Climate change discussion launches at Lewisboro Library

By NEAL RENTZ

The dangers of climate change was part of a talk presented by the Lewisboro Sustainability Committee at the Lewisboro Library on April 22, Earth Day.

Committee member Robert Whittaker presented the science behind climate change and touched on such topics as what is happening and why, and the potential impact today and in the future if there are no changes. 

Recent storms have had serious impacts because of climate change, Whittaker said. For example, droughts make fires “more intense and deadlier than ever,” he said. The threat of major storms is hurting people financially, he said.

“In many states, insurance companies are raising rates higher than most homeowners can pay,” he said, and some are forced to leave their states due to the rising costs. 

As a result of one fire in Australia, over a billion animals were killed, Whittaker said. “One firefighter said, ‘I don’t know how we come back from this,’” Whittaker said. 

“Massive heatwaves and droughts and fires are now happening all over the world again and again,” Whittaker said. 

The ice sheets on both Greenland and Antarctica are now melting hundreds of billions of tons of ice into the oceans every year, Whittaker said. The U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration has said that if greenhouse gases are not significantly reduced, much of the U.S. coast waterways could rise by 7 feet by the end of the 21st century, and by 2150 it could rise by over 13 feet, he said. 

“If that happens, the United States coast as we know it” will be gone, as well as many American cities, Whittaker said. 

According to NASA, most of the warming has taken place over the last 50 years, Whittaker said. During that period, the sun’s intensity has decreased, according to NASA. While the stratosphere has become slightly cooler, the inner atmosphere air is getting warmer, he said.

But when sunlight comes into contact with darker surfaces, such as water, rock and soil, 70 to 90 percent of the sunlight is absorbed by those substances and the light is converted into heat, Whittaker said. 

“They retain heat like a greenhouse,” he said of gases.

Carbon dioxide is causing most of the current warming, Whittaker said. 

“The carbon dioxide that we are emitting into the air today will continue warming the planet for hundreds of years,” Whittaker said. More of the heat is being trapped both by carbon dioxide and methane, he added. 

“What’s happening now is a wake-up call,” Whittaker said. “Life with increasing climate change will never be the same” without changes.

Humans need to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, Whittaker said. They emit more than 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year through the burning of fossil fuels, he said, “And that’s increasing every year.” 

This week’s presentation was the first in a series of climate discussions that the committee has scheduled on a bimonthly basis, the fourth Tuesday of the month. Upcoming meetings will focus on solutions for the climate crisis.

“There’s lots of things we can do,” he said. “They need to start with us.”