Talking Climate Change

Climate change is as real as the world around you and it is greatly affecting the world around you.

It seems that the only way to get this point across to people is to be blunt about it. Democrats and Republicans in America's government have spent so many hours inside the halls of Congress debating back and forth about its existence and what to do with it, have cut money cited as "pork" at the time that focused on climate change, and have, even in my short lifetime, largely ignored the subject.

Isn't it funny, then, that now that people have started to accept that it is happening, everyone in the government is clamoring to do something about it, but still, little is actually getting done.

CO2 emissions are the biggest cause of this climate change. And this is how it happens:

CO2 is released into the atmosphere, where it stays and is not broken down. Sunlight travels in through the atmosphere to the earth's surface, where some of it is absorbed, and some reflected. The sunlight (and energy) that is reflected bounces back into the atmosphere, where most passes through back into space, but an increasing amount (due to the buildup of CO2) is being retained by our atmosphere, thus creating the Greenhouse Effect that we've all heard about.

But the part that you probably haven't heard about has nothing to do with the Earth's solid surface, but its liquid surface. The amount of sun reflected is called albedo, and is measured on a scale of reflectivity. The ocean, being dark blue, retains a lot of light and heat and has a low albedo, while ice, being white, reflects nearly all of the light and heat, and has a high albedo. Since global temperatures have begun to rise, glacial ice and sea ice have begun to melt, creating a rise in water levels. Every year, less and less ice is retained in places like Greenland, the tundra of Canada, and Antarctica. Since there is less ice, and that ice is becoming water in the case of sea ice, there is a lower global albedo as the ice is not around to reflect that light and heat. So where does that light and heat go? Into the oceans, which in turn become warmer. Warmer water means less ice during the annual freeze, thus furthering the cycle.

Since every year, more ice melts, the rate at which the oceans are warming just because of the ice melts is alarming. Add in the factors of pollution and the general lack of response by many nations to acknowledge this problem, much less act on it, and we have a climate change crisis on our hands. Also, much of the industrial processes that were employed by the US, UK, and other western nations that started the problem are now being used by developing nations like China and India because it is the cheaper alternative to new, cleaner technology.

Acting on this situation is something that needs to be done by the global community, and action needs to come fast because if it is not already reversible, it seems it may be soon.
(Photo at right source surveygalaxy.com, NASA)

Looking At The London G20

The G20 world summit is coming up on 2 April 2009, and it is arguably the most important G20 Summit in its ten-year history. 19 of the world's largest economies and the European Union will meet in order to discuss the world economy and the stakes have never been higher. At this meeting will be:

• Chairman of the International Monetary and Financial Committee
• Financial Ministers of 19 of the world's largest economies, including the G7
• Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
• President of the World Bank
• Most of the G20 nations' heads of state
  

With many of the world's markets at their lowest points in over a decade, including the DJIA (6627 at last close), FTSE (3531), Nikkei (7173), and Hang-Seng (11922), it is obvious that in order to save the world's economy from slipping further into recession (or possibly depression). The plan at the London Summitt seems to be to review how things have progressed since the summit in Washington, D.C. in November 2008, and to judge whether what was laid down at that time has been effective.

Much of what has been promised seems to be "reform" related, as in "reforming the current financial system, the IMF, and World Bank". Pressure seems to be higher than ever on the heads of state and financial ministers in attendence to get things done. Many have argued that the Washington Summit did little other than address the sources of the financial collapse (mortgage lenders, banks, etc.) but the guidelines that were laid out have been completely ineffective. It has also been noted that several leaders, including Sarkozy and Brown, have disagreed on occassion on what should be done.

I'm sure that free-trade and globalization will once again be the "solution" to the economic collapse, but it seems as though pressure is mounting from global citizens to look elsewhere for a solution. Another thing I find interesting is how much of a role the emerging economies of Brazil, India, and China will have in the talks. Their presence was felt greatly at the talks in Washington, but are the old economic powers ready to fully admit that they might not be the hegemons anymore? The inclusion of the EU is also something that should be followed, as the IGO could be one of the biggest economic players in the coming years as it includes four of the other G20 nations (UK, France, Germany, Italy) as well as several other quickly-developing nations, including those of Eastern Europe and the old Soviet bloc.

Another focus of the G20, though it will probably be overshadowed by the economic talks, will be on climate change. There's no denying by anyone who knows anything about it that climate change is very real, and it's happening right now. CO2 emissions are the largest source of climate change, and they continue to rise simply because the nations who are working to reduce them have not focused on it enough, and developing nations are not fiscally-secure enough to use new technology and are thus relying upon the technologies that the US, UK, and much of the rest of the west used for years and years to get us into this situation. It is up to the G20, as the world's largest secure and developing economies, to set an example to the rest of the world as to how to handle climate change as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Thinking about the G20 Summit, it seems as though much of the problems we are now trying to solve have only become these major problems because we failed to care enough about tomorrow. Our banks didn't fail, houses foreclose, markets crash, and ice caps melt at ungodly rates by some awful miracle overnight. It is because all people, from the heads of state all the way on down to you and I, failed to assess the risks of what we were doing today and how it would change the way we live tomorrow. Now that everyone has realised that the world is going to shambles, people are finally beginning to realise this. Things aren't going to get done overnight, just as they weren't undone overnight. But people need to know about the G20 and put pressure on the leaders at the G20 Summit to get done what needs to get done in order to attempt to fix the exorbitant number of problems facing our world today.