July 2021 was Earth’s hottest month on record and was marked by disasters, including extreme storms, floods and wildfires. Thomas Lohnes via Getty Images Climate change has been accumulating slowly but relentlessly for decades. The changes might sound small when you hear about them – another tenth of a degree warmer, another centimeter of sea… Continue reading Climate change is relentless: Seemingly small shifts have big consequences
Need a handkerchief? Num LP Photo/Shutterstock Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. Why do onions make you cry? – Dana L., age 12, Belmont, Massachusetts Onions are grown and used all over the world, and anyone… Continue reading Why do onions make you cry?
Black licorice gets its distinctive flavor from licorice root. PicturePartners/Getty Images Black licorice may look and taste like an innocent treat, but this candy has a dark side. On Sept. 23, 2020, it was reported that black licorice was the culprit in the death of a 54-year-old man in Massachusetts. How could this be? Overdosing… Continue reading The spooky and dangerous side of black licorice
‘Frankenstein’ via www.shutterstock.com Fear continues to saturate our lives: fear of nuclear destruction, fear of climate change, fear of the subversive, and fear of foreigners. But a Rolling Stone article about our “age of fear” notes that most Americans are living “in the safest place at the safest time in human history.” It continues: Around… Continue reading Why we’ll always be obsessed with – and afraid of – monsters
President Joe Biden wanted to have a clear plan before the U.N. climate conference starting Oct. 31 in Scotland. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images President Joe Biden’s new climate strategy, announced after his original plan crumbled under opposition in Congress, will represent a historic investment in clean energy technology and infrastructure if it is enacted. But… Continue reading How to meet America’s climate goals: 5 policies for Biden’s next climate bill
Falling into a black hole is easily the worst way to die. John M Lund Photography Inc/Getty Images Halloween is a time to be haunted by ghosts, goblins and ghouls, but nothing in the universe is scarier than a black hole. Black holes – regions in space where gravity is so strong that nothing can… Continue reading The scariest things in the universe are black holes – and here are 3 reasons
July 2021 was Earth's hottest month on record and was marked by disasters, including extreme storms, floods and wildfires.Thomas Lohnes via Getty Images
Climate change has been accumulating slowly but relentlessly for decades. The changes might sound small when you hear about them – another tenth of a degree warmer, another centimeter of sea level rise – but seemingly small changes can have big effects on the world around us, especially regionally.
The problem is that while effects are small at any time, they accumulate. Those effects have now accumulated to the point where their influence is contributing to damaging heat waves, drought and rainfall extremes that can’t be ignored.
The most recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is more emphatic than ever: Climate change, caused by human activities like burning fossil fuels, is having damaging effects on the climate as we know it, and those effects are rapidly getting worse.
Earth’s energy imbalance
An excellent example of how climate change accumulates is Earth’s energy imbalance. I am a climate scientist and have a new book on this about to be published by Cambridge University Press.
The Sun bombards Earth with a constant stream of about 173,600 terawatts (that is 12 zeros) of energy in the form of solar radiation. About 30% of that energy is reflected back into space by clouds and reflective surfaces, like ice and snow, leaving 122,100 terawatts to drive all the weather and climate systems around us, including the water cycle. Almost all of that energy cycles back to space – except for about 460 TW.
That remaining 460 TW is the problem we’re facing. That excess energy, trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is heating up the planet. That is the Earth’s energy imbalance, or in other words, global warming.
Outgoing radiation is decreasing, owing to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and leading to Earth’s energy imbalance of 460 terawatts. The percentage going into each domain is indicated. Kevin Trenberth, CC BY-ND
In comparison with the natural flow of energy through the climate system, 460 TW seems small – it’s only a fraction of 1 percent. Consequently, we cannot go outside and feel the extra energy. But the heat accumulates, and it is now having consequences.
To put that in perspective, the total amount of electricity generated worldwide in 2018 was about 2.6 TW. If you look at all energy used around the world, including for heat, industry and vehicles, it’s about 19.5 TW. Earth’s energy imbalance is huge in comparison.
Interfering with the natural flow of energy through the climate system is where humans make their mark. By burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests and releasing greenhouse gases in other ways, humans are sending gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere that trap more of that incoming energy rather than letting it radiate back out.
Before the first industries began burning large amounts of fossil fuels in the 1800s, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was estimated at around 280 parts per million of volume. In 1958, when Dave Keeling began measuring atmospheric concentrations at Mauna Loa in Hawaii, that level was 310 parts per million. Today, those values have climbed to about 415 parts per million, a 48% increase.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and increased amounts cause heating. In this case, the human increment is not small.
Where does the extra energy go?
Measurements over time show that over 90% of this extra energy is going into the oceans, where it causes the water to expand and sea level to rise.
The upper layer of the oceans started warming around the 1970s. By the early 1990s, heat was reaching 500 to 1,000 meters (1,640 to 3,280 feet) deep. By 2005, it was heating the ocean below 1,500 meters (nearly 5,000 feet).
The average global temperature change at different ocean depths, in zetajoules, from 1958 to 2020. The top chart shows the upper 2,000 meters (6,561 feet) compared with the 1981-2010 average. The bottom shows the increase at different depths. Reds are warmer than average, blues are cooler. Cheng et al, 2021, CC BY-ND
Global sea level, measured by flights and satellites, was rising at a rate of about 3 millimeters per year from 1992 to 2012. Since then, it been increasing at about 4 millimeters a year. In 29 years, it has risen over 90 millimeters (3.5 inches).
If 3.5 inches doesn’t sound like much, talk to the coastal communities that exist a few feet above sea level. In some regions, these effects have led to chronic sunny day flooding during high tides, like Miami, San Francisco and Venice, Italy. Coastal storm surges are higher and much more destructive, especially from hurricanes. It’s an existential threat to some low-lying island nations and a growing expense for U.S. coastal cities.
Some of that extra energy, about 13 terawatts, goes into melting ice. Arctic sea ice in summer has decreased by over 40% since 1979. Some excess energy melts land ice, such as glaciers and permafrost on Greenland, Antarctica, which puts more water into the ocean and contributes to sea level rise.
Some energy penetrates into land, about 14 TW. But as long as land is wet, a lot of energy cycles into evapotranspiration – evaporation and transpiration in plants – which moistens the atmosphere and fuels weather systems. It is when there is a drought or during the dry season that effects accumulate on land, through drying and wilting of plants, raising temperatures and greatly increasing risk of heat waves and wildfire.
Consequences of more heat
Over oceans, the extra heat provides a tremendous resource of moisture for the atmosphere. That becomes latent heat in storms that supersizes hurricanes and rainstorms, leading to flooding, as people in many parts of the world have experienced in recent months.
Air can contain about 4% more moisture for every 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.55 Celsius) increase in temperature, and air above the oceans is some 5% to 15% moister than it was prior to 1970. Hence, about a 10% increase in heavy rain results as storms gather the excess moisture.
Again, this may not sound like much, but that increase enlivens the updrafts and the storms, and then the storm lasts longer, so suddenly there is a 30% increase in the rainfall, as has been documented in several cases of major flooding.
Cyclone Yasa heads for Fiji in December 2020. It was the fourth most-intense tropical cyclone on record in the South Pacific. NASA Earth Observatory
In Mediterranean climates, characterized by long, dry summers, such as in California, eastern Australia and around the Mediterranean, the wildfire risk grows, and fires can be readily triggered by natural sources, like dry lightning, or human causes.
Extreme events in weather have always occurred, but human influences are now pushing them outside their previous limits.
The straw that breaks the camel’s back syndrome
So, while all weather events are driven by natural influences, the impacts are greatly magnified by human-induced climate change. Hurricanes cross thresholds, levees break and floods run amok. Elsewhere, fires burn out of control, things break and people die.
I call it “The straw that breaks the camel’s back syndrome.” This is extreme nonlinearity, meaning the risks aren’t rising in a straight line – they’re rising much faster, and it confounds economists who have greatly underestimated the costs of human-induced climate change.
The result has been far too little action both in slowing and stopping the problems, and in planning for impacts and building resilience – despite years of warnings from scientists. The lack of adequate planning means we all suffer the consequences.
[The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.Weekly on Wednesdays.]
Why do onions make you cry? – Dana L., age 12, Belmont, Massachusetts
Onions are grown and used all over the world, and anyone who has cut into one knows that it can make you cry. This happens because onions release an irritating chemical that makes your eyes sting.
Onions are mostly water, plus some vitamins and sugar compounds. They also contain compounds that include sulfur, a natural chemical found in many smelly substances, such as skunk spray and garlic. This is one way that plants defend themselves – producing substances that repel creatures who might eat them. Other plants have thorns or stinging leaves, or are made of special cells that make them hard to chew.
One sulfur compound in onions, called propyl sulfoxide, escapes into the air when you slice an onion. When it comes into contact with moisture, such as water vapor in the air or the natural moisture around your eyes, it changes into sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid has a strong smell and irritates your eyes, so they make tears to wash it away.
There are some tricks to avoid this “emotional” onion experience. Next time you’re getting ready to dice an onion, start by cutting off and throwing away a little bit of the root end, which has lots of stringy little roots hanging from it. This lets most of the noxious sulfuric compounds, which are found in the root, escape. Then you can remove the pointy tip of the onion, peel its skin and slice it with fewer tears.
Some cooks chill onions for 30 minutes before they cut them, which helps because the sulfur compounds don’t escape into the air as easily when they’re cold.
Ornamental alliums (related to onions) are a popular flower for sunny gardens. Mike/Pexels, CC BY
Onions add flavor to lots of our favorite foods, from spaghetti sauce to
tuna salad, so don’t let the smell drive you away. And gardeners love to grow ornamental alliums – members of the onion family that are bred for their looks. Many are very attractive, with blooms that make balls of color on long straight stalks. And their onion-y smell helps fend off rabbits, deer and other animals looking for a tasty garden meal.
Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.
And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.
In stark contrast to the overblown fears portrayed during decades past, these days, most people think cannabis is relatively harmless. While weed is indeed less dangerous than some other drugs, it is not without risks.
In a study published Jan. 5, my colleagues and I found that 59% percent of people using medical cannabis for chronic pain experienced moderate to severe withdrawal symptoms if they stopped ingesting weed for hours or days.
When people use cannabis regularly – such as daily or nearly daily – parts of the brain become reliant on cannabinoids, the psychoactive chemicals in cannabis. Cannabinoids are naturally produced in the body, but at a much lower level than is available in most cannabis products. Among those who don’t use weed for a period of several hours or days, cannabinoid levels drop and they experience withdrawal symptoms. These can including irritability, depressed mood, decreased appetite, sleep difficulties, a desire or craving to use cannabis, restlessness, anxiety, increased aggression, headaches, shakiness, nausea, increased anger, strange dreams, stomach pain and sweating.
Cannabis withdrawal symptoms usually go away within one to two weeks after use is stopped as the body adjusts back to its own natural production of cannabinoids. Unlike withdrawal from some psychoactive substances – such as alcohol – cannabis withdrawal is not life threatening or medically dangerous. But it does exist. Cannabis withdrawal can also be quite unpleasant and people can end up continuing their cannabis use – even when they want to cut back – just to avoid experiencing withdrawal.
Regular use of cannabis can result in dependency and withdrawal when a person stops using cannabis. AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
How common are withdrawal symptoms?
To figure out how common withdrawal symptoms are, over two years, my colleagues and I repeatedly surveyed 527 people who were using medical weed for chronic pain. We found that 59% of people who use medical cannabis for chronic pain had moderate to severe withdrawal symptoms. The most common symptoms were sleep difficulties, irritability and anxiety.
We also found that cannabis withdrawal symptoms were more severe in younger people, people with mental health problems, people who had a longer history of cannabis use and people who used more frequently or in larger amounts. Additionally, we found that smoking cannabis – rather than eating or topically applying it – was correlated with worse withdrawal symptoms.
Our team also looked at how people’s withdrawal symptoms changed over time. Most continued to experience the same severity of withdrawal symptoms any time they stopped ingesting cannabis over the two years of the study, but about 10% – particularly younger people – got worse over time. As with most dependency-forming substances, reducing the frequency or amount of cannabis use may help to alleviate these symptoms.
Our study looked at people who use medical cannabis only for pain. But in another recent meta-analysis that included both recreational and medical use, researchers found that 47% of frequent cannabis users experience withdrawals.
Cannabis may not be the demon drug from “Reefer Madness,” but neither is it a wonder–plant with limitless upsides and no downsides. As cannabis use increases across the U.S., it’s important for people to understand that regular use can lead to withdrawals, and to know what those symptoms are.
Black licorice may look and taste like an innocent treat, but this candy has a dark side. On Sept. 23, 2020, it was reported that black licorice was the culprit in the death of a 54-year-old man in Massachusetts. How could this be? Overdosing on licorice sounds more like a twisted tale than a plausible fact.
I have a longstanding interest in how chemicals in our food and the environment affect our body and mind. When something seemingly harmless like licorice is implicated in a death, we are reminded of the famous proclamation by Swiss physician Paracelsus, the Father of Toxicology: “All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison.”
The unfortunate man who succumbed to excessive black licorice consumption is not alone. There are a smattering of similar case reports in medical journals, in which patients experience hypertension crisis, muscle breakdown or even death. Adverse reactions are most frequently seen in people over the age of 40 who are eating far more black licorice than the average person. In addition, they are usually consuming the product for prolonged periods of time. In the most recent case, the Massachusetts man had been eating a bag and a half of black licorice every day for three weeks.
Licorice is a flowering plant native to parts of Europe and Asia. Its scientific name, Glycyrrhiza, is derived from the Greek words “glykos” (sweet) and “rhiza” (root). The aromatic and sweet extract from its root has long been used as an herbal remedy for a wide variety of health maladies, from heartburn and stomach issues to sore throats and cough. However, there is insufficient evidence to support that licorice is effective in treating any medical condition.
Glycyrrhizin (also called glycyrrhizic acid) is the chemical in black licorice that gives the candy its signature flavor, but it also leads to its toxic effects.
Glycyrrhizin mimics the hormone aldosterone, which is made by the adrenal glands when the body needs to retain sodium and excrete potassium. Sodium and potassium work together as a kind of cellular battery that drives communication between nerves and the contraction of muscles. Too much glycyrrhizin upsets the balance of these electrolytes, which can raise blood pressure and disturb the heart’s rhythm. Other symptoms of excessive licorice intake include swelling, muscle pain, numbness and headache. Examination of the man who died from consuming too much licorice revealed that he had dangerously low levels of potassium, consistent with glycyrrhizin toxicity.
It should be noted that a number of licorice-based foods do not contain real licorice, but use a flavoring substitute called anise oil, which does not pose the dangers discussed here. In addition, despite its name, red licorice rarely contains licorice extract. Instead, red licorice is infused with chemicals that impart its cherry or strawberry flavor.
Products that contain real licorice are usually labeled as such, and list licorice extract or glycyrrhizic acid among the ingredients. Be advised that some products, such as black jelly beans or Good & Plenty, are mixtures of different candies that contain both anise oil and licorice extract.
Glycyrrhizin has the distinct licorice flavor and is 50 times sweeter than sugar and has been used in other types of candy, soft drinks, tea, Belgian beers, throat lozenges and tobacco. This can make it challenging to keep track of how much glycyrrhizin has been consumed, and a combination of these products could trigger adverse effects.
Some people take dietary or health supplements that already contain licorice, which increases the risk of toxic effects from eating black licorice candy. Certain medications such as hydrochlorothiazide are diuretics that cause increased urination, which can lower potassium levels in the body. Glycyrrhizin also lowers potassium levels, further disrupting the balance of electrolytes, which can produce muscle cramps and irregular heart rhythms.
People with certain preexisting conditions are more susceptible to black licorice overdose.
For example, patients who already have low potassium levels (hypokalemia), high blood pressure or heart arrhythmia are likely to have greater sensitivity to the effects of excessive licorice. Those with liver or kidney deficiencies will also retain glycyrrhizin in their bloodstream for longer times, increasing their risk of experiencing its adverse effects.
What to do?
If you’re a fan of black licorice, there is no need to ban it from your pantry. Eaten in small quantities from time to time, licorice poses no significant threat to otherwise healthy adults and children. But it is advisable to monitor your intake.
With Halloween approaching, be sure to remind your kids that candy is a “sometimes food,” especially the black licorice. The FDA has issued warnings about the rare but serious effects of too much black licorice, advising that people avoid eating more than two ounces of black licorice a day for two weeks or longer. The agency states that if you have been eating a lot of black licorice and experience an irregular heart rhythm or muscle weakness, stop eating it immediately and contact your health care provider.
Some scientists have further cautioned against the routine use of licorice in the form of a dietary supplement or tea for its alleged health benefits, including the treatment of cough associated with COVID-19 or other respiratory infections. A review article from 2012 warned that “the daily consumption of licorice is never justified because its benefits are minor compared to the adverse outcomes of chronic consumption.”
Article updated to mention concerns about using licorice as a COVID-19 treatment.
Bill Sullivan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Around the globe, household wealth, longevity and education are on the rise, while violent crime and extreme poverty are down. In the U.S., life expectancy is higher than ever, our air is the cleanest it’s been in a decade and, despite a slight uptick last year, violent crime has been trending down since 1991.
So why are we still so afraid?
Emerging technology and media could play a role. But in a sense, these have always played a role.
The title page of Cotton Mather’s ‘Wonders of the Invisible World,’ which describes the execution of witches in Salem, Massachusetts. Wikimedia Commons
In the past, rumor and a rudimentary press coverage could fan the fires. Now, with the rise of social media, fears and fads and fancies race instantly through entire populations. Sometimes the specifics vanish almost as quickly as they arose, but the addiction to sensation, to fear and fantasy, persists, like a low-grade fever.
People often create symbols for that emotions are fleeting, abstract, and hard to describe. (Look no further than the recent rise of the emoji.)
For over the last three centuries, Europeans and Americans, in particular, have shaped anxiety and paranoia into the mythic figure of the monster – the embodiment of fear, disorder and abnormality – a history that I detail in my new book, “Haunted.”
There are four main types of monsters. But a fifth – a nameless one – may best represent the anxieties of the 21st century.
Rejecting rationality
The 1700s and 1800s were an era of revolutionary uprisings that trumpeted a limitless future, when the philosophers and scientists of the Enlightenment proclaimed that reason had the power to change the world. Emotion was pushed out of the intellectual sphere by scientific reasoning; awestruck spirituality had been repressed in favor of the Clockmaker God who set the universal laws into motion.
Of course, humans have always been afraid. But while the fears of the demonic and the diabolical characterized medieval times, the changes wrought by the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution created a whole new set of fears tied to advancements in science and technology, and an increasingly crowded and complex world.
During this age of political upheavals and aggressive modernization, tales of Gothic horror, haunted castles, secret compartments and rotting corpses were the rage. The novels and stories of writers such as Horace Walpole, Matthew G. Lewis, Anne Radcliffe and Mary Shelley soon became bestsellers. These writers – and many others – tapped into something pervasive, giving names and bodies to a universal emotion: fear.
The fictional monsters created during this period can be categorized into four types. Each corresponds to a deep seated anxiety about progress, the future and the human ability to achieve anything like control over the world.
“The monster from nature” represents a power that humans only think they have harnessed, but haven’t. The Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, King Kong and Godzilla are all examples of this type. An awesome abnormality that we can’t predict and scramble to understand, it strikes without warning – like the shark in “Jaws.” While the obvious inspiration are real ferocious animals, they could also be thought of as embodied versions of natural disasters – hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.
“The created monster,” like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, is the monster we have built and believe we can control – until it turns against us. His descendants are the robots, androids and cyborgs of today, with their potential to become all too human – and threatening.
“The monster from within” is the monster generated by our own repressed dark psychology, the other side of our otherwise bland and blameless human nature (think the Mr. Hyde to our Dr. Jekyll). When nondescript and seemingly harmless young men turn into mass-murdering killers or suicide bombers, the “monster from within” has shown his face.
“The monster from the past,” like Dracula, comes out of a pagan world and offers an alternative to ordinary Christianity with his promise of a blood feast that will confer immortality. Like a Nietzschean superman, he represents the fear that the ordinary consolations of religion are bankrupt and that the only answer to the chaos of modern life is the securing of power.
Zombies: A vague, nameless danger
Recently, our culture has become fixated on the zombie. The recent explosion of zombie films and stories illustrates how fear – while it may be a basic human trait – assumes the shape of particular eras and cultures.
The zombie emerged from the brutal Caribbean slave plantations of the 17th and 18th centuries. They were the soulless bodies of undead slaves who stalked plantations grounds – so the myth went. But director George Romero’s pioneering films, like “Dawn of the Dead” (1978), generalized the figure into an unthinking member of a mass consumer society.
The theatrical trailer for ‘Dawn of the Dead.’
The central distinction between the traditional monsters – such as the Frankenstein monster, Dracula or Mr. Hyde – is that the zombie exists primarily as part of a group. Unlike earlier monsters, who all stand alone, even in a kind of grandeur, one zombie is barely distinguishable from another.
What might the horrific image of mindless hordes out to eat our brains represent in the 21st century? It could symbolize whatever we fear will overwhelm and engulf us: epidemic disease, globalization, Islamic fundamentalists, illegal immigrants and refugees. Or it could be something less tangible and more existential: the loss of anonymity and individuality in a complex world, the threat of impersonal technology that makes each of us just another number in an electronic list.
In 1918, German sociologist Max Weber announced the triumph of reason: “There are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play,” he wrote in “Science as a Vocation.” “One can, in principle, master all things by calculation.”
“The world,” he continued, “is disenchanted.”
Weber may have been a bit optimistic. Yes, we are committed, in many ways, to reason and analytic thinking. But it seems that we need our monsters and our sense of enchantment as well.
Author Leo Braudy discusses his book ‘Haunted.’
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.
Leo Braudy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
President Joe Biden committed the U.S. government to racial equity by issuing four executive orders on Jan. 26 that seek to curb systemic racism. In the orders, he cited the killing of George Floyd in 2020, which sparked months of protests and prompted many U.S. companies to likewise commit themselves – and hundreds of billions of dollars – to helping Black Americans overcome institutional discrimination.
Shortly after the protests began last year, we hosted a panel that addressed this very topic. Held on Juneteenth, the webinar featured four Black women – including one of us – who poignantly shared their own frequent encounters with racial bias in job interviews, shopping for clothes and even working with their peers.
A common question we got from the predominantly white audience was some variation on “How can I be an ally?” That is, a lot of people wanted to know what they can do as friends, colleagues and managers to support African Americans in overcoming ongoing discrimination and bias and achieving success.
This prompted us – business scholars with a keen interest in diversity, one white, one Black – to try to find an answer to these questions of how white people can support their Black colleagues. So we interviewed five successful Black professionals and the mostly white “allies” they said were instrumental to their achievements to see if we could find an antidote to racial bias in the workplace.
Three themes stood out from this ongoing research, which we plan to submit for peer review.
Therefore, we sought to understand the small acts of resolute connection that could shift the tide toward greater justice and equity.
Using our own networks, we reached out to five Black professionals in a range of industries – financial services, packaged foods and sports management – who were all in executive roles in their organizations. We asked them to think of the individuals who were instrumental to their success and describe the specific support these people offered to help manage explicit or implicit moments of discrimination. Next, we interviewed the eight allies they identified – seven white, one Black.
These 13 in-depth interviews yielded key patterns about the simple ways to address racial bias that defy conventional wisdom. Unlike research that relies on surveys to get representative viewpoints, a qualitative approach allowed us to gain a richer, more comprehensive understanding of the factors and variables in these relationships that made them powerful.
Consistent with social exchange theory, we found that these relationships worked best when there was a partnership and both parties benefited.
People of color said they did not want to be objects of pity. Even the question “What can I do?” implies a power dynamic – someone in power reaching out to someone in need.
The people of color we spoke to found the strongest support when their allies recognized their talents and helped them apply these talents more effectively in the workplace. And that support was more authentic and trustworthy when both parties benefited from the relationship and learned from each other.
The Black professionals we interviewed said that they were already performing at a high level and trying to prove themselves invaluable, which made colleagues and managers who benefited from their efforts seek to promote them in the organization. The allies likewise said they supported Black workers because they saw their talent.
For example, one ally reported seeing that the dominant white macho culture in his organization did not appreciate his female Black colleague’s talent and was limiting her success. When he moved to a new company, as soon as he saw an opportunity he actively recruited her. The new role involved much more responsibility than her previous positions, but he convinced her that she could do it.
She told us that his ongoing support in the position encouraged her continued success. The relationship focused on talent, not pity, and benefited both parties.
Don’t avoid uncomfortable conversations
These relationships were not careful or guarded; they were straightforward and honest.
Past research has found that white supervisors often avoid giving critical feedback to Black subordinates and peers out of a fear of being viewed as biased. Yet it can be more biased to say nothing. Avoiding difficult conversations can impede a young professional’s upward mobility.
People of color need advice from more experienced individuals on how to successfully navigate racism traps that may exist in the workplace. They might be unaware that some of their actions or approaches are being perceived negatively in the office. These difficult conversations can strengthen relationships.
For example, an ally observed that although it was difficult, she considered it a managerial responsibility to tell her Black colleague that he was not meeting her expectations. Another ally reported explaining to a junior Black colleague that proving you are right to a supervisor may not always be beneficial if it harms your long-term career prospects.
These difficult but honest conversations helped shape the person of color’s conduct and laid the foundation for lifelong trusting connections.
Connect outside of work
Finally, it made a big difference to the people of color we interviewed when an ally tried to get to know them better as a person, not only in terms of work.
People are more productive at work when they feel that colleagues see them with nuance – with unique passions, talents and interests – rather than pigeonholing or stereotyping them based on race or gender. It also becomes a lot easier to champion and advocate for someone you know well.
But as a result of real or perceived racial barriers, Black professionals often report feeling anxious during work-related social engagements, in part because they say they don’t understand the rules. Black and white professionals also tend to move in different social circles outside of work.
Our interviewees said a key antidote to this came when allies made an effort to connect outside of work. Whether over a cup of coffee or a home-cooked meal, these social encounters allowed relationships to flourish and stereotypes to diminish.
One white ally we interviewed reported realizing that she often had white colleagues to her home for dinner but had never invited a Black colleague. So when discussing her vacation plans – a seven-day chartered Alaskan fishing trip – with a Black woman who worked in the same office, she discovered her co-worker’s husband loved fishing and invited them on the trip, where they bonded and formed a friendship.
Doing this doesn’t require becoming friends. It only means closing the “psychological distance” that can separate people along racial lines at work.
Black people in the U.S. are faced with a world that can make them feel both empowered and vulnerable. Recent scenes at the U.S. Capitol just two weeks apart sum up this jarring narrative.
Americans face great challenges on the road to a more inclusive society. To be sure, addressing institutional racism requires systematic interventions by companies and substantial policy changes by the government. But our research suggests they also could use something simpler from their colleagues, managers and others in their lives: genuine relationships.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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President Joe Biden wanted to have a clear plan before the U.N. climate conference starting Oct. 31 in Scotland.Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
President Joe Biden’s new climate strategy, announced after his original plan crumbled under opposition in Congress, will represent a historic investment in clean energy technology and infrastructure if it is enacted. But it is still not likely to be enough to meet the administration’s emissions reduction goals for 2030.
As director of the Fletcher School’s Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University, I analyze ways governments can manage climate change.
As the new plan comes together, and the administration considers future steps, here are five types of policies that can help get the United States on track to achieve its climate targets. Together they would reassure the world that the United States can honor its climate commitments; help stave off the effects of a carbon border tax planned in Europe; and, if designed right, position U.S. workers and firms for the low-carbon economy of the 21st century.
Industrial policy
The United States’ ability to compete in low-carbon and resilience technologies such as energy storage has eroded over the past two decades.
Part of the problem has been the political impasse in Washington over clean energy and climate policies. Over the past 20 years, tax credits, loan guarantees and regulations have started and stopped, depending on the political whims of whoever is in power in Congress and the White House. U.S. companies have gone bankrupt while waiting for markets to materialize.
Meanwhile, European companies, with backing from their investment and development banks, and Chinese companies have surged ahead, using their home markets to demonstrate new technologies and build industries. Wind turbines are a good example. European companies, led by Denmark’s Vestas, controlled 43% of the wind turbine market globally in 2018, and China controlled 30%. By contrast, the United States accounted for only 10%.
I believe the United States as a country needs to make choices about where it has comparative advantage, and then the federal government can chart a clear course forward to develop those industries and compete in those global markets. Will it be electric vehicles? Electricity storage? Technology for adaptation such as sea wall construction, flood control or wildfire management? Independent advice could be provided to the administration and Congress, perhaps by the National Academies of Science, and then Congress could authorize an investment plan to conditionally support these industries.
Tempting as it is to support all technologies, public dollars are scarce. Companies that receive subsidies must be held accountable with performance requirements, and taxpayers should get a return when those companies succeed.
As part of industrial policy, officials also need to squarely face up to the fact that some workers, states, cities and towns with industries closely tied to fossil fuels are vulnerable in the transition to cleaner energy.
On an expert panel convened by the National Academies of Science and recent study, colleagues and I recommended that the government establish a national transition corporation to provide support and opportunities for displaced workers and affected communities. These communities will need to diversify their economies and their tax bases. Regional planning grants, loans and other investments can help them pivot their economies to industries that contribute less to climate change. Establishing a U.S. infrastructure bank or green bank to fund low-emissions and resilience projects could help finance these investments.
Equally important is investing in the workforce needed for a low-carbon economy. The government can subsidize the development of programs at colleges and universities to serve this economy and provide scholarships for students.
Fiscal tools
Other policies can help generate the revenue needed to support the transition to a clean economy.
Tax reform can also help, such as replacing some individual and corporate income taxes with a carbon tax. This policy tool would tax the carbon in fuels, creating an incentive for companies and consumers to reduce use of fuels with the greatest impact on the climate. To avoid overburdening low-income households, the government could reduce income taxes on lower-income households or provide a dividend check.
Tax credits, loan guarantees, government procurement rules and investments in innovation are all useful tools and can shape markets for American companies. But these fiscal policy tools should not be permanent, and they should be phased down as technology costs come down.
Investing in markets as well as innovation
The government has the ability to both “push” and “pull” climate technologies into the marketplace. Government investments in research and human capital are “push”-type policies, because supporting research ensures that smart people will keep moving into the field.
The government can also “pull” in technologies by creating vibrant markets for them, which will provide further incentives to innovation and spur widespread deployment. Carbon taxes and emissions trading systems can create predictable markets for industry because they provide long-term market signals that let companies know what to expect for years ahead, and they at least partially account for a product’s damage to the environment.
A tried-and-true U.S. policy tool is the use of performance standards. These standards limit the amount of greenhouse gas emissions per unit, such as fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for motor vehicles, energy efficiency standards for appliances and industrial equipment, and building efficiency standards at the state level. Fuel economy standards on automobiles since 1975 have saved about 2 trillion gallons of gas and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by about 14 gigatons, roughly three times the country’s annual emissions from energy in 2020.
Performance standards give companies the flexibility to find the best way to comply, which can also fuel innovation. The Biden administration could develop new performance standards in each major emitting sector – vehicles, power plants and buildings. Federally imposed building codes, which are set at the state and local levels, would be a difficult political lift.
The laws that established the government’s authority to set standards, such as the Clean Air Act and Energy Policy Act, have some ambiguities that can leave standards vulnerable to court challenge, however. Legal challenges have led to a zigzag in regulations in some sectors, most obviously the power sector.
Nature-based solutions and state legislation
A final area where policy is needed is for nature-based solutions. These might be fiscal incentives for restoring forests, which store carbon, or protecting existing lands from development, or they might be regulations.
Laws and regulations at the state level can also be enormously powerful in changing the U.S. emissions trajectory.
Biden’s Plan B
The centerpiece of Biden’s original climate plan was a program designed to reward and pressure utilities to shift electricity production away from fossil fuels faster. With the Senate split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin’s opposition sank the plan.
The Biden administration’s new Plan B has a number of heroic assumptions and relies heavily on fiscal and regulatory tools, along with lots of state-level actions.
Missing from Plan B is the emphasis on innovation and industrial policy, both of which might have a larger impact on U.S. emissions. The elephant in the room that cannot be ignored is that the United States needs a climate bill that puts its targets for reducing emissions by 2030 and 2050 into law, gives the right government agencies the authority to set policies and addresses industrial and workforce needs.
The Climate Policy Lab directed by Kelly Sims Gallagher receives funding from a number of sponsors listed at https://www.climatepolicylab.org/support. She is a member of the board of the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School and Energy Foundation China. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and currently serves on the study committee of the National Academies of Sciences study on accelerating decarbonization in the United States.
Halloween is a time to be haunted by ghosts, goblins and ghouls, but nothing in the universe is scarier than a black hole.
Black holes – regions in space where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape – are a hot topic in the news these days. Half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Roger Penrose for his mathematical work showing that black holes are an inescapable consequence of Einstein’s theory of gravity. Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel shared the other half for showing that a massive black hole sits at the center of our galaxy.
Black holes are scary for three reasons. If you fell into a black hole left over when a star died, you would be shredded. Also, the massive black holes seen at the center of all galaxies have insatiable appetites. And black holes are places where the laws of physics are obliterated.
I’ve been studying black holes for over 30 years. In particular, I’ve focused on the supermassive black holes that lurk at the center of galaxies. Most of the time they are inactive, but when they are active and eat stars and gas, the region close to the black hole can outshine the entire galaxy that hosts them. Galaxies where the black holes are active are called quasars. With all we’ve learned about black holes over the past few decades, there are still many mysteries to solve.
Death by black hole
Black holes are expected to form when a massive star dies. After the star’s nuclear fuel is exhausted, its core collapses to the densest state of matter imaginable, a hundred times denser than an atomic nucleus. That’s so dense that protons, neutrons and electrons are no longer discrete particles. Since black holes are dark, they are found when they orbit a normal star. The properties of the normal star allow astronomers to infer the properties of its dark companion, a black hole.
The first black hole to be confirmed was Cygnus X-1, the brightest X-ray source in the Cygnus constellation. Since then, about 50 black holes have been discovered in systems where a normal star orbits a black hole. They are the nearest examples of about 10 million that are expected to be scattered through the Milky Way.
Black holes are tombs of matter; nothing can escape them, not even light. The fate of anyone falling into a black hole would be a painful “spaghettification,” an idea popularized by Stephen Hawking in his book “A Brief History of Time.” In spaghettification, the intense gravity of the black hole would pull you apart, separating your bones, muscles, sinews and even molecules. As the poet Dante described the words over the gates of hell in his poem Divine Comedy: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
A photograph of a black hole at the center of galaxy M87. The black hole is outlined by emission from hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its event horizon. National Science Foundation via Getty Images
Nature knows how to make black holes over a staggering range of masses, from star corpses a few times the mass of the Sun to monsters tens of billions of times more massive. That’s like the difference between an apple and the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Just last year, astronomers published the first-ever picture of a black hole and its event horizon, a 7-billion-solar-mass beast at the center of the M87 elliptical galaxy.
It’s over a thousand times bigger than the black hole in our galaxy, whose discoverers snagged this year’s Nobel Prize. These black holes are dark most of the time, but when their gravity pulls in nearby stars and gas, they flare into intense activity and pump out a huge amount of radiation. Massive black holes are dangerous in two ways. If you get too close, the enormous gravity will suck you in. And if they are in their active quasar phase, you’ll be blasted by high-energy radiation.
How bright is a quasar? Imagine hovering over a large city like Los Angeles at night. The roughly 100 million lights from cars, houses and streets in the city correspond to the stars in a galaxy. In this analogy, the black hole in its active state is like a light source 1 inch in diameter in downtown LA that outshines the city by a factor of hundreds or thousands. Quasars are the brightest objects in the universe.
Supermassive black holes are strange
The biggest black hole discovered so far weighs in at 40 billion times the mass of the Sun, or 20 times the size of the solar system. Whereas the outer planets in our solar system orbit once in 250 years, this much more massive object spins once every three months. Its outer edge moves at half the speed of light. Like all black holes, the huge ones are shielded from view by an event horizon. At their centers is a singularity, a point in space where the density is infinite. We can’t understand the interior of a black hole because the laws of physics break down. Time freezes at the event horizon and gravity becomes infinite at the singularity.
The good news about massive black holes is that you could survive falling into one. Although their gravity is stronger, the stretching force is weaker than it would be with a small black hole and it would not kill you. The bad news is that the event horizon marks the edge of the abyss. Nothing can escape from inside the event horizon, so you could not escape or report on your experience.
According to Stephen Hawking, black holes are slowly evaporating. In the far future of the universe, long after all stars have died and galaxies have been wrenched from view by the accelerating cosmic expansion, black holes will be the last surviving objects.
The most massive black holes will take an unimaginable number of years to evaporate, estimated at 10 to the 100th power, or 10 with 100 zeroes after it. The scariest objects in the universe are almost eternal.
Chris Impey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
The big idea
Children seem to understand that others will give up more things they don’t like to get fewer items they prefer. This tendency indicates that they can trade with sophistication.
As a result, Halloween gives children a chance to practice a fundamental form of economic exchange – one they will have to grapple with for the rest of their lives.
How we did our work
To see whether kids realize that preference can be used as leverage, I worked with two other psychologists, Kayla Good and Alex Shaw.
Across three studies, which appeared in Judgment and Decision Making, an academic journal, we asked 314 children as young as 5 and up to 10 years old to predict whether someone we called Mr. Frog would agree to make a specific swap. In two of these studies, our team told some of these kids that Mr. Frog preferred chocolates to cookies and others learned that he liked these two foods equally.
We then proposed a series of trades, and children predicted whether Mr. Frog would accept them. In some cases, the trades were equal – such as a cookie for a chocolate – and in others they were unequal – say two cookies for one chocolate. Children were less likely to predict that Mr. Frog would give up more cookies for fewer chocolates if they were told he was just as fond of cookies as chocolates.
Why it matters
Whether they’re in the classroom or the cafeteria or on the playground, kids find opportunities to trade. And although this finding may not surprise you, it runs counter to a lot of what experts have learned about children’s commitment to fairness and equality.
Usually – when a pandemic isn’t disrupting everyday life – kids trade the candy they gather on Halloween. After they go trick-or-treating, children wind up with some treats they really, really like and others that they can’t stand. Once they’ve taken stock of their inventory, children can get down to the business of trading away candies they dislike for candies they do like.
These swaps can take place among siblings, neighborhood friends or classmates. Our results suggest that a child who winds up without any Kit Kats, but really likes them, will be more likely to trade two bags of M&M’s for one Kit Kat than a child who prefers M&M’s and Kit Kats equally.
This scenario assumes, however, that the child is trading with someone who knows about this preference. Otherwise, kids may rely on other criteria, such as a treat’s size or quantity, when they swap their Halloween hauls.
What still isn’t known
There’s still more to learn about children and trading. We asked children to predict what someone else – Mr. Frog – would do. This means that we don’t yet know if these predictions reflect what children would do themselves.
Second, we prompted children to think about specific trades. It is unclear which trades children would spontaneously propose themselves.
Third, we did not examine the extent to which other factors, such as sibling rivalry, might influence a child’s trading patterns. Kids with at least one sibling could have more experience trading and may thus engage in more sophisticated trading strategies.
Margaret Echelbarger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Over two weeks in November, world leaders and national negotiators will meet in Scotland to discuss what to do about climate change. It’s a complex process that can be hard to make sense of from the outside, but it’s how international law and institutions help solve problems that no single country can fix on its own.
I worked for the United Nations for several years as a law and policy adviser and have been involved in international negotiations. Here’s what’s happening behind closed doors and why people are concerned that COP26 might not meet its goals.
That treaty has since been updated, including in 2015 when nations signed the Paris climate agreement. That agreement set the goal of limiting global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F), and preferably to 1.5 C (2.7 F), to avoid catastrophic climate change.
COP26 stands for the 26th Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC. The “parties” are the 196 countries that ratified the treaty plus the European Union. The United Kingdom, partnering with Italy, is hosting COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct. 31 through Nov. 12, 2021, after a one-year postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why are world leaders so focused on climate change?
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report, released in August 2021, warns in its strongest terms yet that human activities have unequivocally warmed the planet, and that climate change is now widespread, rapid and intensifying.
Enough greenhouse gas emissions are already in the atmosphere, and they stay there long enough, that even under the most ambitious scenario of countries quickly reducing their emissions, the world will experience rising temperatures through at least mid-century.
However, there remains a narrow window of opportunity. If countries can cut global emissions to “net zero” by 2050, that could bring warming back to under 1.5 C in the second half of the 21st century. How to get closer to that course is what leaders and negotiators are discussing.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the latest climate science findings a ‘code red for humanity.’ UNFCCC
What happens at COP26?
During the first days of the conference, around 120 heads of state, like U.S. President Joe Biden, and their representatives will gather to demonstrate their political commitment to slowing climate change.
Once the heads of state depart, country delegations, often led by ministers of environment, engage in days of negotiations, events and exchanges to adopt their positions, make new pledges and join new initiatives. These interactions are based on months of prior discussions, policy papers and proposals prepared by groups of states, U.N. staff and other experts.
Nongovernmental organizations and business leaders also attend the conference, and COP26 has a public side with sessions focused on topics such as the impact of climate change on small island states, forests or agriculture, as well as exhibitions and other events.
Celebrities like youth climate activist Greta Thunberg add public pressure on world leaders. UNFCCC
What is COP26 expected to accomplish?
Countries are required under the Paris Agreement to update their national climate action plans every five years, including at COP26. This year, they’re expected to have ambitious targets through 2030. These are known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs.
The Paris Agreement requires countries to report their NDCs, but it allows them leeway in determining how they reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The initial set of emission reduction targets in 2015 was far too weak to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
One key goal of COP26 is to ratchet up these targets to reach net zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century.
Another aim of COP26 is to increase climate finance to help poorer countries transition to clean energy and adapt to climate change. This is an important issue of justice for many developing countries whose people bear the largest burden from climate change but have contributed least to it. Wealthy countries promised in 2009 to contribute 0 billion a year by 2020 to help developing nations, a goal that has not been reached. The U.S., U.K. and EU, among the largest historic greenhouse emitters, are increasing their financial commitments, and banks, businesses, insurers and private investors are being asked to do more.
Other objectives include phasing out coal use and generating solutions that preserve, restore or regenerate natural carbon sinks, such as forests.
Chinese street vendors sell vegetables outside a state-owned coal-fired power plant in 2017. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
Are countries on track to meet the international climate goals?
The U.N. warned in September 2021 that countries’ revised targets were too weak and would leave the world on pace to warm 2.7 C (4.9 F) by the end of the century. However, governments are also facing another challenge this fall that could affect how they respond: Energy supply shortages have left Europe and China with price spikes for natural gas, coal and oil.
China – the world’s largest emitter – submitted an updated NDC on Oct. 28 with little change from pledges it announced almost a year ago. Major fossil fuel producers such as Russia and Australia seem unwilling to strengthen their commitments. Saudi Arabia strengthened its targets but doesn’t count exports of oil and gas, which it says it will continue producing. India – a critical player as the second-largest consumer, producer and importer of coal globally – has also not yet committed.
Other developing nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa and Mexico are important. So is Brazil, which, under Jair Bolsonaro’s watch, has increased deforestation of the Amazon – the world’s largest rainforest and crucial for biodiversity and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
What happens if COP26 doesn’t meet its goals?
Many insiders believe that COP26 won’t reach its goal of having strong enough commitments from countries to cut global greenhouse gas emissions 45% by 2030. That means the world won’t be on a smooth course for reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and the goal of keeping warming under 1.5 C.
But organizers maintain that keeping warming under 1.5 C is still possible. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been leading the U.S. negotiations, remains hopeful that enough countries will create momentum for others to strengthen their reduction targets by 2025.
That translates into many premature deaths, more mass migration, major economic losses, large swaths of unlivable land and violent conflict over resources and food – what the U.N. secretary-general has called “a hellish future.”
Shelley Inglis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
July 2021 was Earth's hottest month on record and was marked by disasters, including extreme storms, floods and wildfires.Thomas Lohnes via Getty Images
Climate change has been accumulating slowly but relentlessly for decades. The changes might sound small when you hear about them – another tenth of a degree warmer, another centimeter of sea level rise – but seemingly small changes can have big effects on the world around us, especially regionally.
The problem is that while effects are small at any time, they accumulate. Those effects have now accumulated to the point where their influence is contributing to damaging heat waves, drought and rainfall extremes that can’t be ignored.
The most recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is more emphatic than ever: Climate change, caused by human activities like burning fossil fuels, is having damaging effects on the climate as we know it, and those effects are rapidly getting worse.
Earth’s energy imbalance
An excellent example of how climate change accumulates is Earth’s energy imbalance. I am a climate scientist and have a new book on this about to be published by Cambridge University Press.
The Sun bombards Earth with a constant stream of about 173,600 terawatts (that is 12 zeros) of energy in the form of solar radiation. About 30% of that energy is reflected back into space by clouds and reflective surfaces, like ice and snow, leaving 122,100 terawatts to drive all the weather and climate systems around us, including the water cycle. Almost all of that energy cycles back to space – except for about 460 TW.
That remaining 460 TW is the problem we’re facing. That excess energy, trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is heating up the planet. That is the Earth’s energy imbalance, or in other words, global warming.
Outgoing radiation is decreasing, owing to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and leading to Earth’s energy imbalance of 460 terawatts. The percentage going into each domain is indicated. Kevin Trenberth, CC BY-ND
In comparison with the natural flow of energy through the climate system, 460 TW seems small – it’s only a fraction of 1 percent. Consequently, we cannot go outside and feel the extra energy. But the heat accumulates, and it is now having consequences.
To put that in perspective, the total amount of electricity generated worldwide in 2018 was about 2.6 TW. If you look at all energy used around the world, including for heat, industry and vehicles, it’s about 19.5 TW. Earth’s energy imbalance is huge in comparison.
Interfering with the natural flow of energy through the climate system is where humans make their mark. By burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests and releasing greenhouse gases in other ways, humans are sending gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere that trap more of that incoming energy rather than letting it radiate back out.
Before the first industries began burning large amounts of fossil fuels in the 1800s, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was estimated at around 280 parts per million of volume. In 1958, when Dave Keeling began measuring atmospheric concentrations at Mauna Loa in Hawaii, that level was 310 parts per million. Today, those values have climbed to about 415 parts per million, a 48% increase.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and increased amounts cause heating. In this case, the human increment is not small.
Where does the extra energy go?
Measurements over time show that over 90% of this extra energy is going into the oceans, where it causes the water to expand and sea level to rise.
The upper layer of the oceans started warming around the 1970s. By the early 1990s, heat was reaching 500 to 1,000 meters (1,640 to 3,280 feet) deep. By 2005, it was heating the ocean below 1,500 meters (nearly 5,000 feet).
The average global temperature change at different ocean depths, in zetajoules, from 1958 to 2020. The top chart shows the upper 2,000 meters (6,561 feet) compared with the 1981-2010 average. The bottom shows the increase at different depths. Reds are warmer than average, blues are cooler. Cheng et al, 2021, CC BY-ND
Global sea level, measured by flights and satellites, was rising at a rate of about 3 millimeters per year from 1992 to 2012. Since then, it been increasing at about 4 millimeters a year. In 29 years, it has risen over 90 millimeters (3.5 inches).
If 3.5 inches doesn’t sound like much, talk to the coastal communities that exist a few feet above sea level. In some regions, these effects have led to chronic sunny day flooding during high tides, like Miami, San Francisco and Venice, Italy. Coastal storm surges are higher and much more destructive, especially from hurricanes. It’s an existential threat to some low-lying island nations and a growing expense for U.S. coastal cities.
Some of that extra energy, about 13 terawatts, goes into melting ice. Arctic sea ice in summer has decreased by over 40% since 1979. Some excess energy melts land ice, such as glaciers and permafrost on Greenland, Antarctica, which puts more water into the ocean and contributes to sea level rise.
Some energy penetrates into land, about 14 TW. But as long as land is wet, a lot of energy cycles into evapotranspiration – evaporation and transpiration in plants – which moistens the atmosphere and fuels weather systems. It is when there is a drought or during the dry season that effects accumulate on land, through drying and wilting of plants, raising temperatures and greatly increasing risk of heat waves and wildfire.
Consequences of more heat
Over oceans, the extra heat provides a tremendous resource of moisture for the atmosphere. That becomes latent heat in storms that supersizes hurricanes and rainstorms, leading to flooding, as people in many parts of the world have experienced in recent months.
Air can contain about 4% more moisture for every 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.55 Celsius) increase in temperature, and air above the oceans is some 5% to 15% moister than it was prior to 1970. Hence, about a 10% increase in heavy rain results as storms gather the excess moisture.
Again, this may not sound like much, but that increase enlivens the updrafts and the storms, and then the storm lasts longer, so suddenly there is a 30% increase in the rainfall, as has been documented in several cases of major flooding.
Cyclone Yasa heads for Fiji in December 2020. It was the fourth most-intense tropical cyclone on record in the South Pacific. NASA Earth Observatory
In Mediterranean climates, characterized by long, dry summers, such as in California, eastern Australia and around the Mediterranean, the wildfire risk grows, and fires can be readily triggered by natural sources, like dry lightning, or human causes.
Extreme events in weather have always occurred, but human influences are now pushing them outside their previous limits.
The straw that breaks the camel’s back syndrome
So, while all weather events are driven by natural influences, the impacts are greatly magnified by human-induced climate change. Hurricanes cross thresholds, levees break and floods run amok. Elsewhere, fires burn out of control, things break and people die.
I call it “The straw that breaks the camel’s back syndrome.” This is extreme nonlinearity, meaning the risks aren’t rising in a straight line – they’re rising much faster, and it confounds economists who have greatly underestimated the costs of human-induced climate change.
The result has been far too little action both in slowing and stopping the problems, and in planning for impacts and building resilience – despite years of warnings from scientists. The lack of adequate planning means we all suffer the consequences.
[The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.Weekly on Wednesdays.]
