Ohio: 4th largest CO2 contributor

While many Americans dispute the veracity of global warming, the city of Cincinnati seems to be experiencing global cooling.

Cincinnati experiences a variety of weather patterns each season. As most natives might agree, the city can have sunshine, sleet, hail, high winds and flurries all in the same day. The icy winds and unpredictable snowfall give people reason to deny global warming.

By definition, the increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere prevents the earth from cooling properly. Theoretically, this leads to the melting of glaciers, which leads to flooding, and it causes the evaporation of wetlands, which leads to drought.

Last February, high levels of rain caused mudslides, closing Delta Avenue for several days after a retaining wall collapsed. The following month, Columbia Parkway was also closed due to flooding and mudslides. Experts agreed that the drought from the year before, in combination with the high levels of rain, is what caused the soil to loosen.

Does that support global warming?

Geographically, the city is located in an area that attracts a variety of weather conditions and also produces a high level of pollution emissions.

Ohio emits the second highest amount of carbon dioxide in the electricity sector. Overall, Ohio ranks as the fourth largest contributor of carbon dioxide, making the Midwest state a bigger threat to global warming than 98 countries, according to Environment Ohio, a citizen-based environmental advocacy organization.

“Global climate change can be documented over hundreds and thousands of years, without question,” said Warren Huff, professor of geology at UC. “But it is difficult to connect local, short-term weather patterns to long-term global events.”

Since the debut of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Americans have started asking questions and looking to the White House for answers.

In May 2008, the Bush administration released a climate report titled “Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the United States.”

“The climate system is warming, as is now evident from direct observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures,” according to the report. “But warming is not distributed evenly across space or time.”

Researchers also included evidence of human-driven climate change in the report, stating carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel are one of the main sources for climate change.
In addition to road closings and damage caused by mudslides, Cincinnati has also experienced some threats to wildlife.

“Rising temperatures and drops in lake levels in the state will likely change the makeup of entire ecosystems, forcing wildlife to shift their ranges or adapt,” according to information posted on the Environment Ohio Web site.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is currently working to push the Senate into action on the issue by the end of this summer. The details of the climate package are still undecided as Republicans and Democrats struggle to limit costs.

As for the state of Ohio and the geographic position of Cincinnati, the erratic weather patterns are not going anywhere. Expect another humid summer and a possible state mandate requiring standards on renewable energy use.