It’s getting hot in here

August has been a big month for global warming, and not just because of the warmer temperatures. For those of you who have yet to be convinced that the world is getting warmer, here’s all that happened this month to add to the growing pile of evidence and consensus:

* A recent study has linked the growing strength of intensity of hurricanes over the last three decades to rising global temperatures.

* A bipartisan group of Senators comprised of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine) visited Alaska this month to highlight anecdotal evidence from local residents that confirms the science of global warming.

* A key argument of global warming critics was debunked when it was revealed that atmospheric weather balloons were hindered by a faulty design from the 1970s that allowed the sun to interfere with readings. While surface temperatures were clearly rising, critics had used atmospheric readings to argue the earth was cooling.

* As a conference on global warming opened in the Danish colony, it was found a Greenland glacier has tripled in speed since 1988, jumping from 5 to 14 kilometers per year. Another glacier has shrunk by 10 kilometers in just the last few years alone.

* An analysis of ice breakups in the Great Lakes since 1846 has shown that the thaw is happening later each year. The rate of change is three times as fast in the last three decades, with the date of breakup moving northward at a rate of 100 kilometers per decade.

* A study by the World Wildlife Federation found that summers in Europe had gotten 4 degrees warmer Fahrenheit since the 1970s, and that the trend may accelerate as carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere continues to affect the world’s temperatures.

* A study has linked the 2002 collapse of a 1,250-square-mile Antarctica ice shelf to increasing global temperatures. According to scientists, the break up is without precedent for the last 11,000 years, or at least since the last ice age.

* New Scientist magazine reports that Russian researchers have found that the world’s largest frozen peat bog in Siberia, over a million square kilometers, is melting. The metdown could trigger the release of billions of tons of methane, a greenhouse gas that is four times as potent as carbon dioxide.

All told, the average global temperature has risen about two degrees Fahrenheit in the last thirty years alone. It may not sound like much, but consider that changes like these normally occur over hundreds or thousands of years, in geologic time. We are seeing these changes in our own lifetime.

And it’s not just about melting ice caps and rising sea levels, either. “Global warming” is actually a misnomer because climate change can cause greater extremes in weather – colder winters, for example, can accompany warmer summers. The recent study about hurricanes could also tell you more about what “extreme” weather acually means.

There are still a few who believe that human activity is not responsible for such drastic changes in our climate, despite the lack of any geologic activity that has begun in the last 30 years that would suggest otherwise. The only thing that has changed in the last two centuries is our emission of millions upon millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a global experiment of unprecedented scale.

Even if we stopped all our emissions today, the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere is going to make the effects of our emissions felt for centuries. We need to take drastic action to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases. Some governments have taken the first steps, while others remain skeptical. Whatever we do, the changes are irreversible.

Omar Yacoubi may be reached at yacoubioa@vcu.edu