DISRUPTION: A review of the climate change documentary

The video opens with the following quote:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
---Frederick Douglass

This statement and its author tell us much about the documentary that follows. The focus is on action, in keeping with the title itself, Disruption. The target of the action is, clearly in this case, the fossil fuel industry and the political machine that protects and supports it. And quoting Frederick Douglass hints at the central environmental justice theme.

As a scientist, I am nervous when the discussion moves from a consideration of the science to how to achieve political goals. So, yes, I am not thrilled with the documentary’s fuzzy use of the “tipping point” concept, and avoidance of the more accurate term, “positive or reinforcing feedback.” Yes, I am anxious when specific storm events come to characterize climate change rather than global shifts in heat content of the oceans and the atmosphere. Yes, I am concerned with the touch of exaggeration I perceived when methane was described as fifty times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (I believe twenty-five times is more like it). And I don’t understand why they left out sea level rise and long-term climate events like drought.

However, as a parent and a new grandparent I am more nervous with the risks we take doing nothing, or doing as little as we have done for the past decade to avert climate change. The risk is significant, the consequences likely to be severe, and many unknowns exist that could send us spiraling down paths to new unpleasant, perhaps catastrophic “normals” we could find difficult to avoid or change. I don’t want that for my children or their children.

The purpose of this documentary was not so much education as motivation. The clear goal was to spur individuals to take part in the upcoming climate change march in New York City, either directly or in their local community. Given the seriousness of the problem and especially our country’s negligence in taking sufficient steps to address climate change, I can live with a little rabble-rousing. I only wish it were done with more dispassionate logic, but passion is what they hope, and need, to arouse. On that point I have no dispute.

Next to large crowds on the streets, neighbor to neighbor efforts to share knowledge of the causes and consequences and solutions to climate change seem important as well. Consider participating in that type of activity in addition to marching in the streets.

Rates of Change

Noah Diffenbaugh and Christopher Field offer a sobering perspective on the ecological challenges posed by climate change in the coming decades.

In their review, "Changes in Ecologically Critical Terrestrial Climate Conditions", in the August 2, 2013 issue of Science, these two Stanford scientists suggest that the magnitude of near-future climate changes will match the greatest changes seen over the past 65 million years of Earth's history.  However, it is the rate of changes the Earth will see in coming decades that causes even more alarm.  Our planet will likely proceed along the path to these greatest climate changes at a pace 10 to 100 times faster than ever before experienced.  And if that kind of unique once-in-a-planetary-history ecological and evolutionary challenge were not enough to cause concern, today's living things, and that includes you and me and our offspring, will be trying to adapt to those rapid changes in the face of natural system habitat losses and disruption as well as pollution brought about by our own unprecedented population growth and competition for resources.

But Diffenbaugh and Field offer a sliver of hope in their final paragraph:

However, the ultimate velocity of climate change is not yet determined. Although many Earth system feedbacks are uncertain, the greatest sources of uncertainty—and greatest opportunities for modifying the trajectory of change—lie in the human dimension (emphasis added). As a result, the rate and magnitude of climate change ultimately experienced by terrestrial ecosystems will be mostly determined by the human decisions, innovations, and economic developments that will determine the pathway of greenhouse gas emissions.

In other words, what we decide to do in the next few decades will either significantly slow down or speed up the climate change we and our descendents will have to adapt to.  The speed with which we make the inevitable switch to renewable energy sources such as solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, wind, tidal, and geothermal, and leave as much coal, oil, and natural gas as we can in the ground, will mean everything to our children and grandchildren.

I have three daughters, and one of them is now expecting our first granddaughter.  I think they would expect us to make our decisions based on the best available scientific evidence unclouded by the disinformation campaign we've seen so successfully waged over the past decade.  Diffenbaugh and Field represent that best available scientific evidence.  Listen to them.  And hear your children and future children ask what you did to make the right decision today.