The global community faces an invisible problem that threatens to disrupt the entire planet: climate change.
According to recent reports, the rate of humanity's current greenhouse gas emissions is setting the world on a course toward leading scientists' projected worst-case scenario by the end of this century, and West Texas will not be immune to the ecological and economic impact.
Although experts do not foresee any way to reverse climate change, many believe today's society can make changes - including President-elect Barack Obama's call for an 80 percent greenhouse gas emissions reduction by 2050 - that, at the very least, will curb scientists ominous predictions.
"It is one of the most pressing challenges that we face today," said David Tissue, a research professor for the Centre for Plant and Food Science in Sydney, Australia, "and there is no doubt that global climate change is occurring."
Tissue, a former Texas Tech biological sciences professor who responded via e-mail, said scientists have been warning people about the increasing threat of global climate change for decades, but policy makers have yet to make it a top priority.
Katharine Hayhoe, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Tech, said climate change often is overshadowed by more immediate issues, such as economic or foreign troubles.
"These problems don't look urgent, but they will be in 20 or 30 years," she said. "It needs to be addressed very soon or it'll be worse than we've seen before."
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil have caused concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses to increase significantly, which has increased Earth's average surface temperature anywhere from 1.2 degrees to 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit in the last century.
In its 2007 report, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that an increase between 3.2 degrees and 9.7 degrees Fahrenheit could trigger massive global changes - such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, the Himalayan-Tibetan glaciers and Arctic summer ice - which, Hayhoe said, could have direct consequences on humans, including the submergence of major coastal cities in rising ocean levels.
A report by the Environmental Integrity Project found that carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants rose 3 percent in 2007 - the biggest single-year increase since 1998.
According to an October analysis of scientific publications by the World Wildlife Fund, the increased rate of carbon dioxide emissions is higher than all of the U.N. panel's scenarios.
The World Wildlife Fund also predicts that the Arctic Ocean is losing sea ice up to 30 years ahead of the U.N. panel's projections. Some scientists predict the summer sea ice could disappear between 2013 and 2040, which hasn't occurred in more than a million years.
The panel's 2007 re-examination of the impact of greenhouse gas emissions concluded that an 80 percent cut in emissions by 2050 likely would limit climate changes to "acceptable" levels.
Hayhoe, who contributed to the panel on climate change, said consequences of ignoring such measures must be taken seriously.
"We can't stop it," she said. "The change we're going to see is from what we've already put into the air. If we take action now, we can stabilize by the end of the century."
THE THREAT TO HUMANS
Although some areas are experiencing hotter temperatures, Hayhoe said, other areas will continue to experience "extreme" weather changes such as extended periods of rainfall or drought.
She said many coastal cities will be lost as the ocean rises from melting ice and warmer water.
But melting ice and rising oceans is not the only water-related threat.
"Half of the world gets its water from glaciers," Hayhoe said. "There will eventually be nothing left if it melts too fast."
According to the World Wildlife Fund analysis, the change in global temperatures since 1981 led to a reduction of global yields of wheat, maize and barley, which resulted in combined losses of roughly 40 million tons of food each year.
Another 2007 report concluded that children generally are more susceptible than adults to certain diseases resulting from air pollution because their bodies are still in development.
These diseases include heart and breathing disorders, Hayhoe said.
THE ECONOMICS OF GLOBAL WARMING
Aaron Huertas, press secretary for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said refusing to address the climate crisis will cost trillions of dollars by the end of the century.
Huertas said the United States needs to create green jobs and energy-efficient cars that will yield economic growth and allow people to spend less on oil and more money in their local economies.
Huertas said, the union has recommended employing the same cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide the United States has used since 2005 to regulate mercury emissions, which could improve the financial viability of renewable energy.
The system allows the government to establish a market for mercury emissions by selling permits to companies that emit mercury, he said. The companies then choose whether to invest in technologies that reduce emissions and meet goals or to buy credits from other companies that already have met them.
Huertas said the absence of regulation for carbon dioxide emissions allows companies to use the atmosphere as a "free dumping ground."
Tissue said a lack of action "boils down to priorities."
"Interestingly, our government can put trillions of dollars into a war, and $700 billion into the financial crisis," he said, "but it cannot find a way to subsidise renewable energy in any sizeable fashion."
Tissue said governments worldwide need to take immediate action to decrease energy use and increase energy conservation.
"Unless we change our lifestyle to some degree, and rather quickly," he said, "we will have a massive problem in the next decade."
THE OTHER VICTIMS
According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, about one-fifth of the world's 5,487 species of mammals are at risk of extinction. Human-caused hunting and habitat destruction threatens approximately 1,141 of these mammal species.
Celine Godard-Codding, an assistant professor in environmental toxicology at Tech, said two species of animals directly endangered by global climate change include sea turtles and polar bears.
"For sea turtles and reptilian species, the gender of the animals is determined by temperature," she said. "That means a fertilized egg will evolve and become a male or female sea turtle depending on the temperature."
Godard-Codding said scientists are concerned a temperature change will skew the sex ratio enough to become detrimental to the species.
For polar bears, she said, scientists are concerned about increasing rates of starvation and death by drowning. With warmer temperatures in the Arctic, sea ice melts faster than normal, shortening the species' hunting season and potentially stranding polar bears on icebergs after the surrounding ice disappears. Because of this, polar bears may need to swim longer distances than they are capable of and may drown.
The world's plant species also face significant risks.
A study published in "Science" magazine in October reported a temperature increase of 5.8 degrees Fahrenheit in Costa Rica over the next 100 years would cause 53 percent of the 1,902 lowland tropical plant species studied to deteriorate.
About half the carbon dioxide emissions have been absorbed by land and ocean, according to the World Wildlife Fund, but "the capability of these natural 'sinks' is declining at a greater rate than forecast in earlier studies."
SLOWING GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
Global climate change cannot be stopped, Hayhoe said, because scientists have yet to develop a method for removing the emissions already released into the atmosphere.
However, she said, people can slow the process and avoid catastrophic consequences by investing in renewable energy.
"Anyone who has been south of Lubbock has seen the wind turbines," she said. "We can still use the land underneath, and it could be an economic boom for West Texas."
Tissue said people can reduce their use of fossil fuels by buying gas-efficient cars, and they can conserve energy by purchasing efficient appliances.
People can contribute several ways, he said, but everyone needs to "break the mindset that we have unlimited energy and that our actions have no consequences."
"The longer you let it go unchecked," Hayhoe said, "the bigger the impact."
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