Climate Change: The Single Greatest Threat to Surfing and Coastal Communities

By Cannon Kade Eccleston

16 December 2016
Mrs. DeVoe, English 143

He'enalu is Hawaiian for The Art of Surfing.Surfing was the centerpiece of ancient
polynesian culture. Becoming the chief of your tribe depended on your ability to ride a wave.
The leaders of each tribe had access to the best boards and beaches; only through sheer skill
could a commoner rise in prestige. Hundreds of years later, He'enalu has spread to coastal towns
and settlements all over the globe and become a sport beloved by millions, but could that
change? Global Warming and Climate change is real and threatens the safety coastal
communities and the art of surfing
Global warming and Climate Change are common terms you hear through life, but what
exactly is it? The Earth is changing rapidly, and these terms are used to describe these changes.
Global Warming is the term used to describe Earth's rising surface temperature. The term
Climate Change is used to describe the change in weather and climate that stems from the
warming of earth's land and oceans; and these changes are drastic.
Global Warming, Cooling, and climate change are not foreign concepts when it comes to
earth's history. The Earth goes through very slow periods of warming and cooling that takes
millions of years; sometimes it will change drastically and the earth will be 10-15 degrees
warmer or cooler than the earth's average temperature. This causes massive changes in climate,
for instance the ice age: where 21 thousand years ago the Polar Ice caps extended far down into
North America when the Earth's average temperature was 49 degrees.
Another extreme example of Warming and climate change in earth's history happened
252 million years ago in a period called The Great Dying. Large Super volcanos in a current
day Siberia erupted, emitting extremely high amounts of methane and CO2 in the atmosphere.
The rise in greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere produced extreme warming of earth's surface
and oceans; the average temperature in the tropics was 140 degrees fahrenheit, while the

temperature of the ocean was 104 degrees fahrenheit. According to Andrew Knoll, a
paleobiologist at Harvard, this massive spike in temperature and CO2 caused the fate of 83% of
all life on earth
Modern day Planet Earth has been going through its own Climate Change within the past
century. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency Earth's average
surface temperature has risen by 1.5F over the past century, it is projected to rise another 0.5 to
8.6F over the next hundred years. That may seem like a very small temperature rise, but small
changes can have drastic and dangerous shifts in weather and climate.
The warming our planet is facing today is the same process that caused The Great
Dying 252 million years ago; a process called The Greenhouse Effect. Greenhouse Gasses like
Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide, are very important to life on this planet. The Sun
showers our planet with incredible amounts of radiation every day. While some of this radiation
is reflected off the atmosphere back into space, most of the radiation passes through the
atmosphere and is absorbed by the earth. This radiation is converted into heat energy and some
of the infrared light is reflected back towards space, but greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere
trap some of that escaping heat further warming the earth. When more greenhouse gasses are
added to the atmosphere, those gases trap more of that heat within the planet's atmosphere
resulting in higher temperatures
Human beings have played a pivotal role in Earth's rising greenhouse gas output and
rising temp. The Rapid rise in temperature in th
e last hundred years has been attributed to Industrialization and the burning of fossil fuels
that became so prevalent at the turn of the 20th century. The burning of fossil fuels releases
greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide;. plant life requires carbon

dioxide to live, so its always balanced out the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The rise of
industry resulted in mass deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels for electricity,
transportation and production on a global scale; humans are releasing more CO2 in the
atmosphere faster than plant life and oceans can absorb it. How much exactly? According to a
2013 report by the Global Carbon Project, scientists agree the total human carbon output is 9.7
billion tonnes a year, from burning fossil fuels alone. They calculate that total emissions of CO2
from 1870 (start of the Industrial revolution) to 2013 has been over 550 billion tonnes.
Many people in government, industry, news etc. claim that Human fueled climate change
is a hoax and is not backed by science, but these claims are unfounded and untrue. According to
published Climate Scientist Dr. John Cook from the University of Queensland, the bulk of
scientists around the world believe that humans are the driving force of climate change. Dr.
Cooks paper titled Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on humancaused global warming states that: Among abstracts that expressed a position on
Anthropogenic Global Warming (Human Caused Global Warming) 97.1% endorsed the scientific
consensus. Among scientists who expressed a position on AGW in their abstract, 98.4% endorsed
the consensus. This consensus of Anthropogenic Global Warming is also backed by scientific
organizations like: NASA, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, The
American Chemical Society,The American Geophysical Union, The American Meteorological
Society, The American Physical Society, The Geological Society of America, etc. And these are
just american organizations, Scientific organizations all around the world are in agreement that
humans have a direct cause and effect to the changes in earth's temperature and climate.
These changes in Earth's temperature and climate come with a cost. Global Warming and
Climate Change is downplayed by many people around the world as not a real issue, but its the

largest issue facing people all around the world. Among these effect of climate change are more
extreme weather patterns, drought, the melting of earth's glaciers and polar ice, and warming
oceans. These then trigger wild changes in ocean life and reefs, tides, ocean currents, wind and
weather, coastal topography, etc. which are are all important natural processes that surfing and
coastal communities depend on for survival.
The Ocean and ocean life is the centerpiece for surfing and coastal communities. Almost
half the world's population live within 62 miles of the coast, and more than 3.5 billion people
depend on the ocean for their primary source of food. Oceans are the primary source of CO2 and
heat absorption for the planet; over 90% of the warming that's happened within the last 50 years
has happened in the ocean. But when temperatures and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere
rises, ocean life tends to die.
Coral reefs are a key example of rapid CO2 and temperature rise causing die offs; visible
through the natural process of coral bleaching. Coral bleaching is a process in which corals lose
the algae (More specifically: zooxanthellae) in their tissues, this causes the coral to lose a major
source of food and become susceptible to disease. Prolonged stress from bleaching in most cases,
cause the coral to die, and coral is dying in mass all over the world. Studies by the Australian
Research Council have concluded that coral bleaching is present in 93% of The Great Barrier
Reef; this has caused the top half of the reef to die off almost completely. Large die offs are
happening all over the world. Coral bleaching has killed 16% of all coral like world wide.
Reefs are a very important to surfing because of their tendency to create large barreling
waves; the highest quality surfing spots around the world are located on top of reefs. While the
death of a coral reef does not affect the structure of a wave, surfing and beach communities rely
on them as a source of food and income. Coral reefs provide billions of dollars in income for

communities through fisheries, and tourism, while also protecting shorelines by stopping rising
tides and large waves brought on by storms. If these reefs are not protected, people will lose jobs,
a source of food, and their communities will be more often threatened by storms.
Storms and hurricanes will also become more common due to climate change. According
to a 2013 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Increases in
hurricane activity are linked to warming ocean temperatures because hurricanes draw more
energy from warmer water. The United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)
also has concluded that hurricanes have increased in frequency, power, size, and duration.
Surfers may find this fact appealing because of larger waves, but many surf spots rely on
the shape of the beach and sandbars to create and shape waves. Large Hurricanes tend to erode
beaches and displace sandbars; wiping out surf spots completely. This paired with the fact that
large hurricanes, result in billions of dollars worth of damage done to communities all across the
coast; Hurricane Sandy resulted in a total of 128 billion dollars worth of damage. 2016 Hurricane
Matthew, another level 5 hurricane, took the lives of 19 people throughout the southern coast of
America, along with over a death toll of over 1,000 in haiti. Storms like these take thousands of
lives and destroy economies; if nothing is done to negate the effects of climate change, more
threatening storms will result.
Hurricanes, floods, and more extreme rainfall is not just due to warming oceans, but also
to warmer air temperature. Warmer air temperature brings exceedingly more problems on top of
the problems warmer oceans bring; one of which is Earth's melting ice. Glaciers all over the
world have been melting at a rapid rate since the start of the industrial revolution in 1850; How
fast exactly? Glacier National Park was founded in 1910 because the area was home to over 150
glaciers; it is now home to only 25 glaciers. Once again, this is happening everywhere on the

planet, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service: scientists expect nearly a quarter of
earth's mountain glaciers will be gone by 2050. Earth's Polar ice is also subject to earth's
warming temperatures. Many climate change deniers will use the recent NASA discovery of
increasing Antarctic sea ice, as evidence against climate change. However, in the same, official
statement released by NASA, Dr. Walt Meier a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory (research focuses on remote sensing of sea ice),
says otherwise. People may see the increasing Antarctic sea ice as evidence that climate change
does not exist; this is simply untrue. Dr. Meier says, Arctic (North) sea ice is still decreasing
twice as fast as the increasing antarctic ice sheets. As the sun reflecting, arctic sea ice
disappears, more and more of the dark, heat absorbing ocean is uncovered. This results in further
heating of the ocean, which in turn melts more ice; melting ice is a problem that makes itself
worse.
As the Earth's ice melts at faster rates, the sea levels rise as faster rates as well. 40% of
the world's population lives within 60 miles of the coast; many major cities like Miami, New
York City, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. If sea level keeps rising it will cause major
flooding and the country will spend billions, raising buildings and creating seawalls; low income
cities and communities by the coast that don't have the money for these luxuries are the places
that will suffer.
If world leaders Like Donald J Trump neglect the threat of climate change, removing
restrictions of fossil fuels and natural gas the planet will suffer