It Sounds Radical But It's Not, Not Really.

There's been no end of weirdness over the past couple of decades but, being the most adaptable species of complex life on Earth, the only creature able to inhabit every part of our land and ice mass, we've done what man has always done - we've tolerated change until we came to see it as our new normal. Maybe if we were less adaptable, more vulnerable... oh well.

The funny thing is that danger or risk is something we countenance especially in the face of significant cost or inconvenience for doing anything effective to deal with it. We want something done about it provided that something is free or really cheap. We want something done that won't put us out. We're all for change provided we don't have to change. We don't want to see the consequences and thus there's no need to put a price on future events.

One measure of selfishness is the frequency of responses from people of my age who say, "I'll be dead by then. Yes, it's a pity, but that's none of my concern and, besides, Oprah's on in a few minutes."

Climate change. Despite all the ongoing denialism and campaign of distraction, it's probably the best researched scientific theory of all time. The central theory has been tested against one scientific discipline, or specialty, after another. For example, a geologist might say, "If the central theory is right, there ought to be this sort or that form of geological evidence, corroboration. Let's have a look. Let's see." And so a mountain of research has been amassed - covering a gamut of scientific disciplines including geology, geography, hydrology, oceanography, atmospherics, glaciology, physics, biology, botany, marine biology, epidemiology, paleontology, and many more.

One discipline after another, the research poured in corroborating the central theory of anthropogenic global warming, AGW. There isn't a single scientific discipline that refutes the theory. Not one disproves AGW or calls it into question. Likewise in the developed world there's not one national academy of sciences that does not endorse the theory of AGW.

None of this puts off the denialists or their corporate backers. They're still free to attack climate change as an ideology, a belief. They don't engage the scientific fact of climate change. They don't refute the mountain of research and analysis. It's too conclusive, too sound to be challenged on any factual basis. And so they seize the narrative and transform it into a belief because nothing is easier to challenge and undermine than a belief. That's been the stock in trade of organized religion since it was invented. All you have to do is present an opposing belief especially if it's a belief that a lot of people find preferable to scientific fact.

(BTW - National Geographic has posted DiCaprio's climate change documentary, "Before the Flood," online.)

We've seen plenty of proof of the reality of climate change over the past twenty years. Severe storm events of increasing frequency, duration and intensity; floods and droughts on a scale we haven't known before; disease and pest migration (destructive beetle infestations, the spread of viruses - West Nile, Zika and Lyme disease, etc.); species migration, especially marine species moving poleward as their traditional waters turn too warm; the retreat of glaciers and melting of ice caps; accelerating sea level rise; a steady progression of record hot years.

The next ten years will see the onset of something completely unknown to human civilization. It's called "climate departure." It marks a transition from the climate we've known for the past 12,000 years to a new climate in which, past the point of "departure" even the coolest year will be hotter than the hottest year experienced in the pre-departure era.

When it comes to climate departure, the closer you are to the equator the sooner it will set in. It's predicted to manifest within 10-years in parts of the Caribbean and Asia Pacific, spreading poleward until it engulfs most of the populated regions by mid-century. The Middle East will be hit in about 20 years. The populace in these areas impacted will find it very challenging to remain. Heat kills and it also wreaks havoc on agriculture and freshwater resources. Most of the cities of the world will have reached departure by 2047.

That sounds sufficiently dire that rational people would be spurred to action, immediately. Perhaps the problem is an even more dire paucity of rational people. They're practically an endangered species.

You see, you can't deal with climate change without also tackling its companion crises - overpopulation and over-consumption. You won't have a hope of fixing any of them unless you fix them all. So, what exactly have we got in mind for Existential Crisis B and Existential Crisis C? Nothing good.

Science has now figured that we, mankind, reached our Earth's carrying capacity when our numbers reached the low 3-billions sometime in the early 70s. That's an important date, do keep it in mind.

For several years the World Wildlife Fund, in conjunction with the Zoological Society of London and in collaboration with other groups including the Global Footprint Network have been producing annual Living Planet reports. One subject of focus has been our rapidly dwindling wildlife. Not the number of species but the overall tally of plants and animals - the totality of the other life forms with which we share Earth.

What they have found is that we, mankind, are squeezing out other species, plant and animal. Since 1970 their numbers have declined by more than half. The Living Planet 2016 report estimates that the decline could hit 67% by 2020, just a few years from now. We are constantly pushing back their habitat to make room for our burgeoning global population and we're consuming ever more of the resources without which their numbers collapse. This is real "uncharted waters" stuff.

In just one lifetime, my own, mankind's population has tripled. It took us 11,000 years of civilization to grow to just one billion. We doubled that in a century. In under 70-years we tripled that again to over 7-billion. What grows like that? Not much - bacteria in a petri dish, cancer cells - oh yeah, and us. Now Africa and Asia have developed huge population bombs - with hundreds of millions about to enter reproductive age. Hang onto your hat. We're going to hit 9+ billion before you know it.

Then there's the business of over-consumption. The Earth, as you might have heard, is finite. It's about the same size it was when multi-cellular life first appeared way back when. Yet, starting in the early 70s, we began to exceed our biosphere's carrying capacity. By "we" I mean humankind. When it comes to natural resources, everything from fresh water to biomass, there's only so much the Earth can replenish in a given time, say a year. Right now we've exceeded that replenishment rate by a factor of 1.7. It's the equivalent of taking home a thousand dollars a month but spending 17 hundred. Not good.

Part of our quandary arises out of sheer numbers. The other part comes from how much each of us consumes. Here's the thing. Take per capita energy consumption, for example. In 1820 that stood at a steady 20 gigajoules of energy per person per year. By 1970 (there it is again) that had grown to 50 gigajoules per person per year. Half a century later, today, it's 80 gigajoules.

So we've gone from one billion people, each using 20 gigajoules of energy per year, to more than seven billion people, each using 80 gigajoules of energy per year in a little under two centuries, a blip in mankind's 12,000 year history. Do the math and you go from 20 billion gigajoules in 1820 to 560 billion gigajoules today.  Can you get a sense of the enormity of what we're doing?

If you can get a sense of the enormity of what we're doing, if you grasp how our population is burgeoning even as our consumption levels skyrocket, if you appreciate how we're gutting pretty much every other life form on the planet - if you get all this, then I'm proud to include you in the "rational" group I spoke of earlier on. You're in a decided minority.

Can you guess who is not in that minority with you? That would be those holding the reins of power, our political leadership. Not just Canada but globally. Here's the giveaway. They are absolutely obsessed with the pursuit of perpetual, exponential growth in GDP. They are devout adherents to a world of ever growing extraction, production and consumption. The International Energy Agency believes them. It predicts overall energy demand will grow by upwards of an additional 40% by 2050.

So, you see, despite the fact that the Earth is essentially finite, despite the fact that we're now utterly dependent on continuing to deplete its resources ever faster than they can be replenished, despite the fact that we have wantonly exceeded our biosphere's environmental carrying capacity, despite the fact that our specie's numbers are more than twice what our planet can support, despite all this and more:

Our political leadership, in conjunction with our economic leadership (you don't understand that?), are so utterly irrational that they ignore everything that's been happening since the early 70s, all the signs, all the science to continue their pursuit of perpetual, exponential growth, the very foundation of what's predicted to be the 6th major extinction event.

Stopping this, breaking this bleak and self-destructive pursuit, sounds radical but it's not, not really. When you've got a three pack a day habit, there's nothing radical about quitting.

Oh, This Is Rich. Stephen Harper Wants Us to Listen to Scientists.

"get the facts from the ...scientific community, and if you're not a ...scientist yourself, listen to the people who are. It's that simple."

You heard it right, straight from the lips of Stephen Joseph Harper.  Get the facts from the scientific community and, if you're not a scientist yourself, listen to the people who are.  Who could argue with that sort of logic except, of course, the man who said it, Stephen Harper.

Memo to Steve:  There are many, many scientists who would dearly love to give you oodles of facts so why aren't you listening to them?  We could pack an auditorium with top scientists in fields such as climatology, meteorology, hydrology, atmospherics, biology, botany, oceanography, glaciation, geology, chemistry, medicine and epidemiology, and many, many more scientific disciplines who would love to explain to you things like climate change, and the host of imminent threats it poses to our country - if only you would listen.  

You put it perfectly, Mr. prime minister:  "But we have a responsibility to set an example, for God's sake. ...And as an advanced, educated society, it's completely irresponsible of people in this society to communicate anything other than that anywhere else in the world."

So, for God's sake (as you put it, Steve) get the facts, listen to the scientists and act on their advice.  Do it Steve - or the cat gets it.

A Brit Rallies Support for Canadian Science

Harper's war on science is the subject of an op-ed piece in today's Guardian calling for international support for Canadian scientists and warning Harper's funding cuts could have global impacts.

[Protesting Canadian scientists] were sticking up for the right to ask difficult questions and provide uncomfortable knowledge, in particular when it comes to the Arctic. They were sticking up for the things they research as well as the right to keep doing their research. They were sticking up for the planet.

...In May, many were shocked to hear the Canadian government had cancelled its funding for the Experimental Lakes Area, a laboratory complex over 58 remote lakes in north-west Ontario that has been running since the 1960s. As one scientist told Nature magazine, it's like turning off the world's best telescope.

...Canada's natural resources minister might complain about foreign campaigners and "jet-setting celebrities" trying to hijack their country with their opposition to local environmental policy, but there are reasons why there was international outcry about the Experimental Lakes Area. Scientists from all over the world studied there for generations: it's where the first evidence for acid rain came from. There are also reasons Canada won Fossil of the Year at the Durban talks last December, why the Daily Mail mentions Canadian people appealing to the Queen over Alberta oil sands and why, despite having passed an austerity budget in April, the Canadian government still found money to invest in Arctic drones. We can't pretend Canadian science is simply a Canadian matter any more than we can pretend we can separate the natural world from our political decisions.

...It's easy to see scientists as dogmatic, passing on rarefied expertise from on high. Some are. But at its best, scientific evidence can play a liberating role in political discourse and is worth standing up for. Yesterday's message of "No science, no truth, no evidence, no democracy" is an idealistic view of science in society, but if it really is said in thoughtful co-operation with the public at large, it's a beautiful thing to behold.

Can You Learn to Love Uncertainty and Failure?

Most of us see uncertainty and failure as negative things, outcomes to be avoided wherever possible.  Yet, according to an item in The Guardian, learning to accept, even love, uncertainty and failure could be instrumental in the public understanding of climate science.

 Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of Aix-Marseille, emphasised the uselessness of certainty. He said that the idea of something being "scientifically proven"   was practically an oxymoron and that the very foundation of science is to keep the door open to doubt.


"A good scientist is never 'certain'. Lack of certainty is precisely what makes conclusions more reliable than the conclusions of those who are certain: because the good scientist will be ready to shift to a different point of view if better elements of evidence, or novel arguments emerge. Therefore certainty is not only something of no use, but is in fact damaging, if we value reliability."

The physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University agreed.   "  In the public parlance, uncertainty is a bad thing, implying a lack of rigour and predictability. The fact that global warming estimates are uncertain, for example, has been used by many to argue against any action at the present time,"   he said.

"  In fact, however, uncertainty is a central component of what makes science successful. Being able to quantify uncertainty, and incorporate it into models, is what makes science quantitative, rather than qualitative. Indeed, no number, no measurement, no observable in science is exact. Quoting numbers without attaching an uncertainty to them implies they have, in essence, no meaning."

The Guardian report was based on an article from Edge which asked what scientific concepts would best improve everybody's cognitive skillset?  158 scientists, artists and philosophers weighed in.  They concluded we need a more discerning public, one capable of grasping the essential value in failure as fundamental to success and uncertainty as far more worthwhile than any supposed certainty.   They want a public able to understand the distinction between "average family income" and the "income of the average family."  What they want seems utopian - a far more sophisticated public awareness.  Unfortunately, public cognition appears to be trending in the opposite direction.

To those who reject the science of global warming as uncertain, they should remember this.   Global warming is a theory, but so is gravity.

Hunting Witches in the 21st Century - Burn the Scientists

There is nothing the far Right fears more than knowledge, especially widely disseminated knowledge.   Any expression of objective reality - reasoned, studied logic - imperils their often superstitious narratives.   Knowledge erodes their stock in trade; fear, anger, and hatred.

America's Republicans offer living proof of the insidious plans of the far Right.   Climate scientist Michael Mann has sounded the alarm in the Washington Post.  I urge you to read his warning and realize this is indeed what we're up against on our side of the border also.

The 21st century witch hunt may be just months away.

Faster Than the Speed of Light?

Chuck Yeager may have been the first person to break sound barrier but that's kids' stuff compared to two German scientists who claim to have broken the light barrier, the 186,000 mile per second speed of light. From The Telegraph:

According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.

However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory.

The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.

Unfortunately the report doesn't even attempt a guess at what speed was reached. Is it even possible to measure "instantaneous"?

Uncorking the Scientist In Each of Us

Up til now we've been content to view science as something for the geeks - essential, sure, but that's why we have geeks, right?

Whether we like it or not, our dismissive attitude may not work for us much longer. We're on the dawn of an age where holding well-informed scientific views is going to be essential to how we live and even how we vote.

Our parents' world, our grandparents' world is now much in the past. That world is gone, utterly gone, and it isn't coming back for centuries. When I was born the world's population had just set an all-time record of 2-billion people. Little more than half a century later and we've bumped that all-time record to 6.5-billion people which we expect to hit 9-billion before the next half-century is out. Just churn that over for a minute and digest it.

For all the thousands of years of our civilization, it wasn't until about 1814 that we first broke the billion-person mark. 140-years or so later than that, we'd doubled that record. Barely another 60-years yet, we'd gotten 6.5 times more populous than we were when the record was set in 1814. In another 50-years we're looking to be bigger by up to half again. This is something we really need to come to grips with in order to create the informed citizenry we're going to require in just a decade from now.

Here's something to chew on. There is a host of very important, social change decisions that will have to be taken, on a regular basis, fairly soon. What you need to bear in mind is that someone is going to be taking those decisions, one way or the other. If we don't recover our ability to make suitably important decisions in these critical times, we run the very real risk of that core power of our democracy becoming forfeit to others who believe they will make the decisions for us. Also bear in mind that those who usurp this power can't necessarily be trusted to make the best decisions in our interest.

Without wanting to sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist, there is a tendency today and has been for about two decades of dumbing down the public. People seem to be transforming into cogs, losing their intellectual and political robustness. This sort of thing needs to be reversed if we're not to let our political freedom slip through our fingers. A New York Times article by Columbia physics prof Brian Greene suggests the key may be in science:



A COUPLE of years ago I received a letter from an American soldier in Iraq. The letter began by saying that, as we’ve all become painfully aware, serving on the front lines is physically exhausting and emotionally debilitating. But the reason for his writing was to tell me that in that hostile and lonely environment, a book I’d written had become a kind of lifeline. As the book is about science — one that traces physicists’ search for nature’s deepest laws — the soldier’s letter might strike you as, well, odd.

But it’s not. Rather, it speaks to the powerful role science can play in giving life context and meaning. At the same time, the soldier’s letter emphasized something I’ve increasingly come to believe: our educational system fails to teach science in a way that allows students to integrate it into their lives.

Allow me a moment to explain.

When we consider the ubiquity of cellphones, iPods, personal computers and the Internet, it’s easy to see how science (and the technology to which it leads) is woven into the fabric of our day-to-day activities. When we benefit from CT scanners, M.R.I. devices, pacemakers and arterial stents, we can immediately appreciate how science affects the quality of our lives. When we assess the state of the world, and identify looming challenges like climate change, global pandemics, security threats and diminishing resources, we don’t hesitate in turning to science to gauge the problems and find solutions.

But here’s the thing. The reason science really matters runs deeper still. Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.

It’s striking that science is still widely viewed as merely a subject one studies in the classroom or an isolated body of largely esoteric knowledge that sometimes shows up in the “real” world in the form of technological or medical advances. In reality, science is a language of hope and inspiration, providing discoveries that fire the imagination and instill a sense of connection to our lives and our world.

Like a life without music, art or literature, a life without science is bereft of something that gives experience a rich and otherwise inaccessible dimension."



This isn't to say that we all need to become scientists, not at all. Fortunately our society's ability to quickly disseminate their discoveries in a form we can comprehend them via the internet and other media is advancing rapidly.

We've certainly reached a critical mass of the production, dissemination and access to credible, lay science. RJ Reynolds and Big Oil aren't gone yet, nor are their shills, but the world is changing, right in front of our eyes, day in and day out, and the list of unresolved challenges gets a bit longer every year.

They always knew their scam couldn't last forever but that wasn't what they've been after. They were there to buy time they otherwise wouldn't have had, an extension, a little more time for another round of their rapacious and highly profitable ways.

There are big changes looming and they'll bring big opportunities as well as big challenges. It would be naive to expect that we'll all rally to these challenges to seek the greater good. There will certainly be individuals and industries that move to exploit it, to set up their interests against ours. The less we understand what's happening the greater their prospects of prevailing against us.

That's why it's becoming important, vital even, that we re-open our minds to science.