The planet is at stake because of global warming.
That’s what many people would think after seeing the Time magazine cover that ran the caption: “Be worried. Be very worried.” The cover also had a picture of a polar bear standing on a melting glacier.
Subsequently, Time magazine’s Web site featured an interview with NASA’s chief climate scientist James Hansen. The interview focused on the popular global warming issue.
“We are getting close to a tipping point, despite the fact that most people barely notice the warming yet,” Hansen told Time. “Three degrees will take us to a level at or just above the warmest in the past million years.”
During the 20th century, the average global temperature increased by about 0.6 degreesCelsius.
Even though climate change is irrefutable, MSU professor and state climatologist Charles Wax said people shouldn’t be worried about the Time cover.
“If you take a longer look, there has been evidence that there have been many ups and downs in Earth’s temperature history,” Wax said.
Jamie Dyer, assistant professor of meteorology at MSU, said people should take their parts in conservation, but they shouldn’t panic.
“We should be aware,” Dyer said. “We know it’s warming. The question is, ‘Is it natural?'”
Thermometers used by scientists show that temperatures are increasing. But Wax said the results could be inaccurate because of the thermometers’ locations.
During the early 20th century, scientists placed thermometers in fields to read temperatures. However, these thermometers were moved in the ’40s and ’50s to airports. Thermometers were moved again in the ’70s and ’80s to more populated areas.
“Any time you change the instruments, you might be changing the results,” Wax said. “It’s something that can happen, and it has happened a lot.”
Scientists who believe global warming is threatening point to the increased carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.
“We need to get on a track that I call the alternative scenario,” Hansen said, “which requires that we begin to slow emissions this decade and substantially reduce them before mid-century.”
Although many scientists agree that humankind has significantly influenced global temperatures, Wax said most of the climatologists he knows disagree.
“There is a fraud perpetuated by the media that all scientists agree that we’re changing the climate,” he said.
Grady Dixon, assistant professor of meteorology at MSU, said scientists aren’t sure why the climate is changing or how much it’s changing.
“Anyone who says with 100 percent certainty, ‘This is how it is,’ probably has an agenda,” Dixon said.
Even though scientists know that glaciers in the Artic region are melting, glaciers in Antarctica are thickening, Wax said. Many places are warmer than before, but that isn’t always the case.
“In some places, it’s getting colder. Some deserts are getting more rain,” Dixon said.
“Global climate change is more accurate than global warming,” Dyer said.
However, Hansen believes global warming should be taken seriously before the sea level rises, which would not only cost many places a lot of money but would kill plants and animals.
“Incredibly, there are still staunch deniers who would prefer to listen to a science fiction writer [Michael Crichton, who wrote ‘State of Fear’] than a real scientist,” Hansen said.
Wax said climate predictions have been entirely wrong in the past.
“When I was going to school in the ’70s, they were thinking that we might be going into an ice age,” he said.
Dyer said there are many issues concerning global warming that people should be worried about. But in the long run, there may not be much humankind can muster against global climate change.
“I think the earth is bigger than us,” he said.
MSU sociology professor Frank Howell said not enough research has been done on global warming. But this needed research may not come unless the government makes the issue a priority.
“We should worry about politics getting in the way of good, fundamental science,” Howell said.
Howell added that global warming isn’t an immediate economic issue, rendering it to the background of the political world.