Food Water Health Gardening Energy Housing Security Communications Livelihood

Money Making Tips Work from Home Make Money Used Lumber & Building Materal Beginner's Guide Buy/Sell Gold Electronics & Computer

GIS Shapefile Store - for Beginners & Experienced GIS Users Alike. Geographic Names Information System, Nuclear Facilities, Zip Code Boundaries, School Districts, Indian & Federal Lands, Climate Change, Tornadoes, Dams - Create digital GIS maps in minutes.

Toxic Release Inventory TRI Shapefiles

Canada FSA Postal Code Shapefile

GNIS Shapefiles 2,000,000+ Points

Nuclear Energy Facilities in the U.S.

Download Zip Code with Demographics Shapefiles

Download U.S. Streams & Rivers Shapefiles

Download Water Body & Wetland Shapefiles

Download Zip Code Boundary Shapefiles

Download School District Shapefiles

Download Indian & Federal Land Shapefiles

Download Climate Change Shapefiles

Download Tornado Shapefiles

Download Dams & Risks Shapefiles

Follow Mapcruzin.com on Twitter Follow on Twitter

Didn't find what you are looking for? Email me and I'll find it for you.

Progressive Links

Federation of American Scientists

Physicians for Social Responsibility

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility

Union of Concerned Scientists

Alternet

Reader Supported News

Common Dreams

Truthout

Huffington Post

Media Matters

Think Progress

Grist Environmental News

Climate Shift Blog

MapCruzin Consulting
Data Research and GIS Specialists.

GIS Tutorials

GIS Basics

GIS Terminology

Of Interest

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Maps

Climate Shift - The effects of climate shift on the future of planet earth and its inhabitants.

Right to Know or Left to Wonder?

Hazardscapes - Toxic and Nuclear Risks in your backyard.

War & Environment

Worst Case Scenarios: Terrorism & industrial chemicals.

Some Experts Fear a Sharp Climate Shift - "unpredictable consequences with cascading effects."

Sponsors

Fair Use Statement

<-- Return To Climate Change

Source: LA Times

July 13, 2001

Some Experts Fear a Sharp Climate Shift

By USHA LEE McFARLING, Times Science Writer

AMSTERDAM -- As climatologists gather here this week to discuss new research on global warming, a disquieting idea has been gaining currency--the possibility that small shifts in global temperature could lead to sudden and abrupt climate changes.

What makes such projections important is not their likelihood, which is uncertain, although a growing number of scientists believe that sudden changes in climate are a possibility. Instead, the chief significance for policymakers and the public lies in what the new research suggests about scientific uncertainty and risk.

Until recently, much of the climate debate has centered on whether global warming is occurring at all. Most climate models had assumed a slow, steady increase in temperature and forecast gradual changes with gradual effects.

But newer, more sophisticated models suggest that the Earth's climate system is "nonlinear"--in other words, small changes can have large effects on everything from ocean and land temperatures to drought and monsoon patterns, icecaps and tropical rain forests.

Though loath to cry wolf, more and more experts are beginning to publicly discuss--and personally fear--changes that are far more dramatic, and potentially faster, than those at the center of discussion so far. Some events could permanently alter life on Earth.

For example, one projection is that melting Arctic ice could cause a flow of fresh water into the North Atlantic that would shut down the Gulf Stream this century. That warm current moderates the European climate, and turning it off would make a swath of land from London to Stockholm miserable.

"Sometimes very small, innocent changes can trigger huge changes," said Will Steffen, executive director of the Sweden-based International Geosphere-Biosphere Program, or IGBP, which is coordinating the Amsterdam conference. "Sometimes you hit it with a hammer and nothing happens. We simply do not know. We are heading into uncharted waters."

Sponsors

In the global warming debate, a chief argument of industry, joined by Bush administration officials and some scientists, is that the U.S. and its allies should not rush into potentially costly measures to head off possible climate change because our knowledge of the subject is limited.

Many scientists, however, say that argument is precisely backward. The possibility of sudden, dramatic climate shifts means that, although there is a risk that current models are too pessimistic, there is also a substantial risk that they are too optimistic.

A prominent advocate of the go-slow school of thought is Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, an expert on how the sun and its heat output have varied through time.

Her research is funded by federal agencies but she accepts money--to "travel around and speak"--from firms that have advocated a go-slow approach on global warming. She argues that computer models are unreliable, exaggerate warming trends, fail to adequately take into account natural fluctuations in temperature and do not explain why no warming has been seen in the upper atmosphere.

"The best evidence says [climate change] is slow to work, so we have a window of opportunity," she said.

As advocates of that school of thought note, many climate scientists a decade ago feared that global warming could cause a catastrophic melting of the massive West Antarctic ice sheet. Such an event would release huge amounts of water into the seas, devastating many of the world's highly populated, low-lying coastal areas.

Recent studies, though, suggest that the Antarctic icecap is stable--and actually growing as more precipitation falls there.

Other scientists argue that because knowledge is uncertain, it is crucial to begin cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases to slow the rate of climate change.

"We could be either under- or overestimating the effect of human activities on climate," said Robert Watson, chief scientist at the World Bank and head of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "So why should we be complacent?"

Paul Crutzen, an atmospheric chemist working in Germany who won the Nobel Prize for explaining the hole in the atmosphere's ozone layer, makes a similar point. There is not enough room to take chances with the climate, he argues.

The chief cause of the hole, which appeared over Antarctica in the final decades of the 20th century, was chlorofluorocarbons--chemicals used as refrigerants and as propellants in spray cans. Had chemists earlier in the century decided to use bromine instead of chlorine to produce coolants--a mere quirk of chemistry--the ozone hole would have been far larger, occurred all year and severely affected life, he said.

"Avoiding that was just luck," he said, noting that no scientist had predicted the hole or its impact. "We missed something very important. There may be more of these things around the corner."

What climate watchers fear most are shifts that could "kick the climate system" into an entirely new state, said Berrien Moore III, chairman of the IGBP. That could cause "unpredictable consequences with cascading effects."

Such shifts have occurred before. A tiny change in the Earth's orbit, for example, altered precipitation and temperature patterns enough to convert what was once fertile African savanna into today's dry Sahara. "There are caves in today's desert that show giraffes and all kinds of other animals," said Robert J. Scholes, a South African climatologist.

"Abrupt changes in the Earth's systems can occur when thresholds are crossed," said Moore, a climate researcher at the University of New Hampshire. "Those changes may involve rather distant, telegraphed connections."

One current possibility is the melting of the Arctic sea ice.

Arctic snow and sea ice moderate the climate by covering a massive portion of the Earth's surface. This white, frozen blanket reflects sunlight and heat back into space, cooling the planet. If much of the ice melted and the Arctic Ocean became an open sea, the resulting big, dark patch would absorb heat and lead to even more warming.

Oleg Anisimov, an expert on the planet's icy "cryosphere" at the State Hydrological Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, said Thursday that such a shift is already occurring. The snow and sea-ice cover in the Arctic has decreased 10% since the 1970s, and the ice has thinned markedly in that time, he said. "Such changes are already enhancing the greenhouse effect," he said.

Research published June 21 in the journal Nature suggests that freshwater flows in the Nordic seas are increasing and may be slowing the crucial circulation of warm water, said Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

Anisimov said the increased flow of Siberian rivers also provides evidence that Arctic waters are freshening. Thawing permafrost in the region, he said, could also fuel warming by allowing decomposing material to emit greenhouse gases now trapped in frozen soil.

<-- Return To Climate Shift

Didn't find what you are looking for? We've been online since 1996 and have created 1000's of pages. Search below and you may find just what you are looking for.


Michael R. Meuser
Data Research & GIS Specialist

MapCruzin.com is an independent firm specializing in GIS project development and data research. We created the first U.S. based interactive toxic chemical facility maps on the internet in 1996 and we have been online ever since. Learn more about us and our services.

Have a project in mind? If you have data, GIS project or custom shapefile needs contact Mike.

Contact Us

Report Broken Links

Subscribe for Updates

Advertise on MapCruzin

Follow on Facebook
News & Updates

Find: Maps, Shapefiles, GIS Software & More

MapCruzin Blog for updates, questions and answers
Blog Updates

More Blog Updates

Downloads

Google Earth Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Maps
Lester Brown's Plan B 3.0
State GIS Shapefiles, Maps & Resources
GIS Shapefiles & Maps
GIS Programs, Tools & Resources
Free World Country & Regional Maps
GIS / GPS Careers and Job Positions
Disease Outbreak Maps
TOPO Maps
Extreme Weather & Disaster Maps
Free World Maps from the CIA Factbook
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ANWR Maps
Oil and Gas Maps
Africanized Honey Bees
Renewable Energy Potential Maps of the United States
Terrorism Maps
War Maps
Google Maps
Weather Maps
GPS Resources
Historical Maps of the World
Google Earth
Library of Congress American Memory Map Downloads
Toxic Chemical Pollution Maps
Climate Change Maps
Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Maps
Census Shapefiles
World Maps

Issues

Environmental Justice
Data Sources
Greenwash & JunkScience
Statistical Resources
Wireless Dangers
Surviving Climate Change
Global Right-To-Know
Creating Living Economies
Books of Note
Toxic Klamath River
Federal Lands Maps
TRI Analysis
TRI Webmaps
EnviroRisk Map Network
Community-Based Research
Right-To-Know or Left to Wonder?
Chemical Industry Archives
21st Century Warfare
Biotechnology
Nanotechnology
Globalization/Democracy
National Parks and Public Lands
Trade Secrets/Toxic Deception
GIS Books
Our Projects
Other Projects
1999 Archive Environews
Environmental Books
Environmental Links
Redwood Coast Information
Recycle, Salvage, Reuse

Resources
Shapefile Store
Free GIS Software
Free Map Downloads
Free Shapefiles
Free Remote Sensing
Free Topo Maps
Free GIS Tutorial
Free GPS
ToxicRisk.com
ClimateShift.com
Maptivist.com

About MapCruzin - Cookies, Privacy, Fair Use and Disclaimer - Advertise on MapCruzin.com

Copyright © 1996 - 2019 Michael Meuser, All Rights Reserved
MapCruzin is a Pop-Up Free Website -- Best Viewed With ANY Browser