Lots of Content on Climate Change

Every day, the sheer volume of material written on climate change continues to amaze me – and, of course,  too much is better than too little. The only real problem with the mass of journalism on the subject is that a great deal of it appears to be a frantic search for brand new points to make — and I’m not sure there are many more of any major consequence.

The basic concept, of course, that our passion for cheap energy and our rush to supply that need with fossil fuels has resulted in greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet, was accepted by the scientific community long ago. But the basic fact of human-caused climate change leaves us at an impasse: we need to cut emissions, but we can’t.  To distill it to a sentence: The poor countries can’t, and the rich countries won’t.  The real money and power on this planet seems content to plow our civilization into the ground over the next few decades, so as to profit further from the fossil fuel economy that was so important to the 20th Century, and so lethal to the 21st.  After all, these people know (they’re not illiterate) that they’re condemning all living beings here to an unspeakable level of suffering, but, apparently, it doesn’t seem to bother them all that much.

Here’s where we start reaching for topics to discuss that have more theoretical than practical importance. For example, check out this piece on the albedo effect, i.e., the fact that white surfaces, e.g., snow-fields, reflect solar energy back into space, where darker areas, e.g., forests, which would have sequestered CO2, absorb that energy, thus heating up the planet.  The author asks if we should accelerate the cutting of trees in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  Trees grow very slowly there anyway, and fewer trees mean more snow-fields.

I’m not sure, whether or not it’s a good idea, but I am sure (no offense to the author) that whether or not it’s a good idea is a matter of academic importance only.  Even if he had a scientifically well-backed stance to take on one side or the other, and really wanted to see his plan implemented, the lawyers on one side would make it rain until the lawyers’ client on the other side could no longer tread water.

And that’s not a bad metaphor given the circumstances: the realities of climate change and the resultant sea-level rise means that, if we do not arrive at a solution, many millions of your fellow Earth-dwellers will soon be doing exactly that: treading water.