Climate Doom, Geologic Time, and You

Changes in climate, coastlines, and resource availability are nothing new. 7.9 billion people being encouraged to resist or turn blind eyes to these things is.

America, hold the ice. An extremely likely hot, ice-free planet means no more East Coast, among other places.

I took a survey course at Columbia around 2006 taught by some of the world’s preeminent climate scientists. They said all research showed the earth’s atmosphere was warming at an unprecedented rate; that yes, it experienced warming trends in the past and has natural warming cycles due to planetary tilt , and that the current atmospheric warming was not these things; it was/is the direct result of “anthropogenic ”—human-made —industrial drivers. The earth has had higher atmospheric C02 levels in its history, but the planet was much hotter at those times, e.g. the time of the dinosaurs. Today’s difference in temperatures from those earlier times is not an historical anomaly, but a delayed reaction: the planet’s present warming is a reaction to industrial emissions from fifty or sixty years ago that cannot be undone or stopped; new emissions are layered on top of historic ones causing new impacts in the future.    

The earth’s atmospheric C02 level is now 416 parts per million; a growing number that exceeds 350 ppm, the accepted point of no return for maintaining atmospheric thermal-stability. This new threshold brings with it unavoidable temperature increases, melting glaciers, and rising seas that may leave the earth looking like it did when the dinosaurs in the relatively near future. 

The world of the dinosaurs, like the world of the future, was ice-free. Much of today’s landmass did not exist or was under water.

There is zero reason to feel optimistic about modern, industrial society’s long term survival. 

Forty-percent of the world’s population lives in coastal regions that’ll be swallowed by the oceans. Those with the resources to flee will rush to the rapidly contracting numbers of climate stable areas with access to water and food. But I learned in that class the planet’s new normal isn’t a gentle, predictable warming period with progressively rising seas , but an unpredictable series of meteorological phenomenon like overflowing dams in China, deluged inland German villages, heatwaves in the Yukon, and deep freezes in Texas.   

The good news is the planet has gone through similarly rough patches, even if the causes were not as dumb as death-by-shopping. The Chicxulub impactor, for example, killed a huge percent of life on earth, including dinosaurs.

The Last Glacial Maximum (Ice Age) ended about 10,000 years ago, setting in motion the climatic stability that enabled humans to grow as they did and which is currently ending.

The last ice age ended a mere ten thousand years ago, when homo sapiens had already been around for almost 3 million years. Prior to the end of this ice age, there were few permanent human settlements and the birthplaces of industrialism in Northern Europe and North America were under glaciers. Humans  as a species —not every individual or society —have pulled through some violent natural events in their history. 

The novelty of today’s situation is that now 7.9 billion people must adapt to Mother Nature’s fickle ways. Most of these people are barely getting by in entrenched, climate-vulnerable areas (everywhere!). They depend on multinational resource production and distribution channels for survival. Climate change promises to bury their settlements and destroy these channels.     

There are ways of adapting to all of the above , but none include returning to, or maintaining, the status quo. They involve critical paths to survival based on hard data and best-practices gleaned from ten thousand years of recorded human knowledge. More on that soon.