Very many people now feel that climate change matters, and that action on climate change is both important and necessary; witness the protests this week at London’s Heathrow airport and numerous rallies and meetings all around the world.
There are still a significant minority, though, who challenge this idea, albeit for a large number of different reasons, some technical, most personal, and often point out that there are many other ‘problems’ we face in this world which are either more pressing or more credible, or both.
In another virtual life, as a poster on non-scientific blogs, I find myself frustrated time and time again by what appears to be some fundamental misunderstandings on the part of both these parties, as well as by many people who remain ‘undecided’ on the issue of what, if anything, we should do about climate change.
There are a number of reasons for some of the more common misunderstandings, but here I am going to focus on one which I think is, if not the central hindrance to proper understanding, at least one of the key problems.
Many non-scientists do not properly understand the reasons why climate change matters. (Or perhaps I could specify here, global warming.)
Furthermore, I will add my belief that, in the UK at least, this ignorance is deliberately and systematically sustained by the government and other organisations, for two reasons; one is to ensure that a perception of urgency should exist among the population in general, the other is to shift responsibility for the causes of global warming away from the real perpetrators and place it firmly at our doors, and thereby shift the demand for action (and payment, via taxation) onto our shoulders, too.
It is easy to see how we can be fooled into thinking that we understand why climate change matters. We have a natural tendency to personalise, to seek in our own experience the evidence for beliefs which we hold about the larger world. We also posses a natural tendency to extrapolate from our personal experience a perception of the realities of the world at large. These tendencies are exacerbated by the media, whose job is, after all, to report ‘disaster’ and human tragedy, and for whom headlines such as ‘Floods caused by Global Warming threaten millions’ are an easy option; they sell the product.
These ways of understanding the world are not flaws or signs of ignorance, simply normal human inclinations. One of the reasons why science should be a central resource for people seeking truth is that, in proper scientific work, fact and observation are depersonalised and generalisations need to be supported by evidence, not hearsay, so this tendency is not (normally) present.
This is not to say that scientists don’t face a problem, though. Many of my co-bloggers have strong feelings about the urgency of the problems which climate change poses. This concern is based on an awareness of the real problems posed by climate change. But the significant consequences of this change are, by and large, relatively distant future risks, which the rest of us struggle to find urgent or even meaningful. But this does not mean that action is not needed. If we take the output of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report as an example of the kind of conclusions which might be reached from the evidence available (and I hedge the terms carefully here, as parts of the report are by no means scientifically ‘obvious’), we can read that urgent action is recommended now or in the next few years to help reduce the risk of changes in the more distant future which are uncertain, but serious – very serious – in their implications. And many scientists have such concerns.
So, in their awareness that the public needs to be alerted to the risks, but also aware that we aren’t likely to respond with great enthusiasm to a warning about what might plausibly occur in a hundred years’ time, scientists who wish us to have a sense of urgency for important reasons need to generate headlines without, wherever possible, compromising the integrity of the science or their own reputations. Probably the prime example of this is James Hansen, who appears to have mastered the art of generating a sense of urgency without descending into hyperbole (which doesn’t necessarily mean that everything he says is right).
What are we, the public, getting wrong, then?
First and foremost, we believe that unusual weather events, or human tragedies caused by the weather, are evidence, or even proof, that global warming is real and its effects are visible now. But there is no strong scientific analysis which supports this belief. Oh, apart from some recent, and hotly discussed, papers on the genesis of tropical cyclones, including a very recent one which once again attempts to establish that a pattern of climate change is historically measurable from TC indeces. I won’t express an opinion on this here, but will say that, to date, no strong agreement has been reached that this is the case.
Following on from this, we observe the large number of extreme weather events which have already occurred this year, and conclude that this, then, must be stronger evidence that there is a fundamental instability in our climate system, which did not previously exist, and which is a signal of present climate changes already ‘in the system’. But this, too, is not demonstrably the case.
What certainly is the case is that the media have picked up on the climate change mantra and run with it at every opportunity; it’s a perfect story; huge, uncontrollable forces, human tragedies, heroism in the face of adversity, and all played out in dramatic images on our TV screens almost nightly. What definitely has happened is that the reporting of weather-related ‘disaster’ has increased exponentially in the past year or so. As a consequence, we are more aware than ever before of the substantial challenges people around the world face in surviving experiences which to us are both frightening and exceptional, but to them might be regular, seasonal occurrences. That Bangladesh faces floods every year which place lives at risk and pretty much guarantees persistent poverty and struggle for its people is no less a tragedy for its being persistent, but to use this annual event as evidence of something changing in the climate is, clearly, not credible.
Playing on some of these misunderstandings, the (now thankfully few) climate change ‘sceptics’ work hard to undermine our confidence in science by constantly questioning the validity of a belief which is commonplace but is not generally held by scientists in the first place. On top of this, they emphasise the manipulative element of ‘official’ representations of the problem and cast doubt on the credibility of both policy makers and scientists. Finally, they emphasise the uncertainties which exist in climate science (nothing exceptional really; science is in principle a means of testing doubts and uncertain ideas), and use these to claim that projection and prediction is impossible, that concern is irrational, that the inferences drawn from the evidence cannot follow, because the evidence, or the methodology, is somehow flawed. But their scepticism, too, is misplaced, because it also fails to address, often to understand, the real issues we face about a changing climate and a warming world.
The real worry is not what we do know, but what we don’t.
This isn’t to say that some of the more recent evidence of change aren’t in themselves of concern, only that the bigger concern is something different. It is also a bit of a simplification; more accurately, its the relationship between what is known and what is not which, in this case, leads a significant number of scientists to conclude that we should have a genuine sense of urgency about addressing the future consequences of our current actions.
Weather, and the climate trends derived from it, should be understood as a complex of events which are linked by a relatively small number of persistent or semi-persistent phenomena, often referred to as teleconnections, because the impact of what is happening in one part of the globe (actually, its more often hemispheric, in the first instance) can be observed in another part, ‘down the line’; the impact is ‘broadcast’. The are not the only drivers of weather, but they are the biggest influences on the larger scale of the patterns which lead to, for example, heavy rainfall in the UK or India, drought in The South-West USA, or the potential for tropical cyclones to fall.
These teleconnections do not exist in isolation from each other, either. Every year, the situation around the world is slightly different – natural variability – and the differences felt on the ground can be the result of any one or more of a number of changes in conditions to parts of the global climate system.
All of this is, by and large, known. What is also known is that a change in the balance of forces which operate to regulate these mechanisms will have an effect on them. And one of the central forces is the amount of energy, heat, which exists within the global climate system, that is, the atmosphere and oceans combined.
If we change the amount of energy in the system, we destabilise it.
What we don’t properly know is what the consequences of this destabilisation will be. This is why global climate models exist. We can’t experiment on the real world, so we have to seek answers by imitating the factors which seem to be most critical in a model and seek to establish both what and how future changes might happen.
Why should this concern us? Because of the social and industrial constructs which make up our modern world. Almost every part of the world we currently inhabit and, most critically, the processes involved in the production and provision of the two fundamental of food and water, has been set up to account for a certain degree of natural variability in weather, and no more. Beyond a particular threshold of changes, the reliability of food and water provision becomes compromised. At best, this would imply that there will be more competition for resources, and therefore higher prices for staples, and thus substantial recession-inducing economic inflation. At worst, there won’t be enough to go around.
Beyond food and water, we then have to think about the other ‘essentials’ on which our industrial/post-industrial world depends; foremost, energy, then key raw materials, and also the transportation systems on which the distribution of all of these depend. All of these stand to be effected by a destabilisation of the global climate.
Of course, we are a resilient species (historically, anyway); we have the means to survive an ice age, disasters, plagues. We will survive and persist. But our world is different to the world of the past. We have many more interconnected dependencies on large scale systems than ever existed before. We live in vast conurbations and close to key transportation and trade access-points. There is a vast, almost unimagineable amount, of ‘machinery’ which operates beneath the surface of our everyday lives, which we take for granted. On top of that, we exist in a marketplace, where our capacity to provide for our families is also dependent on an economic operator.
Once again; what we don’t know is how this world is going to be affected by a destabilisation of the global climate system. What we can almost guarantee is that it will be affected. We also don’t know how quickly the first effects are going to kick in, or if, in fact, they haven’t already. We do know, though, that whilst we can adapt , given time, to changing circumstances, we may be running out of time.
I am aware now that this is a long, perhaps overlong, piece, so I will stop now, though so much more could and maybe should be said. Climate change matters, not because it will result in distant tragedy for some and some inconvenience for us, but because there does exist a real risk that everything we know, everything, might not be as permanent as we pretend it is.
Be loved.
12 comments
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August 15, 2007 at 10:13 am
Heiko Gerhauser
As you say yourself, maybe the post is a little bit long and winding, but there isn’t terribly much for me to disagree with.
August 15, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Barrie Lycett
Laserguy here,(fron net-weather) as promised. Firstly I must say I am impressed by what little of your blog I’ve seen so far. I will peruse all of it in due course but being a family man during the school hols does put severe constraints on my time. Here I’ve had a window of opportunity to concentrate on the matter in hand-climate change-, and will attempt to comment accordingly. Very briefly though,I suspect that you as well as more than a few others on net-tv have already reached certain conclusions about my persona based on my so-far limited contributions. I know this is your blog but I feel it necessary to to define ‘me’ before I go on,if you don’t mind!
42 years old,always worked hard in such diverse fields as dentistry,radiology,making artificial limbs,fork-lift-truck-driving,prototype research and development and most recently (last 4 years),setting up and programming industrial lasers-hence the moniker! A pretty random mix it would seem but I get bored very easily! I don’t watch television (except news and odd documentary),or films of any description. After five minutes I’m thrashing around restlessly. Interests: rock music,motorcycles,our six cats and the rest of the family! Oh,and weather. If I can do/make something myself rather than paying someone to do/make,I will do. Examples: audio equipment,esp. ultra hi-performance loudspeakers. Beer,from scratch,not kits! I grow what I can to eat,prepared foods I prepare myself. Motorcycles,mine is 18 years old and in utterly perfect condition because I maintain it meticulously right down to the last nut and bolt including ones in the bowels of the engine. I play for keeps and despise today’s throw-away culture. The bike will outlive me. I’m a quiet type who is very ungregarious;family and close friends are all I need. My postings on net-tv come across as full of bluster and belligerance at times as you’ve noted,but really that is probably a manifestation of my need to get to the point and not tinker around the edges as well as my lack of eloquence in such matters! I never consciously set out to offend or provoke harsh reaction. Even the most cursory glance at your site reveals a higher I.Q. and life experience than myself (I say that with sincerity not sarcasm),but I honestly believe that where climate change is concerned, you,me and no-one else has a clue what’s going on.
We do care about it(all of us,whichever side of the fence we’re on),otherwise we wouldn’t get so worked up about it. Even one’s like me who as you know completely dismiss AGW as nonsense, care about climate because as each day goes by I feel I’m being lied to. It’s one report after another,more facts and figures the validity of which are also not proven. As time goes by I personally can’t see any manifestations of this great calamity which has been looming for, what,twenty years now? Yes we do seem to be having a plethora of events shoved in our faces but in my opinion they are just part of the machinery of media hype and in reality nothing of any significance has changed. Look out the window,there’s no 200mph winds,dustbowls or thirty feet high snowdrifts. It’s a coolish August on the back of a wet and sunless summer. Not the first,won’t be the last.
I read somewhere recently that the entire world’s urban areas could be squeezed into an area no bigger than that of Spain. Sounds silly at first but a moment’s thought reveals it to probably be about right. Now that area would constitute a tiny (<1% of the globe?) area. Then take out the fraction that is producing CO2 in any appreciable amount and,well… it just puts thing’s into perspective really,all that colossal remaing area of ocean and land with it’s vegeatation. And then we’re told that so many tons of CO2 is emitted daily and the guy in the street thinks “wow,that’s incredible” but we’re not told how many of those tons is immediately reabsorbed by the oceans and vegetation etc. It’s all so unnecessarily one-sided.
The crux of the matter is this: for the sake of argument let’s assume that CO2 really is the villain it’s made out to be. Exactly what does government want us to DO about it? Try as I might I really can’t think of any practical way to do that(apart from giving up my very infrequent motorcycling/camping hols),and that ain’t gonna happen! The onus must rest with government and big business but the only action I see is car giants pushing vehicles that are marginally better on emissions(and which you pay accordingly more for) and washing powder manufactures trying to bolster their green credentials and public profiles ‘cos they’
ve developed one that delivers outstanding results at 30C! Well that’s alright then,imaginary problem solved! Sorry,getting a bit polemical again there!
As we know,CO2 makes up a tiny fraction of the atmosphere (approx 0.3 %?), and it’s ‘greenhouse effect’ is truly miniscule when compared to the real daddy water vapour. Minute changes in ocean surface temperature,whatever the cause,have a huge effect on atmospheric water vapour. The amount of CO2 and it’s effect in this context is so miniscule that it must be discounted. Furthermore,CO2 is twice as heavy as air so it must be concentrated at or near ground level where it cannot possibly have any insulating effect. I cannot accept that it is evenly distributed from ground level right up to the tropopause/stratosphere!
As you know,I’m of the opinion that nothing untoward is going on,certainly where AGW is concerned. Seems pretty clear to me though that if global temps are indeed rising the inevitable outcome will be a great cooling,just like has happened throughout Earth’s history. That can be the only outcome of a saturated global atmosphere. And historically,we are reliably informed,CO2 concentrations have been far higher than this during full-on ice ages and before us lot came along. Aw you know the score!
Gotta go now,take it easy P3. Respond if you please,keep it friendly,if folks didn’t have opinions it’d be a boring ol’world. Look forward to your input on n-w.
August 15, 2007 at 8:21 pm
fergusbrown
Hi, Barry, and welcome to the cave; I appreciate that you’ve made the effort and will try to do your comments justice.
Let’s start where you start: “…but I honestly believe that where climate change is concerned, you,me and no-one else has a clue what’s going on…”
Let’s hope you’re wrong. It depends on how literally you want this comment to be read. Of course there are people (climate scientists, mostly) who do have a fairly good idea about at least some of ‘what’s going on’, but if by this you mean ‘nobody is certain about what is going on or what might happen’, then you’d be right. The issue here is where, on the line from absolute ignorance to certainty, we think we are. Aside from that, you might want to consider who is more likely to be ‘further along’ the knowledge line than you or I, or the general public.
There is a lot of data floating around. This is observation, records, etc. etc. Most of of the data is highly reliable; much has been checked and rechecked, and revised, several times over, to improve accuracy and reliability. There are also the laws of physics and of chemistry, which are also quite well known. There are a number of processes and reactions which are very well understood and which have no uncertainty attached to them, to all intents and purposes. So, there is a lot of what could loosely be termed ‘knowledge’ available to us.
I could give other examples, but I hope you get the principle; we do have at least some idea about what’s going on, and this understanding is based on sound foundations. But this only touches the edge of what I understand to be your real point; that we aren’t in a position to reliably ‘predict’ what the future will bring as far as climate change is concerned.
This is a central issue in climate science and is by no means settled. There are indications, though, that the predictions of the early climate models about certain elements of the climate, notably temperatures, made twenty years ago or so, were close enough to what has happened since to count as ‘good’ estimates.
The sense you have of being ‘lied to’ is not uncommon, it seems. Many of us feel that we are being ‘sold a line’, in particular, by the media, which constantly seeks to alarm us with stories of imminent disaster. Even the write-ups of scientific reports and papers look for the most sensational interpretation, ignoring the rest of the work, and try to ‘prove a point’ about some terrible event or other. On this I will say that the validity of most of the media output is certainly not proven, but this is not the same as the validity of the actual science being done. Much of the science is steady, not-very-exciting-to-outsiders research, leading to carefully considered conclusions, based on substantive logic and evidence, and invariably presented with many caveats about error probability and possible weaknesses. This doesn’t make for a good story, but it does make for solid science.
What you have to say next is linked to your sense of being deceived, but also is an example of what I wrote about yesterday. The media want us to think that disaster is about to happen to us; no way are we going to be interested in a story about what may or may not happen in a hundred years time. So they write their headlines, and present the information, in a way which is calculated to get you asking ‘where’s the disaster’? Your expectation has been generated, at least in part, by this persistent and pernicious process (oops, a lot of alliteration, there!). So you expect the whirlwind, the storm, the drought, if not right now, then at least at some time over twenty or more years; am I right?
As I was trying to say yesterday, this isn’t what climate change is really about. However hard people try to claim that Hurricane Katrina, or whatever other event, is ‘proof’ of global warming, the truth (as I understand it) is that most of the ‘climate impacts’ or changes in extreme weather phenomena, were not expected to be happening now, and have never been predicted to be happening now. One thing some scientists are concerned about is that some of the things which were considered possible in the 2030s, or 2050s, appear, on the surface, to be starting already. But whether the current extremes are the start of a manifestation of actual climate change affected weather is very, very uncertain. What is clear, though, is that some things which have been modelled, such as the decline of the Arctic Summer sea ice, are apparently happening earlier, and much more rapidly, than expected.
On the question of CO2, which you describe as the crux of the matter, your understanding of the physics and the processes is in need of a little more research, I am afraid. The increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere each year, on top of what is already there, can be understood as the residue of all the processes you describe, of absorption and ‘CO2 sinks’. It is a large amount in absolute terms, a small amount in relations to other gases in the atmosphere, and yet, still, is , almost beyond argument, something which ‘forces’ the global mean temperature. There is argument about how much this forcing is, but the majority of scientists who have studied the subject think it is a stronger forcing than all of the others which are known. Whether this represents 30% or 70% of the warming we saw in the last fifty years is important, but it doesn’t change the principle that CO2 increases in the atmosphere lead to temperature increases in the system.
And this gives us two reasons to do something about CO2; firstly, it is likely to be the single most potent of the current climate forcings. It is also a forcing which was created largely by us, and can be reduced, in time, by us.
The second reason is that there isn’t a great deal we can do about some of the forcings, for example solar radiation, so we have to learn to deal with that part of the equation. As research continues, though, it begins to look like there are a lot of things which might effect the global mean temperature which we can actively respond to: ice albedo, which is effected by carbon and soot deposition and by ozone concentrations; CO2 uptake, which is effected by the size of the tropical rainforests and by wildfires. It’s quite a long list…
When we get to the matter of policy, this is a much harder subject to be clear about; it always feels like we’re trying to second-guess the government, but my opinion is that the government wants us to feel responsible for the problems, whereas in truth we are not the source of most of the CO2. They also want us to pay, as far as it is possible, for any prospective solutions. Soemone has to pay, but how this bill is shared out is a real issue. If taxation was based on carbon emission rather than consumption, it might be fairer.
I’ll look at a couple of the things you say at the end of your comment later; hopefully, I’ll have addressed some of your points already.
Be loved.
August 15, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Barrie Lycett
Hello Fergus,thanks for the incredibly quick and lengthy response. I realise this is getting tedious but my time is not my own,sorry. You do however make a lot of sense even to my jaded ears. I’m ‘pleased’ that you mention other factors such as ice albedo,solar radiation,deforestation etc whereas governments’ be all and end all is our CO2 emissions.
I look forward to your response on the latter part of my comments and I’ll be back then,hopefully much sooner than later.
Thanks again,take care.
August 16, 2007 at 10:21 pm
S2
Hi, Fergus.
Just so you know, I came here via your post on globalchange.
I mostly agree with you, in particular about the apparent knee-jerk reactions by much of the media to any and every extreme weather event. I don’t think it helps.
I’m also a little sorry that Al Gore is as active as he is – I’m sure his intentions are good, but as a political figure I think he has helped to polarise the issue, particularly in the USA.
However Climate Change is real, and it is happening. In Scotland, we had a skiing industry thirty years ago, but out 1 °C rise has pretty much put paid to that. In the Highlands, the Council is diverting part of it’s budget for winter road treatment to flood defences. This isn’t alarmist, it’s a pragmatic reaction to the changes we’ve seen so far (less snow, and an increase in flooding).
I don’t expect to live long enough to see any really bad stuff (just as well, really, as I live on or about the 5 metre contour), but my children might. My five year old granddaughter could easily do so – and that’s sufficient grounds in my eyes to be concerned.
As to your assertion: “in the UK at least, this ignorance is deliberately and systematically sustained by the government and other organisations, for two reasons; one is to ensure that a perception of urgency should exist among the population in general, the other is to shift responsibility for the causes of global warming away from the real perpetrators and place it firmly at our doors, and thereby shift the demand for action (and payment, via taxation) onto our shoulders, too.”
Personally I don’t buy that.
The government is caught between a rock and a hard place; on the one hand it wants to reduce emissions (in order to look good as much as meeting Kyoto targets), but on the other hand it wants a strong economy, as that is the most likely route to retaining power after the next election. Finding an effective way of doing both is proving to be difficult.
But I don’t see it as them shifting the blame to us. If anything, I see it as them clutching at straws.
August 16, 2007 at 10:39 pm
fergusbrown
Hi S2 and thanks for visiting.
I accept your criticism about the polemic about the government; sometimes I get carried away. I have suspicions about the overall strategy behind the government’s presentation of climate change, though, as it is clearly oriented towards the end-user, us. I also know they have several initiatives operating in the construction industry, and are (it seems) biting the nuclear bullet and aiming to change energy provision. But I’d be happier with the kind of strategies Hansen is currently proposing, which are oriented towards the emitter and have some chance of actually effecting the CO2 numbers.
On the dichotomy between economy and climate, as things stand, I still see what the government has produced so far as placing economy first and environment second. This is hardly surprising, but it might, as Michael Tobis has suggested, ultimately prove to be our downfall. If there was some indication that the balance of priorities was more in favour of dealing with the climate, I might be a bit less – pejorative – at times.
Thanks for visiting; I hope you come again.
Be loved.
August 17, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Barrie Lycett
Hello again,Fergus. And how are you this fine April afternoon? Well, it certainly feels more like April than August.
Y’ know, I think that if our government doesn’t step in really soon with seriously draconian measures to get to grips with CO2 emissions then evereyone is going to lose all interest in the matter. That’s assuming 99% of the populace haven’t already. The ‘pestering’ by the government and the insiduous whisperings in the background by the media have become like a modern day plague on a par with something we have to constantly live with but about which nothing is being done,ie anti-social behaviour.
Now,I very rarely watch television but I take a quick look at the missus’s TV guide just in case there’s something on that’s worthy of my time. But it’s the same trash day after day- Pete ‘n’ Jordan’s having a lie-in today,Posh ‘n’ Becks go to the hairdressers amidst other thought provoking,mind expanding delights such as house makeovers,how to sell the stuff loitering in your attic etc. On the insistence of the missus we’ve got 50 TV channels. Keeps her amused while I have my necessary early nights but out of all those channels there’s nothing to watch!!
This situation of worldwide gravitas is nowhere to be seen except perhaps as a postscript on the news where we are shown pictures of cute polar bear cubs adrift on a postage stamp sized lump of ice,or maybe a slab of ice falling into the sea from its parent ‘berg,just like they’ve always done. Exactly what is your average Joe supposed to make of that,let alone do about it? Obviously there is colossal amounts of info about climate change on the ‘net (both pro and anti AGW),but how many people care enough to investigate it and form an opinion of their own? You,me,a few hundred people on net weather plus a few thousand more elsewhere perhaps. Probably about 0.1% of the population thereabouts. Some of the ‘others’ might occasionally absorb that odd snippet of info which states that the UK is responsible for no more than 2% of global CO2 emissions. We are not told how to reduce our emissions by any appreciable amount,just that we have to while most of the world carries on regardless,and in many cases are prodigiously increasing their CO2 output. China,and soon India will in effect be the new America! In the face of this it’s no surprise that Britons are increasingly coming to the conclusion that it really isn’t worth worrying about. Do you get where I’m coming from?
On top of all that,there’s also the not very small matter of factors other than CO2,and amidst all those what’s the real importance of it (CO2)when weighed against the cumulative effect of those other factors? I’ve yet to see anything on mainstream TV(not that I look very hard!) which goes anywhere to presenting the facts about natural fluctuations,solar output,heating of the oceans from below due to increased tectonic activity as a result of the Earth’s innards responding to changing solar activity etc etc. The layman is never told exactly why CO2 has the ability to increase world temps(except in the very simplest of terms, and that ain’t good enough for me),only that it does. The loud and clear message that Joe Public is getting is that climate change is driven exclusively by CO2,produced by his wicked consumerist ways. And that is clearly a blatant lie.
This brings me nicely to the question of “am I expecting the whirlwind right now or in twenty years”? Well,to be honest I am not expecting anything except a cool down,which is contrary to what everyone else is being led to expect! But I think the public are getting fed up of it,I mean this ‘change’ has been predicted for well over twenty years now. Whenever a really big event like the recent floods happen,the media are on GMTV(please,spare us!) telling us even before the water has started to recede that it’s most probably our fault and we can look forward to this kind of thing more often. Of course,it most probably won’t happen again for a very long time. And if and when it does folk will still see it as a one-off due to the distance of the last similar event,and in no way related to it in terms of the cause. Even during the recent mega floods,older folk were saying that it’s nothing new and they’ve seen it all before,( I live in South Yorkshire,and only about 6 miles from a very seriously affected place). Then comes the revelation from NASA that they’ve dropped a googlie and 1934 ( I think),was the hottest year last century and not 1998. Of course,people are naturally asking “where’s the disaster”? It seems like it gets postponed from one year to the next. Like they are crying wolf,in a way. Any rise in temperature that has allegedly happened has been imperceptible,the only manifestation really being the recent run of mild winters and hot summers. Nothing new in such runs,as any ‘oldie’ will confirm,but perhaps this summers ‘breaking of the current mould’ will herald a return to what we see as normality. For the populace to be concerned about climate it would take a super disaster or a very,very protracted run of seriously weird weather,wouldn’t you agree?
And if such a thing did happen,it returns us to square one-now what? It is surely madness to believe that if ALL CO2 emissions stopped right now we’d be ok. Things are underfoot that may or may not affect us,that we probably aren’t even aware of. And I think it is pure fantasy that governments can reduce CO2 emissions anyway. The world as we have made it now simply won’t have it. Whatever reductions the West achieve,the aforementioned China and India will soon more than make up for.
All we can seriously expect to achieve is a change in the way we live to suit the changing climate,we certainly can’t change the climate to suit us!
Take care Fergus, I look forward to your intelligent and considered comments here and on n-w.
August 17, 2007 at 7:23 pm
fergusbrown
Hello again, Barry.
I’ll just go to a couple of your comments, if that’s okay.
By chance, I caught a bit of Mark Lawson’s interview with Lovelock late last night, from a couple of years ago. I mention it because Lovelock gave an interesting response to the question of ‘why should we bother’. He pointed out that doing something engages us in the debate at some level, and is evidence of a concern and commitment which is more substantial than simply discussing it in a pub (actions speak louder than words). The effect of many people choosing to act is that it shows government, and others, that the issue is one which the constituency is both aware of and concerned about. This in turn puts pressure on government to respond. Sadly, I think I also agree with Lovelock that, as you say, what we in the UK do won’t, in real terms, make much of a difference, but that isn’t necessarily the point or the value of doing it. So, being environmentally- minded, I’d still argue that action is worthwhile, even important.
You are right that there is a large emphasis on CO2 emissions. In part this is driven by the conclusions of the IPCC, but it is also a general understanding that this is one thing which needs working on, and which can be worked on, over a suitable timeframe. It is also generally understood that adding indefinite quantities more CO2 into the atmosphere this century (which seems seems quite likely), cannot possibly improve the risks, and is very likely to substantially worsen them. But I also have respect for Roger Pielke Sr.’s position, which says that an excessive focus on this one issue is causing other problems, such as deforestation, which are potentially almost as disastrous as the emission of CO2 in the first place.
On your expectations, and people’s experiences of the past, my thought is that you are looking at weather extremes as evidence of GW, a game the media plays which is of doubtful worth, at best; we must try to disconnect these two matters, if we can. The second thought is that you are still thinking in terms of a timescale which, until recently, at least, is probably too short to really expect any substantial change. The problem is, if we then decide to wait for another twenty years, for more solid evidence of changes in weather or climate, we may have added enough extra crud into the environment one way or another to mean that, whatever we thought might improve the situation, is now beyond our reach; this is the issue of potential runaway feedbacks.
I agree that it is most likely that people won’t take climate change seriously until some weather extreme has affected them personally and directly. The fact that this is not evidence for climate change is irrelevant, here; it’s about how we interpret reality, rather than what the truth is. And people being people, we want to see it to believe it.
I hope you are wrong about the reduction of emissions. Lovelock believes that not enough will be done in time to prevent serious climate impacts in this century. He also concludes that the consequences will be disastrous in a biblical sense. I’m not convinced (yet?) that the latter is likely, but I’m growing more inclined to believe the former.
Best wishes,
August 18, 2007 at 1:06 am
inel
Hi fergus and hello Barrie,
I decided to jump in to address this question:
Some members of the public are taking action to combat climate change, but we are in the minority. Those who are not acting are still not convinced that action is necessary nor worthwhile and they have no way of assessing the rewards of taking action now. They need immediate financial benefits and the guarantee of extra kudos to attract them to change their habits, as well as assurances that nothing they value will be harmed in the process!
“The public” tend to have different approaches in different places, so I would emphasise what is being done right, and try to spread that expertise and those techniques further afield, rather than pinpointing and dwelling on what is being done wrong.
The point that needs to be stressed is not the uncertainty of what might happen as climate change progresses, but the certainty that doing nothing will worsen our situation in the long run.
Unfortunately, we all have habits that we know are not good for us in the long run. If people cannot even keep their bodies in shape, how are they expected to look after the environment?
The only way is to applaud what people are doing right, and work to raise the lowest acceptable response to a more helpful level, so people who choose to do nothing about climate change are still not able to cause as much damage, ignorant or wilful, as in previous decades.
It is possible to design solutions to deal with problems where the interaction of various and individual parts is uncertain. The overall goal is what needs to be stated, understood and achieved, even without understanding the detailed interaction of all the parts. That’s my point of view. Lots of climate change discussions spend too long on the details and miss the overall objective.
I used to design global networks to carry traffic for mission-critical applications around the world for governments and businesses. There is no way anyone could predict the details of each and every unique path built through such a network, but as long as the network is designed to tolerate failures and reroute around faults and the data reaches its destination, all’s well. I tend to view climate change solutions as requiring the same redundant, fail-safe approach: the more the merrier, so if some fail to produce results, others may exceed expectations, and the overall goal to reduce emissions can be achieved and improved as time goes on.
That is why I believe it is important for each person to do his or her part in their own way, without being criticised for being hypocritical on this front or that. If there were some way of pooling ideas for campaigns to make a group difference where an individual cannot have an impact, I’d love to hear about that.
August 18, 2007 at 9:58 am
fergusbrown
Hi inel.
What you say is eminently sensible. As a side note, it is interesting to observe the dynamics of scepticism, which often focuses on details to discredit the big picture, but hardly ever addresses the big picture itself. Another point worth considering is that there is a great deal of confusion between climate change in itself, and environmentalism as a more broad-reaching attitude. This leads to some difficult conversations about issues which are closely related, but whose import is not the same. People tend to conflate climate change with environmentalism in terms of the rationale behind action, which is to imagine that the two have similar types of solution.
Best wishes,
August 20, 2007 at 10:06 am
William Connolley
Nice post. I largely agree with you.
Minor teechnical quibble: adding energy to the system doesn’t necessarily destabalise it (e.g. warm a pan of water uniformly. Indeed, warm a pan of water from above and it will become more stable). It depends on the system. As a climate system I don’t think there is much evidence that we are de-stabalising the world.
August 20, 2007 at 11:45 am
fergusbrown
Ah! I thought someone might pick me up on that; it’s not necessarily true, is it? Changing the amount of energy in the system does have an effect, but not necessarily the effect implied. Would it be more correct to say that changing the amount of energy in a system result in the system adjusting to account for the change? A re-balancing at a different state, perhaps?
How do you stand on the GIS thoughts?
Thanks for visiting,
Fergus.