So, I spent all day yesterday on Guy McPherson's Nature Bats Last, your one-stop shop for all things apocalyptic. It took about five hours but I read through all the links on his regularly updated "Climate Chaos" page - a more or less complete listing of all the ways our species is desperately fucked. I had a hard time digesting most of the material. Not because it is overly scientific (I didn't need to use a calculator at any point, there is no math on the exam) but because it is scientists who are screaming "The sky is falling!!!"
I've written about that before. The incredible weirdness of people dedicated to the continuous but incremental increase in human knowledge, the practical definition of "slow and steady", the most rational and level-headed among us being the one's who are crying doom instead of patiently destroying every claim of the Doomsday freaks. It's a very odd thing. Scientists are careerists, of course they are. But they are also just one part of a larger project that has been underway for the past 300 odd years - the patient displacement of human ignorance with human knowledge. It is a deeply optimistic world view to take. You have to believe you are engaged in a process that began long before you were born and will continue long after you are dead. It doesn't make any sense otherwise. This process might be slowed in certain places and certain times but, as a whole and on the level of our entire species, it will continue. Now large groups of them are saying it might not. We just might be fucked.
The crux of the whole thing boils down to two points: self-reinforcing feedback loops and locked-in change. Here is a good video about feedback loops. There are two essential things to know. First, each loop feeds back into all climate changing factors and second, the changes are exponential and not linear. The "albedo" effect is a really simple example. White reflects more heat energy than black. Anyone who has worn dark clothes on a sunny summer day knows this. The biggest reflectors on the planet are the polar ice caps. They reflect sunlight (heat) back out of the atmosphere. As the ice melts, less energy is reflected causing the temperature to increase causing more ice to melt and so on. Since melting ice caps also expose the enormous peat bogs that store billions of tonnes of methane, as they melt more methane is released, increasing the temperature, which causes more ice to melt exposing more peat bog, etc etc. People say methane is 25 times more potent as a green house gas than carbon but that's measured over a century and the whole argument about feedback loops is they occur in a much shorter time span so 100 times would be more accurate. There are a whole bunch of these systems and they're all connected.
Then there are locked in changes. The planetary record shows historically temperature changes have preceded changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide (rather than the other way around). Some people use this as an argument against climate change theory but it makes sense and the scientists' models are include it. Essentially, when the climate change is not anthropogenic, higher temperatures have started all the feedback loops. Now, dumping millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere started them. But the net result is the same. Once the temperature change occurs, billions of tonnes more carbon will be released into the atmosphere by melting ice caps, increased ocean temperatures (warm water throws carbon stored by cooler water back into the atmosphere), etc etc. That means the effect of the carbon already released into the atmosphere won't be entirely measurable for another 50 years. Basically everyone agrees that a 4º increase in temperature would fuck our shit up. We are currently at around .8º higher and the estimate is the locked in change is 1.4º - but that doesn't include what the planet will do in response to those extra 2.2º. It might mean we are already locked into a 4º change. If that isn't scary enough, the difference between the survival of our species (with billions of death) and the complete extinction of our species is the difference between a 4º and a 6º increase. 6º over 1850 and bye bye.
What I didn't realize until late last night, after several hours of trying to write something intelligent about the possibility humans might do sufficient damage to our environment in the next ten years to ensure our own extinction sometime in this century, was some part of me hopes it is true. This is partly because the people doing the most significant damage are kind of hideous people -the coal lobby, the natural gas frackers, etc. Then there are the people like the Tea Party Republican Paul Broun, who also happens to be the Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee for the House Committee on Science and Technology, who thinks evolution and the Big Bang are a "lies straight from the pit of Hell" intended to convince people they don't need a saviour, that there is "convincing scientific evidence" the Earth is 6000 years old, and who stated on the floor of the House "Scientists all over this world say the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax." You can find all those quotes, and many others, in his Wikipedia entry. The irony of this guy being in charge of oversight for the US Government's science and technology initiatives is lost on no one (except possibly him). And to correct his bullshit, no climate scientists think global warming is a hoax. The massive money of the combined energy lobbies has convinced some people with PhD's to argue against anthropogenic climate change. The 9000 studies combined in the IPCC's 2013 Report on Climate Change contain precisely zero studies claiming it is either a hoax or a natural occurrence. This isn't a selection bias. The IPCC is famously conservative, including only the most conclusive and widely accepted results. Anything with even a little bit of doubt (and some things that are certain but frighten politicians) is cut.
It's unfair to pick on Broun. Not because he doesn't richly deserve it but because he is only one of many prominent people who are doing their best to preserve the myth there is some kind of debate about climate change. Or, more accurately, that the terms of the debate are "does it exist or not?" rather than "is it already too late or not?" Donald Trump thinks winter is conclusive proof "global warming is bullshit", Rush Limbaugh thinks climate change is a Trojan Horse for liberals to further their goals of higher taxes, bigger government, and less freedom. The (cartoonishly evil) Koch brothers have put up almost $70 million of their own money to fund climate change denial. It's hard not to want these people to lose and lose badly.
One of the places I spent a lot of time is Youtube. I generally avoid Youtube for anything other than incomprehensible Japanese gameshows because videos get ranked according to popularity. And a climate scientist telling us the world as we know it is fucking over is bound not to be popular. But I was (and am) stunned by the comments that climate change videos attract. There is a large group of extremely dedicated commentators who want everyone who thinks climate change is anthropogenic thrown in prison, executed, or subjected to some form of humiliation. The crux of these comments is the same as that of Rep. Broun - climate change is a conspiracy of devils and liberals (interchangeable in his mind). Fuck the IPCC - the most rigorously vetted scientific findings in the history of our species. Fuck the liberal ideologues (like the World Bank, NASA, and the NSA) who think climate change is man-made and dangerous as fuck. It's a big-government conspiracy. If you believe their lies everything is evidence of climate change.
I remain undecided re who is more absurd: me hoping for the worst so the deniers will get their comeuppance or the deniers who think it is a hoax perpetrated by malefactors and brainwashed liberals. I have at least the good grace to be ashamed of my own irrational and stupid bias. And, if I gauge the worth of my position by the quality of my opposition, I am more correct than the deniers. I would rather oppose the Koch brothers than David Suzuki any day of the week.
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