Credit: www.globalwarmingart.com

The Valdez Glacier in Alaska's Chugach Mountains has thinned by approximately 300 feet over the last century. The unvegetated regions along its margins have been exposed primarily due to melting between 1980 and 2000.

As a winter storm closed in on New Brunswick February 13, a panel of environmental scholars at Rutgers came together to discuss global warming and how the country, the university, and individuals might cope with it. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had issued its summary report for policymakers February 2, saying that evidence for global warming was “unequivocal” and that it was “very likely” human beings are responsible for it.

Alan Robock, professor of environmental sciences and a contributor to earlier editions of the IPCC, explained that science and technology have gotten better since the first IPCC report in 1990, and that this has allowed the IPCC to become”90 percent certain” about the role of humans in global warming.

“The only scenario that is consistent with the warming [of the global climate] over the past 100 years is human,” said Robock, to an audience of students, faculty, and staff who came to listen to the panel discussion, “Global warming: It’s later than we think, but it’s not too late.” Robock added that the world’s climate has been warmer in the past 50 years than at any time in the past 1,300 years.

Anthony Broccoli, professor of environmental sciences and IPCC contributor, discussed the impact of climate change on New Jersey. The higher sea level already has risen in the past century and should rise at least another 2 feet in the next century, submerging much of the coast and the shore of Raritan Bay. The higher sea level portends severe flooding farther inland during strong storms, Broccoli said. The cycle of droughts and floods may intensify, and this has significant implications for the management of water.

“Water managers now must make hard decisions about timing the release of water from the reservoir into the Delaware River,” Broccoli said. “If they release it when it is too full, it ends up in someone’s living room downstream. If they lower the reserves and then there is a drought, they risk jeopardizing the water supply for New York City. These types of situations could have tremendous impact on water utilities and society as a whole.”

For Paul Falkowski, professor of geological and marine sciences, and interim director of the newly established Rutgers Energy Institute, carbon is the key. The aim of researchers, industry, and citizens should be to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere, and to contain, or “sequester,” as much of the carbon we do produce as possible.

He could offer no silver bullets, however. Even nuclear energy, which provides 11 percent of the power in the United States and much more in Europe, is no panacea, since we would only have enough uranium to last 30 years if everyone switched to nuclear power. “So, you can see the problem,” Falkowski said. “In this country, 77 percent of our energy comes from fossil fuels. They’re abundant. We’re not going to run out.”

Kevin Lyons, the university’s director of purchasing, spoke last. “As an institution, we buy a lot of things – $400 million in goods and services each year,” he said. He said the university is moving toward “green purchasing,” and looks at everything it buys from raw materials to shipment to disposal. Rutgers insists in its contracts with vendors that certain environmental standards be met, such as requiring that all cleaning products be biodegradable, Lyons said.

An express company has agreed to use only biodiesel fueled trucks when it comes to Rutgers, and vendors account to Rutgers for where their products were made and from what, how they are shipped, and how they are disposed of. “The purchasing power of the university is significant,” Lyons said. “We can actually move the market.”