Opinion: Why climate change matters to Michigan
Jim Lax is a meteorologist and founder of Climate for Tomorrow, an organization dedicated to climate research, monitoring, forecasting and information dissemination. He worked at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for three decades and the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University. He has a BS in environmental science from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and a MS degree in atmospheric science from Ohio State.
The Michigan presidential primary results earlier this year bear out something that’s hard to admit – climate change does not matter to many people in Michigan.
The issue of human-caused climate change never seemed to gain traction as a central issue in the campaign. Although the Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders endorsed action to curb climate change, Republican candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are on record as denying that climate change exists.
With a roughly 50/50 split of Democratic and Republican votes in the primary, the results imply that climate change was a compelling issue for only half the population of Michigan. This finding is in line with a Yale study in 2014, which revealed that only half of Michigan respondents believed that global warming is caused mostly by human activities and that the effects are harmful. These results are in contrast to a much larger majority of climate scientists who maintain that climate change is human-caused and harmful.
Unfortunately, the issue of climate change has been framed by politics and what people believe. In science, it’s not about what you believe; it’s what the facts tell you. The facts point to the real danger of excessive greenhouse gas levels and the urgency of addressing climate change.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas; this is the first thing we learn in any meteorology or climatology class. The undeniable fact in any climate debate is that global carbon dioxide levels continue to increase. Excessive carbon dioxide levels from burning fossil fuels have caused global temperature to rise. Global temperature rise has led to many negative impacts. Climate change is a real issue, even in Michigan.
Yet skepticism remains. Skeptics like to rely on “talking points.” A popular talking point is “the climate’s always changing.” In actuality, the weather is always changing; climate has been relatively stable up until now. Skeptics who are able to distinguish between weather and climate will say “there has been no change in climate.” Climate change is often subtle and, in fact, can be easily masked in the Midwest.
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For example, because of well-defined wave patterns in the upper atmosphere, the weather in the Midwest is often the opposite of weather in the Southwest. When temperatures are below normal in the Midwest, they are often above normal in the Southwest, and vice versa. In 2014 the entire continental U.S. had annual temperatures above normal except for the Midwest and Mississippi River valley. The Southwest was experiencing a drought. It is quite possible that planetary warming would favor a warmer drier Southwest, and the Midwest would be relatively cooler. Those of us in the Midwest would be misled into thinking that we are not experiencing any planetary warming.
Whether we admit it or not, the short-term effects of climate change are already here. Sea level rise already jeopardizes inhabitants of low-lying coastal areas around the globe. The loss of marginal agricultural lands is producing “climate refugees.” These impacts will eventually affect Michigan.
And then there are the long-term problems. The melting of polar ice and more abrupt changes, such as the possible collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, would result in inundated coastal regions, altered weather patterns and global economic catastrophe. What good is your 401K when Wall Street literally goes under water? Once the climate system is completely broken, you can’t fix it.
The urgency of fixing climate change is lost on a portion of the general public because climate change is seen as a long-term issue not in need of immediate action. This view is fostered by politicians, who are only interested in short-term concerns. It’s just like the infrastructure issue. In fact, our climate is a natural infrastructure. Climate supports our way of life and well-being. Climate is the ultimate infrastructure upon which all other infrastructures are based. Climate change does matter to Michigan.
Politics have diminished the role of science in decision making. Technical decision making requires scientific knowledge. The current Flint water crisis serves as an example of how more attention to the science, at all levels of management and government, could have averted a tragic situation. The consequences of ignorance are unforgiving.
Elected officials need to be pressured into responding to critical issues like climate change. We need to reduce greenhouse gases now so that major environmental and economic catastrophes can be averted. Reduction of greenhouse gases is imperative to ensure the security of our supportive climate infrastructure. Michigan, with its traditional ethic of conservation and environmental awareness, should be at the forefront of any effort to promote action to combat human-caused climate change. We owe it to future Michigan generations.
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