By Ann Paul, President
Tampa Audubon Society
Ready or not, we have a real problem – and we can be part of its solution.
I am talking about global climate change and how it is directly affecting me and you.
In the last month, our community and members of the Tampa Audubon Society have endured two giant hurricanes that devastated nearby areas and caused damage that will affect our state and country for decades. Storm surges, powerful winds, electrical outages, flooding due to inland rains raising rivers and streams to flooding levels – these are serious storm impacts. Emotional impacts to our children and our family members will also take time to recover from.
The temperature of the air and ocean is increasing faster than at any time in human history. It is the result of human use of coal and gasoline-type products causing an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide in our air traps sun-generated heat, warming our planet at a rate greater than has ever happened before, as measured through ice sheets, tree rings, sediments and more. Credible scientists agree that this warming is entirely human caused.
A hotter world means a world unsuited for our current uses – and we don’t like the changes at all.
Rising temperatures are affecting our crops. As the Earth’s surface heats up, more evaporation occurs, increasing precipitation in storm-affected areas that can lead to flooding or crop degradation in some areas and long-term drought in others.
Lowered water levels will make some places uninhabitable for existing populations, causing people to move, creating political disruption.
Storms and hurricanes will increase in ferocity and will hold more rainwater, creating greater coastal disruption, especially for vulnerable areas like Florida, and inland flooding as occurred recently in North Carolina and Virginia.
As ocean temperatures increase, polar ice caps and glaciers are melting, altering the habitat of many arctic creatures, including many of the birds we love, and raising ocean levels. Currently, the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica contain over 99 percent of the Earth's freshwater (the Antarctic ice sheet is the size of the United States and Mexico combined). Scientists are observing melting of these ice sheets. Warmer water also takes up more space in the oceans than cooler water. Rising ocean levels drive salt water inland, contaminating soil with salt, destroying wetlands, and inundating the coastal cities and communities where most people live, including us in Florida.
A problem with climate change is the speed at which it is occurring. On the one hand, it is so slow that we don’t see it affecting us right now. However please note that the summer of 2024 was 2.25 degrees F warmer than the average summer between 1951 and 1980, and August alone was 2.34 degrees F warmer than average. August 2024 set a new monthly temperature record, capping Earth’s hottest summer since global records began in 1880, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. I know myself that it was one hot month! Ugh.
But this warming is happening faster than animals, plants, and ecosystems can safely adapt to it — and the same is true for human civilization. The increase in temperature is putting our food and water, our infrastructure, and even our economies at risk. In some places, these changes are now crossing safe levels for ecosystems and humans.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), humanity has until the year 2030 to limit climate change or dramatically increase the risk of extreme heat, floods, and droughts that will affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide. According to my very poor math skills, that’s only 6 years! WOW!
So what can we do to reduce our heat-trapping gas emissions as much as possible, as soon as possible?
Through personal home efficiency and behavioral change, we can each reduce the amount of energy we need. Working together, we can transition our economy away from fossil fuels that emit carbon, by using clean energy sources like wind and solar.
We can protect forests and plant trees. We can use agricultural practices and technologies that capture and store carbon. Proper land management of forests and farmlands, called natural climate solutions, can store carbon, removing it from the atmosphere, one molecule at a time.
We can construct natural defenses for coastal areas as restored reefs, protect our coastal marches, mangroves, and inland wetlands that reduce the impact of storms and floods.
And we can talk about climate change with family and friends. Sometimes these conversations can be tricky, but even a person who is of a different political bent can’t pretend that the world isn’t changing. Let’s talk together with care and understanding – it’s hard for people to give up long-held beliefs.
It will take political will for this. So let’s choose leaders who understand the world as it is, not a dream of past decades.
We can’t afford not to take this real threat seriously. It’s past time to act.
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