Kindergarten Environmentalism Part II: Global Warming

There are more things about popular environmentalism that anger me than I could reasonably put in one blog post.  I got into a bit of a Facebook discussion with some guys about global warming (aka climate change), and decided I should elaborate here, where I have a little more space (and privacy, sadly).

Don't watch this without coffee.

NOT a Climatologist.

            Several groups have been warning us over the last 10 or 12 years about the coming catastrophe of climate change, brought on by the sudden increase in global average temperature, brought on by the exponential increase in carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other “greenhouse gasses.”  The most famous of these was Mr. Excitement, VicePresident Al Gore in his famous movie adaptation of a slide presentation, An Inconvenient Truth.  Now, apart from featuring the mind-numbingly boring former VP, this was an interesting documentary, and really helped to get the message out there, revitalizing the environmental movement and the study of climate.  The beef I had with it was that the producers of the film (and several other people before and since) have put forth the notion that the science for this is rock-solid, that there is no debate within the academic community, and that there are no other possibilities to prevent the apocalypse besides the ones they propose.  That’s dangerous talk, from people who should know better.  The idiot media gets a dose of rhetoric like that, and they absolutely propagandize it.  Take a look at one of the more yuppie-type TV channels sometime, and count how many times you hear some metro-sexual on HGTV mention his "carbon footprint" in an hour.  Now I'm getting advice on environmental issues from a guy with enough gel in his hair to kill all of the fish in a small pond.  

Disagreement and debate in the academic community is the very thing that will save us.  It exists, luckily, even though it mostly goes unreported.  Here's a link to a good debate among some scientists on NPR.  The day that every scientist agrees with a complex theory in a complex (and really young) field like climatology is the day we have lost our only real hope.  If there is one saving grace for humanity, it is its relentless search for knowledge and truth.  This is the pursuit that our academics need to stick with.  I hate seeing scientists clamoring about political and economic changes.  It only makes them less credible and paints them into corners dogmatically.  Politics and bullshit should be left to the professional bullshit artists, namely politicians.

Not all hazards are man-made...

Environmental issues are often very complicated.  Our planet is not the unchanging, stable platform that the hippie environmentalists would have you believe.  It orbits its star, narrowly misses other celestial objects (occasionally doesn't miss), wobbling slightly on its axis, part of a solar system, which is in turn part of a larger galaxy, which is all turning around a black hole, which is also moving.  All of these interactions are pretty complicated and interactive and important to our climate here on Earth.  And that doesn't even begin to comment on the interactions within our atmosphere and oceans.  It is super-extra complicated, and our measuring methods are sort of unreliable and VERY recent.  I do not discount everything that Al Gore has to say.  It is probably true that we have drastically increased the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial revolution, but it is important to remember that our climate is an incredibly complex system, with multiple feedback mechanisms, both positive and negative.  The Gore camp tends to focus solely on the positive ones, the ones that will accelerate the warming trend, and discount the negatives that would slow down the trend. 

            For instance, the former-VP pointed out the retreat of several glaciers and the melting of the ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland, presumably due to the increase in CO₂ over the last 150 years or so (we’ll just ignore all the possible other factors for now).  This melting and loss of white reflective surface will reduce the albedo (reflectivity) of the planet and cause the earth to absorb more of the sun’s energy and release it as heat, which will cause the earth to warm, which will cause more melting.  The warmer temperatures will cause more water vapor to be held in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect and cause even more melting until, SHAZAM—the set for Waterworld is created.

If this is what acting will be like after global warming,
somebody get me an electric car right now.

Which is it?  Freeze or melt?
Make up your minds, guys.
(I didn't even notice this wasn't in English at first)

            Apart from being a pretty shitty movie in general (kind of a Road Warrior rip-off, only with jet-skis) and yet another pathetic Hollywood attempt to make a good action hero out of Kevin Costner, Waterworld is a good illustration of what the Al Goreites (does that work?  “Al Goreians,” maybe?) were initially selling with the global warming idea.  Problem is, this theory kind of forgets about the other side of the coin, and all of the negative feedbacks that would also kick in to stabilize the temperature.  For example—when the ice packs melt, there is more fresh water dumped into the northern ocean, which affects the salinity balance between the surface ocean currents and the deep ocean currents, which slows them down, which in turn reduces the amount of heat brought into the polar regions and slows melting.   Remember the other apocalyptic climate-change movie with Dennis Quaid, The Day After Tomorrow?  That movie’s premise is that global warming actually triggers an ice age by disrupting the ocean currents, but is just as silly and unlikely as the Kevin Costner abortion.  There are numerous other negative and positive feedbacks that I won’t get into, lest this blog turn into a geography text book.  Suffice it to say that it is really freaking complicated. So even though I began this rambling with a claim that change is normal, we now see that there are plenty of dampeners between us and oblivion.  The pendulum never swings too far one way or the other, which is how this place has managed to survive this long.

Speaking from anal defilade...

Truth is, nobody knows what the overall effect of doubling CO₂ in the atmosphere will be.  We don’t have really accurate computer models of the Earth’s climate, mainly because of a lack of understanding of the dynamics of the oceans.  So anyone who claims to know the answer for sure or who says that “every scientist agrees” is speaking from what I like to call “anal defilade,” and is letting his political views cloud his perceptions.

The way I see it, even if the worst case happens, and there is a major and rapid planet-wide climate shift, it is hardly curtains for the human species.  The truly maddening argument is the one over whether or not this is a man-made problem.  As if the extermination of half the existing population is fine, as long as it's not anthropogenic.  I don't care where it came from, only the best way to fix it.  We humans are a very inventive bunch, and when necessity comes calling, inventions will result.  Sure, the population is going to take a hit, and a lot of things will have to change, but as long as we can keep our panicky little hands off the nuclear button, it is hardly an existential threat.  This little planet we have will only support a certain number of us, that is the most inconvenient of truths.  Eventually, we will have to compete even more for resources, regardless of sea level or climate shifts.  And that's where my job comes in.  So settle down, Beavis.  It's going to be okay.

If the worst happens, you can bet it won't be America that goes hungry.