Accepting An Unpleasant Reality; An Inconvenient Truth

CLIMATE CHANGE is already very much with us, has been for a long time, and its effects are quite evident, already, daily. It will only get worse, so much worse that disastrous consequences are now unavoidable, and no matter what we do at this point, it will not be enough. The best we can hope for is to some degree ameliorate its worst effects, and to preserve life on Earth albeit, beyond doubt, in a seriously compromised form. Pessimistic assessments of this sort have appeared repeatedly on this website, the common theme being that with every new study of global warming, scientific results reveal the situation to be much, much worse than previously, recently thought. That has long been the situation; with every new study, the outlook, realistically, appears bleaker, as more information is added to the existing store of research and information. And so the trend continues. The very latest assessments are described in a new book by David Wallace wells, "The Uninhabitable Earth: The World after Warming". This title is eerily remindful of a 1991 book by Isaac Asimov and Frederick Pohl "Our Angry earth", in which the late great science fiction writer and bio chemist warned us that global warming threatens humanity's future. It was the last book Asimov, who died in 1992, and who wrote more books than anyone in history, ever wrote. Dire warnings about climate change are nothing new. The first such warning came nearly two hundred years ago, in fact, but was ignored, just as many people, particularly American conservatives, continue to ignore them today, incredibly. Mr. wells asserts, based upon the latest information, that the current goal of keeping global warming below a two degree threshold for the next century is no longer achievable, because of our sluggish response to the emergency. A more reasonable outcome is a four degree increase in the average global temperature by the year 2100, although Wells claims that if we start taking drastic action now, we can keep it to about three degrees, which will still be disastrous, but endurable. A high percentage of carbon injected by humanity into the atmosphere has been injected within the past twenty five years; after Asimov's book came out. We are at least three decades late in combating this dire circumstance, if not more. Einstein knew about climate change in the nineteen forties. Various scientists were talking about the theoretical possibility of warming the Earth's atmosphere by burning fossil fuels over a hundred and fifty years ago. David Wallace Wells makes the horrifying remark that no matter what we do at this point, by the year 2050 every major city in India and in most of Asia will be uninhabitable during the summer months, and to go outside will be lethal. By 2050 climate change, in the most optimistic scenario, will have killed one hundred and fifty million people, and probably more. The worst case scenario, which is perhaps even more likely, due to our current lack of action, is that by the year 21000 the planet will be a hot hell hole, with mass extinctions of species of plants and animals, with humanity in cultural and economic decline, as hordes of refugees flee from unbearable conditions, and humanity takes cover, barely hanging on to life, for a while. This is not fantasy; this is reality, the reality that the great grandchildren of the baby boomer generation is doomed to a world of severely compromised living standard and almost no long term hope for humanity's future. That tragedy is that the human species has shown remarkable creativity and beauty, and this planet has revealed a wonderful, awesome variety of lifeforms. All that will be lost. We might as well resort to prayer, or hope for interventions by extraterrestrials being with vastly superior intelligence and technology. Why not? In the meantime, it would be nice if we could at least die trying, and maybe show good intent by getting rid of fossil fuel energy, and electing an American president who doesn't believe that climate change is a hoax, a lie, and a trick being played by bad people with malicious intent. And then, maybe, just maybe, our descendants will hate us a little less, though still with good reason. It will only be a small consolation, and a meaningless one.