This is a fantastic, "no frills" interview from Democracy Now about increasing climate instability. Dr. Paul Epstein discusses the data behind global warming, offering a better phrase, climate change or climate instability. He shows that there has been a clear increase in climate instability over the past 50 years, with the past year being particularly bad, from fires in Russia, to floods in Pakistan, heat in the Middle East and now the blizzard that hit the East Coast and intense winter weather that has hit much of the U.S. this year. My own family's home was 1 street away from being completely destroyed in a tornado that hit several places around St. Louis on New Year's Eve.
Over the past 50 years, the oceans have absorbed 22 times the amount of heat as the atmosphere, which Epstein points out, is, for some reason, not as often discussed as heat increase in the air, yet absolutely essential to understanding the weather phenomena. This ocean temperature increase leads to more evaporation and rainfall. Another interesting point about rainfall statistics is the way they are reported. When reported on an overall average increase, the increase appears small. But when you look at regions based on their varying rainfall, from 2, to 4, to 6, 8 and so on. The rainfall increase, increases almost exponentially, with areas averaging a higher rainfall, seeing a far more significant increase in rainfall over the past 5 decades.
Epstein has written a book looking at the way global warming is affecting human health. He highlights 5 areas: 1) Infectious diseases; 2) Respiratory diseases, especially asthma; 3) winter anomalies; 4) heat; and 5) affect of warming and extremes on crops. Growing insect populations carry many infectious diseases with them. To name a few of the pest increases he talks about, lime disease associated with the growing number of ticks, increasing numbers of spiders, mosquitoes as far north as Alaska and of particular significance, an invasive beetle species that has moved from Arizona to Alaska and is literally decimating forests. Epstein notes that especially with issues like the spreading of these beetles, there is very little that can be done in the way of human involvement/help. Crops and forests are being destroyed because of pests that can now migrate further and further north due to slight temperature increases.
As for asthma and respiratory diseases, it has been studied that pollen count increases in plants in response to increased carbon dioxide. Pollen count has increased 2-3 times in the past 2-3 decades, which extends the allergy season and leads to more respiratory problems. The resulting components in the air from things such as burned fossil fuels, allows for the pollen to enter more deeply into the lungs, again, escalating the problem.
So why is there still the questioning of global warming? As discussed in the interview, it is a manufactured doubt coming from a corporate agenda. Epstein does not try to give his opinion on what this corporate agenda is, but he does point out that the number of companies benefiting from the agenda is slipping. Insurance companies, for example, are seeing the risk to their business in this weather instability. The main proponents of maintaining the doubt is the fossil fuel corporations and that is pretty much it. They sight here reporters being specifically told to "always state climate change data has been called into question." And a Fox News official has been exposed in telling reporters to refrain from asserting that temperature has increased or decreased in any given period. Epstein calmly explains that while this may be the mainstream media push, it is blatantly accepted by the scientific community that climate change is occurring.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/28/from_snowstorms_to_heat_waves_how
