Scare Tactics
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Script
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.
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