Chapter One: What Causes the Greenhouse Effect?
Taking the Temperature of the Earth
We know that the Earth is located in the solar system, and that the solar system is contained in the Milky Way galaxy. In the universe, there are numerous galaxies like the Milky Way. The question "what exists outside our galaxy?" is one that most of us have asked at some time. A whole scientific field of study called cosmology seeks to answer this question. At the other extreme lies the search for the origin of matter. The atmosphere is made up of molecules of nitrogen and oxygen. Molecules are made up of atoms, atoms of atomic nuclei and electrons, atomic nuclei of protons and neutrons... where does it all end? This also is a question probably most of us have asked ourselves at one time or another. Some people in the field of elementary particle research spend their lives trying to find clues to the answer to this problem.
Compared to these fundamental questions, probably very few of us have asked why the temperature of the Earth is what it is. Let us stop and think about it for a minute. The temperature of outer space is about -270 oC and the temperature of the surface of the Sun is 6000 oC. On Earth's neighboring planets, the surface temperature of Venus is 470 oC and that of Mars is -45 oC. While the moon's average temperature is about the same as the Earth, the difference between night and day on the moon is more than 200 oC. What causes these differences and why is it that the temperature of the Earth is what it is?
(cross sectional area of the Earth) x (incident light flux) = (total area of the Earth) x (radiant light flux)In this book, we will use only two equations. This basic relationship between two energy fluxes is the first. Planets are spheres floating in vacuum. Their surfaces are warmed by the Sun and cooled by the release of energy to outer space. The meaning of this equation is that the surface temperature of a planet is the temperature at which the rates of warming and cooling are balanced exactly. This balance determines the surface temperatures of all of the planets. It is what guarantees that while on Mars water is locked up in the solid form of ice, on Earth water flows freely in rivers and waterfalls.
Let us begin by thinking about the rate of warming of a planet. The incident light from the Sun, that is the amount of light energy arriving directly from the Sun shown in the equation above by the capital letter J, is 1367 watts per square meter on the Earth. Solar cells that are currently in use can transform about 15% of the energy of incident light into electricity. Therefore, a one square meter solar cell on a clear sunny day will produce 200 watts of electric power. This is sufficient to power a large sized color TV.
The Sun radiates this amount of energy to the Earth continuously, but this incident light arrives at the Earth's surface only during the day. It decreases near the poles as the Sun's angle on the Earth decreases. Therefore, estimating the total incident light onto the Earth may seem at first to be difficult. In fact it is quite easy. We need only multiply 1367 watts by the cross sectional area of the Earth, R2 where R is used here to designate the Earth's radius, to get the sum total of the energy of the incident light shining on the Earth from the Sun each second.
The Earth is cooled by the radiation of heat back to outer space. There are three mechanisms that transfer heat energy: conduction, convection, and radiation. However, the only mechanism by which heat can travel in a vacuum is radiation. On the surface and in the interior of the Earth, heat is transferred by conduction and convection through the ground and the air. However, because of the vacuum of space, the energy from the Sun only reaches the Earth by radiation and likewise can only escape the Earth by radiation.
Research on the radiation of heat energy from a solid surface led Max Planck to discover the first clues that paved the way for quantum mechanics. According to the results of his groundbreaking research work, the total radiant energy emitted from a solid surface is proportional to the fourth power of the surface temperature, which we will designate with the capital letter T. That is to say, the radiated energy per unit area per unit time can be expressed as " T4". The symbol is called the Stefan-Boltzman constant, after the famous physicists Josef Stefan and Ludwig Boltzman. The remarkable thing about this constant is that it is equal to 5.67 * 10-8 J/(m2sK4) no matter what kind of solid is being considered. Here, the temperature T is expressed on the absolute temperature scale, or the Kelvin scale, which is indicated by the capital letter K just as oC is used for the Celsius scale and ?F for the Fahrenheit scale. The absolute temperature is equal to the temperature in Celsius plus 273. The temperature 0 K, or -273 oC, is known as absolute zero. This is the temperature at which all motion stops. It is also the lowest temperature possible in the universe.
The surface temperature of a piece of burning charcoal is about 1200 K. This is four times hotter than a surface at room temperature, which is about 27 oC plus 273 or 300 K. The formula for heat radiation says that four to the fourth power, or 256 times as much energy is released from the charcoal as from the object at room temperature. This is the reason that when you place your hand close to burning charcoal, it feels so warm. The surface temperature of the Sun, about 6000 K, is about twenty times greater than that of the Earth. Therefore 20 to the fourth power, or 160,000 times more energy is being radiated per unit area by the Sun than by the Earth.
Radiation of heat from the Earth to space occurs at night as well as during the day. Therefore, multiplying T4 by the surface area of the Earth, 4 R2, gives us the amount of energy radiated from the Earth to outer space per unit time. Now we can substitute these formulae into our equation and solve for the temperature of the Earth:
π R2 J = 4 π R2 σ T4Therefore, we can write the following equation for the temperature of the surface of the planet:
The meaning of our first equation is that the radiative heat loss from the Earth must be equal to the rate of light coming from the Sun that heats the Earth. If we enter the values for J and into this equation and calculate T, we find that T equals about 278 K. That is to say, the surface temperature of the Earth is predicted to be 278 minus 273 or 5 oC.
In fact, the actual average temperature of the Earth is about 15 oC. There are two phenomena that give rise to this difference. However, as we shall see next, these phenomena can be included in our basic equation without altering its form, so the temperature of the Earth is determined by just this one energy balance equation between light from the Sun and heat from the Earth.
The "Water Planet": Earth's Good Fortune
Let us try to get a more practical understanding of the physical meaning of this equation. It is generally accepted that the temperature of outer space is 3 K. If the Earth were not warmed by the Sun, its surface would eventually cool to this temperature. When we add the incident light from the Sun to this picture, the temperature of the Earth shoots up. This is because the ground absorbs the Sun's energy and warms the atmosphere. In fact, if the Earth were simply being heated without any cooling effect, the temperature would continue to rise until it reached the Sun's temperature of 6000 K! To avoid this baking of the Earth, there must be some way for the Earth to cool itself. The cooling mechanism is heat radiation.
On a crystal clear winter's morning, you may have been surprised at how cold the metal door of your car had become over the night: much, much colder than the air. The car door cannot be cooled to a temperature lower than that of the air simply from cooling by conductive and convective heat transport. The reason that the metal is cooled so much more than the air temperature is because it radiates away its own heat. The door cools less on cloudy nights because, as we will see later, radiated heat from the Earth is absorbed by clouds and half of that heat is radiated again back to the Earth. A portion of this heat then warms the car door slightly.
Why is it that, in the possible range of temperatures from the temperature of 3 K in outer space to the Sun's surface temperature of 6000 K, the surface temperature of the Earth is what it is today? Why is it that this temperature is neither above the boiling point of water nor below the freezing point? Why is it that the Earth has oceans, rivers, and rain? Why is it that we have been blessed with the great fortune of a world of water that is neither vapor nor ice? For the most part, it is because of this simple energy balance between incident light from the Sun and heat radiation from the Earth.
A Cooling Effect
Let us now calculate the temperature of planets other than the Earth. The only difference between the Earth and other planets in terms of our energy balance equation is the amount of incident light, J, from the Sun. Although the planets also differ in size, as you can see in the equation, the planet's size represented by the radius R cancels out from the right and left sides of the equation. Thus the energy balance determining the temperature of a planet is independent of the planet's size.
The difference in incident light from the Sun is due to the difference in the distances of the planets from the Sun. The temperatures predicted for Venus, Earth, and Mars by our equation are 327 K, 278 K and 221 K, respectively. Yet, the actual average surface temperatures on the planets are 743 K, 288 K and 243 K, all of which are higher than the predicted values. The difference is especially large in the case of Venus.
Two main factors are responsible for this difference between the temperatures calculated by our first equation and the actual temperatures. This first has to do with the reflectivity of the planet. Because Venus is covered by a thick, reflective atmosphere that is over 90 times denser than that of the Earth, 71% of the Sun's light is actually reflected away into outer space. This proportion of light reflected away from the planet is called its albedo. The albedos of the Earth and Mars are 30% and 17%, respectively. The incident light from the Sun reaching the planet's surface, J, is reduced exactly by this percentage. If we recalculate the temperatures of these three planets using this albedo correction, the new temperatures are 240 K, 255 K and 215 K for Venus, Earth and Mars, respectively. However, these values are even more different from the actual planet surface temperatures than before!
The French Revolution and the Asama Volcanic Eruption
If the albedo of a planet were to be increased, then more light would be reflected and the planet will grow cooler. People have long known that large volcanic eruptions can cause worldwide cooling. Fine particles of ash spewed out from the volcano spread all the way to the stratosphere and reflect the Sun's light, so for several years after the eruption the Earth's temperature decreases. Eventually, the fine particles fall back to the Earth and the Earth's temperature returns to normal.
In 1982, from March to April, the El Chinchon volcano in Southerm Mexico had a huge eruption. Data measured in Tsukuba Science City near Tokyo, Japan showed that as a result of this eruption, incident light from the Sun was reduced by 3 to 4 percent.
How many degrees does the Earth's surface temperature drop when light is reduced by 4 percent? The answer can be obtained by replacing the value of 1367 watts/m2 for the incident light from the Sun, J, in the first equation with 96% of that value. To do the calculation in one's head, it helps to know that if we reduce J, and thus the contents under the root sign in our first equation, by four percent, the fourth root of that reduction is one fourth of four percent, or one percent. Therefore, temperature decreases by one percent of 278 K, or about 3 degrees.
Historically, many events have been strongly influenced by volcanic eruptions. For example, in 1783 the Asama volcano in Japan erupted so violently that the shape of the mountain was completely changed. In the same year, Mt. Skapta in Iceland had an eruption that matched that of the Asama Volcano. It is likely that, following those two huge eruptions, the entire world cooled quite significantly. The cooling effect was so large, in fact, that some scholars have put forth the theory that the poor harvests in France that occurred following the eruptions and the resulting destitution of the farmers is tied to the French Revolution of 1789.
Whether or not these volcanic eruptions really had a causal relationship with the French Revolution, there is no doubt that large volcanic eruptions have influenced history through changes in climate. Even a volcanic eruption of the magnitude of the Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines is likely to have had an influence on temperature that cannot be ignored. As we discussed in the introduction, we can praise Miyazawa Kenji's clear-sightedness for understanding the global warming phenomenon resulting from CO2. However, if in fact he attempted to cause the emission of CO2 by blowing up the volcano, he would find that the effect of the fine particles would have been much greater. Thus, the volcanic eruption would not be an effective countermeasure for the cold weather famines.
You may have heard of Carl Sagan's scientific novel entitled "The Nuclear Winter". His story is based on the prediction of a cooling of the Earth resulting from the huge quantity of fine particles scattered into the atmosphere by nuclear war. This effect is essentially the same as that from the volcanic eruptions.
In July 1994, a group of comets collided with Jupiter and the resulting mushroom cloud reached 2500 kilometers above the planet's surface. As a result of this collision, the temperature of Jupiter will decrease significantly for many years. During its long history, the Earth has almost certainly experienced similar collisions. It is known that at the end of the Cretaceous Period (145,600,000 to 65,000,000 years ago), many species of dinosaurs first began to die off. The mass extinction of the dinosaurs that followed was a great loss to the diversity of life on Earth. One theory for the cause of this mass extinction is that a massive meteorite about 10 kilometers in diameter collided with the Earth. According to this theory, for several years after this collision, dark and frigid days continued one after another. Plants stopped growing, and many species that lost their food supply became extinct. The recent discovery that iridium, an element that is extremely rare on the Earth but abundant in meteorites, can be found in large quantities only in the geological stratum corresponding to this era has lent further strength to this theory.
The Greenhouse Effect is a Scientific Fact
Please take a look at Table 1-1. What is it that brings about the difference between the temperature that we calculated by taking into account the cooling effect of the planet's albedo and the actual planet surface temperatures? The answer is none other than the greenhouse effect. For Mars, our calculated temperature is only 13 K too low, but for Venus the difference is over 463 K! The atmosphere of Venus is more than 90 times thicker than that of the Earth, and 96.5% of it is CO2. This high concentration of CO2 is the reason for Venus' enormous greenhouse effect.
The greenhouse effect is like wearing a jacket. A jacket allows only a part of your body heat to escape to the outside air, reflecting the remainder back to your body and keeping you warm. The greenhouse effect does the same for the Earth. Some of the energy radiated by the Earth to outer space is absorbed by molecules in the atmosphere. These molecules, after they absorb the energy, release it once again in all different directions. One part escapes to outer space, but the remainder returns to the Earth's surface, just as part of your body heat escapes from your jacket to the outside air, but the rest returns to your body. As a result, the total energy arriving to the Earth's surface increases. This increase in the effective supply of radiative energy to the Earth is the greenhouse effect.
Let us consider the mechanism of the greenhouse effect a little more closely. Among the Earth's greenhouse gases, the most important is water, and next is CO2. These gases do not interfere with incoming light from the Sun. For example, in the summer, the humidity over the Pacific Ocean is high. Compared to a dry winter's day, the atmosphere in the summer contains a lot more water vapor. However, the summer sky is not darker than in winter, as it would be if the water vapor were blocking light from the Sun. The same is true for CO2: even though the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is higher now than before the industrial revolution, the sky is not darker.
H2O and CO2 do not absorb visible light, the main component of light from the Sun. So why do these molecules absorb radiation from the ground? Well, what kind of radiation is actually emitted from the ground? If visible light were being emitted, the ground would be luminescent even at night. The radiation coming from the ground is infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye. However, while molecules of H2O and CO2 in the atmosphere cannot absorb visible light, they can absorb this infrared light and emit some of it back to the Earth's surface. This is similar to the way that the glass roof of a greenhouse keeps heat radiation inside the greenhouse, thereby making the temperature inside much warmer than the surrounding air. This greenhouse analogy is in fact the origin of the term "greenhouse effect".
So why is it that molecules of oxygen and nitrogen do not absorb infrared light?
As you can tell from the molecular formulas, O2 and N2, oxygen and nitrogen molecules are made up of two of the same atoms. You may have heard that heat is just vibrations of molecules. Molecules made up of two of the same atoms are too symmetrical and therefore cannot make these vibrations very well. However, when a molecule is made up of different atoms, such as H2O, the asymmetry allows the molecule to vibrate in such a way that it can absorb infrared radiation. In addition to CO2 and H2O, nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), and CFC's (hydrocarbons that contain chlorine or fluorine atoms) also absorb infrared light emitted by the Earth. CO2 accounts for 55% of the greenhouse effect brought about by human activities, and the other gases contribute the remainder.
This difference between symmetrical and asymmetrical molecules is very fortunate! If oxygen and nitrogen absorbed infrared radiation, the temperature of the Earth due to the greenhouse effect would have been much greater, perhaps even as high as Venus! That would cause all of the oceans of the Earth to vaporize.
A diagram of the greenhouse effect is shown in figure 1-2. We can see that as a whole the Earth is warmed by absorbing visible light and cooled by radiating infrared light.
The main component of the thin Martian atmosphere is CO2. The current temperature of Mars is -45 oC, so water is frozen, and life as we know it cannot exist. Is there some way to warm Mars just enough so that people could live there? There are people who have thought about this problem and calculated an answer. The reason that, despite having an atmosphere of CO2, the greenhouse effect increases the surface temperature by only 13 K is because the atmospheric pressure of Mars is a mere 0.0055 earth atmospheres, or almost two hundred times thinner than the Earth. On Mars, frozen CO2, that is dry ice, exists in large quantities. If this CO2 was put into the atmosphere, the temperature of the planet should rise due to the greenhouse effect. If we could vaporize a little bit of the frozen CO2, then the greenhouse effect would cause the air temperature to rise a little higher, causing more dry ice to vaporize, and thereby continuing the cycle. Because of this cycle, we only need to give the system a small push at the start by vaporizing a little dry ice. Nature will do the rest. This is just a rough calculation, but the important idea here is that planet atmospheres may have several equally stable compositions with correspondingly different degrees of greenhouse effect. If a little push could fundamentally alter the climate on Mars, what could the tremendous quantities of greenhouse gases emitted from the factories, automobiles and power plants be doing to the Earth's energy balance?
The Center of the Earth is Several Thousand Degrees Celsius
The Earth's core is made up mainly of iron and zinc which are molten at high temperatures. Does this molten core have any influence on the temperature at the Earth's surface? Heat flows out from underground to the surface. This heat then radiates from the Earth's surface to outer space. In other words, on a whole the Earth is cooling down by radiating away its internal heat. In the far distant future, the core of the Earth, like that of the moon, will cool to the same temperature as the surface.
How much does this heat flowing from the Earth's core affect the temperature on the surface? We can consider the influence of heat flowing out of the Earth's center in the following way. In our first equation, the only energy entering the Earth's surface was solar radiation. We can compare this energy, 1367 W/m2, with the heat flux, i.e. flow of heat per unit area, from underground. It is possible to estimate the rate of heat flowing up from underground by dividing the difference of the surface temperature and the underground temperature by the thickness of the Earth's crust, and multiplying that temperature gradient by the thermal conductivity of the Earth's crust. Even if we estimate on the high side, this heat flux is only about 0.05W/m2, insignificant in comparison to the energy flux from the Sun. If you think about it, this conclusion is supported by our actual experiences. We experience day-to-day changes of surface temperature in the differences between sunny and cloudy days, summer and winter, sunlit areas and shadows. These differences are all caused by variations in the local energy flux from the Sun. On the other hand, the only places where we experience the heat flux from underground are places such as hot springs and volcanoes where magma exists near the surface.
What about Direct Warming of the Earth from Energy Use?
When we use fossil fuels or nuclear energy to produce electricity, or when we burn gas for transportation or cooking, heat is produced. Doesn't the temperature of the Earth rise due to the accumulation of this heat? We can answer this question using the same sort of calculation we did for the heat flux from underground. The total energy use by humanity is about one ten thousandth, or 0.01%, of the energy coming from the Sun. Recall the example where the light from the Sun decreased 4% due to volcanic eruptions. Temperature decreased by one fourth of 4%, or 1%. One fourth of 0.01% of 278 K is 0.008 degrees. If this is the level of the direct warming effect from energy use by human beings then we don't have to worry about the direct consequences of global warming by human activities for many centuries to come.
As a worldwide average this estimate is fine. However, you may have noticed one limited area where human energy consumption is causing a direct warming of the environment that is becoming a very big problem. This is the heat island phenomenon that is occurring in large cities. We will discuss this problem in Chapters 6 and 8.
How about the effects of Night and Day, Sunspots, Volcanoes, and other factors?
Global warming is the result of the intensification of the greenhouse effect. If the concentration of CO2, the main substance contributing to the greenhouse effect, increases greatly, there is no doubt that global warming will occur.
In our discussion of planetary temperature, there are several things that we have ignored. We have only treated average temperatures, and we have ignored the many factors that lead to temperature distributions such as the differences between night and day, differences from place to place, and differences due to height above the ground. Efforts are being made to solve these temperature distributions directly using computers. However, even today's supercomputers do not have the capacity to divide the Earth's surface into very much detail when calculating the temperatures. In fact, the standard global circulation models run on these computers must be divided into grids of a scale so rough that all of Japan is contained in a single grid square.
Furthermore, we do not know clearly how the influence of other climate factors such as clouds will change. When the temperature of the atmosphere rises, the ocean will absorb a part of this heat and thus play a role in controlling the rise of temperature to an extent; however, this effect is also not well understood. These are the biggest problems in predicting global warming through computations. However, the results of calculations based on the best efforts of current scientific technology predict that when the CO2 concentration doubles, the average temperature on the Earth will rise 2 to 3 degrees.
There are several other phenomena that cause changes in the Earth's surface temperature. For example, some people have claimed that sunspots and volcanic eruptions cause even greater changes in global temperature than the greenhouse effect. Over the past one hundred years of data, this claim is valid. Since sunspots affect the incoming solar radiation, J, they will also affect temperature. Recall that if sunlight decreases 4% due to volcanic eruptions, the average temperature will decrease 2.8 oC. However, global warming is a phenomenon that is still on it's way here: the best guess is that over the last one hundred years average temperature of the Earth's surface has increased just 0.6 oC.
The comparison between fluctuations in calculated temperature and actual measurements over the last one hundred years in figure 1-3 shows this situation very well. Global warming cannot account for the observed temperature changes (a). The effects of volcanic eruptions are clearly important (b). When we include the influence of sunspots, we are able to explain the changes in average temperature over the last 100 years quite well (c).
The Fragile Balance of the Earth
Now then, in what form will global warming manifest itself? We have seen that the average global temperature may increase 2.5 oC if the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere doubles. However, the local temperature change that will not happen uniformly over the whole planet. Compared to the continents, the oceans are relatively difficult to warm or cool. For this reason, the temperature of the ocean will probably rise about the same amount as the average temperature rise. The variations in temperature changes on the landmasses will be much larger. In particular, cold regions are predicted to have large temperature increases. Some computer simulations have predicted that the temperature of Siberia will increase by more than 10 oC for a doubling of CO2 concentration. Although the uncertainties in these predictions are quite large, research in this field has been moving forward rapidly and should produce reliable estimates within a few years.
A rise in global temperatures will cause dramatic changes in the Earth such as a significant increase in sea level due to the melting of ice in the polar regions and the thermal expansion of the ocean. It has been predicted that a doubling of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere could cause the average sea level to rise between 20 cm and one meter. At present rates of CO2 emissions, this doubling will occur in less than 100 years. If the rate of CO2 emissions continue to increase as they have over the last several decades the doubling will occur much sooner.
About 5000 years ago, during the Jomon period of Japan, the world was warmer than it is today. The sea level at that time was 2 to 3 meters higher than it is now. In Japan, the sea had extended far into today's inland areas. We know this because mounds of shells have been found as far as 100 kilometers from the seashore. It is said that many of the lakes of Hokkaido were all part of the Pacific Ocean at that time and that the aegagropilas, or Marimo balls, for which the lakes are famous were originally marine plants. In this Jomon Era, the average temperature of the world was higher than it is today, but only by about one degree. With just that small temperature difference, the ice melted and the sea level rose 2 to 3 meters.
Why is it that the predicted 2.5 degree rise in temperature has been estimated to result in a rise in sea level of just a few tens of centimeters? The reason is that ice melts very slowly, a fact that is clear whenever you take ice out of your refrigerator. The melting rate is determined by the rate that heat is transmitted from the air in contact with the ice. The amount of air in contact with the ice is determined by the surface area of the ice. Therefore, the time it takes for a certain quantity or volume of ice to melt completely is determined by the ratio of the surface area to that volume. This ratio is called the relative surface area of the ice and generally decreases with increasing volume. The bigger the piece of ice and the smaller the relative surface area, the longer it takes to melt. Even in mid-summer, if a block of ice is large it will not melt for a long time. A very long time is needed for a huge glacier to melt. The encroachment of the sea during the Jomon progressed over the period between 9500 and 5000 years ago, four and a half millennia. The 2.5 oC rise predicted to occur in response to the global warming phenomenon will occur over the span of less than 100 years, and it is predicted that that glaciers will not be able to melt nearly that fast. However, there is no proof.
Another effect of global warming is the possible increase in the size and strength of typhoons and hurricanes as well as the paths of destruction that they take. Low pressure zones are generated on the warmed sea surface of the tropical ocean. As these low pressures move northward, they are heated by warm ocean surfaces of 28 oC or higher, causing the pressure to drop even more. The result is a typhoon or hurricane. There is persuasive evidence that if the global temperature increases and sea water temperature increases, this will cause typhoons to become stronger. Rainfall worldwide has been predicted to increase by about 15%. Again, this change in precipitation will not increase uniformly. In some places rainfall will increase tremendously, possibly resulting in floods and increased erosion, whereas in other places rainfall will actually decrease.
The greenhouse effect of gases such as CO2 is a scientific reality as we saw in our consideration of the Earth's surface temperature. Consequently global warming will definitely occur in response to the CO2 increase in the atmosphere resulting from human industrial activities. Of course there is uncertainty concerning the quantitative extent of the warming, but the phenomenon of global warming itself is firmly based on scientific fact. We mentioned a few of the effects that might be brought about by an increase in temperature. The uncertainties here are even greater than with the prediction of global warming. However, it is very likely that the consequences of these effects on the world as a whole could be devastating. The Earth has achieved its present state based upon the various balances of energy, materials, flows, plant-life and animal-life. Let's think back to the conceptual experiment about whether or not we could raise the temperature of Mars. We saw that it might be possible to change the state of balance of a planet to a completely different one through just a small push in the CO2 balance. The same thing may be happening on the Earth. It is time to take control and harness the power of technology and scientific principles to work to solve the problem of global warming and climate change. We must do this before the devastation of global warming induced storms, sea level rises, climate changes, and associated effects on ecosystems hereto unheard of in the history of mankind reaches us, and it is too late to reverse the damage.
