Climate change is the most important issue of our lives (and why I come to forums and blogs such as this to participate and try to learn more.) We are descending the rabbit hole far more dramatically and far sooner than numerous scientists had suspected only years ago. It seems that in the last seven years or so, study after study has been published, and the take away is that the pace of climate change and its effect (physically, biologically, and chemically) is steadily worsening. Worse than expected. If it wasn't just permafrost, it was permafrost and methane clathrates, or a certain threshold at which permafrost would continue to release methane without stopping. A new understanding of the topography of Greenland suggesting that the retreat of the GIS will not stabilize as soon as thought, bringing in more sea level rise. Not just the gradual calving, but the now irreversible nature of the WAIS ice loss–a much feared point. There are now positive feedbacks from black carbon/soot, algae producing dark pigments, and pine beetles that carry great risks and need to be understood. Stuff from the most obscure corners of human imagination and geographical reach are now coalescing into a Pandora's box of extremely dangerous feedbacks. The more we learn, the more the uncertainty grows, as it is said, because each discovery opens more questions.
I've had my hand in trying to bring people to light on this subject, without being judgmental or accusatory, though I sometimes may come off as a little self-righteous when I cut to solutions. A couple of years ago, I befriended a man much older than me who worked for a different firm in the same office building as mine, just through casual light conversation. He used to give me rides to a martial arts class at which he taught during weekday evenings. We'd talk usually, which I soon found uncomfortable since he often espoused right-wing dogma that fringed on conspiracy theories. He would put trust into the things he heard on Fox News. The one consolation I received, though, in our dozens of car ride conversations, was when he went on a tangent about climate change. Saying Antarctic ice was growing, the Earth was about to head into a cooling... all this other stuff, and I had to stifle my disbelief as much as possible. Without engaging so much of what he said, I calmly explained the basic physics of global warming: how the energy budget of the Earth was tilting out of balance, in that more energy was entering than leaving the system, such that carbon emissions were outpacing the equilibrium with carbon sinks. Deforestation juxtaposed with increased emissions was such an obvious visual example of this. That, due to the trapping of outgoing longwave radiation, the Earth was warming, whether in the oceans or in the sea ice or in the atmosphere. All that extra energy has to go somewhere. He let me go on for about 5 minutes, without interrupting. When I finished my thoughts, he conceded to me, unexpectedly, "Well, it does seem to me that the climate has been changing." Then he said, "I guess we should be planting more trees." Even if I knew this wasn't enough, and our conversation was cut short anyway, I think it helped plant a seed in him to get him to second-guess his beliefs.
We're on the same team, and I think there are many who have been fed lies for so long and are now waking to this environmental emergency. I welcome them, because this is something that will impact every human being and the rest of life on Earth. Glad as I am with this, we're now very late to addressing this. The five alarm fire is going off, and we're just getting around to calling in firefighters. Even if El Niño this year is mild, one year it won't be. And we're going to need as many people cognizant of the cause of our problems as possible if change will happen. Not to get off-topic, I was just interested in the discussion of Bob Tisdale and it got me thinking.
Cheers, everyone.