Captain Future's Log

The Climate Crisis in Review

Sunday's New York Times Week in Review features a summary piece on the latest global heating science and public awareness of the issue, called Yelling Fire on a Hot Planet.

The Times is deliberately conservative, trying to review the certainties and uncertainties:

Between the poles of real-time catastrophe and nonevent lies the prevailing scientific view: without big changes in emissions rates, global warming from the buildup of greenhouse gases is likely to lead to substantial, and largely irreversible, transformations of climate, ecosystems and coastlines later this century.

Here's the "middle" view: The latest estimates, including a study published last week in the journal Nature, foresee a probable warming of somewhere around 5 degrees should the concentration of carbon dioxide reach twice the 280-parts-per-million figure that had been the norm on earth for at least 400,000 years. This is far lower than some of the apocalyptic projections in recent years, but also far higher than mild warming rates focused on by skeptics and industry lobbyists.

As a result, by 2100 or so, sea levels could be several feet higher than they are now, and the new normal on the planet for centuries thereafter could be retreating shorelines as Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets relentlessly erode. Rivers fed by mountain glaciers, including those nourishing much of south Asia, could shrivel. Grand plans to restore New Orleans and the Everglades would be rendered meaningless as seawater advances. Manhattan would become New Orleans — a semi-submerged city surrounded by levees. In summers, polar bears would be stuck on the few remaining ice-clotted shores around the largely blue Arctic Ocean. Nothing about species extinction, the interaction of climate with deforestation, overfishing and ocean pollution, continued development, etc.

Projections of how patterns of drought, deluges, heat and cold might change are among the most difficult, and will remain laden with huge uncertainties for a long time to come, said M. Granger Morgan, a physicist and policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. This is conservative, too, as is the assertion that current Arctic melting and more ferocious storms are linked to the Climate Crisis by a minority of climate scientists.

On Public Perception and the Road Ahead:

A Gallup survey last month shows that people are still not worried about climate change. When participants were asked to rank 10 environmental problems, global warming was near the bottom, far below water pollution and toxic waste (both now largely controlled). Toxic waste largely controlled? I don't think so. Out of sight of the New York Times demographic maybe. If water pollution is no problem, why is everybody drinking bottled water? Still, the basic point is well taken---Americans are worrying about problems that were basically confronted in the 1970s, not global heating, which had its first burst of publicity in the long hot summers of the late 1980s.

Here's the nub, though:Without a connection to current disasters, global warming is the kind of problem people, and democratic institutions, have proved singularly terrible at solving: a long-term threat that can only be limited by acting promptly, before the harm is clear. Though the point is well taken, an example or two might be more enlightening. In many respects, this is a pretty new kind of situation. Science just hasn't been able to forecast as well, and we as a species haven't actually endangered the entire future and the planet as we know it before.

Stressing the problem's urgency could well be counterproductive, according to "Americans and Climate Change," a new book by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The book notes that urgency does not appear to be something that can be imposed on people. Moreover, it says, "Urgency is especially prone to being discounted as unreasoned alarmism or even passion." It is true that this is a difficult paradox, it is urgent to act now, though many of the problems won't appear right away. On the other hand, if "alarmism" (let alone "passion") is non-motivating, what the hell are we doing in Iraq, or fighting something nebulously called the war on terror?

Among its recommendations, the Yale book suggests something radical: drop the reluctance to accept adaptation as a strategy. Adaptation to climate extremes has long been derided by many environmentalists as defeatism. But, the book says, adaptation may help people focus on the reality of what is coming — and that may motivate them to cut emissions to limit chances of bigger changes to come. Actions could range from developing drought-resistant crops to eliminating federal insurance and other subsidies that have long encouraged coastal development. I agree about what they call "adaptation." I'd rather call it dealing with the immediate crisis. But at the same time, prevent the greater crisis. The Climate Crisis and The Climate Catastrophe. And scientists, as well as the enviros, do too often fall into the either/or mindset of the culture at large, when they're trying to be "realistic."

Could stressing adaptation work? The Yale group calls global warming "the perfect problem" — meaning that a confluence of characteristics make it hard, if not impossible, to solve. Its impact remains clouded with scientific uncertainty, its effects will be felt over generations, and it is being amplified by everything from microwaving a frozen dinner to bringing electricity to an Indian village. So what? Uncertainty is no excuse. Try reading your own columnist, Nicholas Kristof, who wrote in a recent colum:"The White House has used scientific uncertainty as an excuse for its paralysis. But our leaders are supposed to devise policies to protect us even from threats that are difficult to assess precisely -- and climate change should be considered even more menacing than a nuclear-armed Iran....The best reason for action on global warming remains the basic imperative to safeguard our planet in the face of uncertainty, and our leaders are failing wretchedly in that responsibility."

"I wish I were more optimistic of our ability to get a broad slice of the public to understand this and be motivated to act," said David G. Hawkins, who directs the climate program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group. Wishing won't make it so, bub. So get off your butt and make it so. So sayeth Captain Future.