How Fast is the Climate Warming? Quite fast, but thus far almost entirely in the winter. Trend graphs for northern New York, which parallel those for elsewhere in the Northeast, show a gradual warming early in the century, a cooling in mid-century, and a rapid warming from 1970 on. Both the warming and the cooling are believed to be caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The mid-century cooling is believed to have been caused by sulfuric acid, which reflects sunlight. (It also causes acid rain, and the onset of the cooling in both America and Europe, coincides with the onset of acid rain.) The warming of the last thirty years is part of an unprecedented warming of the Northern Hemisphere. It is thought to be the result of increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, mostly from fossil fuels, which trap heat that would have otherwise escaped from the earth.

The current warming rates are very significant. If they continue they will give Albany the climate of Washington, D.C. by the year 2100. If the current rate accelerates, as all the climate models predict it will, Albany could have the climate of Washington, D.C. by 2050, and that of Richmond or Atlanta by the end of the century.

A winter warming of 5-10 degrees will have great effects on the Adirondacks. In the short term, when the Adirondacks are the only place in the state with persistent snow cover, winter sports and winter tourism may prosper. But in the long term there is little prosperity, natural or human, in sight. It is very likely that neither the major northern forest trees nor the boreal forest animals associated with them will survive much more than one forest generation of rapid climate changes. Fifty years from now we may have Adirondack winters without snow and ice and forests that are the biological analogues of the dying coral reefs seen in the tropics today: stressed, structurally altered, not reproducing, and unable to support the birds and animals that once lived in them.