Why this blog?

I've been sending emails about global warming and climate change to friends for a while now. Some of them suggested I start a blog to reach more people. This blog is meant primarily for people who already think global warming is real, although anyone is welcome to read it. I just don’t want to spend a lot of time trying to prove what the vast majority of climate scientists agree on. The fact that so many climate scientists agree should be sufficient for anyone who respects science and truth to want to find out more, at the very least. I want to start from there.

I think global warming is by far the most important topic for the human race at this time. While most people now realize it is happening, very few realize how bad it could get or how quickly we need to act. You can see this in the polls, where several other issues are always ranked as more important. You can see it in the way politicians talk about the issue, often referring to it, if they refer to it at all as a subset of energy independence (an insignificant subject in comparison). Most of all, you can see it in the inaction and counter-productive action at all levels, but especially the national level in most countries.Most people think global warming is similar to acid rain or the depletion of the ozone layer, or they think that greenhouse gases are just another form of pollution. But this is very different. Its quality is different, but it is also much more serious and much more urgent. It is not easy to explain why the situation is so urgent, and it is not easy to imagine what living in a world where global warming has gotten out of control would be like. I think that is what is needed the most right now, so that is where I will start. I will focus on the urgency in this post, which will also convey something about the unique quality of global warming, and begin to cover what could happen in the next.

By the way, if you are wondering why I’m using the term global warming instead of climate change, it is because climate change itself is not necessarily a threat. The climate changes all the time, and as long as the changes stay within a certain range, that is not a problem. It is the increase in global average temperature that will cause devastating climate changes. Climate science is the more general topic, but global warming is the problem.When you are steering a large ship, you can't wait until the last minute to turn. You have to begin the turn quite a while before you want to be headed in the new direction, and the turn will be wide and gradual. The faster the ship is moving, and the bigger it is, the more this is true. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is like a gigantic ship that has been accelerating for many decades. Only recently have we begun to notice the effects of the excess carbon dioxide (CO2) we have been putting into the atmosphere for so long. Once the level of CO2 stops rising and begins to fall, it will take hundreds of thousands of years for it to get completely back to pre-industrial levels naturally. Temperatures would also fall slowly. According to several models, it could take anywhere from 1,000 to more than 10,000 years for the temperature to get half way back to the preindustrial average, and to fully return to the preindustrial temperature range would take hundreds of thousands of years. (See “The Long Thaw”, by David Archer if you want to learn more about this.)It also takes quite a while for the effects of the CO2 we are releasing to be fully felt. I've read that it takes 50 to 100 years before most of the effects of CO2 emissions are felt. That is one reason we have to reduce our greenhouse gas output long before we see any major effects. But we will only be able to gradually reduce our output, probably over several decades at best. That means things are guaranteed to continue to get worse for many decades, unless we begin to actively remove massive amounts from the atmosphere (and we don’t know how to do that).There is an even more compelling reason why we must change our ways quickly: feedback. In the past, feedback has caused climate changes as huge as the difference between the current climate and that of an ice age in as little as 5 to 20 years. Just imagine living through a change like that. This out of control feedback is what we need to avoid at all costs. Once it starts, we won't be able to stop it, and we will have to adapt to the new climate. But there is a chance we won't be able to adjust, and the human species (along with most other species) will die out completely. Our planet has experienced several mass extinctions before, some of which probably were caused by the release of greenhouse gases, at least as one major factor. Regardless of the causes, the climate changed too quickly for most life to adapt, and anyone who values life wouldn’t want that to happen again, much less be the cause of it. And nobody would want to live (or die) through it.When you combine the very slow response time with the very fast feedback, you can understand why I am so worried. We have to reverse course many years before we reach the “tipping point” where that uncontrollable feedback starts, or else it will be too late. Instead, we are still increasing emissions at an alarming rate. From what I’ve read, I think we are very close to the point where it will be too late to stop runaway feedback. Unfortunately, we won’t know for sure until it is way too late to stop it. And the consequences are so bad that we should minimize the chances of this occurring as much as we possibly can. But we are doing the opposite.

One other very important point that most people do not really understand is that we will not get a second chance. If we mess this up, we mess it up essentially for good – for many times longer than human civilization has existed. Why would any sane person want to take chances with that?When might this point of no return come? Although many scientists say time is running out, nobody knows exactly how long we have. This uncertainty leads some to a false sense of security. They think that since we don't know for sure, that means it's not as bad as scientists say. But they ignore the fact that uncertainty always goes both ways. In other words, it is as likely that we have already run out of time as it is that we can take our time. And the pattern I keep seeing is that new data often proves things are worse than the scientific consensus. Since the stakes are so high, shouldn't we play it on the safe side and act as if we knew we had very little time? We know that it won’t destroy the world if we bring the level of CO2 in the atmosphere down, even all the way to preindustrial levels. It has been lower than it is now for all of human existence and for hundreds of millions of years before that. So we have nothing to lose by fighting global warming, and everything to lose by promoting it. There is simply no question what we should do, if we value life.But what if it is already too late? Does that mean we should give up since we are doomed anyway? No, because anything we can do to slow the change down will give us and other species more time to adapt. But also, we don’t know, so it makes no sense to give up now. We should do all we can while we still can. At this point we should act as if it is very late but not too late, because even if there was only a small chance we could save the world, we should try. Wouldn’t you try to save your baby as long as there was even the slightest chance you could? And isn’t that what we are talking about on a personal level? Your children, or the children you know will be stuck with whatever world we leave them. So what are you going to do?