Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings January 2014, Volume 27, Number 1 | Page 72

are climbing and spring thaws occur a week earlier and winter
freezes commence a week later than they did 50 years ago. Numerous studies have shown that the last 2 decades of the 20th
century were the hottest in 400 years and perhaps the warmest
in several millennia.
Rapid ocean acidification, which increased by 30% in the
past century, is another tipoff. The oceans are the world’s carbon
sink, absorbing about 50 times more CO2 than the air does. But
CO2 forms carbonic acid when it dissolves in water. As a consequence, rising CO2 emissions are fueling the growing acidity
of the oceans, which is killing seafood species, coral reefs, and
organisms at the foundation of the ocean food chain. By 2050,
if carbon emissions continue at current rates, the alkalinity of
the ocean will be lower than at any time in the last 20 million
years, a change that is occurring 100 times faster than at any
time since Earth was formed.
Industrialization, deforestation, and pollution have supercharged the concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon
dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in the upper atmosphere.
These gases absorb extrasolar radiation and then release that excess heat into the lower atmosphere, inhibiting planetary cooling
and creating a hothouse environment under the carbon canopy
that amplifies temperatures on the Earth’s surface. And all this
has happened since the Industrial Revolution.
Effects of rising temperatures on the ecosystem. In the
coming decades, as Marsa indicates, the higher temperatures
will have numerous effects on our ecosystems: higher levels
of ozone pollution in the air we breathe; more uncontrolled
outbreaks of deadly infectious diseases as mosquitoes migrate
to newly warm habitats; and more extreme weather events. Hot
air holds more water so we will have more torrential rains, more
ferocious hurricanes, and, conversely, more dry spells as a result
of heat-induced changes in rainfall patterns. Rising temperatures
could trigger pestilence, drought-induced food shortages, raging
firestorms, massive migrations, political instability, and wars,
even the return of bubonic plague, the Black Death that killed
more than 25 million people in the Middle Ages. And then
there are the debilitating injuries and deaths that come with
increasingly violent and more frequent hurricanes, floods, and
fires and the chronic illnesses exacerbated by being left untreated
for lack of medical care after weather-related calamities. So, we
must expect more of the likes of Hurricane Katrina, the tornado
that hit Joplin, Missouri, and superstorm Sandy.
As Linda Marsa writes, “In the absence of meaningful mitigation and adaptive strategies, we are on the cusp of a terrifying and increasingly unhealthy future. . . . We are going to see
incremental changes in the next 5 or 10 years but that might
not compare to what we are going to see in the next 30 or 40
years.”
According to a noted meteorologist, “It only took 1 degree
to cause the 1930s Dust Bowl. Just 1 degree change in the surface temperature of the oceans cut off the pipeline of moisture
that normally travels north from the Gulf of Mexico and triggered the long dry spell.”
While there have been some noticeable fl uctuations,
according to Marsa, for the past 12,000 years, we have
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enjoyed a relatively stable climate that has allowed civilization
to flourish. But we are now on the threshold of transformative changes in the weather. There is, however, a pervasive
and falsely comforting belief that climate change will happen slowly, that the globe will heat up uniformly, and that
the predicted devastation will not occur until long after the
Baby Boomer generation has died of old age. The developing world—Africa, Asia, and South America—will bear the
brunt of the toxic legacy of wealthier nations’ addiction to
fossil fuels. But even relatively affluent Americans will not
be observing this seismic shift from a safe insulated distance.
Studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) indicate that these climate changes will not be gradual
but will appear as extreme events. The freak weather patterns
occurring across the USA in recent times confirm that Earth
is warming at a swifter pace than even the direst forecast predicted just a few years ago. Since the presidency of Kennedy,
the USA has heated up more than 2°F, a change greater than
the warming average for the whole planet. Winters are now
shorter and warmer than they were 30 years ago, with the
largest temperature rises of >7°F measured in the Midwest
and northern Great Plains.
No matter how fast we move to reverse this trend by drastically cutting emissions, temperatures will continue to climb
because of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide that has already
been dumped into the environment. Carbon dioxide lingers
in the atmosphere for centuries, while oceans absorb the heat
by warming and releasing it back into the air for hundreds
of years. Over the next century the thermostat will climb
another 2°F to 11°F on average, a range that is contingent
upon what we do to reduce greenhouse gases, according to
projections from numerous governmental studies done both
in the US and abroad. When the amount of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere climbs from the current 393 parts per mill [ۈ
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