Note: The script below is from the author at Manpollo.org
and other
site (on this second site, the author asks for help translating
the topics to Spanish for DVDs, etc.) The script doesn't correspond
100% to the video and still needs checking over.
This video is titled “Scare Tactics” and is part of the expansion
pack accompanying the main video “How It All Ends.”
GONNA BE BAD
[With flashlight] Ever wonder where the horror stories of global
climate change come from? In this video, boys and girls, we’ll
see why the boogeyman is real, and not just a make-believe story
your friends tell you to scare you. Bwuaah-haa-haa (cough, cough)
[Desk] When I first posted a version of the climate change decision
grid in the Spring of 2007, a lot of the complaints I heard were
along the lines that I had biased the grid by underplaying the
negative consequences in the upper left box, and overplaying the
negative consequences in the lower righthand box. In the video
“How It All Ends: Risk Management,” I justified the consequences
placed in the upper left box. Here, we’ll take a closer look at
the lower right box. As you’ll recall, that’s the feasible worst-case
scenario where we didn’t take action, but human-caused global
climate change turned out to be true after all.
I was accused a lot of scare mongering. Which got me to thinking:
is that always a bad thing? Can you imagine a scenario where maybe
you’re not scared enough for your own good? I’m a science teacher,
so I’m in a position of being able to understand a bit of where
the pronouncements of “impending doom” come from. Now, most in
the scientific world are very careful to NOT pronounce impending
doom, not just because they don’t want to be accused of scaremongering,
but because scientists have a trained hesitancy about being too
confident. So the perception of doomsaying usually is created
by the media’s reporting on what the scientists actually say.
As you’ll recall from the video “How It All Ends: The Nature
of Science,” all science is explicitly uncertain, but that uncertainty
is often dropped from the story when the media gets ahold of it.
This is where the public has gotten its perception of “Why should
we listen to the scientists this time, when they’re always predicting
doom, and it never comes?” It’s because when the scientist says
“I found an interesting preliminary result: it may be possible
that average global temperatures might be falling. This merits
further study,” the media—which is all about telling stories—runs
with that and proclaims “Scientists warn of impending ice age!
Glaciers may cover Florida!”
Which is why you personally, are at a huge advantage, having seen
parts of the statements from AAAS and NAS that I shared in “Risk
Management,” because you’ve had the opportunity to bypass the
media and see for yourself what the scientists are saying. And,
after viewing “Nature of Science,” you now have a better appreciation
of how tentative science really is. So now you grasp how really
remarkable those statements from AAAS and NAS are in their boldness.
Science in its very nature is tentative, yet the two organizations
that pretty much are the Science Establishment felt compelled
to announce to the world: the globe is warming, we’re the ones
doing it, it’s going to be bad, and we should do something about
it quick. If you feel a little nervous because the normally sober
fuddy-duddies seem decidedly alarmed—that’s probably a healthy
reaction.
I should make this clear: the nasty details of catastrophic climate
change I described in previous videos are the worst-case scenarios,
so we don’t think at this point that they are likely to happen.
But—as time goes on and our understanding gets better—they appear
to be increasingly feasible. Eric Rignot, a NASA scientist who
has measured a doubling in ice loss from Greenland over the past
decade, recently said: “We see things today that five years ago
would have seemed completely impossible, extravagant, exaggerated.”
[National Geographic, June 2007]. Martin Parry, co-chair of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told reporters
this month, “We are all used to talking about these impacts coming
in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. Now we know
that it’s us.” [Washington Post, September 29, 2007]. Now remember,
as a professional individuals, they’re near the bottom of our
credibility spectrum that we described in the video “Risk Management.”
But still, the sentiments give you pause.
Just today a student said to me “I’m tired of the predictions
painting a worse and worse picture. I just want them to come out
and say—oh, we were wrong. Everything’s going to be fine.” I told
him he can get just such a pleasant bedtime story—just go the
websites of the conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation,
the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the
American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institute. Cato actually
published the book Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry About
Global Warming, and CEI ran TV ads last year with the tagline
“Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life.”
But then, of course, he’d be obliged to compare them on the credibility
spectrum with AAAS, NAS, USCAP, and Exxon. And then he’d probably
get depressed again. But despair not! We can do something about
this, which is what the video “How It All Ends: The Solution”
is about. So be sure to not click away until you’ve seen that
one. In the meantime, let’s employ some “scare tactics,” and take
a look at where the boogeyman stories come from, to get a sense
whether raising the alarm about abrupt climate change is closer
to the story of Chicken Little or of Paul Revere. You gotta admit,
they were both alarmists.
PENTAGON
In the video “Risk Management” I detailed how AAAS, NAS, and USCAP—as
well as the national science academies of most of the rest of
the world—have publicly called for action on climate change. But
I didn’t a mention another stunning warning about climate change
from a source high up on our credibility spectrum: a 2003 Pentagon
study titled “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications
for United States National Security: Imagining the Unthinkable.”
Commissioned by the Pentagon’s most respected big thinker, co-written
by a former Shell Oil analyst, and reported on by Fortune magazine;
it’s hardly the Sierra Club newsletter. You should definitely
check it out yourself [Google “Pentagon climate change”]. It is
an accessible yet terrifying read, full of war and chaos, as our
military planners sketched out a worst-case, but plausible scenario:
“As famine, disease, and weather-related disasters strike due
to the abrupt climate change, many countries’ needs will exceed
their carrying capacity. This will create a sense of desperation,
which is likely to lead to offensive aggression in order to reclaim
balance.”
It cautions that, while the scenario it explores is not likely,
“[i]t is quite plausible that within a decade the evidence of
an imminent abrupt climate shift may become clear and reliable.
. . The [sic] report explores how such an abrupt climate change
scenario could potentially de-stabilize the geo-political environment,
leading to skirmishes, battles, and even war due to resource constraints.
. . . Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.”
Ewww, that last line is icky. In so many ways.
“Recent research. . . suggests that there is a possibility that
this [currently observed] gradual global warming could lead to
a relatively abrupt slowing of the ocean’s thermohaline conveyor,
which could lead to harsher winter weather conditions, sharply
reduced soil moisture, and more intense winds in certain regions
that currently provide a significant fraction of the world’s food
production. With inadequate preparation, the result could be a
significant drop in the human carrying capacity of the Earth’s
environment.”
Did you catch that? You may have nodded off for a second cuz these
guys are even more verbose than I am, but that was essentially
government-speak for “We’re all gonna die!!!!” Not quite, but
roll the phrase “significant drop in the human carrying capacity
of the Earth’s environment” around in your head a few times, and
see how warm and fuzzy it makes you feel.
The report’s bottom line warning to the nation’s military planners
is: “because of the potentially dire consequences, the risk of
abrupt climate change, although uncertain and quite possibly small,
should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national
security concern.”
If you go and you read this report about a national security concern,
you’ll notice that the only mention it makes of terrorism—is as
a consequence of abrupt climate change.
PEARCE
Pretty scary stuff. It makes a little more sense now when the
author Fred Pearce relates his experience in researching his book
With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in
Climate Change. Remember, on our credibility spectrum, as a professional
individual he falls near the bottom, and so we won’t take his
personal analysis about the climate at face value. However, we
certainly have no reason to question his personal experience.
In the introduction he writes:
“Some environmental stories don’t add up. I’m an environmental
journalist, and sometime the harder you look at a new scare story,
the less scary it looks. The science is flaky, or someone has
recklessly extrapolated from a small local event to create a global
catastrophe. . . . But climate change is different. I have been
on this beat for eighteen years now. The more I learn, the more
I go and see for myself, and the more I question scientists, the
more scared I get. . . Don’t take my word for it. Often in environmental
science it is the young, idealistic researchers who become the
impassioned advocates. Here I find it is the people who have been
in the field the longest—the researchers with the best reputations
for doing good science, and the professors with the best CVs and
longest lists of published papers—who are the most fearful, often
talking in the most dramatic language.”
ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE
So let’s take a look at some of the specific mechanics that have
got top brass and top scientists both so nervous.
The details of all these worst-case scenarios are very complex,
which is why in both the “Risk Management” and the “Nature of
Science” videos I suggested leaving the interpretation of the
evidence to the experts, and we stick to performing our supervisory
duties by taking what the scientists say and deciding the course
of action that seems to have the best expected value. But, now
that you’ve watched “How It All Ends: Mechanics of Climate Change,”
you are in a position of understanding a bit where some of the
more outlandish-sounding predictions come from. So we’ll explore
those here.
I think you’ll be disappointed to find that they are far more
reasonable than you would hope. Because the picture ain’t pretty.
As always, you shouldn’t take what I say at face value. Do some
research for yourself, and remember to evaluate your sources.
A lot of what I’ll share here can be found in a book called Abrupt
Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises, published by NAS, which—as
a professional organization—is at the top of our credibility spectrum.
You can actually read the whole book online if you google around
a little.
In discussions about this with skeptics, I often feel frustrated
with their insistence on immediate and certain consequences before
they would acknowledge the need to do anything. Sometimes I find
myself thinking “What do I have to do—say that global climate
change is going to come to your house—personally—and eat your
lunch!??” So here’s where we see why it’s not so outlandish that
yes—global climate change may indeed eat your lunch.
The reason why this message may seem so different from what you’ve
been used to hearing about climate change is that, just in the
last few years, an entirely new topic in climate change has emerged.
That is the idea of abrupt climate change. We used to think that
the climate of the past changed gradually, and twenty years ago,
when climate models first started suggesting that we could change
the climate, all the discussion was about it happening in hundreds
to thousands of years. But as the science improved (the data collection,
computer modeling, and understanding of complex systems), the
predicted time scale for the change just got shorter and shorter.
This is where most of the scary stuff comes from. And unfortunately,
it’s not simply conjecture. Just in the last 5 or 10 years, we’ve
come to see that the typical behavior for the climate seems to
not be to change gradually, as we’d previously thought, but to
hang in one state for a while, and then suddenly lurch to a new
state, in a very short period of time, usually prompted by some
sort of poke—some change in the conditions. And now the best,
most recent science is suggesting that we may face the threat
of the climate changing very abruptly—that means within decades.
Perhaps even a single decade.
This general trend in the science of climate change—this trend
of ever increasing severity of the predictions—is in itself frightening.
Because in general, what science tells you today is more reliable
than what it told you yesterday. In science, changing your mind
is a good thing, because it means your understanding is getting
better, closer to the physical truth. So it’s bad news for us
that as time has gone on and the picture about climate change
has gotten clearer, it has also gotten more grim. One more reason
to be nervous.
So we no longer see the climate as something gradually shifting
over millennia, but as something lurching from one extreme to
the other, usually prompted by some sort of outside factor. Wally
Broecker, the Columbia University climate researcher whose work
is the foundation of carbon cycle science, summed it up vividly,
saying: “We are getting a picture of the climate as an angry beast.
And we are poking it with a stick.” This is one of the most authoritative
climate dudes on the planet. Yikes.
ABRUPT=COMPLEX SYSTEM
In order to understand how something as huge as the global climate
can change in a geological eyeblink, we need to first understand
the nature of complex systems, sometimes known as non-linear dynamical
systems, or in the popular parlance, “chaotic” systems.
I’ve pointed out elsewhere that “global warming” is not a great
name for the phenomenon, not only because some places get colder,
but because the change in temperature may not be the main thing
we’ll notice. It’s how the rapid change in temperature destabilizes
the climate, affecting precipitation (droughts and floods), wind
events (storms, hurricanes and tornadoes), and ecosystems (forest
fires, agriculture, and permafrost) that will really matter to
us.
So how can such a small change so destabilize the global climate?
Because the climate is a complex or “chaotic” system. So it’s
worthwhile to look briefly at some of the features that define
a complex system.
Unpredictability of specifics
One main feature is that the behavior of the system is extremely
difficult to predict—hence the term chaos. General trends are
easier to tease out than specific behaviors—sort of like it’s
easier to say that about 50% of coin tosses will be heads, but
you can’t predict the outcome of a single toss. It’s also why
we can talk about probabilities of what the climate may do in
20 years, but we have trouble predicting whether it’s going to
rain Tuesday or not.
Extreme sensitivity
Another distinguishing characteristic is what’s called “extreme
sensitivity to initial conditions.” What that means is that tiny
little differences can cascade into vastly different outcomes.
Popularly known as “the butterfly effect,” it’s not just fanciful,
but is easy to observe. Imagine two dried leaves floating on the
surface of a swift river. One of them ends up hung up on a rock
10 yards downstream, while the other one finds its way to the
ocean, even though they were placed side by side.
One objection you’ll often hear when talking about climate change
is “how arrogant to think we can affect the planet. It’s only
common sense that we’re too small to have an effect.” Tell that
to a virus, or a mosquito in your bedroom when you’re trying to
go to sleep. In a complex system—like the climate—very small differences
can have huge effects. If you watched the video “Nature of Science,”
you’ll know that common sense is easily fooled, and is no way
to make a decision about a complex topic.
Here’s a slightly geeky example, but if you stick with me, it
can be a pretty cool realization. Here’s a graph made by a fairly
simple calculation, but the calculation is run again and again.
It’s designed to do a basic population simulation of rabbits or
wombats or javelinas or whatever, and it turns out to behave like
a complex system. (Note that the population is not in whole numbers—you
can take the vertical axis to be in millions if it makes you more
comfortable.) Across the bottom we have “generations,” each one
representing one turn of the crank on our simple calculation.
You can see that the population goes up and down in a way that
looks random, or chaotic. You couldn’t be expected to look at
this and predict what the population of the next generation will
be. Maybe you can describe some patterns, like it goes up, then
down, but anything more specific soon fails.
But here’s where the really wild part of complex systems shows
up. In this graph, the initial population differs from the one
in this graph by just .0000002%. As you compare the population
fluctuations between the two cases, you see that they track along
nicely—identical as far as we can tell—which is what you would
expect. But then, after 50 generations—BAM! The profiles diverge
wildly, and we suddenly have two very different outcomes. Two
completely different outcomes from initial conditions that were
only as different as 5,000,000 is from 5,000,001! That’s crazy!
That’s wild! That’s chaotic!
So next time you hear someone say “Oh, but we’re too small to
make any difference to something as big as the global climate,”
you just whip out your graphing calculator and show them this.
Or. . . maybe not.
Feedback
The reason that complex systems behave with such extreme sensitivity
is due to another hallmark of a complex system: feedback. This
is where you have some process with an input and an output, say,
like a microphone hooked up to a speaker. Here the input is the
sound that goes into the microphone. The system transforms the
input—in this case, amplifying it—and the speaker give the output—LOUD
SOUND. In the population simulation we just talked about, the
input is the number of live rabbits going into a breeding season,
and the output is the number of live rabbits surviving at the
end, and the system is all the things affecting bunny survival.
Feedback is when the output of the system is then used as the
input for the next go-around—it is “fed back” into the system.
As you’ve probably experienced, the results [DEMO feedback] can
be painful sometimes.
The reason feedback leads to the extreme sensitivity we mentioned
a minute ago, is because the process—breeding rabbits or an amp,
or whatever—in one “turn of the crank” takes small differences
and makes them slightly larger. These result are then “fed back”
into the system for another go round, which makes the differences
still larger, which are then made larger, which are then made
larger, and you can see how you can quickly get a result which
seems way out proportion to the original input.
“But that’s not feasible. That implies it would go forever, and
run away!” Eventually, other factors kick in to stop the change,
just like the speaker doesn’t continue to get louder forever.
It bumps up against some limits [DEMO], so that the sound does
level off, though that doesn’t mean it’s comfortable for us. [DEMO]
This is why—with global climate change—it’s not the temperature
increase that really has scientists worried. Who wouldn’t like
to be just a little warmer on a chilly day? The problem is that
even a small change in temperature can get amplified by feedback
mechanisms, so that we end up with a huge change further down
the line—not necessarily in temperature, but in some other characteristic
of the climate. Maybe in rainfall patterns, or storm frequency,
or growing season.
Forcings and Tipping Points
The changes in the conditions which trigger such abrupt shifts
in the climate are called “forcings.” In the case of our speaker
demo, the forcing would be the small amount of ambient noise which
gets the whole feedback cycle started.
In the past, the likely forcings which caused abrupt climate change
were things like changes in the output of the sun, or the periodic
wobble in the Earth’s axis, or a large random event—say, the breakup
of a single ice dam releasing a huge lake all at once. The conditions
at which a small tweak in the conditions causes a huge change
is called a “threshold,” or in the popular press, a “tipping point.”
In the video “How It All Ends” I offered the analogy of flipping
a light switch—small pushes result in small movements, until a
tipping point is reached, when the same small movement that had
done not much of anything suddenly results in a big change. Sort
of leaning a canoe gradually over, until it suddenly tips. Or
here [speaker DEMO],
moving the mic a quarter of an inch at a
time does nothing. A little movement, little to no change. The
same little movement, still little to no change. But at some unexpected
time, the same little movement which had unnoticeable effects
before. . . . [screech] This is the part of complex systems that
I think is really fascinating. Or really terrifying if I happen
to be in the test tube.
It is the likely presence of tipping points in our climate which
makes the game of climate change so dicey, or perhaps we should
say Russian Roulette-y. The nerve-wracking part is, we’ve recently
learned enough to have very strong suspicions that the Earth’s
climate has tipping points, but because of the unpredictable nature
of chaotic systems, we can’t know where they are! We can say that
the farther and faster things change, the more likely we are to
cross one. But tipping points really can only be identified from
the other side. [Oops—guess I shoulda stopped there.] This is
where that picture of the climate as “an angry beast” is coming
from.
In fact, recent research seems to be showing that in the measurable
past, there have only been two periods of climate stability, one
of which humans grew up in. You might think “Ha! Change is inevitable!
See, I told you it was a natural cycle!” Sure, on a geologic time
scale it’s inevitable, like tens of thousands of years. But we
have excellent evidence that CO2 is a forcing which may trigger
another abrupt climate change sooner than it would have otherwise
happened. So yes, it’s inevitable that the climate will change,
probably drastically. But we seem to be making the difference
between whether it happens 20,000 years from now, or in 2020.
That’s the difference between it happening to you, and it happening
to your great-great-great-great-great-great—well, you get the
point. Plus, dying is inevitable, too. But you still dodge the
bus, don’t you?
So how do we know it’s NOT just a freaky coincidence that the
climate is changing observably at the same time we are putting
observably more greenhouse gases into the air. How do we know
it’s not natural, caused by the sun, or cosmic rays and clouds,
or the Earth’s wobble? The simple answer is: no peer-reviewed
study or model or graph has been able to reproduce the observed
warming of the last 20 years without also including the “forcing”
of anthropogenic—human-caused—carbon dioxide emissions. Go look
it up yourself. There is no scientific explanation (that is, done
by scientists, rather than armchair commentators) of what we observe
now in the physical world that does not incorporate human “forcings.”
When you hear that old saw about “It’s the sun, stupid,” go do
some looking, and you’ll see that hypothesis is a contender for
much of the 20th century data, but falls apart for the last 20
years. Plus, no one contends that the sun does not affect the
climate. It is certainly one of the factors. But the picture seems
to have become clear that it can’t explain the warming by itself.
But then, what do I know—I’m not a scientist, and this stuff is
really hard to understand. If you want competent analysis of a
complex scientific issue, go ask the trained professionals who
know how to properly interpret data. I think they’ve probably
got a few of those over at AAAS or NAS. Maybe they’ve published
something on the topic. Oh, that’s right. . .
The Pentagon Report I mentioned earlier specifically warns of
such abrupt climate change:
“The research suggests that once temperature rises above some
threshold, adverse weather conditions could develop relatively
abruptly, with persistent changes in the atmospheric circulation
causing drops in some regions of 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit in a
single decade.”
Drops of 5-10 degrees?? In a single decade?? From global warming?
Remember, That’s why global “climate change” is a better phrase.
Better still climate destabilization, or climate chaos, or how
about just global climate [“cl*st*rf*ck” is beeped out.]
So what exactly is the threshold temperature at which it all hits
the fan? We don’t know. We can’t know, until we’ve hit it, cuz
tipping points can only be identified from the other side. Nervous
yet?
We know it’s possible, because it’s happened before.
12,000 years ago, long before SUVs, the globe warmed 9 degrees
Fahrenheit in—guess how long. You got it—a decade!
“That’s what I’ve been saying!” some skeptics have told me. “The
climate has always been changing. So why are we suddenly the bad
guys?” Wait, that story is comforting to you? That because the
climate has gone totally cattywompus in the past, therefore it
can’t be us doing it now? What about the fact that it can lurch
so far, so suddenly? Nine degrees in 10 years? Don’t you find
that just little disturbing? And anyway, isn’t that reasoning
sort of like socking your sister in the arm, and when she complains
to mom, saying “You know, that arm has really been a problem for
her in the past, huh? So clearly I’m not involved.”
Well I’m sorry to break it to you, but here’s the bad news: remember
that idea of a “forcing?” In the past it was a change in solar
activity or a wobble in the Earth’s orbit that provided the poke
that sent the climate spinning off into a new state. Well this
time, we are the forcing. We are the poke which threatens to send
the climate lurching to a new state.
How can we—puny little us—do such a big thing? Well, remember,
with a complex system, the poke—the “forcing”—doesn’t have to
be big to have huge effects. It just needs to be in a ticklish
spot to set off feedback mechanisms which then amplify the change,
setting off more feedback mechanisms, and so on. And in this case,
we are providing the forcing by digging up 300 million years worth
of buried carbon in the form of oil and coal, and putting it into
the air in the space of a couple hundred years.
This is why we should be talking more about “climate sensitivity”
than “amount of warming.” And as far as I can tell, this is a
indeed a shift that’s happening in the climate science community.
I think it also is why the newer research seems to be making the
IPCC’s predictions seem too conservative—perhaps way too conservative.
Because newer research is showing that there are a number of possibly
very significant climate feedback mechanisms which weren’t incorporated
into the IPCC’s climate models. So it looks like history may end
up judging the IPCC’s predictions as being way off base—but off
base in the direction of too mild! That’s not good news.
One last feature of complex systems that seems a little contradictory
is that of lag time. On the one hand you hear talk about abrupt
change, but on the other hand, there can be significant lag time
between cause and effect, simply because the system is so large,
with so many interactions, that chains of cause-and-effect take
a while to play out. What that means is you’ve got to look way
ahead if you want to anticipate changes. This doesn’t contradict
the characteristic of abrupt change, and in fact, can make a nasty
combination.
As an analogy, a large ship is very easy to oversteer if you don’t
know what you’re doing. Here’s why. You want to turn left, so
you spin the wheel left a little bit. The ship doesn’t seem to
turn—because it’s got a lot of momentum that’s hard to change—so
you turn the wheel more. Still going straight, so you crank the
wheel harder. Now, finally, the ship starts to turn a little bit,
but this is the turning that results from you spinning the wheel
the very first time, four spins ago. So now, when you stop spinning
the wheel in response to the ship turning, there’s still a bunch
of your spins “stacked up” that are going to be affecting the
ship over the next few minutes. So you end up turning very sharply
to the left—in a sense abruptly once it happens, though there
was a long lag time after you first turned the wheel. And it’s
the long lag time that allows you to stack up inputs, contributing
to the magnitude of the abrupt change that eventually happens.
With the ship, you panic and turn hard to the right, making the
same mistake the other direction, but worse, and off you go in
a wild zig-zag over the next few minutes, communicating to all
salty hands that it’s a landlubber at the helm.
You know those big supertankers? The biggest ships on the planet?
I haven’t talked to a pilot firsthand, but I’ve read they need
to start their turns MILES AHEAD. As a physics teacher, I have
a keen sense of inertia, and that picture sounds reasonable to
me. So in a sense, our climate, with it’s complex interactions,
lag time, and huge amounts of matter and energy, is like a huge
ship, and we’re turning the wheel with our greenhouse gas emissions.
The problem is, we’re NOT looking miles ahead. My fear is we won’t
look up until it’s obvious to the most casual observer that we’re
in trouble, and at that point, it may very well be too late to
avert the shipwreck. Even if we can, it will take Herculean effort,
because it takes a huge effort to make the same turn in a short
amount of time that smaller efforts made earlier could have accomplished.
CLIMATE FEEDBACK MECHANISMS
So now we get to the meat of the boogeyman [ewww], where we can
get a sense of why there are such drastic predictions resulting
from a little bit of projected warming. What it basically comes
down to is potential feedback mechanisms in the climate. We’ll
take a brief look at a few just to get a flavor. There’s tons
of info out there on this stuff if you want more.
[BOARD] Shiny white ice sheets reflect sunlight. When warming
happens and you lose a little ice, then less sunlight is reflected,
and more is absorbed by the underlying rock or water. This increases
the temperature, which melts more ice, reflecting less sunlight,
and so on.
[BOARD] Near the surface of the ocean, the phytoplankton—just
like land plants—use photosynthesis to split CO2 from the air,
keeping the carbon to build themselves, and spitting out the oxygen
for us to breathe. We like them. They are good to us. They are
actually responsible for about half of the globe’s photosynthesis,
and to live they require the nutrients that are carried by cold
ocean water upwelling from the depths. If the surface of the ocean
warms up a little bit, that increases the thermal stratification
in the ocean, leading to less upwelling of that cold, nutrient-rich
water, which leads to less phytoplankton growing. Less phytoplankton
means less CO2 is removed from the air, which traps more of the
sun’s energy, warming the air and the ocean more, causing less
upwelling, less phytoplankton, more CO2, and so on.
[BOARD] At the bottom of the ocean is trapped a huge amount of
methane—a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2—in the form of
hydrates: kind of frozen together with water. Increase the water
temp, and that melts the methane hydrate, which migrates to the
atmosphere, where it does its greenhouse gas thing, warming the
air, warming the ocean, melting more methane hydrates, and so
on.
[BOARD] Warmer temperatures allow permafrost to thaw, which releases
methane stored there, increasing temperatures, melting more permafrost,
and so on.
[BOARD] Warmer temperatures allow frozen peat bogs to melt, allowing
the peat to go back to the rotting it was doing before being frozen.
Rotting peat releases both CO2 and methane, leading to higher
temps, melting more peat bogs, and so on.
[BOARD] Carbon from the atmosphere ends up in the surface water
of the ocean (both as dissolved CO2, and as part of the bodies
of the plankton). The famous “ocean conveyor belt”— which not
only keeps Europe nicely warm (Northern Europe is the same latitude
as Siberia, but considerably more temperate)—carries the surface
water down to the bottom of the ocean in the North Atlantic, effectively
sequestering or “locking away” the carbon. Warmer temperatures
melt more ice on land, increasing the flow of freshwater into
the North Atlantic, slowing down the conveyor belt. If the ocean
conveyor slows, carbon is sequestered more slowly, allowing more
to build up in the atmosphere, increasing temperature, melting
more ice, leading to more freshwater flowing into the North Atlantic,
slowing the conveyor, and so on. This is part of why you’ll hear
about Greenland—not just because it’s melting ice would raise
sea levels, but because it’s perfectly positioned to seriously
bollix up the ocean conveyer.
[DESK] Forests can give rise to the same feedback mechanism as
the phytoplankton do. As the climate changes, a forest may find
itself in a climate that stresses it out, increasing disease,
allowing more insect attacks, and eventually you can have a significant
part of the forest die—or perhaps the whole thing in extreme cases.
So it stops taking as much CO2 out of the atmosphere, allowing
temps to rise, leading to more dead trees, and so on. But it gets
worse, because if you have an entire forest standing dead, it’s
just a matter of time before a lightning strike sets off a massive
wildfire, releasing back into the atmosphere all the carbon that
used to make up the trees. So not only does the forest stop taking
carbon out of the air, it can actually emit carbon back into the
air that was handily sequestered.
If feedback mechanisms don’t have you scared enough yet for your
own good, there’s also the concept of maskings. These are dynamics
which keep the warming smaller less than it otherwise would be.
That’s a good thing, in the short run. But the problem is, if
the masking gets “used up” or stops working, then the effects
of global warming will accelerate faster than expected. These
maskings have been compared to coiled springs—they take up some
of the shock now, but if used too much, when they let go, we get
a nasty backlash.
[BOARD] Such maskings include the “global dimming” provided by
aerosols—those are tiny little particles of stuff that our activities
have put into the air—air pollution, sort of. Except in this role,
they could be considered a positive thing by buying us some time.
Essentially, they act to reflect some of the sun’s energy back
out into space before it makes it to the ground, keeping us cooler.
Kinda like atmospheric sunscreen. The irony is, as we pollute
less in terms of traditional air pollution, the global dimming
will probably decrease, allowing more sunlight in, increasing
the warming. So the aerosols are probably “masking” some of the
warming we’re causing currently, but could spring on us in the
future.
[BOARD] Another masking effect comes from what are called carbon
“sinks,” like the ocean, or forests. You may recall from the video
“Mechanics of Climate Change” that we emit about 7 billion tons
of carbon every year, but only about 3 billion tons of it hangs
around in the atmosphere long enough to have a greenhouse effect.
Two billion tons goes into the ocean as dissolved gas and bodies
of little beasties. So the ocean acts as a sink, masking the warming
that would otherwise be caused by those 2 billion tons of our
yearly carbon emissions hanging out in the air, doing their greenhouse
thang.
One problem is, in addition to its role in feedback cycles I mentioned
a minute ago, the ocean probably has a finite capacity for absorbing
carbon, but we don’t know what it is. It may be that one day,
it sort of—well—stops absorbing. That would really suck. Because
that would almost double the amount of our yearly carbon emissions
that would accumulate in the air—from 3 billion tons to 5 billion
tons—without us even emitting an ounce more. So suddenly we discover
we need to cut our emissions even faster and more drastically
than we thought. It might be like having the goalposts moved when
we already thought we were giving it our all. Such is the curse
of maskings. Friendly in the short run, but with a serious backlash
if you abuse them.
And do you remember how we can’t account for that last 2 billion
tons of our yearly carbon emissions? There must be a sink somewhere
taking that stuff in, but since we have no idea even what it is,
we can’t have any idea of how resilient it is, or how easily it
could stop absorbing that carbon, leaving our full 7 billion tons
a year to accumulate, instead of our current 3.
[DESK] So maybe now you see why there seems to be an increasing
sentiment in the climate science community that—since the IPCC
didn’t include a number of the feedback mechanisms now being studied—its
predictions of climate change—often dismissed by skeptics as overblown
and alarmist—are probably too optimistic.
DOOMSDAY SCENARIOS
It’s worth giving just a brief explanation for each of the specific
doomsday scenarios that I mentioned in the video “Risk Management.”
Seas rising 20, 30 feet. This is due not just to the runoff from
melting ice sheets and glaciers. A lot of it can be accounted
for by the simple thermal expansion of seawater. Generally, when
anything gets hot, it expands, and takes up more room. This is
actually what accounts for most of the observed rise in sea levels
so far. So you get a double-whammy: more water (from ice on land),
and expanding the water that is already there.
Entire forests die and burn. I already mentioned how a changing
climate can stress out the trees leading to increased disease
and infestations. But here’s another way to look at it: but basically,
as things warm up, regional climates will migrate, and the forests
of northern California may find themselves in a Southern California
climate. They don’t like that climate. That’s why they stuck to
Northern California. So you can have entire forests die just as
effectively as if you’d picked it up and plunked it down in the
wrong spot on earth. These dead forests dry, and as soon as lightning
strikes, you get the next catastrophe.
Widespread wildfires clear the land of the dead forests, but the
forest doesn’t come back like it used to after fires, because
all the seeds on the ground are for a different climate. I don’t
have a reference for this one, so maybe I’m just making this part
up. Someone let me know.
Massive floods alternate with killer droughts. This is a kind
of funky one, because climate change can mean the same annual
rainfall, which sounds like no big deal. Here again, relying on
common sense can really do you disservice. Because if the rainfall
is distributed differently, it can have a profound effect on our
lives. For instance, here in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.,
instead of getting our precipitation drizzled fairly evenly throughout
the winter, we might get it mostly dumped in a month or two. Since
it would be warmer, more of the precipitation than usual would
be rain and less would be snow, not only causing large amounts
of flooding when it fell, but reducing the accumulated snowpack.
So when spring and summer roll around, there would be very little
snowpack to feed the watersheds, and we end up with consistent
droughts. Not only that, but a huge fraction of our electricity
comes from hydropower—a carbon free source. So we would import
more electricity from the coal-fired power plants elsewhere, which
would increase carbon emissions. Hey—another feedback cycle! All
despite the fact that on paper, the total annual rainfall stays
the same as before.
The breadbaskets in the U.S. and Russia turn to dustbowls, leading
to widespread famine. This was mentioned in the Pentagon report,
due mainly to more arid soils, harsher winter conditions, and
stronger winds.
Dreadful epidemics rage like wildfire. Milder winter conditions—wait,
didn’t I just say harsher winter conditions? I can’t have it both
ways, can I? Yes I can. Because what’s the name of the game? Global
climate change—it’s all about the disruption caused when things
like ecosystems and economies are set up for the regional climates
they have now, and then abruptly find themselves in a different
climate. Anyway, milder winter conditions (in some areas), fail
to cause the die-offs of insect larvae that usually occur, so
you get markedly increased insect populations, spreading over
wider territories, carrying disease for people, animals, and crops.
If you combine that with a public health care system already stressed
by dealing with refugees from coastal areas, and the water treatment
systems of major metropolitan areas being breached by rising seawater
(remember how you-know-what always flows downhill? What happens
when the bottom of the hill is raised up?), you can see where
epidemics become feasible results of climate change.
Have you heard of colony collapse disorder? About 25% of the commercial
honey bee hives in the U.S. have suddenly and mysteriously died.
Global climate change can’t be blamed yet, but environmental stresses
are thought to play a significant factor, perhaps by allowing
more favorable conditions for parasites or fungi while at the
same time lowering the bees’ immunity. This is the type of sudden,
triggered, large-scale problem that sudden change in climate might
bring about. If you think we’re just talking about honey, you
should be aware that commercial hives are responsible for the
pollination of something like one third of U.S. crop species.
If you’re worried about “protecting the economy from harsh government
regulation,” think about the economic impact of losing the commercial
production of a third of the US crop species. “Protect the economy”
indeed.
Storms like Katrina can become the norm. The debate is already
active about how much to attribute recent changes in hurricanes
seasons to climate change. But no climate scientist debates that
it is plausible in the future.
And none of this sounds good for the economy, does it?
OBJECTIONS
Still, you’ll often hear objections like:
“Why get all wound up about the climate changing? Who’s to say
what the right climate is?”
“Birds and bees build nests and homes out of raw materials in
their environment, just like we do. How is this different? If
there were no beavers, there wouldn’t be any beaver dams disrupting
the natural course of a river—is that good or bad or just the
way it is?”
“The climate has done fine before without us!”
“But it’s been warm in the past. Where’s the evidence that that’s
bad? Sometimes I feel kinda chilly.”
My response to all these come down to: the climate is tremendously
complex. Like I said a minute ago, it’s more accurate to think
of “global warming” as “global climate change,” and even more
descriptive to think of it as “global climate destabilization.”
I’ve even heard it described as “global climate chaos.” Maybe
that image is a little less comforting than “global warming.”
Who’s to say a light tap on the chest is a bad thing? It’s not.
Unless you’re balancing on top of a post. The issue is not the
temperature; the issue is the stability of the climate. Every
human settlement is set up for the regional climate it has now.
How does spinning the wheel and swapping climate at random with
another settlement sound to you? We’ve got a number of examples
of ancient civilizations that disappeared suddenly, and abrupt
climate change is one of the main suspects: the Anasazi, the Mayans,
the Nabataeans.
There is no “right” climate. And there’s nothing morally wrong
with a changing climate. The problem comes simply from the effects
that a changing climate has on our standard of living. The problem
is, we’re pretty much set up to deal with it like it is now. Here,
it seems the greatest criterion for a “good” climate is predictability.
Consistency. So that we don’t plant our crops and have them die.
We also don’t tend to like extreme weather events, like storms,
floods, and droughts. What the best science is now showing us
is that a little change in the temp can radically change climate,
making it both unpredictable, and violent. That’s the problem.
So it’s really not about saving the planet. It’s about saving
ourselves and our standard of living.
CHINA
One objection I hear a lot is: “Why should we [that is, America]
change? China is a bigger emitter, and India’s right up there.
Taking action would just hamstring us economically, and wouldn’t
solve anything unless China and India are addressed.”
Yes, we should do everything we can to help and prompt China and
India reduce their emissions—perhaps by developing the new energy
technologies, and selling it to them at a profit! But aside from
that, it doesn’t at all invalidate action on our part. Here’s
why.
In a global system, bottom line, it’s the total emissions that
matter. And when you’re playing a game that has a tipping point,
where the movement from here to here is not big deal, but the
same sized movement from here to here… [DEMO], there’s no way
to assign who emitted that little bit that put us just over. Because
you could point the finger at anybody and say: if you had emitted
just this little bit less, then the total wouldn’t have crossed
that tipping point, and we wouldn’t be hosed.
And you’d be totally correct to say that. You do recognize, of
course, that they’ll be saying the same thing to you. And they’ll
be equally correct. Everyone’s disappointed at the guy who missed
what would have been the winning shot at the end of the basketball
game, but the truth is, if that other guy hadn’t missed that lay-up
in the second quarter, the game would have been won as well. And
with carbon emissions, it’s all going on simultaneously, so it’s
even more ridiculous to pick a scapegoat. So, no more of this
“But what about China?” nonsense. It’s not even about the morality
of “chipping in” or “doing our part” or “doing the right thing.”
It’s about doing what’s in our self-interest. It’s about doing
whatever we can to avoid crossing a hidden tipping point which
might totally hose all of us. Plus with 5% of the world’s population,
the US emits 25% of its greenhouse gases, so we really shouldn’t
be stirring up the hunt for a scapegoat anyway.
CO2 LAGS
Speaking of the past, now is a good time to address a common objection
from those who want to believe that humans aren’t changing the
climate, so they go looking for evidence, and stop as soon as
they find something that sounds like it supports their view. I’m
not making fun of that—I just point it out as an example of how
you actually get farther from the truth about the physical world—rather
than closer to it—when you start from belief and look for evidence,
rather than the other way around. Be sure to watch the video “Nature
of Science” for ways to guard against this phenomenon of “confirmation
bias.”
The objection is this: “In the ice core data of past climate changes,
increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration actually happen 500
years after the temperature starts to go up. Those silly scientists
have got it backwards! That’s proof that CO2 doesn’t cause warming—it’s
the other way around!”
This is exactly why I suggest we leave the analysis of the evidence
to the scientists, who know what they’re doing. Here’s the misinterpretation
the skeptics are making about that data.
They are correct that the ice core record generally shows the
CO2 concentrations lagging the temperature by several hundred
years. The explanation is, the CO2 wasn’t the forcing of those
changes in climate. Some other forcing that we’ve talked about
started those periods of warming—like the sun, or the Earth’s
orbital wobble. First off, logically that doesn’t prove that CO2
can’t or isn’t acting as the forcing this time. It’s the same
as saying “My car has stopped many times before, but it’s never
been for lack of gas. Therefore I must not be out of gas,” even
though your gas gauge reads low.
And the second hole in that objection is scary in itself. You
see, the warmer a liquid is, the less gas will stay dissolved
in it. That’s why a glass of tap water left out overnight will
have bubbles on the sides in the morning—when the water warms
up to room temperature, it can’t hold all the air that had been
dissolved in it when it was cold, so some of the air comes out
as a gas, and sticks to the side.
Well, CO2, along with all other atmospheric gases, dissolves into
the ocean. When something warms the ocean up a little bit—the
sun, the Earth’s orbit, whatever—what happens to the amount of
gas that gets to stay dissolved in the water? It gets less, which
means some of that dissolved CO2 is now released into the atmosphere.
And what does more CO2 in the atmosphere do? It traps more of
the sun’s heat. Does this remind you of anything? Like, a feedback
cycle?
The extra trapped heat warms the ocean more, releasing more CO2,
which warms the globe and the ocean more, releasing more CO2,
which warms the globe more, and so on. So CO2 did not trigger
the periods of warming we observe in the ice record, but through
this feedback loop, it probably turned out to be the dominant
factor in the eventual magnitude of the changes. So, far from
dismissing CO2 as a problem, this objection actually emphasizes
the power of a little CO2.
And speaking of emphasizing, I want to use this misconception
to emphasize that none of us should get too cocky about our ability
to understand climate science—perhaps the most complex topic of
study in all human history. Think back to the video “The Nature
of Science” if you’ve watched that already. Do you remember how
easily fooled your common sense was? There’s a reason that it
takes a long time to get a Ph.D in these fields. As citizens,
it is our role to essentially supervise those who are working
for the greater good on our payroll, but we hired professionals
for a reason. It’s because the world is complex, and they aren’t
as easily wrong as we are. For instance, remember this feedback
demo? What would you expect would happen if—once the feedback
loop is activated—I move the mic closer? Louder, right, since
there’s less room for the energy to dissipate, so the output and
therefore the input has higher amplitude? [DEMO—it shuts off.]
Wild huh? Totally unexpected. Guess why it does that? I don’t
know. But I’m gonna have my Physics class play with it and see
what they can figure out. But I recommend not trying this experiment
at home with your own planet.
DIRE TIMES AHEAD?
The Pentagon report I mentioned earlier cautions: “With at least
eight abrupt climate change events documented in the geological
record, it seems that the questions to ask are: When will this
happen? What will the impacts be? And, how can we best prepare
for it? Rather than: Will this really happen?”
In his introduction to With Speed and Violence, author Fred Pearce
quotes a climate scientist who said to him quietly: “If we are
right, there are really dire times ahead.” If you’ll recall, my
whole point of this video project is not to convince you to believe
such predictions, but simply to ask the question: why risk it?
Where is the value in ignoring such warnings from so many smart,
experienced, credible people in the field?
Ten years ago, before I learned the details of global climate
change, I lumped it in with all the other environmental causes.
But once I learned the specific mechanics, evidence, and scope
of the issue, things changed. Dramatically. I distinctly remember
that afternoon, and the dreadful, dawning sense of “Oh, my God,”
as the sheer scope and reach of the threat unfolded and fell together.
I’d studied quite a bit of physics and chemistry by that point,
and in that one afternoon, in that one chemistry lecture by that
one professor, the puzzle pieces fell together with a crashing
sense of awe. It transformed me.
As I said earlier, I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I love
hiking in old-growth forests. I’m a literal tree-hugger. I dig
touching this huge, living thing and imagining how it was there,
in that exact same spot, already old, when the Declaration of
Independence was signed, or when the pilgrims landed, or even
before horses came to the continent. It’s just freaking amazing.
But now, when I see clear cuts, I think “Sweet! Carbon sequestration!
Let’s get more trees planted, so we can cut them down too!” When
a charity asks for money, I ask back “What will it do to reduce
carbon emissions?” I’m even a booster for nuclear power now—the
most reckless, irresponsible, short-sighted boondoggle ever—but
it’s carbon free! I know I sound like a zealot, but this is entirely
a pragmatic thing for me.
It reminds me of an account I read recently by a Washington insider.
He was speaking about how the sentiment on Capitol Hill about
global climate change was slowly changing, as lawmakers one by
one each have their own individual “Holy shit” moment.
But there are so many problems, and only finite resources of time
and money. Why start with climate change?
I had a professor of chemistry, oceanography, and atmospheric
sciences—smart guy!—who put it this way: Paper or plastic? Doesn’t
matter. Save the whales? Doesn’t matter! Toxic waste? Save social
security? Pro-life or pro-choice? Doesn’t matter! If the worst
of the potential consequences of global climate change come to
pass, it will so dominate us as a species that every other conceivable
issue will pale in comparison.
That is why climate change is not “just another” environmental
issue. This is not about whether you love mother Earth or care
for the whales or enjoy the idea of old growth forests or the
value of wild lands. This is the height of pragmatism. This is
about preserving our standard of living in the face of potentially
drastic changes that we ourselves have caused.
Just why is climate change such a dominant issue? Look out your
window. Climate is everywhere, everywhen. In the past, when we
mucked someplace up, we could always move “to greener pastures.”
But when it’s global, there’s nowhere to run to. Nowhere to hide.
Part of what makes this all terrifying is not just the possibility
of abrupt climate change, but how it’s a complete mismatch for
our threat-survival system. Psychologist Daniel Gilbert wrote
an excellent column in 2006 titled “If Only Gay Sex Caused Global
Warming,” where his basic point was, we evolved (if you believe
in that) to react to what is immediately threatening—call it the
Saber Tooth Tiger reflex—and that’s worked great for us so far
as a species. But now we find that we are threatened by something
that instead is abstract and in the future. And we’re just not
wired to watch out for stuff like that. I guess that’s why we’re
sitting in column B of our grid—”little to no significant action”—which
is a frightening place to be when you realize the what the stakes
are, and that the odds seem to be heavily in favor of human-caused
global climate change turning out to be true rather than false.
I don’t know about you, but that gets me really agitated.
It’s sort of like changing lanes on the highway to miss an unexpected
obstruction in your lane. If you’re vigilant and on your game,
you see it far enough ahead that you can signal, look in your
mirror, check your blind spot, and smoothly change lanes to avoid
it. But if you’re careless or distracted, so that you don’t see
it until you’re almost on top of it, all you can do is yank the
wheel and hope no one is in the lane next to you.
And that’s the problem. As a species, we’re pretty much ADD. As
a group, we’re not looking down the road; we’re just trying to
get through the next couple of minutes.
And to me, that’s the most terrifying part of all this. We’re
confident that we get out of any pickle we need to, because our
brilliant innovations, improvisations, and reactions have always
fit the bill before. Maybe that’s why the alarm bells haven’t
gone off. Our unconscious bias has been formed by our past success,
so we can’t imagine failing so spectacularly. But this time, it
seems it will probably take something new for us to succeed: we
will have to overcome our basic human nature of being reactive,
instead of proactive. That’s a heck of a challenge.
Years ago I learned a lesson about looking ahead that has stuck
with me, and I’d like to share it here. I grew up on a farm—a
nursery, technically. My dad grew ornamental plants in the ground,
and sometimes it was my job to mow the grassy roads in between
the planting beds. You’d want to get as close to the plants as
possible, without hitting them, to minimize the amount of hoeing
you’d have to do by hand later. The problem was, the plants were
both delicate, and expensive. So you’d have to really concentrate.
Especially cuz you were driving a medium-sized tractor fairly
fast and the big mower hanging off the back would swing out the
opposite way when you turned.
So if I was trying to nestle right into the row of plants to my
right, I’d have to be extremely careful of turning the wheel to
the left, cuz that would swing the mower to the right, towards
the plants. So of course what happens is by shying away from turning
to the left, you’d have a bias for drifting right, which would
require turning the wheel to the left to correct, but you wouldn’t
want to do that cuz it would swing the mower towards the plants,
so you’d hesitate, drifting farther to the right, requiring a
bigger turn left which you’d want to do even less.
The upshot was, if you weren’t totally on top of it, making tiny
little corrections immediately, anticipating what was coming up
ahead, you would quickly find yourself in a nasty feedback spiral
and before you knew it you’d mowed down a couple hundred dollars
worth of plants.
I learned my lesson fast. Thankfully, all it cost was some money.
Let’s not require such a lesson for ourselves when the cost might
be our climate, our standard of living, our future.
It’s going to take a lot of us giving our best effort to be as
thoughtful, self-critical, methodical, and generous as we ever
will be in our lives. But I think we can do it. We’ve never encountered
a problem like this before, where the lag time is large, the tipping
points hidden, and the outcome global. This time, the problem
is like none other, so the solution must be like none other.
It’s time for the best in us to come out.
This
video-article is part of an advanced listening activity for advanced
learners of English. 
The videos on Youtube:
