An Inconvenient Point
Some 200 years ago humankind discovered machinery in a way far bigger than anything that had gone before. We started pumping pollution into the atmosphere in an equally big way, and as our technology improved, so did the amount of crap we put into the environment.
There are consequences for everything we do, and there is no exception to that rule in this.
Only the blind and the deceitful deny that the climate has changed, and is changing – it’s a natural consequence of our actions, and as much as many would like to believe differently there is, IMO, absolutely nothing we can do with the technology current available to us, and the lifestyles we want to live, that can prevent what was started in the late 18th century.
We have passed the tipping point.
Thirty years ago, there was time to change and reverse the effects of global warming on this earth. In 1978, Angaangaq Lyberth informed the world in front of the United Nations about the melting of the Arctic ice cap. Back then, there was time to change. Now Lyberth said, there isn’t.
“It’s too late now to stop the melting of the ice. You can’t do anything about it,” he said. “You are going to have to change yourself.”
(emphasis mine)
He is, in my opinion, right.
The Northwest and Northeast Passages are both open for the first time in recorded history – that’s a whole lot of blue water soaking up the sunlight isn’t it?
We’re also losing huge pieces of the Canadian ice shelves
The summer of 2008 brought massive ice shelf reductions in the Canadian Arctic, which accounted for 23 percent of the area. According to a recent report, in addition to the July calving from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the shelves along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island had a similar fate one month later, when the entire Markham Ice Shelf completely broke-up and drifted away in the Arctic Ocean.
Overall, the ice shelf lost account for 214 km2 this summer alone! “These substantial calving events underscore the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic,” Dr. Derek Mueller, the Roberta Bondar Fellow in Northern and Polar Studies at Trent University in Ontario explained, adding that these are irreversible changes that point to significant variations in the environmental conditions that have kept the shelves in place for thousands of years.
(emphasis mine)
How many years do you think it took for those ice shelves to be created?
- 1 human lifetime?
- 2 human lifetimes?
- 5 human lifetimes?
- 10 human lifetimes or more?
The really inconvenient truth is that there is absolutely nothing that we can do to prevent that which is upon us. Not within our lifetimes, the lifetimes of our children, the lifetimes of our grandchildren, or even within the lifetimes of our great-grandchildren.
That doesn’t mean that we should simply shrug our shoulders and let what come may for the next 200 years, but it does mean that short term measures like Dion’s carbon tax, or Harpers cap & trade, are not a solution, they are a thin bandage backed with weak adhesive, and they will not make a real difference.
At this point we should be taking Lyberth’s advice and developing adaptation strategies for the environment that will be, while turning serious effort to developing clean energy that will begin to slow the process that has been building for the last 200 years.
Our choices are simple
- Pat ourselves on the back for implementing an ineffective little bandage non-solution that causes significant hardship to a great many people by trying to force them off fossil fuel use when there is no current reasonable, affordable, or equitable alternative to their use – while actually accomplishing next to nothing.
- Sit on our thumbs and wait for the planet to achieve a new balance – not necessarily one that actually includes us in the numbers to which we have become accustomed, but a balance none the less.
- Put the serious time, effort, and dollars into the development of reasonable, affordable, and equitable alternative clean alternatives that people can move to.
Bingo…
What you fail to realize, Stageleft, is that I saw a picture somewhere of a thermometer next to a chimney or something, and Michael Moore is fat.
Or, get some farms in Greenland just like the vikings did centuries ago. Then we can desperately turn to the magic of science to save us all. Or maybe some of that UFO alien technology that everybody knows is being held back from the people. Of course, that would fuck up the god lovers, so maybe before we do that, we should pull the old switcheroo on God with Science. And THEN start praying a whole lot more.
And once again, wether it be man made, or a natural cycle, what’s the problem with Climate Change? Move a little back from the oceans, get more efficient with current power generation, quit teaching that GOD exists, and teach science to our children. Every thing will work out just fine.
I’m pretty sure that we face a bigger issue with our global political situation combined with the ability to blow off really big nasty bombs that will come into play long before any climate change becomes (hypothetically) an issue.
Diet? Why should I worry about my freak’n diet? Smoking’s gonna kill me.
You should try a bit of Comrade Google’s assistance vonrock, it is already an issue in some places.
You also raise the interesting specter of the big nasty bombs going off because of the effects of climate change – heck, even the US acknowledges that.
… download and read.
Stating the obvious but the global warming/climate change debate is neatly divided by party line with the neo-cons, Republicans, conservatives & right-wingers solidly denying the imapct of human behaviour if they even accept climate change(albeit grudgingly).
Meanwhile the left wing, Green enviro-types and intelligent liberals realize we are in a shit load of trouble. (note: I realize I am using excessive labelling, just want to cover all bases)
I expect to kiss my cottage goodbye within 2 decades, maybe even 1 decade. I live in a coastal town and though my house is on higher land, most of the city’s infrastructure is much closer to sea level so hence the water treatment plant, water and sewage pipelines, and much of the power grid are in danger.
Hope I am dead before I end up a refugee.(ah, I take that back, I want to live for more than 20 additional years). I told my son and daughter, don’t live near the coast when deciding their next move.
“debate is neatly divided by party line”…
I don’t think that’s quite accurate. Certainly the opinions of bloggers and pundits are pretty much neatly divided. However, that’s not the case among scientists, which is, in my opinion, the body of opinion that matters. I’d characterize that as:
- a very large majority who agree that climate change is occurring.
- a slightly smaller majority who agree that global warming is occurring.
- a large majority who agree that human activity is a contributing factor.
- a majority who agree that human activity is the most significant contributing factor
- at that point it dissolves into a cloud of alternative models, alternatives, and interpretations of the data – the fog that ALWAYS exists at the edge of science.
Popular media and political pundits characterize prevailing opinion as a clear, partisan split. The truth is, we have a partially understood phenomenon which, because of its POTENTIAL impact, is receiving lots of attention and analysis. And that’s as it should be, no?
Right, Balbul, I was thinking about bloggers and pundits and did not include scientists in my post. I just was cataloging laymen who were forming beliefs either based on what science group they believe and their own personal mindset.
There is still a party line division however, admittedly not as neat as I orginally surmised. Surely you would agree the % of right wingers that believe in climate change is much smaller than the % of leftwingers that do.
Yes, for sure, and in fact that’s one of the indicators used to actually define where on that increasingly nebulous left-right continuum one positions one’s self.
I find it interesting, Canuckguy, that you go with Balbul as a short hand for our host, while I go with Balb.
B-aaaal-b. Like the devil.
You know, the devil? The one heating up the atmosphere right now, running rampant in our fetus wasting culture?
Uh huh. That Devil.
It’s all clear to me now.
It’s always nice to see you guys forget the intended meaning of the original post and turn it into where you sit “on that increasingly nebulous left-right continuum” while patting yourselves on the back for having such good seats.
Instead of addressing the issue, you would rather point fingers at political views that differ from your own.
The meaning that I got from Stage Left’s post, was that it’s too freaking late to reverse what is happening, and we should deal with it. Not who thinks what, or who denies what or who helped cause it while driving so much to the cottage, and what a bunch of idiots everybody else is that doesn’t think just like me.
My point was; We (human beings) will deal with the changing climate just fine through common sense, innovation, a will to survive and who knows what else… assuming we don’t start world war three first with all mankind’s petty bickering and finger pointing. I think it’s a pretty valid point to the posted topic.
Oh yeah, and while we are bickering,
A majority of scientists used to think the earth was flat.
I assume you’re directing your helpful instructions about how we should be running our threads to Canuckguy, Vonrock, since, he first brought up the partisan nature of the divide. Canuck, please apologize to Von for not adhering to his priorities.
Your point – that we will deal with the changing climate – is quite correct. Since (as we are now beginning to understand) climate is an astonishingly complex machine with variables and linkages way beyond our comprehension, we have no idea how extensive the change will be, whether the rate of change is steady or accellerating, or what new changes will be triggured when certain thresholds are reached.
When you blithely mention that all we have to do is little things like “move back from the oceans”, I can’t help but suspect you haven’t thought this through very well. You may or may not have noticed that a rather high percentage of urban areas are, in fact, adjacent to the ocean, many at or just above sea level. You’re brushing off as trivial what would amount to the largest resettlement of humans, not to mention one of the most disruptive events, in history. Think New Orleans, then apply that to every coastline in the world.
‘A majority of scientists used to think the earth was flat.”
That’s right. And then through science, we figured out otherwise. That’s the nice thing about science: it responds to new information, rather than continuing to assert disproven hypotheses on faith.
(Whoops, forgive me. I take it digressions from the main topic are acceptable if YOU introduce them?)
Arwen, my grand-daddy wasn’t no devil. He was just one of many dozen pre-Yahweh Middle Eastern gods, with a good income and a respectable fan club, who happened to be occupying turf subject to a hostile market takeover from a brash and egocentric newcomer.
If you add
The meaning that I got from Stage Left’s post, was that it’s too freaking late to reverse what is happening, and we should deal with it, while working towards solutions that don’t compound the issue.
– you’d be bang on vonrock.
This is, I might add, a position that my progressive friends, and a large number of the climate change industry, do not like me bringing up in the course of conversation because it does not suit their thinking.
The need to “do something” to gain control over what is happening is heavy upon many of them – unfortunately few of them are willing to acknowledge that it’s too late for the sort of thinking they are currently engaged in. As soon as someone like me uses the words strategic adaptation (or similar) we get labeled Harperites or accused of not wanting to do anything at all.
PS: it’s not Stage Left – it’s stageleft, all one word, no uppercase characters .
I guess we now know how many lifetimes it took for the ice shelves to be created.
Warming destroys 4000 years of ice
That’s somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50 lifetimes.
Stage Left (just kidding)…
We’ve had this conversation a few times, and I will still assert that one of the best ways to work towards option C (move towards affordable clean energy) in a practical manner (i.e. a politically realistic manner) is to take the initiative and lay out incentives for innovation and energy conservation.
Now how we go about this as a society is debatable, but that we should move towards this is logical to all but the most ardent loonies. You know this, but every time we talk about this I get the sense you are dealing a little too much in absolutes.
Principle is a good thing, absolutes are not. I fundamentally agree with you that we have to move towards adaptation and accept what we have to accept. However, one should admit that we realistically will not get there (option C) if we will only call for all or nothing.
You are no fan of the Green Shift, we all know. I am a fan of it, even if I know it will only make a total global reduction in Greenhouse gases of 0.2% or something (you told me and I can’t recall the figure).
But it will drive Canadians, rightly or wrongly, to preserve energy, and the market will respond by providing cheaper (cleaner) energy for mass consumption. As much as we would like to think all Canadians are on board for a sudden transformation of our energy generation, they aren’t. Regardless of how (very) low I think of people who deny Climate Change or say it’s not man-made or all that nonsense, that doesn’t change the fact that they are consumers just as much as I am. And one of the few ways I can think of to get THEM to change their habits is to punish (tax) behaviour that is harmful to our ecosystem. Not a perfect solution, but like so many have said, it’s a start.
Any development of clean technology in Canada will immediately be exported to the world, and with any luck we can find a way to do it cheaply and quickly. If we are so lucky, then we can move towards implementing the needed technologies and techniques to get to Option C, and we can give the rest of the world access to the same technologies that are cleaner and cheaper, and do not rely on oil.
You can grumble about band-aid solutions, and you make some good points when you do. I will not wait for the masses to suddenly understand the errors of their ways and demand better fuel economy or cleaner energy. Adaptation is a necessity, and many up north are necessarily ahead of the curve in advocating and working towards it – but don’t belittle us if we are trying to do something, anything, towards mitigation as well.
It’s not absolutism Throbbin, it’s realism.
Dion, and supporters of the Green Shift, want to penalize people for not using alternatives that do not yet exist in the hopes that alternatives will be developed to help them out at some point down the road.
I want to develop reasonable, affordable, and equitable, alternatives that are available for all, and then, if necessary, penalize people for not using them.
If Canada was somehow able to turn the carbon tap completely off while we slept tonight the result would be a 2% reduction in GHG — and that is on the very generous assumption that the output of others stays stagnant, what do you suppose the chances of that happening are?
The reality is that sometimes rushing to “do something“, especially when the actual impact of that something will not make any real difference (and would only be noticeable on a global scale because our politicians talked about it with an air of superiority at international meetings), is just not the right thing to do.
The Turks have a saying that is appropriate for this “The devil takes a hand in what is done in haste“.
Throbbin, I keep hearing about cheaper and cleaner energy, and the market providing it. What I don’t hear is what that cheaper and cleaner energy is. As far as I can tell, we are going to rely on higher taxes for every Canadian, and then assume that this will provide incentive for the market to develop some new technology, which we will then share with the world.
Is this correct?
Edit: never mind all that.. This reality won’t come into play for canadians any time soon.
stageleft, I believe that that’s a 2% reduction in the worlds carbon, which is between 5 and 15% of the GHG. I could be wrong…
Ok, I see where you’re coming from – get the technology in place before implementing penalizing regulations. But we (Canada, the West, etc.) have been talking about getting that technology in place for at least 15 years now. Without any real significant demand for improved technologies, development of said technologies has been slow and has not translated into results.
As soon as there is real widespread demand for cleaner energy, you will see the market respond in kind. Along with incentives for green technology development (included in the Green Shift), market forces will find a way to provide that energy. I’m not a rabid capitalist, but the market (with a little government backing) can address the issue more readily than any government. The government just has to give them a reason to.
And like I said, any new technology developed in Canada will be immediately sold around the world, not just because it’s cleaner but because if it’s cheaper many nations will be happy to wean themselves off of oil.
Now, I’ll admits this will include alot of “if’s”, but that’s my rationale for backing the plan. How do you think development of alternatives will progress without significant market demand? What do you think is the best way to generate that market demand?
I like that turkish quote…if I use it I will cite accordingly
Vonrock – yeah, you got it. Easy, isn’t it?
If I knew what that cheaper and cleaner energy was, I would be out selling it, not sitting on my couch blogging. I study political science, not energy-related science.
And why can’t this become a reality? If significant market demand is generated, I’ll bet alot of investors will be looking for clean energy research and projects to make some money for them. And I know that as a consumer if my lifestyle is becoming more expensive than I can afford, I will be looking for alternatives ways to sustain that lifestyle….as will millions of other Canadians.
The problem is that “market demand” is not a blind force of nature, or driven by purely objective considerations. Vendors of any product or service know how to shape market demand, and will do so to maximize benefits to their shareholders. No problem with that – that’s what corporations DO. But it needs to be acknowledge if we’re claiming that “market forces” will shape demand for energies.
That’s right, and talking is all the west has been doing.
A government with vision would fund R&D into clean alternatives either via positive tax incentives, or the public purse for the public benefit – and not impose financial hardship with no public benefit on the people it says it represents for not using alternatives that do not exist or are not yet viable.
@balbulican – Sure, that is what corporations do. And any smart corporation would realize that they will get alot more market share if they can offer a product or service that costs less than the “traditional” source for said product or service (dirty energy). By driving up the costs of dirty energy, the government is essentially giving clean-energy providers a helping hand, and any smart Corporate board will realize that.
@stageleft – Positive tax incentives don’t always work that well. I have not seen a significant reduction in motor-vehicle traffic as a result of the Cons positive tax incentives for public transportation. I have not seen a significant increase in hybrid vehicles on the road as a result of the eco-initiative (dunno the name, but the incentives to buy hybrids).
I do agree that a government with initiative would fund R&D into clean alternatives (the Green Shift does include some…not as extensive as you or I would like but it’s a start).