Agreed. I’m sure a lot of people missed it for the same reason I did, it was buried deep in one of the political punditry threads. +1 to everyone going and checking out @Wanderfound’s on-point comment:
The #Veep is out: Hillary Clinton chooses Tim Kaine as Vice President - #210 by Wanderfound
Oh. Hot damn @Wanderfound. A real diamond in the rough, that comment is.
I personally cannot recall the last time I interacted with anyone in the physical sciences who was in denial about global warming. Not saying the people aren’t out there, but it’s definitely pressing on minds in the chemistry community. It feels like everything I read lately is about carbon sequestration or carbon neutral energy production. Shit, even textbook problems are about which carbon based fuels generate more energy per molecule of CO2.
Then I walk out into the wider world, visit a bar or whatever, and Americans aren’t all that convinced. It’s like I’m on another planet.
I recall speaking to climate scientists ten years ago who had regretfully decided that convincing the political elites to act in time was a hopeless cause. They were buying houses in the mountains and advising that people don’t have children, because it would be unethical to doom a new life to such a world.
So far, they ain’t wrong.
Technically, unless I have missed some major revisions to basic climate theory in the past decade or so, the exact opposite is so. Without human caused climate change we would be seeing a cooling trend and the start of a new ice age any millennium now.
All of human history has occurred in a warm interglacial. The pattern for the past few million years has been one of long 100,000+ year ice ages punctuated every so often with 10,000-ish year interglacial thaws. We are currently somewhat overdue for the current interglacial to end and a new ice age to start. Instead we have industriously cut down forests and desert-ized vast areas, thereby prolonging the current warm period.
It’s entirely possible that all our converting of forests to farmland would have been able to prolong the interglacial indefinitely, but instead we’ve screwed the pooch by liberating gigatons of carbon sequestered back before the dinosaurs evolved, which is turning this interglacial into a hyper warm period that could shrink the greenland and antarctic ice caps so they no longer pump ice water into the oceans, completely altering ocean circulation, with radical and permanent effects on the climate and the ecosystem that we will not enjoy at all.
Well, to get serious, there’s a whole spectrum of denial, generally based on what level of actual sacrifice the person might theoretically might be called to make and how much they benefit from fossil fuels. A rural Republican objects to climate change purely on ideological grounds: “They [the Democrats, the Liberals] just want to control us.” While Industrialists like the Koch brothers object because they have many billions of dollars’ worth of hydrocarbons underground left to monetize.
The industrialists have PR front groups frame the problem in various stages and let the masses pick and choose which level of denial they want:
There is no problem. Relax. Global warming isnt even occurring. It’s just those scientists getting it wrong again. They said it was too cool, now they say it is too warm.
There is a problem, but it’s not manmade. Whatever is happening is natural, so why should we be interfering. And in any case, how could we possibly change the Earth in any radical, noticeablely harmful way? Earth is too big. Man is not god-like.
There is a problem, it’s manmade, but it’s not anything that is really affecting the environment.
There is a problem, it’s manmade, it’s affecting the environment, but it’s too late. Yeah, uh, sorry for destroying the Earth and all. But what can we do about it now? So, let’s just keep drillin’.
There is a “problem,” it’s manmade, it’s affecting the environment, it’s too late. Wait, did I say problem? I meant: Opportunity! This heating of the environment is great! We’re going to have more CO2, which plants love, so better farming! Greenland, northern Canada, Siberia, perhaps Antarctica itself, will become arable, allowing for more agriculture. Let’s get on with this bounteous warming, and without delay!
[EDIT: missed and added final level of denial. Thank you, cepheus42.]
Unfortunately, this version is too large to share on other web sites.
Maybe a smaller more web friendly version could be made.
I wonder if this explains Fermi’s Paradox.
Thanks for relinking, I hadn’t seen that first time. Brilliant post, covers so much, clear and comprehensible, ideal for sharing. Kudos.
The not so great Great Filter?
cf. also James Lovelock, climate scientist and author of The Revenge of Gaia. From this interview in 2008:
…the current canon of eco ideas, next to ethical consumption, carbon offsetting, recycling and so on - all of which are premised on the calculation that individual lifestyle adjustments can still save the planet. This is, Lovelock says, a deluded fantasy. Most of the things we have been told to do might make us feel better, but they won’t make any difference. Global warming has passed the tipping point, and catastrophe is unstoppable.
“It’s just too late for it,” he says. “Perhaps if we’d gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don’t have time…”
In all seriousness though, the Fermi Paradox doesn’t apply because terrestrial planets can be counted on to have “hot rocks” as an energy source.
I’m starting to become increasingly appalled at the quickness with which nuclear energy is being rejected by people who supposedly take global warming seriously. Look at this article:
https://thinkprogress.org/why-james-hansen-is-wrong-about-nuclear-power-44b486ed8a72#.4lo1o2myf
I don’t think people appreciate just how much we’re really running out of options, and how hard it is to “just solarize everything.” Unless you’re ready to build a rocket to put your baby in so they can grow in the light of another planet’s red sun, you really should be willing to consider that even the long term storage and disposal issues with nuclear (presuming we never improve or figure anything out again ever and all research on the subject halts) may be preferable to the global catastrophes they and their children have to endure.
We have denialists in the UK too, and we switched to metric nearly 50 years ago (with the exception of miles and pints)
There’s one more you missed:
What happens if we find out that the technologies that have had by far the most success at reducing poverty (large quantities of electricity available at low prices, fast transport of large quantities of goods over long distances) turn out to be precisely the biggest drivers of environmental damage??
Are there any members of the political elite of any USA party who personally live a low-carbon lifestyle?
That’s not particularly relevant.
Taking “personal responsibility”, swapping the halogens for LEDs and fluorescents, turning off the aircon occasionally, buying a Prius, paying for some tree-planting indulgences, knitting a hairshirt…we’re way past the point where voluntary changes in individuals’ consumption decisions can make a meaningful difference in time. Focusing on that sort of thing is completely mistaking the scale of the issue.
What we need to do is to shut down the global coal industry. Completely. Yesterday.
Since I live in a community which gets its electricity from natural gas, I’m good with that.
I wouldn’t get too comfortable, you’re next.
We need to decarbonise as much as humanly possible as rapidly as humanly possible. Given how late we’ve left things, there’s a fair chance that we’re screwed even if we do that.
If we don’t do that, we’re certainly screwed.
I don’t know how much of the warming trend is man made, vs natural forces. Climate is extremely complex and hard to accurately model. But I do know that we are responsible for the increase in CO2. I do know we are responsible for a lot of pollutants in to the environment. It would behoove us to do two things:
Continue working on cleaner energy alternatives. I still feel new modern nuclear plants are the best solution for RIGHT NOW, and ultimately solar will probably be our savior if we can get cells efficient enough.
Stop moving to ares not sustainable to life, like the middle of Arizona or too close to the ocean. Man made or not, historically sea levels change. We can’t expect the coat line to be static. In the past, man would just migrate to better areas, but now we are stuck in the mindset of something should never change - which isn’t reality. This, of course, may not be possible in all parts of the world.
Also things to consider - the west is currently the biggest problem, but the developing world is starting to catch up. Especially look at China and their problems. Even if the US and EU locked down all their emissions, there are other nations looking to take the crown in worst offenders. (Though I did read China is working on prototype clean coal plants, so that is promising.)
TL;DR - No matter your view on the cause, we should take prudent action just in case.
