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TechnoratiWe're Nearing Climate's Tipping Point
MARK TWAIN once quipped that "everybody talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it." While Twain's remarks were tongue-in-cheek, they took on resonance in the wake of NASA Administrator Michael Griffin's recent comments on National Public Radio regarding climate change. Griffin stated: "I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists," but he added that he was "not sure that it is fair to say that is a problem we must wrestle with."
Griffin's remarks garnered attention, largely negative, when he suggested that "I would ask which human beings, where and when, are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take." Michael Oppenheimer, professor at Princeton, claimed he found "it astounding that the head of a major U.S. science agency could hold such attitudes — basically ignorance — about the global warming problem. In fact, it's so astonishing I think he should resign."
James Hansen, climate scientist and director of NASA's Goddard Institute, was equally direct in critiquing his boss: "I almost fell off my chair. [His remarks were] remarkably uninformed." Notably, Hansen and other scientists from the Goddard and Columbia University had just released a report that stated that human-made greenhouse gases have brought the Earth's climate close to a critical "tipping point." With the release of the Fourth Assessment Report of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (of which this author is a member), the scientific data provides irrevocable evidence that change is taking place.
It is immensely difficulty to talk with any certainty or sense of prediction about climate change — more commonly (and incorrectly) called just "global warming." The complexities of environmental change have widely different impacts in different regions and are often interwoven with vulnerabilities such as disease, water and natural-resource scarcities, increased storms and flooding in some areas, with extreme temperatures and extended drought in other areas
With the continuing failure of decision makers to deal with climate change and its impact, we are entering a future from which we may not be able to turn back. Indeed, the last time in history carbon dioxide (CO{-2}) levels were at levels similar to today's was during the time of the mid-Pliocene "warm" period — some 3.5 million years ago. As one NASA scientist jokingly retorted to the science journalist Elizabeth Kolbert, "It's true that we've had higher CO{-2} levels before. But, then, of course, we also had dinosaurs."
Phenomenal natural disasters — from volcanic eruptions to seismic quakes to massive tsunami effects and giant hurricanes — should serve to remind us that the Earth itself is the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Today, when mollusks are found growing only several hundred miles from the North Pole, or entire species are in permanent migratory pattern change, or butterflies throughout the Northern Hemisphere are shifting ranges northward by up to 150 miles, or predatory insects or plants begin to invade ecosystems or undermine biodiversity, or polar bears drown because of the loss of surface ice, then all is not well. One has, at such point, reached a "tipping point": commonly described through the visual anecdote of leaning over in a canoe to the extent that one is no longer "rocking the boat" but flipping it — and from which there can be no recovery.
In the 1970s James Lovelock made an intellectual leap by suggesting the possibility the Earth's lands, oceans, atmosphere and living matter could be seen as a single organism, one that regulated itself to support life. Called the "Gaia Hypothesis" after the ancient Greeks' Earth Goddess, it was in many respects a new way of looking at the world. And it was an idea that was as evocative as it was controversial. In part, it repositioned the role of the physical scientist into that of a physiologist. Whereas before there was the studying of processes that responded to natural forces, now there would be the looking for functions that served a larger body.
While it may be trite to suggest that "it's not nice to fool with Mother Nature," it is not inaccurate to suggest that human influences such as ever increasing greenhouse-gas emissions and subsequent effects on climate and security could very well cause "Gaia" to seek her revenge. The time for debate is long past. Perhaps we should pray that the time for effective action has not passed as well.
P. H. Liotta is executive director of the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University, and the coauthor of Gaia's Revenge: Climate Change and Humanity's Loss. The Pell Center hosted an international conference on environmental change this week, with support from NATO, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the United Nations.
© 2007 The Providence Journal
17 Comments so far
Show AllThanks Ken. I recommend the practice of YOGA as it actually draws the left and right brain into greater unity and facilitates very clear thought processes. Imagine if all elected leaders had to get balanced with Yoga before making serious decisions? Houston Smith, a leading authority on world religions was once interviewed by Bill Moyers and he said quite succinctly, "I do Yoga in the morning. It just makes my whole day go a lot better." I always admire men who do yoga, but the classes outnumber then 4: 1. In Key West I used to see Shell Silverstein (the writer) at a Yoga class... lots of interesting people live or once lived in those magical FLorida Keys.
Siouxrose: So true. Plus, we need more HER-STORY don't we?
The challenge as I sense it is fostering and facilitating balance on so many levels. Balance doesn't necessarily mean equal, but it is a recognition that you can't have one without the other (you know female/male, small/large, etc.). However, when one realizes just how ingrained and entrenched certain inbalances are, it becomes evident that achieving an appropriate balance is arduous in mind and indeed.
Here is a simple example from the english language. Folks say: she did the "right" thing. I prefer: she did the "correct" (or perhaps "proper") thing. This may seem trivial but shouldn't "right" and "left" remain objective descriptors associated with orientation -- you know turn right or turn left.
Look up the definition of "right" in the dictionary - the word just has way too many meanings. I particularly dislike the concept of it is my "right" to to this or that such as: the inalienable "right" to the pursuit of happiness. There is way too much "righteousness" going on. You know?
I suspect the origin of this is that most folks are right-handed (I wonder why). As it is, I happen to write with my left hand, so perhaps I'm particularly sensitive to this term.
Anyhow, I so agree with you that we "have those twin brain hemispheres for a reason".
Peace,
Ken
Cruxpuppy & Ken: The two perspectives are not mutually exclusive, or should not be. Anyone remember the TV show, "My favorite Martian?" He wore an antenna atop his head and it simulated the same apparatus used by early TV technology. Interesting, too, that insects have TWO antenna. What's the point? That our human brains were designed with TWO counter-balancing hemispheres in Divine mind. One is by nature rational and given to an analysis of empirical facts and mathematical data. Most science has arisen from this font. It becomes a problem when ONLY the voice of science is accepted as valid. The right brain is resonant with the sensibilities of the shaman. It's basis for understanding is more diffuse and spiritual. With mankind (in the modern world) navigating with only one oar--that of scientific reason, our shared vessel has no choice but to circle. By expunging the voice of the Grandmothers, Indigenous peoples, females, mystics, poets and visionaries, HIS-STORY repeats. Then the pundits presume this marks all that human nature could and can be. Bull shit. The American Indians had a saying, "The land does not belong to us, we belong to the land." So the posting relating the co-optation of all natural resources to serve the mammon-rules-profit motive has rendered the human (particularly American) relationship to the natural world one of ruin and antipathy. The way we treat nature says a lot about how we experience what is natural in ourselves, and this speaks to our innate sensuality (and sexuality.) Notice the way all fundamentalist sects make sex (particularly on the female side or homosexual) its great taboo.
Crux is right that the Gaian realization is part of the old religions and they have much to teach us. Which does not mean science does not. We have those twin brain hemispheres for a reason!
cruxpuppy - awesome response. Thanks.
conscience - although sometimes it can be a "downer", I'd rather "get it all on the table" over dinner and stop pretending. In fact, for me, being practical, realistic, upfront, honest & out in the open feels good. I want to work together with others and engaging in worthwhile discussion may not be as fun or entertaining as some alternatives, but it sure can be uplifting and can leave one with a sense of purpose and prepared for action. As an aside, I think your are the third or forth individual who has recently mentioned "Who Killed the Electric Car". I need to watch this.
Peace,
Ken
* I support HRes333 - Impeach the VP
Ken Hausle - science needs a good thumping now and then to remind us that it isn't the be-all and end-all of human endeavor. If we don't succeed in transforming it, it will be our undoing, whereas if we fix it, it can be the means to global harmony.
It can be a tool to affirm the sanctity of life.
Our science is just a way of looking at the world. As our world devolves into chaos, maybe we will learn to understand it differently.
Hopefully, people will not blame science. Hopefully, we will not become a race of Luddites.
Science isn't killing the planet, people are killing the planet.
We don't understand human nature. We don't know who we are. That's the point. We are not our aboriginal forebears. We are not the Jetsons. We are entirely new and unprecedented.
We are victims of our own enlightenment. We are constrained from expressing what we know by a scientific oligarchy just as Gallileo was constrained by religious tyrants.
A reformation is taking place that is neither religious, nor scientifically orthodox.
The vanguard effort, which took place in the "60's" ended in squalor, but the batton was passed successfuly and the heretics are alive and well.
Whether they will be successful remains to be seen.
Why do we do nothing?
Because it has only been in the last three years or so that the reality of Global Warming has reached the public ---
AND, because a few private families have controlled our nation's natural resources. Exxon-Mobil is still in the suicidal business of trying to keep the public from understanding the true threat of Global Warming to humanity and to the planet.
Nor does the "tipping point" seem to be overall understood as a threat to the planet, itself. When Gore testified to the Senate recently, he began by talking about the "shaking" of the earth.
QUOTE: Hard to criticize PH Liotta's views, but there is an inaccuracy in his comment about the Gaia hypothesis, that "it was in many respects a new way of looking at the world".
It is in fact a very old way of looking at the world. One could say it is a native human perception, one of the fundamental categories of the earliest human attempts to conceptualize the world. All aboriginal cultures we know ab out identify the earth as the universal mother.UNQUOTE
Of course, this is part of the Old Religions -- simple spirituality based on connections to nature.
These are the religions which were overturned to make way for exploitation of nature and natural resources -- i.e., "Manifest Destiny" and "Man's Dominion Over Nature."
Still -- do you see anyone in authority challenging private control of natural resources?
Calling for Electric Cars -- ?
Certainly, Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows the full potential of the electric car because more than 4,000 of them were on the roads in California for five years or so before being "crushed."
See: "Who Killed The Electric Car?"
Arguements about tinkering with pollution are nonsense --
we need major changes --
Wars and nuclear weapons -- and the myth of nuclear energy -- certainly will bring us down the road of destruction even faster.
It's Saturday night -- anyone want to talk about this with friends over dinner?
Not fun, is it? Especially when you're talking with young people just starting families.
So why is it that we are not building solar panels and installing them everywhere?
Why is it that we are not producing new mass transit units to run in every city in the USA?
Why is it that public transportation is not free to all riders.
Why do we do nothing?
"we need to begin planning for... self-defense (for when the rioting hits.)"
"He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword."
The best self-defense against rioting is to become indispensable in your community. If you're supplying your neighbors with healthy, organic food when the stores are empty, they'll make sure no one bothers you.
You can't pick and choose when it comes to Martin Luther King and Ghandi. If you're planning to use weapons and violence, you are a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.
This is from my website (kjh-es.com):
" This is my take on how things are connected...
Us humans are part of an intricately woven environment, and
We have arrived at this moment because we fit in.
But, the environment is finely tuned.
If we forget how connected everything is,
we become disconnected ourselves.
Then, we will no longer fit in,
the environment will respond,
and, humanity will be diminished.
Wake Up and Sense the Connections....
Time is of the Essence...."
Peace,
Ken
* I support HRes333 - Impeach the VP
Jjohn: how about the frequency of storms, the drought in Florida, the loss of honey bees, the vanishing glaciers in regions that rely upon them for water (run off). How about the receding ice caps and polar bears not being able to make the crossings in their past migratory routes to fish and hunt? I'm sure there are COUNTLESS other examples NOW.
Yeah, I'd say Mother Nature has been fighting back for some time now.
Some voices on the Christian Right claim that AIDS is God's punishment upon the sinful ways of homosexuals. I'd say it's just another one of Gaia's ways of defending herself against compulsive overbreeding by human heterosexuals.
She's also prepare to defend herself with drug-resistant Tuberculosis, SARS, and Avian Flu. Extreme weather is just a warning shot compared to those horrors.
If everyone's grandmother had only produced two children, we wouldn't be grappling with global warming (yet), fighting for oil in Iraq, or building walls to keep out immigrant workers..
I know we have to solve the immediate problems now, but I tell my two kids that the ideal family size of their generation will be one by birth and one by adoption.
I just heard George Monbiot on the radio say that the CO2 is just the tip of the iceberg... We're already committed to a two-degree increase no matter what we do.
He says that the crucial tipping-point is the megatons of methane locked up in frozen tundra in Canada and Siberia. Once we go over two degrees, the tundra melts into a squishy bog, the methane rejoins the atmosphere - and the greenhouse effect accelerates.
By his estimate, we must reduce CO2 emission by 90% no later than 2030 to avoid melting the tundra.
And - he says we can do it without bringing industrial civilization crashing down. The more people who cut back, the less each has to cut back.
I keep looking for familiar every-day examples of this kind of "tipping point" phenomena... "parables" I can use when talking about GW to my less imaginitive neighbors.
Any suggestions?
If the Earth is truly that close to the "tipping point," then it's time to start preparing for the near future - especially if things continue to speed up faster than previous predictions. Sure, let's work to cut emissions, live greener, etc., but more importantly, we need to begin planning for mass migrations from the coasts, a severe rise in the need for medical services, and practical survival knowledge, including self-defense (for when the rioting hits.) We're on our own, people, and you know it.
Just as arrogant left-brain scientists didn't know what to make of Lovelock's contention (so resonant with indigenous mysticism and very old teachings) that Earth is a singular being, i.e. Gaia; so, too, did other spiritual adepts relate this message. Quoting from esteemed Yogananda in his lecture to the U.N in l949, here is what he relates (it's from "World in Transition")... "The current era is one of profound changes in world civilization. The Atomic Age is a new ascending stage in the life of our planet. We are destined to witness far-reaching modifications in the religious, social, economic and political institutions of humanity.
"Throughout history there have been periods of foreboding giving rise to predictions about forth coming natural and manmade catastrophic events.
"Partial dissolution of the world is brought on by the evil activities of people in general. If we all begin to fight with explosives, by this direct action we can reduce drastically the extent of civilization. When we desecrate the world the environment undergoes a violent change. Such upheavals have occurred many times, one example is Noah's flood. These partial dissolutions are due to the wrong actions and ignorant errors of mankind. Don't think man's actions have no effect on the operation of God's cosmic laws. The vibrations of evil that mankind leaves in the ether upset the normal harmonious balance of the earth."
This is the spiritual compliment to all the fossil fuel depletion. When Bush used 911 as a pretext to further the ways and means to vengeance and aggressive war, it definitely became a karmic tipping point. First Florida, the state that "GAVE" the world Bush had 7 storms in a row (2004-2005), and soon after our Gulf looked as if decimated by a war (Katrina). Just because science uses empirical models that only relate to tangible cause-effect relationships hardly discounts the higher laws that are also at work. The US (under Bush) decision to build more nuclear weapons is like asking nature to kick our ass... I mean this is the worst kind of hubris, it is killing not only nature, but also attacking the aspect of human nature (and humanity) that might save us from ourselves.
Hard to criticize PH Liotta's views, but there is an inaccuracy in his comment about the Gaia hypothesis, that "it was in many respects a new way of looking at the world".
It is in fact a very old way of looking at the world. One could say it is a native human perception, one of the fundamental categories of the earliest human attempts to conceptualize the world. All aboriginal cultures we know ab out identify the earth as the universal mother.
The fact that it is new to us latter day humans is the strongest evidence that we are severely alienated from the always and everywhere of human experience.
It is tragic in the classical sense that science is not competent to understand Gaia, or human nature, for that matter, given that human nature derives from the being of that greater organism we dimly sense in a "Gaia hypothesis". Science has nothing to say about being or consciousness or personality, or anything else that cannot be weighed or measured or expressed in mathematical terms.
That is why we are at a tipping point and science, try as it may with the best intentions, cannot prevail and save humanity from the consequences of being so radically out of touch.
Global aerosol spraying programs only make matters worse.
Attempts at geo-engineering are laughable. Remember the bio-dome project in Arizona in the 80's? ( scornful laughter). Science is incapable of creating a self-sustaining environment yet it boasts about "terra forming" Mars!
It's terra formed earth nicely, wouldn't you say?
We tinker with things we know nothing about, like the genome and the structure of matter and find ourselves more clueless than ever. But hot on the trail! Oh yes, almost there!
Science has only succeeded in opening Pandora's box. It has barged ahead like Bush into Iraq and discovers that it can't go home again and is more powerless than ever.
We may all become environmentalists as the catastrophic climatic disruptions go forward, but this will not necessarily reconnect us with Gaia because Gaia is not the "environment".
Science did not discover "climate change", "global warming", call it whatever you like. James Hansen knew the story before he went out to gather the data to prove it. He felt the story like a terrible tension in his guts. Lots of people know it, but have no way to prove it, just as they would be unable to prove the existence of God, or Gaia, for that matter. Lots of people have nightmares.
We can in moments of strange lucidity reconnect with our aboriginal selves. Therein lies the solution to the eco-crisis, which will inevitablly, as James Lovelock has repeatedly said, seriously depopulate the planet.
cruxpuppy,
Can we really dismiss "science" altogether? I don't think so. Is not science like many other pursuits in that it reflects humanity's natural curiousity and desire to learn more about our place?
To a certain degree I concur with your sentiment that science has "succeeded in opening Pandora's box", but I don't think this is always the case (it is more likley to be the case during wartime and I think this is a clue). Anyhow, perhaps the whole story regarding "Pandora" (a women given a box by zeus) should be retold in a new way.
Regardless, many ancient human cultures made a transition from "nomadic hunter-gatherer" to "settled agriculturally-based" groupings. For those that become agriculturally focussed was this not the result of curiousity & learning. Could this not be called "science"? Did this not lead to other helpful developments? Is that now how it has always been with humanity and for that matter life in general - in the pursuit of fostering a better life one things leads to another. Science is nothing more than a tool that can facilitate the process.
Perhaps what has been missing over the last few centuries in particular is an utter rejection of any belief system that stratifies life into some psuedo-hierarchy. The way it seems to me this sort of belief system enables rationalization of destructive behavior. You know "my god is better than your god" or "we are chosen and you are subservient".
Can't we just recognize the sanctity of ALL life, and at the same time be capable of learning new things? In fact, this recognition could lead to many incredible and beneficial discoveries that are bordeline unimaginable today.
I have said in other comments how amazed I am when I see the concentration of life in my own backyard. If humanity chose to have a greater collective reverence for life, then "ecological wisdom" could prevail, and serious depopulation of the planet for humanity (and many other species) could be avoided. In my opinion, "science/technology" could play a vital role in this process, and I refuse to give up and accept depopulation as inevitable.
Peace,
Ken
* I support HRes333 - Impeach the VP
Dr. Zimmerman Robert, you ask: "Why do we do nothing?" I've pondered the same question and remain mystified. What will it take for People to awake and be spurred into action?
With that said, let me admit up front I know the rest of what I'm saying below is a bit off topic and perhaps a bit too philosophical, but what the heck.
I think the concept of "nothing" (as in zero, 0) can be hypnotizing and take on a sort of undue influence. In my mind, zero, is nothing more than a placeholder/construct. We can concieve of it, but it is not of any substance. In fact the concept might even qualify as an aspect of "science" that opened its own Pandora's box (there I've made a connection with the previous conversation).
Sometimes I wonder if the concept of zero is of any real value. It leads to things like imaginary numbers and seems to depart from geometry (the shapes and structures of life and our surroundings). It results in undefinable mathamatical quandaries such as 1 divided by 0 -- you know this equals infinity, but just what is that. Much time and effort ends up being essentially wasted contemplating zero and infinity because these concepts will only lead to more unanswerable questions.
In fact, my recollection is that the preliminary use of zero was initially as an accounting tool by the Babylonians for business transactions, so in this way, it is closely linked with money, and I think is perhaps a root cause of humanity's departure from recognizing the sanctity of life (there I've made another connection to the conversation). If another is killed, then their life just becomes a "zero on the accounting books", and this is a sick and sad way of thinking.
There is a fascinating book on this entitled "Zero - The Biography of a Dangerous Idea", by Charles Siefe. I recommend it.
Peace,
Ken
* I support HRes333 - Impeach the VP
The problem people are seeing with the increase in co2 and attendant rise in temperature is due to our arrival at the very end of the most recent ice age. The release of Co2 is related to over all increase in temperature and the effects of released gases.
This however fails to account for the changes in the sun's activity which does explain why the ambient temperature on mars is also rising, Where there is no Co2 release form human activity. Look into it.
Or you can believe what you are told which is a convenient way to prepare the masses for the peak in oil production and ease them into the changes in their lifestyles which will not be optional.
Investment in other forms of energy production will not ne made while the oil is paying so well.
As far as riots and survival, most people will not adjust to the reality of their new circumstances. No person is ever indispensable to anyone other than themselves when the chips are down. You are rely on people to steal, rob, murder, and do anything they can to take what you have. That is the plain truth, look how much it happens when we have relative calm.
Learn what really matters in terms of prolonging life and let go of the trappings that really make no difference. Invest in an education of survival and self sufficiency and you will make it. When it falls apart depart the cities and do not get between someone else trying to live and their goals. Do not be a rube, we are not going to cut emissions until we are forced to. In the world of human progress only worthless painted paper matters.
Good luck.