Scientists Warn of Warming

“It’s like playing a game in which you shoot a gun into the air,” said Mark Boslough, a physicist with Sandia National Laboratories.

He likened the danger going from comparatively minor, if the shot in the air comes down harmlessly, becoming progressively worse if the shot is aimed at your foot, then your temple.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we do know something bad is going to happen,” he told about 200 people attending a seminar Sunday called “Perspectives on Climate Change” at the Jewish Community Center. It was presented by the New Mexico chapter of the Fulbright Association.

In little more than a hundred years, the Industrial Revolution has brought astounding advancements in technology and life comforts, but at what price? Boslough asked.

The potential consequences could range from inconvenient weather to global catastrophe, he said.

Meanwhile, fellow physicist Professor David Gutzler of the University of New Mexico said there is an abundance of scientific evidence from trusted international sources that growing carbon dioxide levels causing climate change can be attributed to humans.

In New Mexico, average temperatures are warmer now than at any time during the past century, he said.

It’s possible, according to some models, that temperatures could rise an average of more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter and almost 8 degrees F in summer by the end of the century. That’s compared with a total global change in average temperature of only 1 degree in the 20th century.

Climate change would lead to reduced snow packs, less water, less agricultural areas, and more desert areas in New Mexico, resulting in higher energy costs and reduced quality of life, he added. Around the world, climate change could cause hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, wildfires and other natural disasters.

Saying he was speaking from a business perspective, Jeff Sterba, former CEO of PNM Resources, outlined some obstacles to addressing global warming, including “naysayers” who deny the existence of a problem.

Appointed in March as the CEO of American Water Works Co., Sterba said one of the biggest obstacles is “an enormous distrust” of business because of unstable financial markets in recent years.

Reducing the carbon output in industries must rely on a market driven system of providing incentives to business for developing solutions and providing jobs, he said.

The forum was co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Central New Mexico and the UNM Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society.
— This article appeared on page D2 of the Albuquerque Journal