Global warming - the brouhaha

Global warming - the brouhaha
So here we are at the start of the twenty first century and science is king. Science has been so sucessful in providing practical benefits and spectacular insights into the world that every theory we have, every published thought or musing in some way must avail itself of the scientific method or its established discoveries else be deemed suspect, personal opinion at best, outright lunacy at worst. Most people don't have a problem with that, most of us don't give it a second thought - it's embedded into our western worldview.

Yet ironically, as soon as scientists suggested that maybe (and now with confidence) economic growth and ever expanding industrialisation, those cornerstones of our world, are beginning to butt up against the limits of that thin zone of life in which we live, then the scientists are villains! Villains! They're doing it for the funding! It's a conspiracy! They're radical leftists in white coats intent on attacking the bastions of honest capitalism. The results are skewed, the models are wrong. They want to bring down America! It's a conspiracy by the english royal family leading to world domination . And whatever you do, don't mention the UN!

Well..bollocks. The scientists have stuck to their guns so to speak and although there seems to have been organised opposition put up by various interests, my sense is that the weight of the evidence has now become such that most scientists involved in climate research agree that climate change is occurring and that we are the driving force. There's still criticism and dissent, but much of the opposition now seems to have moved to the idea that climate change is natural and not due to human intervention - it's the sun, for example. Myself I'd probably be more amenable to this idea if I didn't know that atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by 35% since the start of the industrial age and there's been a sharp acceleration in CO2 emissions since 2000 of >3%. Methane emissions are a similar story. That's not the sun boys and girls, that's us with our smokestacks and tailpipes.

Consider, there's now more than 6,500,000,000 of us on the planet - a staggering number. By 2012 it's projected to be 7,000,000,000 souls. For the last 200 years, we have been increasing the gas, smoke and chemicals we release into the ether. Factories, burn-offs, intensive farming, land clearance, mineral extraction, the combustion engine, air travel, the odd nuclear blast - you name it, we've done it. The atmosphere may be vast in terms of cubic volume, but it's not infinite. Nor are its currents and cycles, on which we and many other aspects of the natural world depend, beyond disruption.

There's not much opposition to the idea that we've had a tremendous effect on the eco-sphere; we've converted vast swathes of the earth's surface to suit ourselves, we know species are dying out due to our demands. And we know we are having an adverse effect on the oceans, as vast as they are. Yet why is it so difficult to comprehend that we're also having an effect on the atmosphere? Is it because it's invisible? Is it because on a clear day, the blue sky has no end? Because that last storm that brought down all those trees and flooded out houses didn't have a label attached that said 'this is due to global warming'?

Next time you're outside on a sunny day, try a thought experiment. Try to imagine that you are standing on a ball, the biggest ball you can imagine. Stupid, I know, but also hard work - our senses tell us quite firmly that the world is flat. However success brings a new way of looking at the world. And everyone else is on this big ball too. If we could just somehow elevate ourselves 20km straight up once or twice (and land safely), then we'd know the earth's spherical nature firsthand. As it is, we have to work at it.

Next, look up. Try to imagine that the sky doesn't go on forever. It's hard. In fact, it's a little depressing. The sky has always represented freedom, even heaven to some. When the hero dies in old movies, the camera pans upwards, the music swells and god is in his heaven as evidenced by the glorious sunbeams breaking through the clouds. But forget all that - try to imagine that the bulk of the stuff we depend upon is actually below 10 to 11km altitude (much lower at the poles), and that is a distance a brisk walker could travel in little more than an afternoon (if it were distance on the ground). Imagine also that our atmosphere in relation to a standard sized globe is as thin as a few coats of thick varnish. Beyond that is void.

We know that the earth is a finite system. We know we're having an effect on the ecosystems and oceans of the world. It seems to me that we can no longer treat the atmosphere as we have been treating the oceans - as dumping grounds. When the scientists state that we are affecting the very climate of the earth, I for one am prepared to take them very seriously.

p.s. so now that you've visualised the air and sky above as a layer in which we 'swim', try to combine it with your new 'earth as a ball' perception. Have fun ;-)