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Catastrophic Climate Change: It's Here - Deal With It.
Here's the deal.
- Catastrophic climate change is real and happening now.
It's killing people and creating climate refugees.
It's also killing thousands of other species. Watch the (real) news and connect the dots.
- Human activity is the
fundamental cause; especially the massive and growing use of
fossil fuels per person, multiplied by increasing population.
- Whereas temperature rise is correctly perceived as the dominant impact of the
CC issue, there are multiple other inter-related
factors on which human survival depend: availability of potable water, declining health
of the oceans and arable land, and more.
- While climate change is inextricably linked to how we use material resources, its
effects will incur unprecedented stresses on maintaining peace between peoples who will
be increasingly deprived of the means of survival.
- You have been fed a lot of disinformation
by the fossil fuel industry,
who have known about this since the 1960s.
- Fixing climate change is cheaper than dealing
with the consequences.
- The rate of change is increasing (that's the
definiton of acceleration), there are catastrophic threshold
(tipping) points,
and there are 'positive feedback loops'
(not positive in the sense of being beneficial to us and our descendants) which we (including the IPCC) have
not yet really taken into account.
- Wide-scale geo-engineering without an off-switch
is a really bad idea based on the human track record, often attended by unintended
consequences, when we're dealing with complex systems we don't understand
sufficiently well. (Consider the current state of 2-week weather forecasts; now
contemplate 100-year predictions based on our current state of knowledge and
understanding.)
- Climate modelling of far greater sophistication than used today is required to get
a better sense of how various factors will interact and of their likely consequences
to help evaluate adaptation plans, or estimate outcomes from various mitigation
strategies. Until we have a handle on that, our best path forward is to reverse the increase in
greenhouse gases to return planetary systems to a more stable state.
- The UN IPCC is hopelessly optimistic and are
building models based on years-old data, not recent knowledge.
They do not take into account tipping points and feedback loops. In short, we don't have 12
years as indicated in their last report. We have months to start making changes, and we have
to get serious about meeting targets like the Paris Agreement, but before 2030.
The IPCC is unavoidably constrained by political compromise.
- There are things we can do, today, which just might
allow the survival of the human race.
We do not appreciate how dependent we are upon having a stable environment to sustain our
population on this planet. By the time we do, it may be too late to matter, and it will certainly
be harder, more expensive and take longer to take effective action. We have no experience as a species with a climate which moves
outside 'normal' patterns. These patterns are the foundation for how we have evolved over the
millennia, and especially the past 10,000 years. The short mandates of our political
systems do not accommodate the medium and long term thinking and what we need to do to deal with
climate change. This leads to consistently poor policy-making in the short term; it may
well constitute crimes against humanity when we come to grasp the enormity of the consequences.
An effective strategy is based on accurately understanding reality; setting policies that steer in
the desired direction; and, taking serious actions to implement the change(s). In much of the western
world today we have active disinformation hiding reality; policies which continue to subsidize and
actively support more GHG emissions; and, a conscious lack of action to correct course.
Those who argue the economy must trump the environment miss the most important, fundamental
point in the discussion: without 'the environment', there is no economy, no civilization,
no humans. No humans. That is not intended to be a hyperbolic statement, but to start a
discussion about the probability of this event as a consequence of catastrophic climate change
already in motion, and what, if anything, we will choose to do about it. Science fact: carbon dioxide
levels have been this high on planet Earth before (over 400 ppm), but NOT while mammals - let alone humans -
lived here. There is no Planet B for us to move to if we render Earth uninhabitable, even for
Bezos, Musk and Branson.
Become politically involved. If you are not already, consider changing "them" to "us".
Shift from governance which has a short-term focus on staying in power to those vested in the
long-term interests of their constituency.
WE caused this mess. It's up to us to fix it. Our future depends on it.
So, let's get to it.
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