Had a scientist in the early 1990s suggested that within 25 years a single heat wave would measurably raise sea levels, at an estimated two one-hundredths of an inch, bake the Arctic and produce Sahara-like temperatures in Paris and Berlin, the prediction would have been dismissed as alarmist. But many worst-case scenarios from that time are now realities.The NYT article sets out a litany of bad calls, stretching from one pole to the other and everything in between. Even as the powerful denounced them as "alarmists," the scientific community continued to grievously err on the side of understatement, bordering on unfounded optimism.
...A recent essay in Scientific American argued that scientists “tend to underestimate the severity of threats and the rapidity with which they might unfold” and said one of the reasons was “the perceived need for consensus.” This has had severe consequences, diluting what should have been a sense of urgency and vastly understating the looming costs of adaptation and dislocation as the planet continues to warm.
The harm they caused by refusing to speak candidly, truthfully, is that they provided the cover the political caste needed to do as little as possible to thwart or adapt to severe climate change impacts.
Our own prime minister is still working off targets set by Stephen Harper and we're not even on course to meet those. Canadians I meet don't know that Canada with our minuscule 0.5 per cent of the global population is in the Top Ten overall greenhouse gas emitters. They don't know we're in the Top Three per capita emitters. When the feds get the Justin Trudeau Memorial Pipeline operational, Canada is expected to move up three spots on the Top Ten list.
When a nation with barely one half of one per cent of the global population makes it into the Top Ten overall greenhouse gas emitters, worse than 170 other countries, and your government says it doesn't matter, we're small potatoes, what we do doesn't matter, then what anybody, any nation does really doesn't matter, does it?
If the Trump administration has its way, even the revised worst-case scenarios may turn out to be too rosy. In late August, the administration announced a plan to roll back regulations intended to limit methane emissions resulting from oil and gas exploration, despite opposition from some of the largest companies subject to those regulations. More recently, its actions approached the surreal as the Justice Department opened an antitrust investigationinto those auto companies that have agreed in principle to abide by higher gas mileage standards required by California. The administration also formally revoked a waiver allowing California to set stricter limits on tailpipe emissions than the federal government.
Even if scientists end up having lowballed their latest assessments of the consequences of the greenhouse gases we continue to emit into the atmosphere, their predictions are dire enough. But the Trump administration has made its posture toward climate change abundantly clear: Bring it on!
It’s already here. And it is going to get worse. A lot worse.
Scientists are just that, scientists. As one told me many years ago, "I'm a scientist, not a cop." It's their job to warn us but they can't enforce policy change. It's really the politicians and bureaucrats who have to get their butts off the carpet and actually make the necessary big changes.
ReplyDeletePart of the problem with scientists is specialization. Most scientists work within a limited field of expertise. We are now seeing cross discipline results and they are more aggressive. The big picture is coming into view.
Initially, I don't think that most scientists grasped how fast climate change would accelerate.
BTW, I remember when the issue was carbon dioxide causing a greenhouse effect. At that time methane release wasn't in the news.