“Give me a fast ship, because I intend to go into harm’s way.” John Paul Jones
In this decade, the nations of the world must come together to protect our Earth from the effects of our industries of the last several hundred years.
Our vessel must be worthy, if it is not, we will not succeed.
The 2021 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be the starting point of these Stone Fig Climate Change postings. The IPCC is a body of the United Nations tasked to assess the science related to climate change. Created in 1988, the objective of the IPCC is to provide all levels of government with scientific information that can be utilized in developing climate policy.
Its website may be found at IPCC — Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The IPCC not only provides information to the nations of the world but to each of us as well. It is appropriate that we should understand the reports by the IPCC. Our nation and other nations will use this 2021 Report, and the reports that follow, to establish climate change policy and regulations.
To support our country, we the people, must have a basic understanding of the chemical and physical processes within our Earth’s climate. We should be able to understand and have a reasoned opinion on the actions developed to combat climate change. The basic principles and ideas of climate processes can be easily found, and refreshed through numerous sites on the internet.
When we read the reports and the proposed laws and regulations it is appropriate for us to use our personal skills of critical thinking to determine whether the proposed regulations are supported by the science. The regulations passed and the support we give to the enforcement of those regulations will determine whether we have a “worthy vessel” and whether or not we will, in the end, succeed.
I will focus my Climate Change postings on reading the documents published by the IPCC. I will start with the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) from the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Report. The SPM may be found at IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf.
The SPM begins with an assessment of “The Current State of the Climate”. In this assessment reference is made to “AR5” which is the IPCC 5th Assessment Report (AR5). The SPM states that since AR5 was released in 2013 improvements have been made in recording the geologic records of ancient paleoclimate. These ancient records are reached by taking core samples of glaciers, tree rings, and sediments from the ocean floors. These core samples can provide us with climate records that reach back long before the early industrial age of the 1700s and 1800s. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) the study of Paleoclimate provides an essential perspective for assessing the potential impacts of future climate on “natural systems and the people who rely on them”. Scientists use the geologic evidence of past climate changes to understand the rates and patterns of Earth systems’ responses to a broad range of climate and landscape changes. When integrated into climate models these paleoclimate data provide a means to improve our understanding of the impacts of climate change.
When we review just the last 100 years, we can see the beginning of a significant increase in average global temperature. This is shown in Figure SPM.1 of the SPM. The graph is shown below.
In my view, after the Second World War (1945) the nations of the world, led by historically industrialized nations and nations with the resources to become industrialized nations, began a significant increase in activity These activities reinforced the change from farm-based/agrarian activities as primary human-activity to that of industrial-labor activities which had begun in the 1800s. To support these industrial-labor activities our collective power requirements for light, energy, transport, and transportation increased apace with this change.
This increase can be seen in the graph above.
It can be seen from the graph that in the last 50 years the average global surface temperature has increased at a average rate of 0.018 degrees Celsius (C) per year. This is an increase of 0.9 degrees C in 50 years. The upward angle of the graph will likely continue to rise if something is not done. What is “something”? It is action by each person, by every nation, to reduce the effect of human-activities that contribute to the increases in average global temperature.
To borrow a phrase from the movie Jaws, “We are going to need a bigger boat.”
We are in need of a revolution against our own past.
I am not saying the past was wrong or evil. Those activities built a standard of living for the people of the industrialized world who should now help raise the standard of living in the non-industrialized world.
We are on the threshold of a new age. We will step through; but what will we find?
If we do not address the rising global temperature and the changes to the climate it is causing, the poorer will suffer even more, and the rich will become poor and suffer as well. If we address the issues of climate change we can likely maintain a standard of living and can raise up those who do not yet have it.
In the pictures below of heroes of the American Revolution we see the spirit of the men and women who chose to fight to bring change to their way of government. Would they be ruled, or would they govern themselves?
We have to fight again, but this time against ourselves. We must use our individual critical skills to determine what actions each of us can take and should take. Then we must act!
The future does not belong to the timid.
We are all called. These pictures of John Paul Jones and Molly Pitcher (Mary Hays/McCauly) call to mind the fight that is ahead and the determination with which we must face it.
Their fight was for a new nation in a new world. Our fight is one to save the world for ourselves, for our descendants, and for all of life on the planet.
Picture “Captain John Paul Jones” 1938, by N.C.Wyeth
Figure SPM.1 copied from Summary for Policy Makers, 2021 United Nations Climate Change Report
Picture “Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth ” 1912, by C. Y. Turner