Hurricane Bill - NASA
This week and next, intense and furious talks will take place in Copenhagen in an attempt to find a solution to the climate crisis the world is facing. To paraphrase someone from over 60 years ago “Never in the history of mankind has the welfare of so many been in the hands of so few.” And yet by all accounts the probablility of achieving a workable solution in time is very low.
Why is this when a possible solution exists and the consequences of not applying that solution are so devastatingly serious? To most people involved in the science of climate change the writing is on the wall in six foot high letters. It is essential that we in the scientific community ask ourselves why this message that seem so clear to us does not seem to be passing into the consciousness of the mainstream.
At a recent round-table discussion at the LSCE in preparation for the Copenhagen Summit Jean Jouzel presented these two tables and introduced them as the two most essential pages from the IPCC report that synopsise the problem we are facing.
The 6 IPCC Stablisation Scenarios
IPCC Scenario Categories
Indeed, to the initiated these tables do make scary reading. However to the vast majority whose self-interests lie in not understanding them, it is all too easy to obscure their meaning.
I would like to make three points about these tables and the difficulties involved in the transfer of their meaning across the human synapses into the brain.
Firstly, they refer to average global warming between 2° to 6.1°. To most people who experience twice or three times this range of temperatures during an average day how communicative is this?
Secondly, the range within each scenario is quite precise and small. For most people the defining characteristic of climate is its variability so that they have a hard time understanding the relative constancy of the average global temperature and why any, even tiny, change is cause for concern.
Finally, in the IPCC tables the ranges of emissions corresponding to the various temperature scenarios can make people feel that there is a choice. (I’ll take the 25% reduction in CO2 emissions, thank you very much!)
Perhaps this is the simplistic view of a newcomer but I can’t help but feel that there must be a better way to communicate the problem.
Another Winston Churchill quotation seems to me to be particularly apt in this context. “The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.”
Dear GEOmon colleagues,
I cannot avoid commenting on Mary’s entry (I think the blog is a great idea!), because after leaving the GEOmon project I have moved closer to politics: I am right there in Kopenhagen at COP15.
It is very difficult to know what is going on here, because of the many many people, the enormous building und the many negotiations going on in parallel. In addition, the NGOs are becoming more visible and audiable.
In general, personnally I think that the vast majority of the people here on site have understood the message from the 2 IPCC figures Mary has posted. Personnally, I assume that they are part of their home countries political thinking and as members of their governments they have to execute this thinking.
Therefore, I think that only political the will of the state leaders who will arrive by the end of next week can make things move to an agreement that is suffient to save the climate in a state very close to what we know at present.
Christiane
Hello Christiane,
Thank you for this positive news from the front line! I just think that politicians need mass support from the people before they will take the necessary action. Not many of them are inclined to commit political harakiri.
Mary
For most people involved in the climate change business, the future may be scary, but the prospect of lowering its standard of living is even more scary. I live among people who are very well aware of the dangers, but very few have changed their way of life. I wonder what is the fraction of people in the GeoMon community who avoid travelling [by airplane or by any mean] because of the impact on the environment.
Have we seriously considered the impact on the forthcoming GeoMon annual meeting on the environment ? What is its carbon budget. Is it really worth it ?
In my humble opinion, our community does not show the way as it should.
To be honest I’m not convinced that fear of lowering ones standard of living is the issue, being different is. I think people want to be the same as everyone else and being marginalised is very difficult for people. At the moment environmental efforts are focused on individual choices and efforts but this is doomed to failure. The only way is to apply the measures to everyone. For me it’s a bit like paying taxes. We all agree it’s a good idea and even essential for our society to survive but if paying them becomes optional not many people would do it. The only way it works is when it’s obligatory for everyone. Studies have been done on attitudes to taxes and even in countries where taxes are very high, what people object most to is if there is unfairness in the system not really the level of the taxes themselves.
During WW2 people adjusted relatively easily to a very severe reduction of their standard of living partly because they were convinced of the need to do so and partly because there was a sense of communal suffering which united people. I think we can find that again if we manage to convince people of the need to change and then impose that change on everyone.
As for the GEOmon conference, I believe that communication and exchange between scientists in the climate change community is essential to their work and so if you call into question the need for the conference then perhaps you are questioning the need for climate change science. Of course I agree we should do this at the least possible cost to the environment but we are human beings who need to have human connections with others and not all progress can be quantified and measured against cost, carbon or otherwise.
It is clear that the incredible progress the human race has made is because of the interconnections between individuals and not because of individual brilliant people working in isolation, difficult as that element is to quantify.