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If only gay sex caused global warming
Why we’re more scared of gay marriage and terrorism than a much deadlier threat.
Daniel Gilbert, LA Times
NO ONE seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center site. Why? Because it won’t involve villains with box cutters. Instead, it will involve melting ice sheets that swell the oceans and turn that particular block of lower Manhattan into an aquarium.
The odds of this happening in the next few decades are better than the odds that a disgruntled Saudi will sneak onto an airplane and detonate a shoe bomb. And yet our government will spend billions of dollars this year to prevent global terrorism and … well, essentially nothing to prevent global warming.
Why are we less worried about the more likely disaster? Because the human brain evolved to respond to threats that have four features — features that terrorism has and that global warming lacks.
First, global warming lacks a mustache. No, really. We are social mammals whose brains are highly specialized for thinking about others. Understanding what others are up to — what they know and want, what they are doing and planning — has been so crucial to the survival of our species that our brains have developed an obsession with all things human. We think about people and their intentions; talk about them; look for and remember them.
That’s why we worry more about anthrax (with an annual death toll of roughly zero) than influenza (with an annual death toll of a quarter-million to a half-million people). Influenza is a natural accident, anthrax is an intentional action, and the smallest action captures our attention in a way that the largest accident doesn’t. If two airplanes had been hit by lightning and crashed into a New York skyscraper, few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened.
Global warming isn’t trying to kill us, and that’s a shame. If climate change had been visited on us by a brutal dictator or an evil empire, the war on warming would be this nation’s top priority.
The second reason why global warming doesn’t put our brains on orange alert is that it doesn’t violate our moral sensibilities. It doesn’t cause our blood to boil (at least not figuratively) because it doesn’t force us to entertain thoughts that we find indecent, impious or repulsive. When people feel insulted or disgusted, they generally do something about it, such as whacking each other over the head, or voting. Moral emotions are the brain’s call to action.
Although all human societies have moral rules about food and sex, none has a moral rule about atmospheric chemistry. And so we are outraged about every breach of protocol except Kyoto.
Daniel Gilbert is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of “Stumbling on Happiness,” published in May by Knopf.
(3 July 2006)
Christy Rodgers similarly writes in a provocative opinion piece for Dissident Voice that, “Collectively, humans are motivated to overcome the forces of social inertia only by hope for a dramatic improvement in their situation, or a personified enemy (or both).” This point might be debatable or overstated, but it seems one worth considering.
One counterpoint may be that the advertising and media industries are the most sophisticated manipulation systems ever created. If their efforts were turned towards helping facilitate new understandings and behaviours suited to energy descent, their power to bring us back from the brink of climate catastrophe could be immense. Unfortunately the sole purpose, financially speaking, of commercial media is to encourage the viewer’s consumption of goods and services, so structurally that kind of support looks unlikely. This incidently, is part of the inspiration of the Post Carbon Institute’s Global Public Media project.
In lieu of the backing of large media institutions, the blend of threat and promise offered by projects such as the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, offers a local way forward.
Even though it also does not wear a mustache, Peak Oil does have an immediate hip-pocket tangibility — and implies inevitable supply side problems — which gives it the potential to be a greater motivator for change than climate change alone, at least when packaged with “clear steps people can take to protect themselves.“
-AF
Scientists investigate giant algae bloom off Canada’s west coast
AFP, Yahoo!
A giant growth of algae in the waters off Canada’s west coast, so huge it can be seen from space, may be linked to climate change, say scientists who hope to collect samples Friday for analysis.
The growth, called a bloom, became visible in late June on
NASA satellite images, said Jim Gower, a physicist with the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sydney, in British Columbia province.
Unlike other algae which produce toxins, known as red tide, coccolithphore algae is not poisonous. But in vast quantities, it could harm other marine life, said institute research scientist Angelica Pena.
Alive, the algae produces oxygen, but when it dies and decomposes, it can consume so much oxygen from the water that fish and marine mammals will die.
Algae blooms are sometimes linked to pollution runoff from land, but in this case the bloom is far from sources such as fertilizers, said Gower.
(29 June 2006)
Global warming: Crisis for Earth?
Richard Black, BBC
The BBC is to gather expert evidence this week on whether human-induced climate change is a crisis for planet Earth, as James Lovelock believes. The originator of the Gaia concept wrote in his recent book “…the fever of global heating is real and deadly”. He says nuclear power is the only short-term way to provide enough energy without causing more climatic harm.
The BBC has commissioned a panel of scientists to review Professor Lovelock’s evidence and opinions. Panel members include top British experts on the Antarctic, climate modelling, interactions between oceans and atmosphere, and sustainable development.
It will meet on Monday and Tuesday, with conclusions and comments reported on Thursday on Radio 4’s Today programme and on the BBC News website.
…But is he right? Are the Earth’s regulatory systems in crisis, with temperatures heading inexorably for a higher level, unpleasant and perhaps uncontrollable?
If he is, what should we make of his contention that renewable energy and the traditional concept of sustainable development are misguided?
Is he right to say that nuclear fission is the only way to provide humanity with the energy it needs until technologies such as nuclear fusion and tidal power can be introduced to a substantial extent? Does “a lack of constraint on the growth of population” lie at the root of modern environmental problems?
(3 July 2006)
Climate change could cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, scientists say
Dennis Bueckert, Canadian Press
So the warnings of harsher heat waves, stronger hurricanes and rising seas fail to impress. How about volcanic eruptions in the Arctic, or a tsunami off the coast of Newfoundland?
The latest scientific discipline to enter the fray over global warming is geology.
And the forecasts from some quarters are dramatic – not only will the earth shake, it will spit fire.
A number of geologists say glacial melting due to climate change will unleash pent-up pressures in the Earth’s crust, causing extreme geological events such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.
A cubic metre of ice weighs nearly a tonne and some glaciers are more than a kilometre thick. When the weight is removed through melting, the suppressed strains and stresses of the underlying rock come to life.
University of Alberta geologist Patrick Wu compares the effect to that of a thumb pressed on a soccer ball – when the pressure of the thumb is removed, the ball springs back to its original shape.
Because the earth is so viscous the rebound happens slowly, and the quakes that occasionally shake Eastern Canada are attributed to ongoing rebound from the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago.
Melting of the ice that covers Antarctica or Greenland would have a similar impact, but the process would be accelerated due to the human-induced greenhouse effect.
(3 July 2006)
Investment Implications of Abrupt Climate Change (PDF)
Eric Sprott and Kevin Bambrough, Sprott Asset Management
It appears that the debate on global warming is about to come to an abrupt end. One can even say that, among the scientific community, it has already ended. Extreme weather events and continued melting of the polar ice caps in 2005 have exemplified the implications of global warming. The concern has now shifted to focusing on the rate of change and its broad implications for all life on the planet.
The atmospheric conditions of the last 400,000 years have been clearly established by analyzing ice cores from Antarctica. The chart below makes it shockingly clear that we have caused greenhouse gases to spike in an unnatural manner the likes of which the planet has never seen before. Human activity has caused both CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) and CH4 (Methane Gas) levels to exceed the upper end of the range for the last 400,000 years. We are now in uncharted territory and may well be on the cusp of experiencing a warming of the planet at a rate well beyond what can be predicted using our limited knowledge of history.
There have been times in the past when an abrupt change in the planet’s climate has occurred. We have had eight such episodes in the past 730,000 years. We have also had a few abrupt changes confined to specific regions of the earth over the past 11,000 years. Such episodic convulsions in the earth’s climate are entirely natural. However, we are now setting ourselves up for a catastrophic event for which Man is solely responsible…
Climate change is an event that would put nations and communities at loggerheads, accentuating the divisions that already exist within us. It would also put government finances under strain the world over. Central bank funded deficit spending on commodity intensive infrastructure projects may combine with a litany of supply disruptions to push us into a hyperinflationary environment. Real returns from traditional asset classes will likely be difficult to achieve but there will also be many unique opportunities for outsized gains in areas such as, emission reducing technologies, the nuclear/uranium sector, synthetic fuels and soft commodities, to name just a few.
It is possible that some of the more extreme consequences of global warming remain preventable and we expect many steps will be taken to combat the forces at work. Global warming thus emerges as both a threat and an investment opportunity. The time to debate has ended. Governments, businesses and the general public are just now waking up to the seriousness of global warming as we witness its consequences unfolding around the planet. The reality is that we are courting with much more than just economic disaster.
(June 2006)
Contributor CP notes “This appears to be the report referenced by the Canadian Press Article quoted in your June 30, 2006 headlines.
“See also Sprott’s now dated report (from 2005) titled “Peak Oil – Are We there yet?” Nothing remarkable here – just the investment community slowly waking up to the opportunities for profit taking from peak oil.”
That report was also mentioned in our May 9, 2005 headlines. -AF
