Boiling Point
Boiling Point
How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis—And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster
Book excerpt
By: Ross Gelbspan
Date: 2004
Source: Gelbspan, Ross. Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis—And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster. New York: Basic Books, 2004.
About the Author: Ross Gelbspan is a retired journalist who worked at the Philadelphia Bulletin, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, and the Boston Globe over his thirty-one-year career. As the Special Projects Editor of the Boston Globe, he edited and directed a series of articles on job discrimination against African-Americans in the Boston area by corporations, unions, colleges and universities, newspapers, and state and city civil services. The series won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize. His cover article on climate change, published in the December 1995 issue of Harper's Magazine, yielded a National Magazine Award. Gelbspan has published books on global climate warming, including The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth's Threatened Climate and Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists are Fueling the Climate Crisis—and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster. He is also the author of several book chapters and articles on global warming and climate change, published in newspapers throughout the USA. Gelbspan also taught at the Columbia University School of Journalism.
INTRODUCTION
The significance of human impact on the increase of greenhouse effect and global warming that is inducing climate changes everywhere is a controversial issue, involving environmental movements, concerned scientists, oil and coal companies, and political interests. Strong financial interests form a formidable barrier against measures to cut down carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases. A systematic denial by skeptic scientists siding with such big oil and coal interests dismisses the significant human role on the greenhouse effect and climate change. A main strategy of fossil-fuel lobbyists has been to convince both the public and their policy makers that the climate changes observed in recent decades are part of a natural cycle, with little, if any, contribution from industrial emissions. Furthermore, the lack of coordination among the several environmental movements and non-governmental organizations, according to Ross Gelbspan, has prevented activists from effectively galvanizing the public opinion around the issue, since a common environmental agenda is not developed by these groups to counteract the heavyweight interest groups lobbying in Washington.
The greenhouse effect is in fact a natural phenomenon, thanks to which multi-cellular life forms evolved and thrived on Earth. Indeed, life itself was the major contributor to the optimum greenhouse effect and its atmospheric gaseous composition, as well as median global temperatures of the last 400 million years, which favored biological evolution and species diver-sification. Cyanobacteria and other primordial photosynthetic organisms living in water and, later, primeval plants growing on marshlands and land, gradually increased the level of oxygen in the atmosphere. 3.5 billion years ago, the atmospheric oxygen level was nearly 0 percent, as opposed to the 20 percent it was approximately 400 million years ago. Other atmospheric gases, such as methane, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide were also regulated through the ages by the natural process of respiratory exchange of living beings, such as plants in forests, animal populations, microrganic activity in soils and waters, organic matter decomposition, etc. Such interdependence and interchange between life and atmospheric balance and gaseous composition shows a self-regulatory activity, oscillating in a dynamic balance, which is expressed in alternate cycles of warmer and colder climatic periods. For instance, plant respiration and organic matter decomposition are natural sources of carbon dioxide and methane, released in the atmosphere in amounts ten times higher than human-related emissions. However, forests, soil bacteria, and microrganic life forms in oceans and waters also act like natural sinks, by reabsorbing methane and carbon dioxide.
The rapid expansion of human population of the last 250 years, associated with increased deforestation, burning of coal and wood, and augmented emissions of water vapor—in addition to the Industrial Revolution practices and fossil fuel burning of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—have elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to 31 percent since 1750. Industrial activity also released (and keeps releasing) into the atmosphere millions of tons of black smoke soot, sulfur dioxides, dioxins, furans, mercury, lead alkaloids, and other toxic compounds that altered the composition of troposphere (the lower atmospheric layer), increasing tropospheric ozone formation with its typical "smog." Such emissions increased the greenhouse effect and caused sulfuric acid formation precipitation to soils, lakes, and rivers under the form of acid rains. On the other hand, the increased concentrations of carbon monoxide in the atmospheric upper layers, known as stratosphere, are literally destroying the ozone shield that protects the surface of Earth from direct exposure to cosmic ultraviolet radiation. The dramatic increase in human population of the last 250 years and the rapid deforestation of large areas in both hemispheres cannot be ruled out as important factors in global warming and climate change. Human-derived emissions and contamination of the environment presently exceeds the capacity of the natural forces involved in the environmental self-regulation during the last 400 million years.
Throughout the last millions of years, climate has undergone sudden oscillations, which led to alternating periods of intense cold weather, known as Glacial Ages, and more tempered ones, the Interglacial Ages. The study of the climate history of the last 400,000 years enabled paleoclimatologists to understand that small changes, when persistent for a long enough period, may result in radical climate changes. The atmospheric composition of each of these ages is well recorded today, because ice in glaciers and polar ice caps trap air inside their structure. By perforating and drilling mile-long cylinders of ice and analyzing each layer, investigators can measure the gaseous composition and the proportion among gases associated with each climatic period, as well as the progressive changes occurred in the years preceding a major climate shift. Based on the gathered data, computer scenarios were developed to assess the recent human impact on climate and global temperature. Greenhouses gases emitted by humans have already altered the capacity of thermal radiation release from Earth to the space. The planet is absorbing more heat from solar radiation than releasing it, because such gases absorb and retain thermal energy, preventing its escape and dispersion, thus returning to the Earth's surface. In other words, Earth is getting warmer, and the temperature of ocean surface is gradually increasing, which causes, for instance, more hurricanes and tropical storms in certain regions, and longer and more intense draughts in other regions.
Since the end of the nineteenth century, the median global temperature has increased 1.3°F (0.75°C). Estimates are that it will further increase between 0.7°-1.2°F (0.4°-0.7°C) in the next fifty years, because of the existing levels of greenhouse gases. In the Arctic region (Greenland, Alaska, and Siberia), global warming is already evident as the progressive melting and shrinking of glaciers has been annually registered for the last thirty years. As the median global temperature rises, permafrost—the underground frozen soil of Arctic lands such as those of Siberia, Alaska, and northern parts of Canada—is also thawing and releasing in the process huge amounts of methane into the atmosphere, thus aggravating the greenhouse effect. Bush plants are invading areas in the northeastern parts of Alaska that until 1949 were covered only by Arctic tundra, due to the decrease of 30-40 percent of the Alaskan glaciers. U.S. Geological Survey researchers recorded in 1986 a temperature increase in the Alaskan soil of 3.6-7.2°F (2-4°C) since 1949. As these and other regions where huge quantities of frozen fresh water are gradually melting into the seas, the salinity of the surrounding oceans is being modified and its surface waters are becoming less dense. Ocean temperatures are also rising, a direct impact on climate that will ultimately raise sea levels over the next decades. Since most of the human populations around the globe are concentrated along coastal lines, even a slight sea level elevation can result in the flooding of entire coastal cities and villages and the displacement of millions of people. Another consequence of increased sea temperatures are stronger and more frequent hurricanes, tropical storms and floods, with their heavy toll upon human lives and the economy of entire regions.
Although concerned scientists and environmental groups have warned for decades on the need of global measures to revert the destructive policy of unchecked economic growth by destroying the environment, they have received little credit until recently. In 1989, the United Nations finally created a permanent agency for the research and monitoring of global warming and climate change, aiming the development of global policies to curb the human impact. The agency was named Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The 1990 IPCC's first report acknowledged the human impact on global warming in the last one hundred years and strongly recommended governmental actions to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by state members around the globe. This report also provided the UN with arguments to start an annual debate among its nation members, known as Climate Change Conventions (CCCs). During the CCC of 1992, held in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 154 countries signed a letter of intention to reduce emissions in industrialized countries back to the existing levels of 1990 by the year 2000. The United States, however, declined to sign the Rio document of 1992 and the CCC Berlin Mandate of 1995. The American Government agreed for the first time, in 1996, to support the IPCC against opposing scientists and to legally adopt emissions reduction targets. However, the U.S. did not ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, targeting to reduce emissions until 2010. Further discussions of the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 and 2000 failed to reach a consensus, scheduling a new discussion in 2001, when the new Bush Administration quit the U.S. participation. In 2002 the European Union members, Japan, and hundreds of other countries finally ratified the Kyoto Protocol, although its full legal force still depends on the ratification by those industrialized nations responsible for 55 percent of global emissions. This occurred in 2005, when Albania ratified the protocol.
As an American alternative to the Kyoto Protocol, the Bush Administration has commissioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop a different strategy for cutting down greenhouse gases emissions without causing a negative impact in the U.S. economy. EPA developed two simultaneous approaches to the issue, presented in 2002 by President Bush as "The Clear Skies Act" and "The Global Climate Change Initiative." The Clear Skies Act aims to cut by 2010 73 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 67 percent of nitrogen oxides, and 69 percent of mercury emissions, the three gases considered the worst pollutants for public health. The Global Climate Change Initiative consists of a strategy to reduce greenhouse gases emissions by 18 percent over the next decade and also allocates research funds for climate change studies. In 2003, the Clear Skies Act established federally enforceable limits of the three above-mentioned gases and also a flexible regulatory policy to reduce such emissions by power generation plants and other industrial activities. Nevertheless, these Acts did not tackle the emissions of carbon dioxide in an effective way, whose tropospheric levels were 280 parts per million (ppm) before the industrial era and now represent 370 ppm and rising.
PRIMARY SOURCE
… Finally, the environmental establishment insists on casting the climate crisis as an environmental problem. But climate change is no longer the exclusive franchise of the environmental movement. Any successful movement must include horizontal alliances with groups involved in international relief and development, campaign finance reform, public health, corporate accountability, labor, human rights, and environmental justice. The real dimensions of climate change directly affect the agendas of a wide spectrum of activist organizations.
Regrettably, the environmental movement has proven it cannot accomplish large-scale change by itself. Despite occasional spasms of cooperation, the major environmental groups have been unwilling to join together around a unified climate agenda, pool resources, and mobilize a united campaign on the climate. Even as the major funders of climate and energy-oriented groups hold summit meetings in search of a common vision, they shy away from the most obvious of imperatives: using their combined influence and outreach to focus attention—and demand action—on the climate crisis. As the major national groups insist on promoting exclusive agendas and protecting carefully defined turf (in the process, squandering both talent and donor dollars on internecine fighting), the climate movement is spinning its wheels….
Take the critical issue of climate stabilization—the level at which the world agrees to cap the buildup of carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. The major national environmental groups focusing on climate—groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the World Wildlife Federation—have agreed to accept what they see as a politically feasible target of 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide….
While the 450 goal may be politically realistic, it would likely be environmentally catastrophic. With carbon levels having risen by only 90 parts per million (from their preindustrial level of 280 ppm to more than 370 ppm today), glaciers are now melting into puddles, sea levels are rising, violent weather is increasing and the timing of the seasons has changed—all from a 1°F rise in the last century. Carbon concentrations of 450 ppm will most likely result in a deeply fractured and chaotic world …
The major, national environmental groups, moreover, are trapped in a "Beltway" mentality that measures progress in small, incremental victories. They are operating in a Washington environment that is at best indifferent and at worst actively antagonistic. And too often these organizations are at the mercy of fickle funders whose agendas range from protecting wetlands to keeping disposable diapers out of landfills….
The fossil fuel lobby has hijacked America's energy and climate policies. An appropriate response would seem to require a coalition of corporate and financial institutions of equivalent force and influence to counteract the carbon industry's stranglehold on Congress and the White House….
The vast majority of climate groups shun confrontation and work instead to get people to reduce their personal energy footprints. That can certainly help spread awareness of the issue….
… By persuading concerned citizens to cut back on their personal energy use, these groups are promoting the implicit message that climate change can be solved by individual resolve. It cannot.
The implicit message behind this approach is one of blaming the victim: People are made to feel guilty if they own a gas guzzler or live in a poorly insulated home. In fact, people should be outraged that the government does not require automakers to sell cars that run on clean fuels, that building codes do not reduce heating and cooling energy requirements by 70 percent and that government energy policies do not mandate decentralized, home-based or regional sources of clean electricity.
What many groups offer their followers instead is the consolation of personal sense of righteousness that comes from living one's life a bit more frugally. That feeling of righteousness, coincidentally, is largely reserved for wealthier people who can afford to exercise some control over their housing and transportation expenditures. Many poorer people—who cannot afford to trade in their 1990 gas guzzlers for a shiny new Toyota Prius—are deprived by their circumstances of the chance to enjoy the same sense of righteousness, illusory though it may be….
The tragedy underlying the failure of the environmental community lies in the fact that so many talented, dedicated and underpaid people are putting their lives on the line—in ways that will make little difference to the climate crisis. They are outspoken in their despair about what is happening to the planet. They are candid about their acceptance of a self-defeating political realism that requires relentless accommodation. What is missing from virtually all these groups is an expression of the rage they all feel.
When small, unimposing woman refused to yeild her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, it led to more than some sympathetic shoulder shrugging. It led to a few brave African American students demanding service at a white-only diner. And that, in turn, led to a movement that refused to be stifled until it had achieved full voting rights, equal job opportunities, and a full and complete measure of political representation—with or without the approval of the majority of the country.
The United States, similarly, did not withdraw from Vietnam because a few individuals moved to Canada or Sweden to avoid military service—or because the leaders of the antiwar movement negotiated a reduction of the bombing runs over North Vietnam. The United States left Vietnam because of a succession of massive demonstrations and dramatic episodes of civil disobedience that the press could not ignore. Ultimately, the United States withdrew from that war because of a sustained uprising of popular will that ultimately forced one president of the United States to drop his plans for reelection and pressured his successor to scramble until he had achieved something he could call "peace with honor."
These comparisons to the climate movement may be seen as too harsh until one considers the most fundamental fact about the climate crisis.
Activists compromise. Nature does not.
SIGNIFICANCE
In spite of the recent endeavors by the United Nations through those countries committed to the Kyoto Protocol, and despite the United States recent initiatives, such measures presently in process of implementation will hardly suffice to deter and revert the climatic changes already in course as a consequence of emissions of the last hundred years. Present and past emissions such as carbon dioxide, methane, tropospheric ozone, nitrous oxide, and perfluorocarbon compounds are climate forcing agents, which elevate the ocean median temperature as a result of the greenhouse effect. Another impact of ocean heating is being already felt upon the warm ocean current (derived from the Gulf Stream) that provides Western Europe with warming winds, which add between 9°-18°F (5°-10°C) to European median temperatures. The Gulf Stream carries warm tropical waters to the North Atlantic Ocean, and near 40°N. Latitude, it divides itself into two currents. One of these two daughter-currents progresses around the Western coast of Europe and heads to the European side of Greenland while the other heads to the Canadian side of Greenland. From there they sink to the ocean floor and return southward, because the water coming from the south contains more salt (higher density) than the seawater around Arctic glaciers. The United Kingdom National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in Southampton has reported, in 2004, a 30 percent decrease in the current flow from the Gulf Stream waters entering the European current. Further analysis by the NOC team, by adding data previously collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has shown that most of such slow-down has occurred between 1992 and 1998. The NOC study found that the sinking water site on the European side of Greenland is not fully functional, thus sending South only 50 percent of deep water. The recent extra increase of fresh water is making the Arctic waters even less dense, altering the salinity of the incoming current. Whether such extra fresh water originates from rapidly Arctic melting glaciers or from increased flow of Siberian rivers into the sea (or both) is still in dispute. Nevertheless, the recent density decrease on surface seawaters does prevent the warm current to sink completely and therefore slows down the current flow coming from the South. If such current flow is further slowed, temperatures may drop between 9°-18°F (5°-10°C) in Western Europe, plunging the region into a new Little Ice Age, similar to that predominating in Europe between the thirteenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries.
Since some greenhouse gases take long periods to be dissipated from the atmosphere, the levels already present may continue to promote median temperature elevation for at least fifty more years. For instance, carbon monoxide takes more than one hundred years to dissipate, whereas perfluorocarbon compounds take more than one thousand years, and nitrous oxide takes one hundred years. Oceans are slow absorbers of heat but are also slow energy releasers, which suggests that the present atmospheric gaseous composition not only will continue to promote the heating process but also implies another one-hundred-year period for oceans to return to their previous energy balance.
Gelbspan alerts that the U.S. recent governmental provisions to deal with climate change are shy measures and may turn out to be ineffective if major national environmental groups continue to promote their individual agendas instead of jointly prioritizing the climate change issues that ultimately affect their own particular areas of interest. Stronger environmental activism and aggressive educational campaigns to improve public awareness about the human impact on climate change are essential and urgent measures to put real pressure on politicians in the United States and around the world to actually act to prevent further emissions and to prioritize the funding of existing and new green technologies, including those necessary to reabsorp the greenhouse gases already emitted.
FURTHER RESOURCES
Books
Gelbspan, Ross. The Heat Is On: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription. New York: Perseus Books Group, 1998.
Thomas, Lewis. The Fragile Species. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1993.
Weart, Spencer. "Rapid Climate Change." In The Discovery of Global Warming. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Williams, Michael A. Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Periodicals
Serreze, M., et al. "Observational Evidence of Recent Change in the Northern High-latitude Environment." Climatic Change 46 (2000): 159-207.
Vellinga, M., and R.A. Wood. "Global Climatic Impacts of a Collapse of the Atlantic Thermoline Circulation." Climatic Change 54, 3 (2002): 251-267.
Web sites
"Climate of 2004 Annual Review." The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, January 13, 2005. 〈http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2004/ann/global.html〉 (accessed March 2, 2006).
Gelbspan, Ross. "Katrina's Real Name." Boston.com, August 30, 2005. 〈http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/30/katrinas_real_name?mode=PF〉 (accessed March 2, 2006).
Pearce, Fred. "Failing Ocean Current Raises Fears of Mini Ice Age." The NewScientist.com, November 30, 2005. 〈http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8398〉 (accessed March 2, 2006).
"Working Group I: The Science of Climate Change (Summary for Policy Makers)." Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 〈http://www.ipcc-wg2.org/index.html〉 (accessed March 2, 2006).
Boiling point
Boiling point
The boiling point of a liquid is the temperature at which the vapor pressure of the liquid equals the external pressure on the liquid. When a liquid is raised to its boiling point, vapor bubbles form in the liquid, rise to the surface, and burst: that is, the liquid boils.
Below the boiling point of a given liquid, molecules may both leave and enter the surface of a body of the liquid due to random thermal motion. When the rate of movement of molecules into the gas phase from the liquid equals the rate of movement of molecules into the liquid phase from the gas phase, the two phases are in equilibrium. If they are out of equilibrium, the liquid may either acquire molecules from the air or given them up to the air (evaporate). However, these exchanges happen only at the surface of the liquid.
When the temperature is raised, more molecules have enough energy to enter the gas phase. If the glass were left uncovered, the water would disappear more quickly. If the glass was kept covered, a new equilibrium would be established more quickly. As the temperature increases, more molecules enter the gas phase and the vapor pressure of the liquid increases.
At some point, as the temperature increases, the vapor pressure of the liquid will increase to the point where it equals the external or atmospheric pressure. At this point, the liquid can enter its vapor phase at any point throughout its volume, not just at its surface. Bubbles form and rise in the liquid, and it is said to be boiling. Below this temperature, a bubble cannot form because the external pressure is greater than the pressure in the bubble and it collapses.
The temperature at which the external pressure and the vapor pressure are equal is called the normal boiling point. For water, this temperature is 212°F (100°C). In general, a liquid with high vapor pressures and a low normal boiling point is said to be volatile. Such liquids often have strong smells because they are rapidly giving up large quantities of molecules to the air. Liquids with low vapor pressures and high normal boiling points are non-volatile and have little or no odor.
If the external pressure is less than one atmosphere (the typical pressure at sea level), liquids will boil at lower temperatures than their normal boiling points. At high elevations, the atmospheric pressure is lower than one atmosphere. At the top of Mount Everest, for example, where the atmospheric pressure is about 5 pounds per square inch (psi), or 260 mm Hg, versus 14.7 psi at sea level, the boiling point of water is only 160°F (71°C), versus 212°F (100°C) at sea level. At such high elevations, it is often necessary to follow special instructions for cooking and baking, as the water temperature is not high enough to cook food. Conversely, if the atmospheric pressure is greater than one atmosphere, liquids will boil at higher temperatures than their normal boiling points. We can use this to our advantage. In a pressure cooker, we increase the pressure so that it is greater than one atmosphere. As a result, water boils at a higher temperature and food cooks faster. We can also raise the boiling point of a liquid by adding a non-volatile solute to it. For example, adding salt to water raises its boiling point.
Rashmi Venkateswaran
Boiling Point
Boiling point
The boiling point of a liquid substance is the temperature at which the vapor pressure of the liquid equals the external pressure on the liquid. Vapor bubbles form in the liquid, rise to the surface and burst, causing the liquid to boil.
At room temperature, in a closed system, there is an equilibrium between the liquid and its vapor phase. For example, if a glass of water is left open, the water will eventually evaporate, although it may take a few days. On the other hand, if the glass is kept covered, when the cover is removed, there is a large amount of water on the bottom of the cover. The molecules of the liquid in the glass move into the vapor phase, but when they encounter the cold surface of the cover, they condense back into liquid form and fall back into the liquid. When the rate of movement of molecules into the gas phase from the liquid equals the rate of movement of molecules into the liquid phase from the gas phase, the two phases are in equilibrium.
When the temperature is raised, more molecules have enough energy to enter the gas phase. If the glass were left uncovered, the water would disappear more quickly. If the glass was kept covered, a new equilibrium would be established more quickly. As the temperature increases, more molecules enter the gas phase and the vapor pressure of the liquid increases.
At some point in time, as the temperature increases, the vapor pressure of the liquid will increase to the point where it equals the external or atmospheric pressure . At this point, bubbles begin to form and rise in the liquid and it is said to be boiling. Before this temperature, bubbles cannot form because the external pressure is greater than the pressure in the bubble and it collapses. The temperature at which the external pressure and the vapor pressure are equal is called the normal boiling point. For water, this temperature is 212°F (100°C). In general, a liquid with high vapor pressures and a low normal boiling point is said to be volatile. Such liquids usually have strong smells. Liquids with low vapor pressures and high normal boiling points are non-volatile and have little or no odor.
If the external pressure is less than one atmosphere, liquids will boil at lower temperatures than their normal boiling points. At high elevations, the atmospheric pressure is much lower than one atmosphere. At the top of Mount Everest, where the atmospheric pressure is about 5 psi (260 mm Hg), the boiling point of water is only 160°F (71°C). At such high elevations, it is often necessary to follow special instructions for cooking and baking, as the water temperature is not high enough to cook food. Conversely, if the atmospheric pressure is greater than one atmosphere, liquids will boil at higher temperatures than their normal boiling points. We can use this to our advantage. In a pressure cooker, we increase the pressure so that it is greater than one atmosphere. As a result, water boils at a higher temperature and food cooks faster. We can also raise the boiling point of a liquid by adding a non-volatile solute to it. For example, adding salt to water raises its boiling point.
Rashmi Venkateswaran
boiling point
boil·ing point • n. the temperature at which a liquid boils and turns to vapor. ∎ fig. the point at which anger or excitement breaks out into violent expression: racial tension surges to boiling point.