I guess everyone interested in climate change will have encountered people who state three things. One; that climate change is not evident, Two; that climate change has happened in the past and is part of the natural cycles, and Three; that we cannot predict exactly what will happen…
Changes that happen slowly are rarely evident to bare human sensory apparatus. We acclimatize, and declare it has always been this way – despite the record of above average temperatures we have been registering (and of course averages are undermined by people’s experience of variations, and by their desires to keep seeing normality and experience tranquility) People who move from cold countries to hot countries may soon feel that temperatures which would have once been ‘hot’ feel ‘cold’. Unaided senses may not always be accurate enough to detect climate change, that does not mean it is not happening. When we can detect climate change with unaided senses it will probably be too late.
After saying that Climate change is not evident, then people may point to previous incidents of climate change and imply it is relatively harmless, or that we cannot do anything about it, and it has nothing to do with us. While I think the idea that climate change has happened in the past is probably correct, the rest may not be.
I particularly have no idea how the concept that “the planet has been going through heating and cooling waves for millions of years” can be considered ‘evident’ in itself – especially if contemporary climate change is not evident. The concept of previous climate change is based on a whole lot of theory, interpretation and data gathering.
Most of that theory is part of the web of theory which also suggests that the current climate change (even if natural) will be rapid (in geological terms) and devastating for ecologies and human civilization.
Current climate change is also compounded with widespread ecological devastation from human sources (deforestation, over-fishing, chemical pollution, depletion of phosphorus etc.), all of which are likely to make the change even more violent and which were not present in previous ‘natural’ periods of change.
The further assertions that because the planet has had changes of climate many times before we should not be worried about it this time, do not seem evident at all to me. Especially as rapid climate change in the past does seem to have been harmful for species.
The third point about uncertainty of what will happen is true; the future is always uncertain. However, because the future is uncertain does not give us the right to assume that the least unpleasant events are the most likely. That is actually a refusal to accept uncertainty.
So what is evident? To me it is evident that we depend on ecologies, and creatures depend on each other (I do not live alone in a vacuum) – this is also backed up by many studies, which give what I would call evidence. Other people may deny this for whatever reasons. But if you accept that some kind of mutual dependence is evident, then continually messing up, destroying and injecting waste into these ecologies is evidently harmful to us all, and likely to result in catastrophic change past a certain point. So its probably best to stop doing it, and try something else. Harm may also result from these remedial actions, but that harm is not evident – it is supposition.
Is it evident that a bullet through the chest will kill me? No, not until it happens – and if it is evident, then there will probably be no me for it to be evident to. There is a level at which it may be best to work with some supposition.
Tags: 'nature', Anthropocene, climate change, complexity, Disinformation, disorder, skepticism
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