Uncharted Territory (part 2 of 2)

Last time we looked at the feedback loop that is climate change and species extinction.  We considered that this may be the Holocene Extinction, we may be included in it, and that at least one scientist believes human extinction is both inevitable and immanent. 

It is at this point that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports start to look hopeful.  From the 2014 Summary for Policy Makers: 

·         Without additional mitigation efforts beyond those in place today, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread and irreversible impacts globally (high confidence).

·         Surface temperature is projected to rise over the 21st century under all assessed emission scenarios. It is very likely that heat waves will occur more often and last longer, and that extreme precipitation events will become more intense and frequent in many regions.

·         The ocean will continue to warm and acidify, and global mean sea level to rise.  Earth System Models project a global increase in ocean acidification for all scenarios by the end of the 21st century. There is high confidence that ocean acidification will increase for centuries if CO2 emissions continue, and will strongly affect marine ecosystems. 

·         Climate change will amplify existing risks and create new risks for natural and human systems. Risks are unevenly distributed and are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development.

·         Many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped.

·         A large fraction of anthropogenic climate change resulting from CO2 emissions is irreversible on a multi-century to millennial timescale, except in the case of a large net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere over a sustained period.

It’s a grim picture, especially when you consider the consequences of ocean acidification and a warmed planet.  No wonder some people don't like the UN. 

Alberta Tar Sands, also know as Oil Sands, mine.

Now here's some “good” news from the same Summary:

·         Adaptation and mitigation are complementary strategies for reducing and managing the risks of climate change. Substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades can reduce climate risks in the 21st century and beyond, increase prospects for effective adaptation, reduce the costs and challenges of mitigation in the longer term and contribute to climate-resilient pathways for sustainable development. 

·         We can reduce the risk, and it requires immediate drastic action:  There are multiple mitigation pathways that are likely to limit warming to below 2°C relative to pre-industrial levels. These pathways will require substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades and near zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases by the end of the century. Implementing such reductions poses substantial technological, economic, social and institutional challenges, which increase with delays in additional mitigation and if key technologies are not available. Limiting warming to lower or higher levels involves similar challenges but on different timescales.

Maligne Lake, Alberta

In other (good) news…

          Just this week, groupof Canadian oil sands companies along with U.S.-based NRG Energy is funding an XPrize competition designed to solve one of the world's most elusive problems: how to reduce CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. There is $20 million U.S. up for grabs.  It seems these oil sands companies (at least) are not climate denialists.  

         Also this week, Shell abandoned oil exploration plans in the Arctic.  This has been widely reported in the news. 

Maybe we can figure this out, but it will take all of us, on every level, immediately. 

To start at the beginning of this seven part series, you might start with my journey, or Global Warming 101.  

Uncharted Territory (part 1 of 2)

We're in uncharted territory.  No one knows for sure how bad will be the effects of climate change or what exactly will happen. 

Speaking of positive feedback loops, inter-related are the current rate of species extinction and global warming.  The Holocene, or Sixth Extinction refers to the current period of mass species extinction that we’ve all been hearing about since we were kids, except we didn’t think it was that bad.  What we learned as kids, with pleas to save the whales, has snowballed into an avalanche of extinctions that has become an event in itself.  Elizabeth Kolbert has described it in detail in her Pulitzer Prize winning aptly named book, The Sixth Extinction.  Here is a succinct summary of the present-day mass extinction, in which we may be included. 

It Gets Worse

Guy McPherson is Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. McPherson is gaining attention as a scientist who believes we humans will be extinct – yes, extinct – in as little as fifteen years.  You can find McPherson's website Nature Bats Last and blog here. 

I learned about McPherson while commuting to work and listening to an interview with him on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) Radio One.  The strength of the following video, Guy McPherson, Full Presentation, York, UK, is the breadth of his overview of sources.  It’s heavily referenced. 

I wish McPherson’s comments were as measured as his monotone is flat.  I’d prefer if he did not inject dark humour and political asides into the lecture.  That said, there is a solid overview of his position and a goldmine of reference material in this short half hour or so lecture. 

Plus, for McPherson, the upshot of it all is refreshingly measured: pursue love and live a life of excellence.  He’s not asking anybody to join him in a commune and drink the purple Kool-Aid.  One could quibble, asking why a scientist is moralizing at all.  But given his conclusions, it’s helpful to see how moderate his “so what?” is.  Pursue love and live a life of excellence.  In fact, it sounds familiar: 

The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.  Above all, keep loving one another earnestly...

1 Peter 4:7-8

Next time:  Near Term Extinction (Part 2), or why the IPCC reports sound optimistic.  

When Positive Feedback is a Bad Thing

Climate change is being accelerated by its own effects.  These are referred to as positive feedback loops.  Here's why: 

In climate change, a feedback loop is the equivalent of a vicious – or virtuous – circle. It's something that accelerates or decelerates a warming trend. A positive feedback accelerates a temperature rise, and a negative feedback decelerates it.

From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center:  

A positive feedback is a process in which an initial change will bring about an additional change in the same direction... There are also negative feedbacks, processes in which an initial change will bring about an additional change in the opposite direction.

It is positive, rather than negative feedbacks that contribute to abrupt climate changes. In positive feedbacks, a small initial perturbation can yield a large change. Negative feedbacks, on the other hand, stabilize the system by bringing it back to its original state.

A simple and obvious example of a positive feedback loop is melting polar ice.  Polar ice is white(-ish) and it reflects back into space lots of sunlight.  Polar ice has been melting as you know, and uncovering darker water or land underneath.  Solar energy is then absorbed, instead of reflected, and so warming occurs, driving more polar ice melt.  

It's a vicious circle, a feedback loop.  It's positive (in scientific terms) because it is consisting in or characterized by the presence of something (increased temperature) rather than its absence (absence would be negative, i.e., cooling).  

In general terms, there are three kinds of feedback loops

1. ice-related feedback loops, 
2. vegetation-related feedback loops and 
3. feedback loops created by these that include larger influences, like ocean currents (the thermohaline circulation, e.g., the Gulf Stream) and air currents like the jet stream and events like El Ninos and El Ninas 

Here are seventeen, count 'em, seventeen positive feedback loops. Please note that the article I cite lists nineteen and organizes it differently.  I have removed their #11 (their citation has been dropped and I could not confirm the assertion independently) and their #19 is covered by others in my humble opinion.

Ice-related 

• Methane hydrates – methane is a super-powerful greenhouse gas surfacing from the Arctic Ocean 
• Siberian methane 
• Darkening ice in Greenland 
• Cracking glaciers release CO2 
• Release of methane in the Antarctic  
• Greatly accelerated Antarctic ice melt 
• Darkening of ice caused by surface meltwater 

Vegetation-related 

• Amazon drought triggered the release of more methane than the US in 2010 
• Decomposing peat in boreal forests 
• Invasive growth warming soil and thus destabilizing permafrost 
• Forest and bog fires burning at a rate greater than the last 10,000 years 
• Thawing permafrost exposed to sunlight increases bacteria, leading to accelerated thawing 
• Microbes as a contributor within thawing permafrost 

Current-related 

• Warm seawater from the Atlantic ocean further warming the Arctic 
• Canadian floodwater runoff 
• Breakdown of ocean currents like the Gulf Stream 
• Jet stream impacted by reduced temperature range between the poles and the equator 

We’ve got a problem.  Humanity’s modification of the atmosphere through the use of fossil fuels has caused staggering effects that are so far reaching that it may already be too late.  We didn’t realize how bad it is until (quite possibly) it is already too late.  We’re all in this together.  Since negative feedbacks can stabilize the system by bringing it back to its original state, we’ve got to do what we can, or risk losing it all.

Next time:  How bad might it get?  

What, Me Worry? (Part 2 of 2)

We’re all puppets controlled by the winds of social conformity.

~ Dr. Joe Hanson, host, It’s Okay to be Smart

Last time we looked at equality bias and its role in climate change denial.  Here are two more reasons that rational arguments alone won’t convince people.    

2.    The way our brains are wired

The American Public Broadcasting System (PBS) Digital Studios has a nifty channel on YouTube called It’s Okay to be Smart.  I featured their segment, Climate Change: What you need to know, in my Global Warming 101 post. 

In his short video (below), host Joe Hanson talks about our wiring, among other things.  He talks about PAIN, the role of uncertainty, and how a need to belong shapes our beliefs:

So you can see that a number of subtle influences disrupt our objectivity.  Still, after equality bias and our wiring, a third contributor to climate change denial is our posse.  I have a great pun to insert here, but out of respect for Jay Heinrichs and my denialist friends, I shall restrain myself. 

3.    Our Tribe

Who’s your tribe?  Who are your homeys?  This is big. 

Climate change denial isn’t not knowing, or refusing to know. It’s about choosing not to notice or talk about it, so they don’t rock the in-group boat. 

~ Stanley Cohen, sociologist

Jay Heinrichs has written a ground-breaking, masterful, and entertaining book on rhetoric that is being used widely in universities like Harvard and elsewhere.  Thank You for Arguing will teach you the art of persuasion and make you laugh while you learn.  Jay has consulted with NASA, the US Department of Defense, Harvard, Walmart (don't hold that against him), Southwest Airlines, and more. 

Jay, who is the big brother of my childhood friend, has launched a video channel on YouTube called ArgueLab.  ArgueLab is a video forum in which “rhetorician Jay Heinrichs, and YouTube star Christina Fox, reveal the secrets of rhetoric, the art of persuasion.”  Its short videos offer entertaining tools for talking. 

In a recent segment, Jay talks about tribal identity using the anti-vaccination movement as a backdrop.  The parallel to climate science is exact. 

Equality bias, our brain’s wiring and tribal identity all work to muddle the facts.  You can't blame it on your brain though, because now you know.  In future posts we'll look at positive feedback loops, and how bad will be it anyway?  

Next time:  When Positive Feedback is a Bad Thing 

  

Denialists: What, Me Worry? (Part 1 of 2)

Here are three reasons why facts alone aren’t enough. 

We can look at science all day, but many folks – a LOT of folks, especially Americans, continue to deny climate science.  We might look at the disproportionate way in which big American money is funding the climate denial movement, much the way the tobacco industry resisted health warnings on cigarette boxes, and sought to raise doubt about health risks. 

The politics of denial is a topic for another time.  Right now, we’re just looking at the individual as part of a group, and the psychology, sociology and biology of it if you will.  So in the next two posts we’ll look at three contributing factors to denialism. 

1.      Equality Bias

I once worked with someone who was (still is) the nicest guy in the world.  He really is.  Brilliant too.  The problem was that whenever we leaders sat around our table solving the problems of the universe (or of the organization, at least), he’d always take a middle ground position, no matter how hair-brained someone on one side of the issue was being.  He is a gentle man and probably did this to protect feelings.  It seems reasonable.  It appears fair.  Even when someone is a crackpot. 

Chris Mooney, in his Washington Post column, The science of protecting people’s feelings: why we pretend all opinions are equal, details this very phenomenon.  Apparently it is a thing, it has a name, and it’s called equality bias.

 [Psychologists have] shown that people have an “equality bias” when it comes to competence or expertise, such that even when it’s very clear that one person in a group is more skilled, expert, or competent (and the other less), they are nonetheless inclined to seek out a middle ground in determining how correct different viewpoints are.

Chris Mooney

The study is recent, multi-national, and shows similar results across cultures.  You can read the study here.

Mooney describes in accessible terms how the study was conducted.  The bottom line is this:

[H]uman groups (especially in the United States) err much more in the direction of giving everybody a say than in the direction of deferring too much to experts. And that’s quite obviously harmful on any number of issues, especially in science, where what experts know really matters and lives or the world depend on it — like vaccinations or climate change. 

It’s only “fair,” right?  We see it in interviews, where one climate change believer (often Bill Nye the Science Guy), is juxtaposed with a single denier, when the reality is that 97% of scientists agree human-caused climate change is real and an immediate threat.  John Oliver illustrated this humourously in a video I featured last time. 

Next time: The other two reasons why facts are not enough: 2) our wiring and 3) our tribe 

Global Warming 101

The first angel blew his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, and these were thrown upon the earth. And a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.

The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. A third of the living creatures in the sea died...

Revelation 8

When I cite sources, wherever possible I will cite diverse, original, scholarly, independent sources. You get what you pay for, and here at There’s More in You, everything’s free (charges by your internet services provider may vary), so how much time do you have? 

Have 6 minutes?  Watch this clever video by the US-based Public Broadcasting System published in December 2014: 

Have half an hour?  The following twenty-six minute video, Climate Change: Lines of Evidence, produced in 2012 by the Board of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the National Research Council and the Academy of Natural Sciences gives a succinct overview. 

Overwhelmed by despair?  Needing a smile?  I give you four and a half minutes of John Oliver.  NOTE:  F Bomb warning.  

Next time: The Psychology of Denial