The average global temperature has increased 0.8 degree Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1850, according to the 2007 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The decade from 2001 to 2010 was the warmest on every continent since modern measurements began 160 years ago.
While new data show that the Earth’s temperature since 1998 has increased less than half the pace of the longer-term averages since 1951, human activity is the dominant cause of warming since the mid-20th century, according to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment released on Sept. 27. The organization said the summer melting of ice sheets and glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland was accelerating, which makes risks related to rising sea levels worse.
Losing Harvests
Warmer seas and a jump in airborne water vapor are fueling more violent weather: Last year, 900 disasters, including Hurricane Sandy, which pummeled New York and New Jersey, caused insured losses worldwide of $65 billion, according to Munich Re, the German reinsurance giant. That’s more than double the 30- year average of $29 billion.
Farmers, meanwhile, are struggling to cope with drastic disturbances of weather patterns they’ve counted on for generations. In the Mekong River delta, the heart of Vietnam’s agriculture and aquaculture, rice growers and shrimp farmers are losing harvests as precipitation becomes less predictable and a rising sea inundates their fields. The World Bank says Vietnam may lose more than 12 percent of its crop production to saltwater intrusion by 2040.
As freakish weather traumatizes society and rings up economic losses, adaptation is now taking on as much urgency as prevention, former Vice President Al Gore says.
“There are some changes that will continue to unfold no matter what we do,” says Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for alerting the world to the perils of global warming. “We have an obligation to pay attention to people who live in areas where the sea level is already rising and to farmers who are suffering the impacts of droughts and erratic weather. But the truly catastrophic impacts can still be avoided.”
As the climate story shifts into a new phase, the key players aren’t just heads of state or the environmentalists and oil industry lobbyists who have long clashed on this issue. They’re agronomists like Jerry Hatfield in Iowa, who’s developing new soil management and tillage practices to help corn withstand drought.
And entrepreneurs who see money to be made. This past summer, Christian Bonfils, co-founder of Nordic Bulk Carriers A/S, a Danish shipping operator, sent two vessels carrying iron ore from Murmansk, Russia, to Shanghai through the virtually ice-free Northern Sea Route along the coast of Siberia. The newly opened route shaved 18 days off the voyage and saved $600,000 in fuel, compared with a trip via the Suez Canal, he says.
Lucrative Possibility