Embracing Change

First, a disclaimer: I'm not a Republican (or a Democrat), nor a Luddite, nor a science-illiterate. And that's as defensive as I'm going to be.

Now I'm going to talk about climate change and why the data do not entirely convince me—and what the current conclusions reveal about how we view the world and our place in it. This post will probably bring heaps of scorn from anybody who's seen "An Inconvenient Truth" (which I haven't), but I'm actually writing this in the spirit of inquiry. I've discussed global warming with several people who ought to know (mostly air quality scientists) and they've never offered me a sufficient explanation beyond "that's what the models show." My problem is that I wonder if the models are running with sufficient data to extrapolate from.

I've got a fairly complicated view of global warming, which seems wiser than not (or delusional), considering how complicated the topic is. Climate science is a complex and fairly young science, as sciences go. Although the disciplines used to study climate (physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, oceanography, paleoclimatology) have well-established principles and methodologies long used to investigate other problems, modern climatology as a discipline is not much more than a century old. By contrast, the study of physics, chemistry, and biology date back thousands of years, and as modern disciplines were practiced with some degree of reliability since the Age of Reason. (Yeah, it's scary that rational science based on the ordered accumulation of facts is actually only a few hundred years old.) Compared to, say, physics, climatology still has that new car smell. This matters only because the younger a discipline is, the less research has been done and the more conflicting ideas about theory there are. It's not a bad thing, but it's not what non-scientists, especially policy makers, want to hear. They want absolutes and incontrovertible facts.

One of the factors that most hampers scientists in studying long-term climate changes is precisely this newness of the study as a scientific discipline. Science depends on reliable, cumulative data and before we started keeping track of precipitation, severe weather patterns, average temperatures, etc. in a systematic, quantitative manner around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the written data is pretty spotty and, far enough back, virtually nonexistent. Calibrated thermometers, for instance, weren't even invented until the 16th century. And it's hard to have a sense of a global climate when you haven't even figured out how many continents there are, or quite how large the earth is, or what the ratio of land to water is, or what the chemical elements are. From paleographic evidence, we have some idea about other drastic changes in climate, in the earth's magnetic field, of the arrival and departure of ice ages, and of the rise and fall of oceans. Written historical records, as far back as they go, have recorded smaller blips in the pattern of climate: the Little Ice Age in Europe and the corresponding warm period, long stretches of drought, volcanic eruption-driven "volcanic winters." But any absolute accuracy in the data only reaches back into the 19th century—just slightly more than 200 years of data in a system that's been running for billions of years through innumerable and unknown geological changes. Even scientists at NOAA acknowledge that "[t]here are not enough records available to reconstruct global or even hemispheric mean temperature prior to about 600 years ago with a high degree of confidence." [emphasis added] And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just significantly downgraded their worst-case scenario from models run five years ago, because of new and improved data.

So here's my question (and it's definitely not rhetorical. I really do want an answer): If we only have about 600 years worth of data on mean temperature for a planet whose rocks are roughly 4.54 billion years old (though its life-supporting climate is billions of years younger) how reliable is that? 600 out of say, even 4 billion is a pretty insignificant fraction. Somebody do the math for me; I suck at it. The point I'm making is that, even if in the last 200 years the climate has changed appreciably (and I'll give you that it has), how do we know the earth hasn't gone through similar periods at other undocumented times in its history? Could the answer actually be that we don't? And if we don't, what does that mean?

Cause and effect in studies of complex systems like climate and ecology is not always a clear-cut thing: Do X and Y happens, unless P interferes or M isn't present. For one thing, living systems are often complex beyond our expectations if not our imagination, and are always surprising us in some way. It's hard to model a system that you're still discovering new facts about. For instance, how much influence does the Amazon really have on carbon dioxide re-uptake (subscription required)? And the phytoplankton we thought were doing that job too aren't doing it as well as we once thought.

Do I believe global warming is a fact? Yeah, no problems there. Do I believe it's entirely caused by human factors. Um, maybe. Do I think there're some alarmist claims on the environmentalist side? Yeah, I do. Do I think the Republicans are stupid for ignoring them? Why, yes, I do, if only because none of their suggestions—decreasing our dependency on oil; finding clean, renewable alternative energy forms, cutting pollution and in general living more lightly on the earth—are in the least harmful to anyone but oil company CEOs and stockholders, who already have more money than God. Oil is a lousy source of energy and there are much cleaner ones that would not even require major infrastructure changes to implement. As far as I can see we already have the technology to maintain the lifestyle to which we've become accustomed with energy and manufacturing and transportation that's at least, at a guess, 25% cleaner than at present, and the only thing that's stopping us is greed.

So I have no objections to the Kyoto Protocols; I think the US needs to get on board that wagon. They're one of the reasons I don't own an air conditioner or a car. I have no doubt that the climate change forecast by most of the accepted models, if unchecked, is going to bring catastrophic changes to Life As We Know It.

And there's the rub.

Over the last few hundred years of human population explosion, we've done some pretty stupid things. We regularly build on vulnerable coastlines. We've dammed and diverted rivers, ruined watersheds, farmed land never meant to be farmed and created huge dust bowls, depleted resources at a fantastic rate, and basically crapped in our own nest. We have, in short, expected the earth's climate and ecology to bend to our desires, instead of trying to figure out how to best work within the system. This is an old argument, trotted out on a regular basis by the early radical ecology movement (c.f. Jackson Browne's anti-nuke anthem "Before the Deluge") and not unheard of now. But let's face it: human beings are control freaks and we don't, as a species, like change. This is one of the reasons global warming and its consequences terrify those of us who take it seriously.

Our complex climate is doing things we haven't been either smart or numerous enough to take note of previously except in an anecdotal way and we feel put upon. The ocean is going to come in and wash away our sandcastles and it pisses us off and frightens us. And it frightens us with good reason. Human beings not only don't like change, we don't deal well with it. Changes in the coastline will affect national boundaries and the amount of land available for the people living within those boundaries. Whenever changes of this sort happen, it makes people nervous enough to think of annexing their neighbors' land, or going in search of more. In earlier centuries, climate change may have sent the Vikings on their raids or been a factor in the French Revolution. If the availability of fresh water is already becoming an international issue, just think what the shrinkage of arable land will do.

New Orleans is a drastic example of what global warming might bring us (and what might happen to Battery Park City here in New York). Or such is the received wisdom. The fact is that New Orleans was built largely below sea level with poorly constructed and maintained levees and it was only a matter of time before a category 5 hurricane came roaring in from the Gulf of Mexico and inundated a city that was built where none should have been. Don't get me wrong: Katrina was a tragedy, but it was a statistical tragedy of tempting fate in the same way Venice and the lowlands of Holland are. Build below sea level or on marshy ground, and you'd better be prepared to get wet. And this is precisely the kind of change we're not prepared for.

We have a long history of this kind of risk blindness. People regularly build on the slopes of active volcanoes, on shifting barrier islands, on landfill, on fault lines, in the regular paths of typhoons and hurricanes. Instead of developing settlements in safer places, we attempt to develop ways to protect ourselves from natural disasters. Often we wait until they happen to even recognize the problem, let alone find a solution, which is basically what we're now doing with global warming. The trouble is that global warming doesn't only affect us, but the entire ecosystem we inhabit. The consequences might be not just the obliteration or inundation of our own structures, but the extinction of species.

As a rule, we think of extinction as a man-made problem, and yet there have been extinctions throughout history that had nothing to do with us. At least five times during the earth's history, 30-95% of its species have been wiped out, making way for the ecosystem we see around us now. Because it's familiar to us and because it seems to have been around "forever" in our foreshortened view of history, this is the ecosystem we think is "right" and that it should be preserved at all costs. But if global warming is not necessarily a man-made phenomenon, but a phase of a cycle that's been going on for millions of years, we may be witnessing nothing more than a natural change. Even if we've contributed to it, somehow sped it up, this is nothing that hasn't happened before.

And without change there is only stagnation and ultimately the death of the system. Humans often forget (if we only recently began to understand) that we're one very disruptive part of a much larger system. We're not, however, necessarily the most important part. No, really, it's not all about us, though we like to think so, in our solipsistic way. I suspect this is because our lifespans are so short, and history is so long. Strangely enough, humans also like to think that we're powerful enough to be the sole cause of all the world's ills, as well as of its marvels. There's as much hubris in that attitude as there is in the idea that we have the power and knowledge to "fix" something as complex as climate.

The point here is that we're looking at patterns in the history of an extremely long period of time, from a very narrow point of view which assumes that much of what happens is either due to our actions or controllable by us or is, at least, going to affect us the most. But the earth has been going through climatic and geophysical upheavals for billions of years without human intervention, and I suspect that it will continue to do so. Just because there are enough of us around to make note of it, and our civilization is advanced enough to begin to understand what is happening, doesn't mean that what's going on is unnatural—just that the changes we see happening are going to affect us as they never have before.

Change of some kind in our biosphere is inevitable and the flora and fauna we live with seem to be far more flexible in their ability to adjust to those changes than humans are. They adjust sometimes by becoming something other than what they were, in a process we call evolution. The question is not what we'll do about the change in climate, but how will we adapt to the changes already occurring. Should we stop trying to fix global warming? Absolutely not. Truthfully, though, I'm more concerned about the social consequences of global warming than I am about global warming itself. We need to remember that change is inevitable and not necessarily the thing to panic over that we frequently think it is. Sometimes change is just . . . different.

Adapt or die.

Comments

[Em]

Granted that New Orleans is geographically vulnerable.
But the Katrina disaster was manmade to the extent that much death and suffering could have been avoided with levees that were maintained, evacuation plans that worked, some political will to go and, for instance, let the prisoners out of their flooded county jail cells.

[Lee Kottner]

Couldn't agree more, Em. It's hard to think of an example where governmental authorities fell down quite so hard on the job as they did in New Orleans. Which doesn't bode well for other similar events.

[Roger]

Hey Ann,

After that hot weekend I spent visiting with you in NYC, how can you say all this?!! How dare you!! LOL.

I wish other people were as open-minded about most issues as you are on this one. It is heathly for any society to question established beliefs. After reading Freakomonics this summer, I started remembering all my statistics work in grad school. If the facts don't support commonly-held beliefs, then what do we believe? In this case, about the environment.

I'm personally torn by the idea that humans need to self-destruct as a species because we have failed miserably and "oh my gawd, we're all going to die." As I see it, either way, the earth wins.

[Lee Kottner]

Yeah, that weekend! That alone could make anyone believe in global warming. Really, it's not that I disbelieve or don't agree with the scientific data, I'm just curious about the methodology. I'm a long-time conservationist, but I do believe there's a balance to be had between human activity and the environment. And extremism either for or against on this issue serves no one.

I'm not even sure that most of the culprits disbelieve the data. I think it far more likely that they don't give a rat's ass.

[Roger]

I know the science is relatively new but Gore's film is compelling and according to most scientists is mostly on target. The film has gotten me involved in environmental issues again and buying "green" light bulbs (but not the green party bulbs). If you get a chance, rent the DVD if it is out by now. If you see it, share your thoughts.

[sushil_yadav]

The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.

The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.

Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.
Subject : Environment can never be saved as long as cities exist.

Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.

If there are no gaps there is no emotion.

Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.

When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.

There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.

People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.

Emotion ends.

Man becomes machine.

A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.

FAST VISUALS /WORDS MAKE SLOW EMOTIONS EXTINCT.

SCIENTIFIC /INDUSTRIAL /FINANCIAL THINKING DESTROYS EMOTIONAL CIRCUITS.

A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY CANNOT FEEL PAIN / REMORSE / EMPATHY.

A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY WILL ALWAYS BE CRUEL TO ANIMALS/ TREES/ AIR/ WATER/ LAND AND TO ITSELF.

To read the complete article please follow either of these links :

PlanetSave

EarthNewsWire

sushil_yadav