Hotter than Hell
Hot & getting hotter?
By Jane Holahan
Lancaster New Era
Published: Aug 05, 2006 12:42 PM EST
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Chris Williams, assistant professor of environmental science at Franklin & Marshall College, has tree fossils in his lab that are 65 million years old. He found them in the Arctic while he was doing research on global climates.Way back then, the Arctic Circle had forests and temperatures similar to what we might find in North Carolina today.
“Sixty-five million years ago, the earth was roughly 25 to 30 degrees Celsius warmer than the present average temperature,” Williams says.
Sort of puts the heat wave we had this week in perspective, doesn’t it?
“We live in a cold, barren planet compared to 65 million years ago,” Williams says with a laugh.
With much of the United States experiencing a 100-degree-plus heat wave this past week that killed 170 people, talk of another brutal hurricane season ahead, and Al Gore’s movie about global warming playing in theaters across America, people are talking a lot about the weather.
Are we getting hotter? Is global warming melting the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro and ice sheets on the North Pole? Will our weather be out of whack all the time?
Williams, 36, says in looking at that question, we have to differentiate between weather and climate.
The weather is the day to day, week to week stuff like this week’s heat wave, which was caused by a large, persistent area of high pressure in the upper atmosphere that moved hot air across the country.
Just because we have a hot summer or several strong hurricane seasons doesn’t necessarily mean the climate is changing.
“But if we get more heat waves like this next year, and more in the following years, then you can say the pattern is changing,” Williams says.
Many scientists believe that’s already been happening.
They point to the fact that 20 of the 21 hottest years ever measured have been in the last 25 years. And this year is shaping up to be the hottest ever on record.
The National Climate Data Center in Asheville, N. C., reported this week that night summer temperatures across the country have been unusually high for the past eight years. And last month was the hottest July on record in England, where records go back to 1659.
Many scientists believe global warming is the cause.
Global warming is defined as the warming of the earth by greenhouse gases such as carbon, methane and nitrogen when they are discharged into the atmosphere.
It can come from nature and it can come from human activities.
Williams has no doubt that global warming is real, and he has no doubt that humans contribute to it.
He liked Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and says Gore did a good job, for the most part, in portraying the science and explaining the way climate operates.
“There is a consensus among scientists that humans have an impact on the climate,” says Williams. “But how much of an effect? That’s hard to say.”
Williams isn’t ready to panic, but he isn’t complacent either.
“What we know for a fact is the earth’s surface temperature has increased one degree Fahrenheit over the last century,” he says.
How are you feeling about your local electrical grid?