Time is Running Out

My last few reads have all had to do with climate change in some way or other. Needless to say, it has been a depressing bit of reading. From Donald Prothero's chapter tackling climate change denial in Reality Check to the article about sea level rise in September's National Geographic to the book I just finished, Bill McKibben's Oil and Honey, being presented with the enormity and the gravity of the problem is daunting to say the least. Worse still is the knowledge that much of our government, including representatives who are supposed to be acting on behalf of "the people", has been bought completely by the fossil fuel industry, money from oil and coal companies flowing into the coffers of politicians who then dutifully halt even the most limp-wristed half-measures to tackle the climate problem. 

For all the denial that exists out there, I've generally thought that the basic science of climate change was fairly simple to grasp and, in an ideal world, would be uncontroversial. We've known for well over a century about greenhouse gases like carbon and methane, how they act to trap heat in the atmosphere. The fact that these gases naturally warm the atmosphere is quite uncontroversial. Further, it is also uncontroversial that burning oil, gas and coal emits carbon into the air as a byproduct of its combustion. Thus, human emissions are adding carbon to the atmosphere at a very rapid rate; more carbon in the atmosphere traps more heat, and the entire globe warms. True, the science of climate change is far more complex than that, and science is still learning about the many intricacies of how our atmosphere works, but I think that this simple explanation is true and a rough, but accurate, description of how climate change works at its most basic level. The deniers tend to come in at this point, asserting that indeed the burning of fossil fuels is one source of carbon going into the atmosphere, but not a consequential one. "How can driving MY little car heat the atmosphere?" they collectively scoff. This is where the scale of human civilization comes into play--were it just one little car burning gasoline, it wouldn't be a problem. Picture, however, our current society with millions of cars burning millions of gallons of gasoline every single day! Add to that the millions more cars across the world, the power plants burning coal around the globe, the jets that burn fuel, their emissions leaving trails in the sky. Take into account the fact that we've been burning coal and oil like this for over a century, and surely then even the most hardened denier can see that human emissions are on a scale sufficient to change the atmosphere. The earth has plenty of natural mechanisms that remove carbon from the air (this is true, and the next line of defense from a denier)--the problem is that humans are adding carbon to the atmosphere at a faster rate than the earth can remove it, hence the warming noted by a plethora of climate scientists using a wide array of different methods to measure the increase. 

This is the briefest of overviews on how climate change works. My purpose isn't to give an in-depth explanation as there are plenty of books and films for that, nor do I intend to answer every single argument that the deniers have come up with (try the Skeptical Science website for answers to common denier arguments, available here). Frankly, I don't much care what climate change deniers think. They can live in whatever fantasy world they choose, but what I do care about is the fact that they have helped to impede and halt any action on the climate. On the basis of deliberate misunderstandings of the science, and funded by the fossil fuel companies, the deniers are causing real and lasting harm. We're running out of time to take action, and I increasingly fear that the only action we end up taking will be spurred by a disaster, one that only proves we've acted too late to mitigate the worst effects. We're already seeing the effects of climate change with more frequent, and ferocious, storms, increased drought due to a hotter atmosphere, and mass die-offs of coral reefs due to the increasing acidity of our oceans, caused by increased carbon. The last decade has seen records broken again and again, with the last fifteen years seeing the twelve hottest years on record. 

In spite of my own personal tendency towards pessimism, I am compelled to believe that there is still hope, still time enough to take steps that will ensure that we avoid the worst-case scenarios for the climate, including a potential sea level rise of over 200 feet that would submerge nearly every major coastal city, from New York and Boston to London, Venice, and Calcutta. We're too late to stop it completely; climate change is real and it is already here, as we've seen from the one degree of warming so far, the melting glaciers, and the measurable rise in sea level that is already threatening low-lying Pacific islands. The president of the island nation of Kiribati has already begun plans to evacuate his entire country's citizens, having purchased land in nearby Fiji, as sea level rise is likely to submerge the nation completely before century's end. In spite of all this, I have to think that at some point the evidence of our own eyes will make all but the most hardened deniers realize that climate change is a threat that we must tackle. At some point, we will take action, and I see hopeful signs that more people are waking up to the reality of this problem. A majority of Americans, even in red states like Texas, now recognize that climate change is real. Will we end up taking action that is meaningful enough to mitigate climate change? I can't say for sure. I may be hopeful, but I also know this; the situation is increasingly worse, and time is running out.