I expand on these themes this week in The New York Times. Video and story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/weekinreview/23revkin.html]
It is nearly impossible to find a scientist actively studying Earth's climate who does not see compelling evidence for a human hand on the planet's thermostat and substantial warming in the forecast.
But there is room for plenty of legitimate debate over how to respond to the fact that we're living in an artificially warming world.
Determining how much warming is too much, or how hard to act now to limit hazards spread over time and space, is not a purely scientific question. Answers depend on the values of the people involved in the debate.
One important issue is figuring out how much to invest in building resilience against climate extremes, particularly in poorer countries, while also figuring out the harder puzzle of how to constrain heat-trapping emissions that come from burning fuels like coal and oil that will, at least for decades, remain an underpinning of economic activity.
More science could actually work against a global consensus on global warming, according to some experts on climate. Knowing more about where droughts or floods will increase, where growing seasons will expand or shrink, and the like could cause some countries to start perceiving themselves as winners and losers.
In the end, this all really leaves two choices for those striving to raise public awareness of the climate issue and trigger actions at the individual, community, national, and international level.
They can try to frame global warming in a way that makes it seem like the kind of "here and now" crisis we are familiar with, or they can do the much harder work of reframing value systems so that we do something rare for our species: act now to limit risks facing our children and their children.
We haven't proved very effective at that yet. Just think about the ever-building national debt, which everyone realizes will be a great burden on someone someday.
After 20 years of writing on climate change, I'm not convinced that the first tactic will succeed. Global warming is not the kind of real-time crisis we grew up with, and the natural variability in the climate system guarantees that what seems urgent today could fade as Arctic ice expands for a few years or drought and storm patterns shift temporarily.
That's one reason that I wrote my third book on the environment, and second on global warming, for the whole family. Only when all the generations who will be affected by this issue are exploring it together do I think there's a prospect that today's grownups will truly "get it."
Stay tuned.
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Andy Revkin has been an environment reporter for The New York Times since 1995. Revkin has traveled to the Artic three times, and he was the first New York Times reporter to file stories and images from the North Pole. He is the author of THE NORTH POLE WAS HERE: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World
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Comments: 13
You made no mention of "global dimming". The pollutants cool by preventing the sunshine from entering (bounced back into space) while the greenhouse gases heat up our planet.
Great stuff.
Yes, but we will all be impacted by refugee crises spawned by any significant increase in sea levels. There are scary numbers of Southeast Asians whose countries are in large part right at sea level even now, such as Bangladesh. Other regions will spawn similar refugee crises due to drought, and there will probably be an escalation of the sort of mass citizen protest of privatized resources and water supplies that were seen in Cochabamba against Bechtel. Because the retreat of glacial ice packs is a worldwide phenomenon coinciding with the unsustainable draw down of aquifers, the drought issue will be paramount on every continent. Further, our food industry has such a globalized supply chain that no one anywhere, barring that they live in an area of food self-sufficiency (which is almost nowhere anymore), will entirely escape the socio-political fallout of these conditions.
You pretty much would have to be rich as a Bush or Cheney to escape direct consequences, or live in a country like Brazil that's actively moving towards energy self-sufficiency, an important first step to food security in this age of petrochemical farming.
i recommend you download the new report from a Yale meeting in Aspen last year on the question, called Americans and Climate Change.
www.yale.edu/environment/publications
Moving people to action in making personal choices that will slow global warming is daunting. Unless we bring the danger vividly present in the here and now - as VP Al Gore is hoping to do in his new movie, An Incovenient Truth - most of us will not be willing to sacrifice our personal mobility or lifestyle for the quality of life in the future. What I think is missing most, frankly, is leadership - at the very top of our country. Without vision, the people will perish. Giiven that we don't have that here in the U.S, we individuals will just have to take it on ourselves. As Gandhi said, "You must be the change that you want to see in the world." My new slogan: Restoring the balance starts with me.
Beyond adaptation, though, I think it's important to reframe the climate crisis in terms of an energy crisis, which is more real and urgent, especially as gas and other energy prices continue to rise. And, even if global warming didn't exist, the solutions to global warming-- clean, safe, distributed renewable energies--will bring energy independence, which will keep billions of dollars in our country thus reducing our deficit. This smart energy system will also create jobs and a healthier, cleaner environment.
Other than global warming, I have found that most of the students I work with are most inspired to bring efficiency and clean energy to their campuses to stop the destructive practice of mountaintop removal (MTR) mining, which is poisioning and destroying communities and ecosystems in Southern Appalachia. Yet another reason to move away from coal powered electricity.
Learn more and join the fight to stop MTR this summer: http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org
I'm a big fan of much of your previous work, but I must say, I'm kind of disappointed with your latest NYT article. I think the way in which you presented your argument was misleading and has done a disservice to public understanding of climate change.
You write that "While scientists say they lack firm evidence to connect recent weather to the human influence on climate, environmental campaigners still push the notion." This is technically true, but it's also misleading. The reader is left with the impression that there is little or no evidence to support the contentions of environmental campaigners that there is a link between recent extreme weather and global warming. As you know, however, there are in fact some indications for such linkages and a number of scientists themselves believe these links.
I know you know this because you've reported on some the studies linking the increase in hurricane intensity to the increase in sea surface temperatures that some scientists attribute to global warming. Likewise, there is some evidence of a linkage between heat waves and global warming. Now, you may not be convinced by the evidence that has been collected thus far and that's perfectly fine. There are indeed disagreements among scientists over these questions, and certainly it would be incorrect to ascribe any individual hurricane or heat wave to global warming. But it isn't fair to suggest that those who are raising concerns about connections between global warming and extreme weather have no scientific support.
I suspect that if the public were presented with a fair review of the evidence to date about the connections between global warming and extreme weather, a significant segment would likely agree with the environmental community. Deciding when evidence is firm enough to justify action is a job for the public as a whole, not scientists and not journalists. By simply saying that environmentalists lack firm evidence for their perspective without giving environmentalists a chance to respond or at least acknowledging the evidence that does exist, you deprive the public of the ability to make this decision for themselves.
None of this should be taken to promote alarmism from environmental campaigners. I think alarm is pretty well justified by the science, but as a means of persuasion, I agree that it is usually counterproductive.
Warm Regards,
Julian Dautremont-Smith
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