**4. Climate change**

So, global warming is happening and one of its consequences is that climates are changing. A warming Earth atmosphere-hydrosphere-biosphere system is not necessarily warming all climates. All of Earth's climates are not changing in the exactly the same ways (some may be warming, some drying, others becoming more hospitable to plant growth with longer growing seasons) or in the same directions (some may also be cooling, getting wetter, and seeing shorter growing seasons). And the pace of change is not consistent across space or time. Some are warming and some (particularly polar and high-latitude climates) are warming faster than others. Warming in Earth's polar regions is melting tundra permafrost [21], Arctic Ocean ice (and the Greenland ice sheet), and Antarctica's ice sheet. Antarctica's ice cap is shrinking in extent, it is thinning, and even hollowing out. The meltwaters from both poles are contributing to changes in ocean circulations, cooling of northward flowing warm currents like the Gulf Stream, furthering consequential shifts of atmospheric circulations from latitudinal to longitudinal flows in the northern hemisphere in the north Atlantic and in the Pacific [22]. The prospects of a colder Europe, caused by the diminishing flow of heat from the tropics, is troubling, given their regional agricultural production and dependence on regional production in many parts of the continent.

The belt of tropical climate (the intertropical convergence zone) is projected to expand due to increasing temperatures along the equator. This may intensify rainfall in the tropical rainforests and with added heat may widen the belt of rainforests and rainfall northward, southward, and upslope to higher elevations in mountainous areas, enabling spread of tropical weather conditions (hot and humid) that will last longer throughout the year [23]. The belt of low pressure will still migrate northward and southward with the progression of the astronomical seasons.

The expanded tropics may yield more and stronger tropical and subtropical storms (hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons), although the linkage of the changing "habits" of weather events to global warming is very tenuous [24, 25], primarily because weather is not climate. But this was one of the expected outcomes of global warming and changing climates expressed very early on in the discussion of the consequences of global warming as our experiences with subtropical storms is empirical (not theoretical), after all. We have not seen a rise in the number of storms annually, but the annual proportion of storms that are stronger does seem to be increasing. And another bit of a surprise to scientists, however, was a change in the storms themselves: they seem to be moving across Earth's surface (i.e., forward motion) more slowly, leading to longer and more devastating localized lashing by hurricane-force winds and extraordinarily heavy amounts of rainfall due to its increasing duration [26]. Both flooding and wind destruction have been increasing in the regions directly impacted by the storms. Warmer oceans strengthen and feed energy to extratropical storms, but they also swell (as water increases volume when it gets hotter and when it freezes) and inundate coastlines, adding to storm-surge problems on top of the flooding rains and high winds. We are finding that our present preparedness and planning for extratropical storms is being exceeded by the evolving nature of the storms. Future losses will be greater (and will spread farther into previously "safe" areas) and future costs for preparation, mitigation, and prevention of disasters will skyrocket alongside.

Sea-level rise is another problem on top of the complication of extratropical systems. Greater inundation extending further inland also "poisons" soils and water supplies with salty ocean water, causing additional problems, particularly for salt-intolerant vegetation (and people). Ocean water is also acidifying due to absorption of carbon dioxide (one of the three or four most important greenhouse gases) to create carbolic acid. Acidification is making ocean habitats less hospitable for ocean life like coral (another tangential consequence of global warming by

**11**

**Author details**

**5. Conclusion**

John P. Tiefenbacher

Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas, United States of America

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

of global warming and changing climates will produce those very results.

\*Address all correspondence to: tief@txstate.edu

provided the original work is properly cited.

*Introductory Chapter: Climates, Change, and Climate Change*

greenhouse-gas loading of the atmosphere) [27]. Fish are one of the fundamental dietary proteins of people around the world. But fish stocks are declining, biodiversity is declining, and ocean-oriented coastal economies are declining globally. Some aquatic and terrestrial species will find ways to survive through biological adaptation, others may not [28]. But these consequences are technically not caused by changing climates, *per se*. They are warming-induced and are usually beyond the discussions had about "climate change." But as one might imagine, these are but a few of the changes produced by the problems derived from global warming.

Public discussions about contemporary human-induced global warming and climate change began to emerge in the early 1980s. Now, 40 years later, the discourse is mired in a polarized "debate," where those who desire action to counteract global warming and to prepare for changing climates are countered by a powerful minority of "deniers" and "skeptics" who refuse to even discuss the matter, because, they believe that the "problem" is not real (And even if it is, it is insignificant, because it is natural!) [29]. It is vital that we converse about the matter. Doing so is very fruitful [30]. It is crucial that the public (and many of the people who inform and "educate" the public) be inculcated with a deeper and clearer understanding of the concepts "climate," "change," and "climate change," by carefully, consistently, and meaningfully establishing standard definitions of these ideas and using them correctly all of the time. The implications of not understanding and not coming to terms with the threats we face are profound. The beliefs that we can empirically know "climate," that it refers to the entirety of "Earth's weather," that the "change" that might happen is either temporary or simply a one-and-done shift to a new steady-state condition, and that "climate change" means that it will be warmer everywhere on Earth in the coming decades, predetermine nonbelievers' responses, if they bother responding to global warming at all. At best, they expect that we may eventually need more air conditioning or assume we can just "move things" to more suitable places. Misunderstanding the basic terms of the problem begets a misunderstanding and a misinterpretation of the science behind the problem. Dismissing experts as elitist, calling global warming and climate change a hoax perpetrated by "the left" to destroy the economy, private wealth, freedom, and the world order, conservatives and libertarians push for collective social myopia and business as usual. Ironically, such an approach to the problems

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92192*

greenhouse-gas loading of the atmosphere) [27]. Fish are one of the fundamental dietary proteins of people around the world. But fish stocks are declining, biodiversity is declining, and ocean-oriented coastal economies are declining globally. Some aquatic and terrestrial species will find ways to survive through biological adaptation, others may not [28]. But these consequences are technically not caused by changing climates, *per se*. They are warming-induced and are usually beyond the discussions had about "climate change." But as one might imagine, these are but a few of the changes produced by the problems derived from global warming.
