McCain continues push for climate change legislation

Issues in Science and Technology, Winter 2005

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) used his last hearing as chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation to continue to push for legislation dealing with the causes of climate change. McCain called the hearing to review the sobering conclusions of a new study on climate change in the Arctic. McCain called the study, which encapsulates the work of 300 scientists from around the world over four years, the canary in the coal mine of climate change. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ.) agreed, calling the report's conclusions "chilling."

In testimony before the committee, Robert Corell, chair of the group that produced the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report and a senior fellow at the American Meteorological Society, listed some of the expected effects of global warming on the Arctic region and on Earth as a whole. He said that between 1990 and 2090, it is estimated that the global surface air temperature will increase by 15° to 180F. Consequently, glaciers will melt at an accelerated pace, leading to a one-meter rise in sea level and a decrease in oceanic salinity.

Such a dramatic change in snow cover would mean a reduction in the reflectivity of the Arctic region, Corell said. He explained that about 80 percent of the Sun's rays are reflected away from Earth's surface by snow cover. A decrease in the total surface area of glaciers and other snow-covered regions would result in more landmass being exposed and more of the Sun's rays being absorbed by Earth, thus speeding the melting process.

Furthermore, a decrease in salinity could hamper the ocean's circulation system, leading to cooling trends in Europe. Corell emphasized that even if action is taken now, it might take a few hundred or a thousand years to put the breaks on the relentless "super-tanker" of global warming.

The hearing also provided an opportunity to glimpse the leadership style of the incoming Commerce chairman, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who has been fixated on the impact of climate change in his state. Corell stated that parts of Alaska are warming 8° to 10°F more than the average global rate, leading to a recession of the ice sheets that used to protect the shoreline of coastal towns. Once exposed, the villages will no longer have a buffer against the usually severe summer storms. Also, rising temperatures have started to melt permafrost, destabilizing foundations and in some cases causing entire buildings to collapse. Stevens acknowledged witnessing the devastation that many of these coastal villages have experienced and vowed to hold future hearings on the subject in the upcoming session of Congress.

Susan Hassol, an independent science writer and lead author of the report, described the negative effects of warming in more human terms. For example, she stated that the 10,000-year-old Inuit language has no word for robin, yet the bird is now thriving in the warmer Arctic climates. Furthermore, in just the past 30 years, the average amount of Arctic sea ice lost would equal the size of Arizona and New York combined.

The report is available at: www.acia.uaf.edu or www. cambridge.org.

The second part of the hearing focused on the federal government's climate monitoring programs in Antarctica. Ghassem Asrar, deputy associate director for science missions at NASA, stated that advancements in remote sensing technology have helped to improve the accuracy of the measurements of the changes that have occurred in glaciers and sea ice. He noted that although the South Pole has recently grown cooler as a result of ozone depletion, the trend is expected to reverse in the next few decades.