A planetary emergency
On the cover of the newest issue of Commonweal is Richard W. Miller’s article “‘Global Suicide Pact’: Why Don’t We Take Climate Change Seriously?” Miller lays out the scientific evidence for climate change – the impacts we are already experiencing and the likely effects of the warming our current course will to bring about. It’s not a cheerful prognosis. And it’s hardly overblown. “That there will be large destructive changes from the continued warming of the planet is certain; indeed, it is already happening. Yet we cannot know with certitude precisely how large and rapid these changes will be,” Miller writes. “What is clear, though, is that so far we have substantially underestimated the problem.” That is, things are already worse than scientists predicted they would be.
The picture is deeply unsettling. But it isn’t hopeless: “It is still possible for us to shift rapidly to clean energy” and avoid truly catastrophic levels of warming, Miller explains. “But doing so will require dramatic political action.”
In related news, I see that Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum spoke at the Gulf Coast Energy Summit this weekend and said, “The dangers of carbon dioxide? Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is.”
Maybe Santorum’s proud ignorance isn’t all that significant in the big political picture – he’s just a long-shot candidate, after all. But then there’s Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, the GOP’s ranking member on the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works. The “welcome” notice on his site says, “We must use the best science available.” And yet this is a man who has said, “Catastrophic global warming is a hoax. That conclusion is supported by the painstaking work of the nation’s top climate scientists.” Which is, to put it mildly, not accurate. Inhofe has a history of saying outrageous and dim things about global warming, and he just published a book titled The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. (Good to know he’s focused on the really significant threats.) And it’s not some tragic accident that Inhofe ended up on the environmental committee; his “skepticism” is why he’s there. So it’s hard for me to be optimistic about that dramatic political action Miller says is necessary. Can anything make people grow up and stop snickering about Al Gore every time it snows? Will Santorum’s dopey jape about carbon monoxide dioxide (whoops) embarrass his supporters as much as it should? The forecast doesn’t look good.
Read Miller’s article, and then let us know: What can be done?
With existing technology, we could harness solar and wind energy to produce over forty times the power needed for the entire world. According to Stanford’s Mark Jacobson, a leading researcher in this field, “There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources. It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will.”
What’s the evidence for this claim, which seems both comforting and incredibly dubious? Jacobson himself claimed only that we could get 100% of our energy from renewable sources, not 40x the energy.
The most important thing that could have been done would have been to elect Al Gore in 2000. If the US had voted him in, the world would be in a different place now. That election might have been a turning point.
What can be done besides not voting for global warming deniers?
Even though it is very difficult, we might be at the point where it’s worth considering changing one’s way of life to spend less energy. The first source of expenditure is transportation, and for academics, flying is the most serious global warming sin. Replacing physical meetings by virtual meetings is a challenge, however this is easy compared to the other ways to produce less CO2. Driving alone in a car is the second serious global warming sin. Moving to a place that can be accessed with public transportation, and then actually using that public transportation, is another challenge! Having children is the third, indirect global warming sin, since in their lifetime those children will themselves produce a lot of CO2. Reducing one’s lifestyle so as to not increase energy expenditure in spite of having more children is yet another challenge!
As to replacing traditional sources of energy by renewable sources… from my office window I have a view of three wind turbines newly installed in Providence. I spend time watching them every day, and can attest that I have yet to see them move, even on high-wind days! If I work for a while, then glance at them again some time later, I can see that they have changed positions, but the movement itself is too slow to be visible. I am beginning to view them as a symbol of public money waste.
Maybe a warmer world will actually be better
In an article entitled, “The impact of global warming on health and mortality,” published in the Southern Medical Journal in 2004, W.R. Keatinge and G.C. Donaldson of Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of London note: “Cold-related deaths are far more numerous than heat-related deaths in the United States, Europe, and almost all countries outside the tropics, and almost all of them are due to common illnesses that are increased by cold.”
See the book: Health on a Changing Planet
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/05/a-changing-planet/
Beginning and end of book review:
Senior author Paul Epstein has a strongly holistic/synthetic health perspective. Accordingly, the book is very wide ranging topically, covering issues from the discovery of the puzzling roots of cholera’s epidemiology, to the effects of large storms on the behavior of the insurance industry, to the social disruptions arising from hurricanes and warfare, to the roots of the problems with the global economic system–and much in between. The book does an outstanding job of connecting many otherwise disparate issues. These topics are all described in simple prose–there are no mathematics or model expositions, few acronyms and little jargon, etc. For these and other reasons, this book is an important and accessible contribution that many will want to read, and which many others really should.
[...]
The book is structured around chapters which integrate a particular climate change element’s effect on one or more health issues, often involving a personal story of some type. These situations include, for example, the discovery of the changing epidemiology of malaria in East Africa, crop disease and insect attacks in the United States, and the plights of the poor in Honduras.
[...]
But there is much more to be learned from the book than just the various technical issues discussed. Just as important is the very evident concern with human welfare and justice; these have clearly motivated a very large part of Epstein’s life work, as well as several of those discussed in the book. One particularly good example is the rather amazing story of the Honduran doctor Juan Almendares and his lifelong dedication to the welfare of rural and/or marginalized people there. The importance of this human aspect in solving the impending global climate change problem is most certainly not to be overlooked, and it in fact forms a kind of subliminal undercurrent upon which the various technical discussions in the book all ride.
Perhaps I missed this part of the article, but I didn’t seem to notice where Miller cites the study from the National Academy of Sciences that noted that divorced households have double the carbon footprint of intact families, use 73 BILLION kilowatts more electricity than intact families, and consume 627 BILLION more gallons of water than intact families. Divorce has caused the need to create 38million more rooms with associated need for increased heating and lighting. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071203190625.htm
Likewise, I don’t think I saw the part where Miller mentions the incidence of intersex disorder (male fish producing eggs) caused in large part by the presence of hormonal contraceptives in human waste that makes it into the waterways. http://robinegerton.suite101.com/environmental-pollutions-causing-intersex-deformities-in-wildlife-a403704
I only mention these things to commend Commonweal on their pro-envirnomental stance and to encourage Commonweal readers to embrace the Church’s teachings on marriage and contraception in order to have a truly wholistic environmental viewpoint.
Did read the article. Couldn’t find the answer to the subtitle: WHY don’t we take climate change seriously? Did I miss the WHY…..
Perhaps it’s not that people don’t take climate change seriously. Perhaps it is that they seriously doubt that massive sweeping changes in human behavior will significantly reverse or alter climate change as it occurs. I often find people writing on this subject fail to differentiate between “climate-change deniers” and “human-action-change skeptics.” Given that many “green” energy forms have non-neutral long-term environmental impacts, I wish more environmentalists would provide scientific studies to support their contentions that human behavior change WILL have meaningful impacts.
Environmentalists must also deal with the unenforceability of “green” policies because of the free-rider problem, as well as the class divide in terms of policy enforcement. Policies that don’t directly end in fines or imprisonment will be ineffective, which will require increased monitoring of many citizen activities that are currently private-market decisions.
If they’re willing to sharply restrict, say, water usage per household and impose hefty fines/fees for usage over that amount, wealthy people will continue to have access to long hot showers. And everyone else will howl about the cost increase and the government interfering with their private lives.
I despair when I read coments like a warmer world could be better.
Or Greg> C’s how the Church’s teaching will help us live more wholelistically on the planet.
Why is change impossible?
So much slanted ignorance and propaganda and the heartland Institute, etc.
Clairem–
The effectiveness of wind farms depends on where they are. Some areas do not have nearly the wind movement others do. From what I’ve read it will be the Amrican Great Plains that can supply the most, having a lot of wind in the first place and being flat enough for the wind to travel. Time of the year is also a factor. The same is true of solar. Obviously, some areas are closer to the sun and have longer days, so 5hey produce more solar energy.
miller says tha 3/4 of the Amerian people accept the global warning threat. So why do idiots like Santorum keep spouting the incredible statements they do? I suspect it is because the blowhards of Murdoch’s Fox empire keep up the drumbeat, with its crucifixion of Al Gore as its primary articlre of faith. But I wondr if the recent demise of Beck and now the disgracre of Limbaugh that element in the popular press has started to see through them. IF so, we might hope to get more balanced reports on the state of nature and more rational political movement. Most of all, the ratioal politicians won’t be so terrified to speak out against the likes of Limbaugh.
What most people, even that 3/4 who think there is a problem, don’t see is that scientists love their children and grandchildren just as much anyone else. This implies that they are inclined to *tell the truth* about these threats, not exaggertate them for some crazy reason. It has always amazed me that people do trust the science of medicine, but not the weather experts. Why do they think that the mteroologists are liars? To dhtye think that all the physical scientists do is scrtch formuas on blackboards and come to their conclusions about nature that way:? Dn’t they realize that a great deal of scientific research is *field* work, even going to genrally inaccssible placs like Antarctica and the North Pole area to find out, e.g., how fast the ice masses are melting?
Has anybody else been keeping track of the weather in yourr neighborhoods this winter besides me? I’ve worn a wool jacket only three times,never a coat of any sort. The trees started budding in February. The ttemperatures have been springlike for weeks (70-80s). That means the Gulf and Atlantic will be terribly hot by August. Hurricane anyone? By the way, New York City is long overdue for a big one.
(Sorry aabout any typos — eye trouble today.)
Bruce,
There is no reason ot doubt what those scientists say about current causes of death. But the problem you will have to face is drought and the loss of food — starvation, in other words. Texas and the Southwest are already sufferng a drought . and it is projected to get much much worse As the food supply becomes smaller population will become larger. This is bound to cause more social and political unrest. and if history can be trusted, more wrs.
Then there are the problems with the seas worldwide. Food from that source has already been affected in some areas. Do read the Miller. unfortunately it’s a fine summary of what I’ve veen reading for many years — except that he says that the acceleration of these forces is now even faster than expected. Very, very scary. Makes me want to stick my head in the sand too. But I love my grandnieces, and I have no choice but to look for solutions and make the sacrifices necessary to change things. (I also don’t want those children to hate the memory of me when they grow up because I didn’t do what was necessary while they are young.)
Here’s some data about drought across the country. I thought it was just the Southwest that was being affected. Not so.
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
Could we hear from the Texas and Arizona people here about their experiences?
Claire –
Speaking of changes in insect populations — a tiny little fly that is new to me has taken up residence in my house. It is about 1/10th the size of ordinary ones and very aggressive! I mean it actually dive pombs at me when I shoo it away from food. I’ve never see anything like them before. Ordinary fly spray does little to discourage them. But I tried flea spray on them and that worked much better.
Biological moral of this story: as climate changes different species have opportunity to prosper and other ones eiether adapt or disappear. If you are a gardenr, expect trouble. Also expect vegetation in your area to change. Start notocomg. It’s actually quitee intresting, if threatening.
Heather B. –
What is the free rider problem?
Thanks for your input. Psychology is a major part of the larger problem. Mrs. S.’s question “WHY” the denial?” needs answering desparately.
“Did read the article. Couldn’t find the answer to the subtitle: WHY don’t we take climate change seriously? Did I miss the WHY…..”
From the article:
Ann, your fly story is a little troubling! I hope it’s some random insect accidentally brought on a boat or airplane, not by climate change.
Thanks Matt, did see those para. Not exactly WHY, more like psychological generalization than actual evidence of why people don’t take this seriously.
Heather Beasley @ 3:45: “I often find people writing on this subject fail to differentiate between “climate-change deniers” and “human-action-change skeptics,” seems to be onto one problem.
We all know that it takes time for people to change their behaviors…i.e., car seat belts, smoking, meat eating, etc. The free rider problem affects behavior: If my neighbor gets the benefit of my composting and not driving a car (i.e., behaviors that MIGHT shift global warming) while tossing vegetable peels in the garbage and driving an SUV (behaviors that increase global warming), I have to be a principled and fully resolved believer in global warming to continue my practices. My neighbor gets the benefit without contributing to solving the problem. Do people in India and China forgo the modern conveniences while we in the West go on enjoying them???
On a day like today in NYC…70s mid-March, someone said to me, “if this is global warming, bring it on.” I think scientists, theologians, environmentalists, etc., have yet to hit the galvanizing rhetorical note that will convince enough people.
Peggy: Did you forget how to write subheds? Or what they are?
Grant: if common practice continues, the editors wrote the head and the subhead both of which should reflect the content of the article. So….why, “WHY don’t we take climate change seriously.”
Good question! What’s the answer?
Claire ==
‘My brother is a population ecologist == he studies how, say, one change in the species within an ecoogical system can change the whole system. I suppose that’s why I have a greater interest in such matters.
There is no reason to assume that this creature arrived on a banana boat. A few degrees difference in the average temperature can trip all sorts of biological reactions. By the way, I’m not the only one who is having trouble with these critters. They’ve probably breen around a long time but only now are they able to prosper.
What really scares me is the possibility of new bacteria and viruses;
QUESTION: Why don’t we take climate change seriously?
ANSWER: We don’t take climate change seriously because “the science is uncertain” and because “we cannot know with certitude precisely how large and rapid these changes will be” and because the conservative noise machine is dedicated to ridiculing the science.
However, if people were to agree that climate change is a serious problem, they might reasonably disagree about what courses of action should be taken to address the problem.
“The most important thing that could have been done would have been to elect Al Gore in 2000. If the US had voted him in, the world would be in a different place now. ”
In fairness to President Obama, environmental concerns were a major theme of his 2008 campaign, and his administration did try to pass the Cap-and-Trade legislation – in fact, it actually passed the House.
The fate of the Cap-and-Trade bill is illustrative of some of the obstacles facing global-warming activism. The cap-and-trade proposal, in my opinion, is rather ingenious: it would address the underlying environmental problem in a way that is consonant with, rather than opposed to, market behavior (which is really just a branch of human behavior). In this sense, it shares a similarity with the health exchanges being stood up by the Affordable Care Act: leverage the market rather than seek to destroy the market – the latter being a feature of far too much environmental rhetoric, and one that renders the entire message suspect. But even Cap-and-Trade seemed too radical for the American people (just as, polls show, the Affordable Care Act is too radical for the American people). I don’t think most Americans have really bought into the doomsday scenarios.
“When faced with the overwhelming character of these forecasts, we develop coping mechanisms … that shield us from the real gravity of our situation. This is understandable, and to some extent we are all to a certain degree susceptible to this, since a real acceptance … requires one to fundamentally revise one’s understanding of the world and one’s responsibilities to it. That is not easy to do.”
What I’ve quoted here is from the article. I’ve excised a couple of phrases that make it specific to global warming. If folks would indulge me for a moment: suppose the topic under discussion is, not global warming, but the accumulated federal budget deficit. As a little experiment, try rereading my edited excerpt here as though the federal debt is what is being discussed. The passage seems to hold up quite well.
My point in this is that it seems to me that the American people, or at least a critical mass of the American people, have bought into the apocalyptic predictions of the budget Jeremiahs, in a way that they haven’t bought into those of the global warming Jeremiahs. Perhaps that gainsays the mass-coping-mechanism theory. It may just be that the implications of living beyond our means is more concrete to more of us than the implications of living in a warming world.
Wednesday’s NYTimes has an article and graphics describing the impact of rising water on U.S. shorelines. It describes some of the reasons WHY Americans might become convinced (whatever their view of climate change).
“Experts say a few inches of sea level rise can translate to a large incursion by the ocean onto shallow coastlines. Sea level rise has already cost governments and private landowners billions of dollars as they have pumped sand onto eroding beaches and repaired the damage from storm surges.”
Climate deniers do not deny the seas are rising; they don’t agree that this is caused by global warming. But presumably they’d have to agree that shoreline communities, etc., are going to have to come to terms with increasing encroachments. The WHYs of the article are largely economic; people and/or the government will not be able to afford rebuilding beaches, homes, etc. Some argue that the government should get out of the business of insuring and rescuing such areas. The article reports that insurance companies are already out of the business.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/science/earth/study-rising-sea-levels-a-risk-to-coastal-states.html?hp=&pagewanted=all
“I think scientists, theologians, environmentalists, etc., have yet to hit the galvanizing rhetorical note that will convince enough people.”
Margaret – I agree. Also, there have been a string of credibility blows to the global-warming publicity machine. In addition, the issue has been politicized, such that global-warming legislation is now a win-lose political proposition – which tends to invite political gridlock.
“Climate deniers do not deny the seas are rising; they don’t agree that this is caused by global warming.”
Another variation on this is that, while they may agree that the globe is warming, they aren’t convinced that human activity is the prime cause.
Thomas Farrell –
While science cannot tell us exactly what changes will be, the rough size of the problme is plain as it could possibly bre. If you don’t believe me, come on down to New orleans and I’lll show you vst areas of the area that have been destroy, and still intact neighborhoods where empty lots where houses used to be that stick out like missing teeth. The city used to have about a half million peple. Now has somewhat over 300000. The rest can’t come back because there is no place for them to live.
Several years before Katrina hit the local newspaper, the Times-Picayune, did an extended series of articales about just what could be expected in the way of hurricaanes and just how the City’s defenses (the levees) were not being maintained properly by the national govrnment. The series was ignored until after Katrina hit, and then the paper got all sorts of international awards retroactively.
Please forgive me for talking so much and so emphatically, but I KNOW that American cities cn suffer catastrophes just as easily as any others. The American people have got to stop thinking of itself as somehow privileged, as that city on the hill. We’re not.
Is there an answer to my question? Obviously you don’t do New-Yorker-style factchecking, but I’d have thought someone would raise an eyebrow at the claim that we can easily generate 40 times as much energy as we need. If so, I’m interested to hear what evidence the author brought forward.
Peggy,
I think that short passage from the article does answer the question why, at lease partially. I think the article also suggests that those in power have trouble responding to problems whose gravest consequences won’t arrrive till after they are dead. Hence the recommendation that we try to imagine what climate change will mean not for future generations — an abstraction to which we rarely pay more than lip service — but for our own children and grandchildren. If democratic governments are going to address this problem adequately, they will have to think further ahead than they are used to doing; they will have govern as if the emergency is already upon us, because, in fact, it is, though most of its effects are delayed.
More to the point, “Why aren’t we more worried about climate change?” does not mean “Here’s why we’re not more worried about climate change.” It’s rhetorical; it means something like “We ought to be much more worried about climate change than we are, given what we know.” And the article furnishes us with ample evidence to support that claim.
Matt: it depends on what you mean by WHY! When CWL arrived (print edition), I sat down to read it and was immediately attracted to “Why aren’t we….” I read it and was disappointed to have another ferverino without the promised assessments of WHY people don’t take this seriously. With this I cease and desist!
Ann Olivier: Of course I will forgive you. However, I would draw your attention to the quotation marks in my statement. I was quoting the author of the article. I quoted that author of the article in an attempt to show Margaret O’Brien Steinfels that the article does indeed answer the question raised in the article’s title and subtitle. Perhaps I should have explained that I was responding to her.
Jim Pauwels: Conservative Republicans, and perhaps others, are galvanized by the apocalyptic predictions of the budget Jeremiahs, because the budget Jeremiahs can point to, say, Greece. In this way, the budget Jeremiahs can make their arguments understandable.
However, many conservative Republicans, and perhaps others, contest the science involved in evolutionary theory. So they have a problem with science and scientific reasoning.
Against this highly charged background, it is not surprising that many of the same people who have a problem with evolutionary theory also have a problem with the science of climate change.
Thomas F. –
Maybe some people just can’t or won’t tolerate change of any sort — political, ecological, evolutionary, theological whatever. That’s why they’re called “conservative”. It has nothing to do with evidence, all to do with temperament.
Ann Olivier: Yes, certain people are temperamentally conservative people who have a low tolerance for significant change of any sort. Then when something beyond their control does somehow change significantly, they are not inclined to adapt to the change. On the contrary, they tend to grumble about the change endlessly. At times, their grumbling can get noisy. In the worst-case scenarios, they can become violent. Thus far, Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic bishops have been non-violent conservative religious zealots. I hope they continue to be non-violent. But I hope that people continue to criticize the church’s teaching against contraception.
Now, back to climate change. The conservative noise machine is revved up against climate change science. Nevertheless, conservative animadversions about climate change science to the contrary notwithstanding, I hope that people who are informed about climate change continue to make the case that climate change is a serious problem.
Speaking as a father with children in school – today’s children are being taught, in their science classes, that the dangers of climate change are real and serious. Perhaps we’re a generation away from political consensus on this issue?
A couple of my friends are especially interested in the philosophy of science. Each has published a book that might be of interest to some people who have participated in this discussion.
James H. Fetzer, who is now retired from the University of Minnesota Duluth, as I myself am also, has published a fine critique of the Christian right’s crusade against science: RENDER UNTO DARWIN: PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT’S CRUSADE AGAINST SCIENCE (Open Court, 2007).
Brother William Rehg, S.J., in philosophy at Saint Louis University has published a fine book about the theory of science, with a passing discussion of climate-change science: COGENT SCIENCE IN CONTEXT: THE SCIENCE WARS, ARGUMENTATION THEORY, AND HABERMAS (MIT Press, 2009).
I myself have published a 5,000-word review essay about Rehg’s book, drawing in Bernard Lonergan’s thought and Walter J. Ong’s thought: “Rehg admirably takes the science wars to a new level” in the journal ON THE HORIZON, volume 18, number 4 (2010): pages 337-345.
My review essay about Rehg’s book would be way over the heads of conservative Christians who object to evolutionary theory and to climate-change science, just as Rehg’s book would be — and so would Fetzer’s book.
Thomas F. –
Have you yourself thought of writing less technical articles for the general Church population? (I notice that Christianity Today, the popular Protestant journal, is starting to publish articles on the subject.) The Miller areticle is a fine description of the status quo, but I think it would be a ogod thing to help people overcome their resistance to the information by making them understand their own scientific prejudices.
I’m quite sure your friends are right about the anti-science element in the Church. I think it probably stems from the Enlightnment folks having won the academic war against the Church. Although many if not most Catholic universities do appreciate the sciences, there is also in the genral Amrican population (including not very well educate Catholics) the prejudice against academe and “elites”. Really dreadful. And of course science was not a major part of the education of priests or bishops, so small wonder they have not generally appreciated it.
I do disagree about Pope Benedict. As a young man he was quite open to change, until he was confronted by some violence-threatening students, and he turned conservative. However, recently he even said that the ‘Church has yet to learn the good lessons of the Enlightenment, and, of course, he is our first ecologically serious pope. I only hope he becomes even more serious. I would love to have a book by him on man as Earth’s steward.
Do some some writing on the subject!
It’s curious how climate change has become a quasi-religious concern for so many on the left. It’s as though their Mother Earth were being attacked by evil capitalists bent on poisoning Her – and as though no one but they, through their constant expressions of outrage, is capable of stopping the sacrilege.
David S. –
Yes, the liberals — as with civil rights — have again been the leaders in making the people aware of the terrible threat that or ecological problems present. This in spite of the demonization of Al Gore and the scientists by the radical right. No, it’s not a matter of religion for us liberals, but it is a matter of the survival of humanity;
Or perhaps you’d like to tell us why you don’t trust the scientists to tell themselves and us the truth. Or don’t you think they know what they’re taling about. By ghe way, how many scientists do you know well?
David: concerns about global warming are mounting as the evidence accumulates. It’s quite simple, really: like a person becoming sick, as the symptoms become more noticeable and more significant, concerns mount.
As to who is concerned, I would say that the primary people who are worried are: climatologists, who are very concerned, children and youth, who are very concerned, reinsurers and insurance companies, who are very concerned.
I am fairly optimistic about many things, but I can’t think of anything I’m more pessimistic about than the possibility building a worldwide consensus on climate change and the need to make fundamental alterations to our economies and our lifestyles. It won’t happen.
I’ve been following something called Lent 4.5 this past month.
The “4.5″ stands for about how much acreage each person on Earth would have to meet all of their needs if we divvied up the planet equally. Americans on average use more than 22 acres each. It challenges the assumption that we just need to lift people in poor countries up to our standard of living. Really, those of us in overconsuming countries need to give some things up.
The Lent 4.5 program uses ” the traditional Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving to protect God’s creation, embrace Gospel justice and nurture spiritual fulfillment.”
I don’t know about changing the world, but I can at least change myself, so I’m going to try and keep doing more of this after Lent.
http://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/lent45/
Of all the political complaints that infect the Western world, Climate Change may be the most dire. It’s the End of the World for the twenty-first century. Politicians are being harangued and implored to Do Something Now, before the Earth is buried forever in human waste. The End is Nigh.
I think we’ve been here before. There’s something in the human mind that wants to wallow in a vision of apocalypse. In the past, we might have prayed to Christ to save us. Now, it’s Al Gore.
“I think we’ve been here before”.
The article makes a very strong case that we haven’t.
What I found most encouraging in the article is that only a small minority of Americans deny the problem (and only 2% of the relevant scientific community dispute it). There will always be the naysayers, no matter how overwhelming the evidence; but if 3/4 of Americans acknowledge that climate change is real and human driven, than it is absolutely possible to mobilize a base to bring about real reform and get the US in line with the international community on this.
David, why don’t you answer Ann’s questions instead of continuing to shoot from the lip?
Bob – and Ann- my objection is to the narrow-minded, perfervid, and apocalyptic nature of this obsession. Of course there are environmental challenges. There always have been and there always will be.
Irene, yes, the world has been about to come to an immediate disastrous end before. Humans love to imagine calamities. This is just more of the same.
David S. –
No, there have NEVER been environmental challenges like this for the simple r4eason that thre have never been nearly as many people as thre are now. Or do you dispute that fact too?
So what are your reasons for saying that the scientists are wrong? Are you more knowledgeable than they are (all hundreds of thousands of them worldwide)? IF so, how did you get to know so much?
And, again, how many real scientists do you know well? Are they liars? Stupid? What do they gain from telling these terrible facts?
Irene –
One of the main reasons that Americans use more than our share of world resources is because American industry operates according to the “planned obsolescence” priniciple. Products are made to break down or wear out much sooner than they need to. By being of such inferior quality, people have to replace the things more often than they should have to, thereby adding to the corporations’ profits and to American’s satisfaction in owning new things (as if new means better)
Ann (11:25 pm), with respect, I didn’t say or imply any of that.
RealClimate has a nice tribute to a chemist studying the atmosphere, Nobel prize winner, who just died this weekend. He worked on ozone depletion.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/03/sherwood-roland-cfcs-ozone-depletion-and-the-public-role-of-scientists/
In the public debate, many of the climate contrarians (such as Fred Singer) got their start denying that CFCs were affecting ozone, using many of the same arguments they now use about climate change (CFCs are heavier than air! it’s all the sun! the science is uncertain! the scientists are KGB agents! any controls will cause untold misery in the developing world!), and for much the same reasons. But through this all, Sherry Rowland strode tall (literally – he was 6 ft 5 in), and played a large role in debunking some of the wild claims (such as the idea that it was all volcanoes).
[...]
Sherry was deeply involved in advocating for policy restrictions on ozone-depleting substances, and made some very profound comments on the role of science in policy. Most notably, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel prize he said:
“What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?”
David, you shouldn’t let yourself be thrown off by the perception that there is an unwarranted apocalypse. Don’t let it stop you from seeing that our burning long-buried carbon is driving Earth’s atmosphere and oceans to a warmer state more rapidly than humans have experienced in the lifetime of our species. While the changes have taken decades to clearly see, if we act now by reducing our carbon use, we can avoid the more apocalyptic outcomes.
Bob, I know it’s serious. But a crisis is not the same as an apocalypse.
Crises can be managed. To the extent that an environmental movement pushes for better management, excellent.
How do you suggest we manage it?
David Smith, I am completely out of patience with your endless comments about how beneath you everything is and how foolish other people are to want to discuss it. If you actually read the article and care to respond to something in it with more than a yawn, that’s what the comments section is for. But anything else – in particular, further generalizations about how other people think wrong – will be deleted.
Mollie, open discussion is generally a healthy and sometimes a productive thing. Why shut it down? Or is it just the tone of voice that offends? Could more or less the same thing be said in a way you don’t find offensive?
The natural environment is something we would all do well to cherish and protect, but we’re not all disposed to do that in exactly the same way, nor is it to be expected, I think, that everyone’s priorities will be in perfect sync.
Hi, David, in the spirit of open discussion, an explanation of your plan for how we should manage this crisis would be helpful. Include how your plan would be effective at avoiding serious impacts from our changing climate.
Hi, Bob. Thanks for asking. But I don’t have a plan. Few of us do. Plans for dealing with world crises are best left to the “experts” and to industry and government leaders. They generally manage to do at least a good part of what’s needed.
My concern is that this issue has become so highly politicized, that there’s so much anger and rancor on “both” sides, that smart, sensible, prudent planning seems likely to be hindered. When politicians feel obliged to respond to popular anger, serious mistakes are likely. What I’d very much like to see is a cooling of the rhetoric, in this and other public forums.
All I’m asking for is civility. Dialogue about this issue is essential – it’s an important concern for conscientious people – along with many other issues. Let’s try not to let it be poisoned by personal hatred.
David, leaving multiple condescending comments about how nobody else should bother with a given topic because it is not important or interesting (or, alternately, is too important for non-experts), as you so often do, is not helping to promote discussion. And I think you know that. I really have no idea what you are trying to do. But in the interest of promoting the healthy discussion you keep talking about, I’m asking you to stop with the windy generalizations about things you haven’t even bothered to read. And if you can’t stop yourself, I will.
Sensible planning has been proposed, but rapidly moving toward emitting less carbon is being thwarted by people falsely claiming that the science isn’t strong and blocking dialogue about how we are going to deal with this threat. People who want to delay action protect their interests by keeping us in the ‘dialogue’ stage of whether we have a problem and if we are causing it.
The idea that we’d make more progress toward preventing catastrophic climate change if only the proponents of action were more polite or less passionate – seems illogical and not what we see when other people are passionate about urgent issues and feel people won’t address them.
It’s been twenty-five years since the warning that we were ‘loading the dice’ by digging up fossil carbon laid down over many centuries, and loading it into the atmosphere in just a few.
I wish I could say that now is the time to move the economy toward lower carbon emissions, but since it will take decades to slow the increase in atmospheric carbon – ‘Now’ was a quarter of a century ago.
Bob, if not carbon, then what? Wind and solar work well only in relatively rare conditions. Nuclear is repeatedly ruled off the table. Conservation would, I imagine, have almost no effect, especially with the rapid industrialization of countries with huge populations.
Perhaps we should content ourselves with the realization that the world’s population is set to level off at about nine billion in a few years, and then, probably, head down. That, together with increasingly more efficient and cleaner carbon, might be enough, no? Technology never stands still. The future always surprises us.
David S. –
Solar works quite well generally and extremely well in many places. If it doesn’t do too well n the far north, you can add solar panels. More expensive. but it works.
The latest giant possibility is tidal energy. It is already possible to generate electricity using the tremendous power of the movement of the waters of the seas, and the technology is apparently not terribly complex.
All we need is the will. And eventually virtue will be doubly rewarded — it will be much cheaper than what we have now.
P. S. And wind power isn’t rare either.
“If not carbon, then what?”
We need to use everything we have: increased nuclear, move to wind, solar, other renewable sources.
By the way, the population won’t level off in a ‘few’ years, even under the most optimistic scenarios. [Of course, why would population stabilize if people don't use effective birth control?]
Under the ‘future always surprises us” and moving to cleaner carbon plan, CO2 and other ‘greenhouse’ gases won’t level off for decades and the climate get more out of balance and the weather will continue to get weirder.
Using cleaner carbon starts with no more coal plants, but more are still being built, even in the USA. Cleaner carbon is the baby step we could have taken 25 years ago, but didn’t.
Even the fringe benefits are great: cleaner air, renewable energy, energy independence, healthier kids, cleaner cities, better oceans and we keep our rainforests.