The Gulf of Maine Times: Vol. 6 Num. 4 : Oceans and climate change focus of Yale lecture series

“Climate and the Oceans: Marine Conservation in a Global Society,” was the topic of a 12-part lecture series held this fall at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The series featured prominent experts who discussed potential effects of global climate change on marine environments, and the politics and policies that have shaped the climate change debate.
In an interview before his talk, Robert Watson discussed how the politics of global climate change impacts humans and ecosystems. Watson is the chief scientist and director of the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Network at the World Bank and former chairman of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC has issued three reports on climate change, each with more conclusive evidence than the preceding one for the existence of human-caused climate change.

“In the third report,” Watson said, “we noted the earth’s climate is warming, that we could not explain it on natural variability, and that most of the observed warming for the past 50 years is due to human activities. We also noted that most of the implications of the warming in the future will likely be adverse effects on ecological systems, sociological systems and human health.”

Watson said it was unfortunate that President Bush had “unsigned” the United States from the Kyoto Treaty to reduce gases that cause global warming. For the treaty to enter into force, it needs 55 countries to ratify, representing 55 percent of the world’s industrial emissions. Those targets could be reached without U.S. participation, but because it is the single largest producer of such emissions, Watson said it is important the United States sign on. Otherwise the developing nations, on which the treaty imposes no legal obligation, won’t take action to lower their increasing emissions.

Other speakers included J. Court Stevenson, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and Carol Shumway, the senior scientist for aquatic biodiversity at the New England Aquarium in Boston.

Stevenson addressed the effect of global warming and sea level rise on tidal wetlands. On a map of the world displayed during his talk, symbols representing deep-water heating of the ocean appear in only one place: the North Atlantic. Stevenson noted the existence of stearic expansion–the heating of ocean waters up to 3,000 meters [almost 10,000 feet] below the surface. He said that thousand-year air temperature trends suggest only one half a degree of warming over the past 150 years. “Why not more?” he asked, and partially answered his question by saying that arctic ice thinning has offset some of the temperature rise. And then there are these “hotspots” of deep water warming, “deeper than many of us thought,” he said, adding that no one has an explanation for why they exist primarily in the North Atlantic.

Stevenson said loss of wetlands due to sea level rise can be attributed, in part, to low tidal flushing. As a result, he said, “We are losing the buffering capacity of shorelines” as they are being overtaken by the oceans.

Stevenson is conducting a pilot study in Chesapeake Bay examining the effects of introducing dredged soils on to marshes to help restore lost sediment, and to augment the sediment supply in existing marshes that are sediment starved. By spraying thin layers of sediment on to the surface of marshes, he explained, it allows “the new marsh to grow up through it.” The process, he emphasized, has to be tightly timed with the right climatic conditions to avoid further damage to the marsh.

In her talk, “Citizen actions: getting the public involved in global environmental issues,” Shumway said a new branch of science called conservation psychology looks at the psychological consequences of the relationship of humans with the natural world. Humans, she said, once had an innate connection to nature, referred to as biophilia–but it has been lost. As for inspiring people to protect the environment, she said simply providing information doesn’t usually work. In programs she has evaluated, activities that provide an emotional connection to the issue, an appeal to values and a call for individual responsibility are most effective.