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This page: https://www.globalissues.org/issue/178/climate-change-and-global-warming.

To print all information (e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links), use the print version:

The United States plus a few other countries, and many large corporations, have opposed climate change treaties seemingly afraid of profit impacts if they have to make substantial changes to how they do business.

However, as more climate change science has emerged over the years, many businesses are accepting this and even asking their governments for more action so that there is quick clarification on the new rules of the game so they can get on with their businesses.

This section explores some of those fears to see if they are justified or not.

Read " Reactions to Climate Change Negotiations and Action " to learn more.

For many years, large, influential businesses and governments have been against the idea of global warming. Many have poured a lot of resources into discrediting what has generally been accepted for a long time as real.

Now, the mainstream is generally worried about climate change impacts and the discourse seems to have shifted accordingly. Some businesses that once engaged in disinformation campaigns have even changed their opinions, some even requesting governments for regulation and direction on this issue.

However, a few influential companies and organizations are still attempting to undermine climate change action and concerns. Will all this mean a different type of spin and propaganda with attempts at green washing and misleading information becoming the norm, or will there now be major shift in attitudes to see concrete solutions being proposed and implemented?

Read " Global Warming, Spin and Media " to learn more.

For a number of years, there have been concerns that climate change negotiations will essentially ignore a key principle of climate change negotiation frameworks: the common but differentiated responsibilities.

Realizing that greenhouse emissions remain in the atmosphere for a very long time, this principle recognizes that historically:

Industrialized nations have emitted far more greenhouse gas emissions (even if some developing nations are only now increasing theirs);

Rich countries therefore face the biggest responsibility and burden for action to address climate change; and

Rich countries therefore must support developing nations adapt-through financing and technology transfer, for example.

This notion of climate justice is typically ignored by many rich nations and their mainstream media, making it easy to blame China, India and other developing countries for failures in climate change mitigation negotiations.

Development expert, Martin Khor, calculated that taking historical emissions into account, the rich countries owe a carbon debt because they have already used more than their fair quota of emissions.

Yet, by 2050 when certain emission reductions are needed by, their reduced emissions will still add up to be go over their fair share:

However, rather than continue down the path of unequal development, industrialized nations can help pay off their carbon debt by truly helping emerging countries develop along a cleaner path, such as through the promised-but-barely-delivered technology transfer, finance, and capacity building.

So far however, rich nations have done very little within the Kyoto protocol to reduce emissions by any meaningful amount, while they are all for negotiating a follow on treaty that brings more pressure to developing countries to agree to emissions targets.

In effect, the more there will be delay the more the poor nations will have to save the Earth with their sacrifices (and if it works, as history shows, the rich and powerful will find a way to rewrite history to claim they were the ones that saved the planet).

These issues are explored in more depth here.

Read " Climate Justice and Equity " to learn more.

Flexibility mechanisms were defined in the Kyoto Protocol as different ways to achieve emissions reduction as part of the effort to address climate change issues. These fall into the following categories: Emissions Trading, Joint Implementation and Clean Development Mechanism.

However, these have been highly controversial as they were mainly included on strong US insistence and to keep the US in the treaty (even though the US eventually pulled out). Some of the mechanisms face criticism for not actually leading to a reduction in emissions, for example.

Read " Climate Change Flexibility Mechanisms " to learn more.

A mechanism suggested for tackling climate change and warming has been the idea of using Carbon Sinks to soak up carbon dioxide. To aid in this, reforestation, or planting of new forests, have been suggested. This is a popular strategy for the logging industry and nations with large forests interests. While there may be some potential in this solution, it cannot be effective on its own. This is because it legitimizes continued destruction of old-growth and pristine forests which are rich ecosystems and have an established biodiversity base (albeit shrinking now) that naturally maintain the environment (at no cost!). Creating new forest areas would require the creation of entire ecosystems. It is also criticized for being a quick fix that does not tackle the root causes effectively and does not lead to, or promote actual emissions reduction.

Read " Carbon Sinks, Forests and Climate Change " to learn more.

Rapid global warming can affect an ecosystems chances to adapt naturally.

The Arctic is very sensitive to climate change and already seeing lots of changes. Ocean biodiversity is already being affected as are other parts of the ecosystem.

Read " Climate Change Affects Biodiversity " to learn more.

It seems there has been a recent interest in associating climate change/global warming with "over population" and that countries such as China and India have to do more to help contain global warming.

Yet rich countries have a lot to do themselves. There were agreed reasons why developing countries were exempt from initial greenhouse gas emission targets: it was the emissions from rich countries that accumulated in the atmosphere for so long to trigger climate change.

Read " Global Warming and Population " to learn more.

One type of ecosystem that perhaps is neglected more than any other is perhaps also the richest in biodiversity-the coral reefs.

Coral reefs are useful to the environment and to people in a number of ways. However, all around the world, much of the world's marine biodiversity face threats from human and activities as well as natural. It is feared that very soon, many reefs could die off.

Read " Coral Reefs " to learn more.

An overview of the Climate Change Conference (also known as COP 19), held in Warsaw, Poland in November 2013.

Predictably and sadly, the same issues have resurfaced: West stalling on doing anything, lack of funding, disagreement on priorities, etc.

This page is an overview of the Warsaw Climate conference.

Read " COP19-Warsaw Climate Conference " to learn more.

An overview of the Climate Change Conference (also known as COP 17), held in Durban, South Africa in December 2011.

Predictably and sadly, the same issues have resurfaced: lack of media coverage, West stalling on doing anything trying to blame India and China instead, lack of funding, disagreement on how to address it, etc.

Geopolitical threats (real and imaginary) quickly focus a lot of political will and money is easily found to mobilize military forces when needed.

The economy also takes center stage as the current pressing issue, while climate change is easily deferred, in the hopes that the West can let China and India pick up the burden of addressing emissions even though they have not contributed to the historical build up of emissions that have started the recent changes in the climate.

This page is an overview of the Durban conference.

Read " COP17-Durban Climate Conference " to learn more.

An overview of the Climate Change Conference (also known as COP 16), held in Cancún, Mexico in the December 2010.

This conference came a year after the Copenhagen conference which promised so much but offered so little. It also came in the wake of WikiLeaks' revelations of how the US in particular tried to cajole various countries to support an accord that served US interests rather than the world's.

What resulted was an agreement that seems much watered down, even an almost reversal, from original aims and spirit of climate change mitigation. In effect, the main polluters (the industrialized nations) who should have borne the brunt of any emission reduction targets, have managed to reduce their commitments while increasing those of the developing countries; a great global warming swindle if any!

Read " COP16-Cancún Climate Conference " to learn more.

An overview of the Climate Change Conference (also known as COP 15), held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in the middle of December, 2009.

There was a lot of hope and optimism before this conference that a meaningful climate negotiation could be agreed to, as climate change concerns are increasing rapidly.

Instead, a mixture of posturing from nations such as China and the US, and the inability for nations to agree on numerous issues led to a meeting failure.

But amongst the various reasons for failure are concerns that repeatedly show themselves every year at these climate conferences.

Read " COP15-Copenhagen Climate Conference " to learn more.

An overview of the Climate Change Conference (also known as COP 14), held in Poznań, Poland, at the beginning of December, 2008. As with past conferences, this too was not without its controversies. For example, while the Adaptation Fund was launched the funding of it caused lots of disagreements. The conference came at a time when Europe seemed to weaken their usually strong stance on climate change action and on news that in recent years, emissions from industrialized nations had risen.

Read " COP14-Poznań Climate Conference " to learn more.

Read " Climate Change Links for more Information " to learn more.

Environmental issues are also a major global issue. Humans depend on a sustainable and healthy environment, and yet we have damaged the environment in numerous ways. This section introduces other issues including biodiversity, climate change, animal and nature conservation, population, genetically modified food, sustainable development, and more.

Read " Environmental Issues " to learn more.

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Global warming and climate change issues are perhaps the greatest threat to this planet. This section from globalissues.org looks into various aspects of this, such as the various international meetings to tackle climate change, the climate change convention and Kyoto Protocol, carbon sinks and flexibility mechanisms, developing countries and social justice and equity concerns, corporate influences, and more.

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Natural Beauty at Risk:

Preparing for Climate Change in National Parks

by Kathryn Hansen design by Joshua Stevens

When most of us think of National Parks, we think of open spaces and healthy, abundant vegetation. We think of forests and woodlands and meadows and wildflowers-all preserved from development. We think of scenic vistas that inspire poets and artists and millions of everyday citizens. These lands are set aside, as Theodore Roosevelt put it, to preserve "the value of natural beauty as a national asset," and to promote "outdoor life and recreation in the production of good citizenship."

But no matter what laws you pass or fences you build, you cannot shelter entire landscapes from the stresses of changing weather and a warming climate. The National Park Service (NPS) manages more than 400 parks, monuments, and historic sites from north of the Arctic Circle down to the Caribbean and the South Pacific. The NPS challenge is to preserve natural and cultural resources while making them accessible to the public. But land managers and park rangers can only do so much when the environment changes but the park borders do not.

Ecologists know that the trees that add color, beauty, and shade to America's national parklands are at risk. Unlike animals, trees cannot pull up their roots and quickly migrate to another area. But figuring out which trees are the most vulnerable is complicated. The types of trees and forests vary from park to park, and even within some parks. Projected shifts in rainfall and temperature patterns in the future are just as variable and uneven. Some species will thrive as climate changes, but many are expected to suffer. And the question is: what can park managers do about it?

"There's been a huge shift in the way the science community approaches climate change," said John Gross, an ecologist with the National Park Service's Climate Change Response Program. "We used to ask: is climate change happening? Then we asked: by how many degrees will the temperature rise? Now we ask: what does that mean for managing things?"

In Yellowstone National Park, for example, spruce and fir forests have adapted to and thrived in a climate where summertime temperatures rarely surpass 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32° Celsius). But 30 years from now, if climate models are right, the park will see an average of two weeks every summer with temperatures surpassing 90°F. Will the spruce and fir trees suffer? Will they adapt and thrive? Will they migrate, seedling by seedling, up to higher altitudes and cooler temperatures? If trees that are already adapted to warmer temperatures take hold, will spruce and fir be able to compete?

In order to figure out what changes the parks can expect, scientists from Montana State University, the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC), the National Park Service, and NASA established the Landscape Climate Change Vulnerability Project. They want to use scientific observations and computer models to help the parks adapt to climate change.

With mountains of data being collected by satellite- and ground-based instruments, scientists can now paint high-resolution pictures of changes within individual parks-down to the effects on various stands of trees. "Computationally that's a big deal," Gross said. "Even on a supercomputer, to produce that data is a big deal."

The data and models could give park managers context and insight on when and where to let nature manage the park and when human intervention could help. For instance, which species and forest stands should managers focus on? Where would it make sense to plant new stands of trees, and which species would benefit?

"If temperatures keep increasing, things will shift in ways that parks haven't seen before," said Patrick Jantz, an ecologist at the Woods Hole Research Center. "So there's been a shift in the parks from managing for historical conditions-to bring things back to a pristine ecological state-to a whole new way of thinking: managing for species turnover."

Envisioning the Future by Examining the Past

The forests of North America have seen plenty of change in a pretty short period of time, at least geologically speaking. Up until about 18,000 years ago, the Laurentide Ice Sheet covered Canada and much of the eastern United States. When temperatures climbed and the ice sheet retreated, forests gradually reemerged. But how? Did pockets of trees find refuge in sheltered areas during the Ice Age? Or were all tree species pushed to the southern tier of the United States, only to spread north again after the ice disappeared?

Scientists still debate the topic, but one thing is clear: today's forests in the eastern United States bear little resemblance to post-glacial forests. Starting with European colonial settlers and marching through four centuries of development, drought, and fire, the tree cover of North America became fragmented.

"There are hardly any forests in the eastern U.S. that have never been cleared-maybe only a few percent," said Jantz. "And younger, re-growing forests tend to have less structural complexity and different species assemblages."

In many cases, National Parks were created to protect the remaining forests and their ecosystems from further destruction and fragmentation. But changes in temperature, rainfall (or snow), and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide could eventually do as much to remake the forests as humans did with saws and fires and bulldozers.

Today, eastern U.S. forests are composed of a wide array of species. Some are common, like the red maple and American beech. Others are important food or habitat resources, such as black cherry and eastern hemlock. But what happens to these trees if atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to rise?

Jantz and colleague Brendan Rogers of the Woods Hole Research Center have been examining the state of current forest cover in the Appalachian region of the United States, while also modeling what the future will look like. They have been working in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area (Pennsylvania and New Jersey), Shenandoah National Park (Virginia), and Great Smoky Mountains National Park (North Carolina and Tennessee).

Jantz and Rogers used the output from a large number of climate models to simulate future climate conditions, assuming that carbon dioxide emissions would continue to follow the current trend-rising from 400 parts per million to 1370 parts per million by 2100. The climate models showed that warming would accelerate in all three parks. The average increase is about 0.7 to 0.8 °F (about 0.4 °C) per decade until 2040, after which warming will speed up to about 1.2 °F (0.7 °C) per decade.

Along with rising temperatures, the parks of Appalachia should see fewer days of frost, which affects the length of the growing season. Precipitation is expected to increase somewhat, but also become more variable. The combination of small precipitation increases, higher maximum temperatures in the summertime, and a lengthened growing season means the frequency of drought could increase.

Rogers notes that climate models disagree about future precipitation much more than temperature. "It is entirely possible that precipitation will decrease, which would exacerbate droughts and fire weather," he said. "If, however, precipitation increases substantially, it could enhance growth for many trees in a warmer climate."

By combining these climate projections with information about topography and soil moisture and composition, Jantz and Rogers are exploring how the suitability of habitats may change for 40 eastern tree species. Their modeled projections are based in part on extensive field observations collected by the U.S. Forest Service. Rogers and Jantz are combining all of this information into a comprehensive vulnerability assessment, aimed at land managers, that is designed to facilitate planning and decision making.

It turns out that sugar maple and eastern hemlock, which Jantz calls "iconic species of eastern U.S. forests," are expected to lose habitat. Lower elevations and southern latitudes will no longer provide the cool, wet habitats preferred by these species. Other species, however, would do quite well. Blackjack oak and black hickory are expected to gain habitat in areas that become warmer and drier. High-elevation species, like red spruce and balsam fir, may effectively be pushed off the mountains.

The suitability of a landscape is just one factor in the success of a species. "If you look at the overall suitability of land, a lot of species do well," Rogers said. "But there are other reasons that trees won't set seed or reach maturity; for instance, the climate might change too quickly, or seeds won't be able to disperse and establish in fragmented land. It's humbling and disconcerting to see areas where conditions for growth could improve but the trees have little chance of getting there unless there is active management."

Weathering Change in Western Parks

The craggy silhouettes of iconic whitebark pines rise from the mountain ridges of Yellowstone National Park. Those trees fill a niche in the environment that was left vacant by other species. Grizzly bears share in that success, ambling through stands of the pines to gather their nutritious pine nuts.

But stands of whitebark have been suffering since about 2004. The trees have been extensively damaged by mountain pine beetles and white pine blister rust. The U.S. Forest Service has tried to combat the problem by developing and planting whitebark varieties that are more resistant to the fungus. Now, the species is further threatened by a loss of habitat as climate changes.

Andy Hansen of Montana State University is leading a research team looking at western forests the way Jantz and Rogers are surveying the east. The Great Northern Landscape Climate Cooperative encompasses almost 300 million acres in the ecosystems of the Northern Rockies, including Grand Teton, Glacier, and Yellowstone National Parks.

The parks out west are different. For instance, the greater Yellowstone area is a large, mostly intact ecosystem that was set aside for the U.S. government before much of it could be developed or cleared. This means it is theoretically easier for species to migrate as weather and climate change. But the landscape is also more extreme, with high mountain elevations and a history of drought.

Temperatures in Yellowstone have warmed substantially since 1980, and some tree species have already responded. Hansen and colleagues have started examining those ecological changes by building on the ecological forecasting capability of NASA's Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS). Based on inputs of data on historic and projected climate, land use, and vegetation, this computer system simulates past and future ecosystem characteristics such as snow pack, soil moisture, and forest growth rates. The models cover the period from 1950 to 2100.

"TOPS outputs are a unique and important product for federal land managers," Hansen said. "Relatively few groups have done these types of projections to begin with, and certainly not using the latest climate and statistical information for the projections."

Climate projections typically have coarse resolution, telling you what is expected over a relatively large area. But Hansen and NASA Ames scientist Forrest Melton have applied a series of additional modeling steps in order to make the projections relevant at scales that work for individual parks. "We delivered sophisticated forecast data in a way that a park manager can readily grasp for his or her place," Hansen said.

In Yellowstone, species like lodgepole pine, Douglas fir, and sub-alpine fir are all expected to lose suitable habitat. But the biggest loser will be whitebark pine. If greenhouse gases continue to accumulate, and temperatures continue to increase as much as some models suggest, the habitat for whitebark pine will rise to higher and higher elevations until the trees are just about pushed off the mountaintops. Juniper trees, by contrast, are expected to thrive and gain more suitable habitat in Yellowstone National Park.

The Landscape Climate Change Vulnerability Project can help keep the researchers and land managers focused on key questions: Where do you thin existing stands of trees? Where do you protect stands from wildfire? Where should seedlings be planted such that habitat is most suitable 50 to 100 years from now?

The effort is slow and complicated, but worthwhile. Parks are increasingly coordinating to plan for climate change, using the new tools and products derived from climate models, large-scale inventory networks from the U.S. Forest Service, and NASA satellite data.

"You'll never find a decision of importance in the National Park System where you can simply say 'someone did this and it led to that,'" Gross said. "The problems we're working on are big, complicated, and involve a lot of people. We're not at the helm of the battleship. We're just one of a number of groups nudging it in the right direction."

References and Related Reading

Appalachian Landscape Conservation Cooperative (2016) About. Accessed May 10, 2016.

Great Northern Landscape Conservation Cooperative (2016) Home. Accessed May 10, 2016.

Gross, J.E. et al. (2012) Remote sensing for inventory and monitoring of the U.S. National Parks. (Boca Raton, Florida: Taylor & Francis) 29-56.

Hansen, A.J. et al. (2014, April 1) Exposure of U.S. National Parks to land use and climate change 1900-2100. Ecological Applications, 24 (3) 484-502.

Montana State University (2016) Landscape Climate Change Vulnerability Project. Accessed May 10, 2016.

Piekielek. N.B and Hansen, A.J. (2012, October) Extent of fragmentation of coarse-scale habitats in and around U.S. National Parks. Biological Conservation, 155 (2012) 13-22.

Thrasher, B. et al. (2013, September 10) Downscaled Climate Projections Suitable for Resource Managements. Eos, 94 (37) 321-323.

USDA Forest Service (2014, August) U.S. Forest Resource Facts and Historical Trends. Accessed May 10, 2016.

U.S. Department of the Interior: Climate Change (2009, September 14) Strategic Response to Climate Change. Accessed May 10, 2016.

Woods Hole Research Center (2016,) Ecosystems and Climate Change. Accessed May 10, 2016.

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Natural Beauty at Risk: Preparing for Climate Change in National Parks

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Many National Parks were created to protect forests and ecosystems from development and fragmentation. But changes in temperature, rainfall, and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide could eventually do as much to remake forests as humans did with saws and fires and bulldozers.

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(Image credit: NSIDC/Ted Scambos)

A vast Antarctica ice shelf that partly collapsed in 2002 has only a few years left before it fully disappears, according to a new study.

Radar data reveals that the Larsen B ice shelf could shatter into hundreds of icebergs by 2020, researchers reported Thursday (March 14) in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

"It's really startling to see how something that existed on our planet for so long has disappeared so quickly," lead study author Ala Khazendar, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told Live Science. [ Album: Stunning Photos of Antarctic Ice]

An ice shelf is like a floating ice plateau, fed by land-based glaciers. The Larsen B ice shelf existed for 12,000 years before it fell apart in 2002, separate studies showed. The ice shelf is on the Antarctica Peninsula, the strip of land that juts northward toward South America. Larsen B is about half the size of Rhode Island, some 625 square miles (1,600 square kilometers).

Because the ice shelf is already in the ocean, its breakup won't further boost sea level rise. But Khazendar and his co-authors also discovered that the glaciers feeding into Larsen B's remaining ice shelf have dramatically thinned since 2002.

"What matters is how much more ice the glaciers will dump into the ocean once this ice shelf is removed," Khazendar said. "Some of these glaciers are most likely already contributing to sea level rise because they are in the process of accelerating and thinning."

(Image credit: Khazendar et al./EPSL)

The Leppard and Flask glaciers thinned by 65 to 72 feet (20 to 22 meters) between 2002 and 2011, the new study reported. The fastest-moving part of Flask Glacier sped up by 36 percent, to a speed of 2,300 feet (700 m) a year.

The glaciers that were behind the vanished section of the Larsen B ice shelf sped up by as much as 8 times their former rate after the ice crumbled over a six-week period in 2002, earlier studies showed.

The northwestern part of the Larsen B ice shelf is also becoming more fragmented, the researchers said. But the southeastern part is cracking up. A huge rift has appeared just 7.5 miles (12 km) from the grounding line, where the ice loses contact with the ground and starts floating on the ocean, the study reported. This crack marks where the ice shelf may start to break apart, the researchers said.

The Antarctica Peninsula is one of the world's fastest-warming places, with an average rise in air temperature of 5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.8 degrees Celsius) in the past 50 years, according to the British Antarctic Survey. This March, the northern tip of the peninsula set an unofficial heat record of slightly above 63 F (17 C).

Researchers think the surface warming is melting the ice shelves, triggering a cascade of events that eventually leads them to catastrophically collapse. But recent research also points to melting from below, from warmer ocean water.

Scientists are tracking the ongoing changes in the Antarctica Peninsula ice shelves because the collapse could indicate what may happen across the entire continent.

"This presents a large-scale natural experiment," Khazendar said. "Here we have an ice shelf in the process of fragmentation, so we can keep an eye on it and learn as much as we can about the process before it disintegrates and disappears."
Follow Becky Oskin @beckyoskin. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.

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Antarctic Ice Shelf in Last Throes of Collapse

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(Image credit: NSIDC/Ted Scambos) A vast Antarctica ice shelf that partly collapsed in 2002 has only a few years left before it fully disappears, according to a new study. Radar data reveals that the Larsen B ice shelf could shatter into hundreds of icebergs by 2020, researchers reported Thursday (March 14) in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

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