A Very Short Reading Group discussion

... two contrasting opinions:

"Its science is sound and its professional recommendations cover the ground"

"This book failed, I actually now have more understanding of the climate change deniers position"

Having a better understanding of deniers is not a bad thing. I'd like to recommend, "Not a Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, and Utterly Mangle Science."

I'd also like to recommend another short book that deals, in part, with climate change. It's "We Can Fix It: Reclaiming the American Dream." I believe every word I wrote in that book, enough so that I'm giving it away for free on Apple, B&N, etc. until summer, 2018.

There's been a lot of discussion recently about the possibility of Terra-forming Mars, to give mankind a refuge in the event that a catastrophe strikes the earth. In the meantime, the process of Venus-forming the Earth appears to be well underway.

This book is useful in the way that it draws together all the main strands of scientific evidence and argument in one place. However, it is the third edition, and having been written in 2014, a lot of the data has now been superceded, and not in a good way. We are due another edition ( the first and second were in 2004 and 2009 respectively). There are a number of graphs showing the development of various climate parameters, assuming different emissions pathways, throughout the book. They take 2014 as the last data point before extrapolation. It would be interesting to move the last measured point back to 2004 and apply the predictions from there, to zoom in and see which pathway we have been taking over the last 14 years.

I have recently been working my way through the archive of the BBC Reith Lectures. To my horror, I discovered the first mention of climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions in a lecture by Frank Fraser Darling, in 1969. We've not exactly been quick to respond to this. This problem lies completely outside the rates of change that human beings have evolved to deal with. You don't need to change your decision-making heuristics if tomorrow, next week, or even next year, looks pretty much the same as today. We are hard wired by neuroscience and hence psychology to keep doing tomorrow what works for us today.

The last chapter echoed my own view of how our existing political and socio-economic systems are not fit for addressing this. I have been in a meeting where funding for a tidal energy development programme was ceased because predictions showed that it could not compete in the market place with subsidised fossil fuels that externalise the costs of environmental damage. Not exactly a level playing field or the right criteria to be judging this by. Market economics, operating with usually a 5 yr plan, is a reactive system, not a proactive one.

I don't expect things to change fast. After several millenia, we have not reached agreement on how to share work and reward, who lives on which side of non-existent lines on the land, and who has the best imaginary friend in the sky. The prospects aren't great.

So I am not optimistic. On the plus side, this is not about the end of the planet. The planet will be fine, and although there will be extinctions, these will provide new niches for evolution to re-fill in a myriad interesting ways. It probably will not mean the end of the human race. We're a pretty versatile bunch, skilled at staying alive under a variety of conditions. It will probably mean the end of civilisation. A shame, because that's what makes it so worthwhile being human. Survival is insufficient.

Great post, Nigel. We have changed the climate and continue to do so. I believe we could have impacted this problem years ago if our culture had valued profit less and our common welfare more. Donors and politicians continue to deny the climate science that 97 percent of peer-reviewed science writers agree on. As you say, "we have not reached agreement on how to share work and reward." A society that is more hierarchical than cooperative will have difficulty solving this problem.

Lots of interesting points. Thanks both for the comments. The group meeting last week arrived at similar conclusions. As you say, one of the key difficulties is the problem of the human mind that works on timescales of, at most, decades, trying to solve a problem that is on a timescale of 100s if not 1000s of years. There’s also the difficulties instigating even small individual changes that could have a sizable cumulative effect. The plastic bag charge was one reasonably positive example cited. But finding a similar method to diminish the western world’s default use of the car, for example, seems less achievable.

Most people felt that the book was a good primer on the subject and covered difficult ground fairly and clearly. A new edition would indeed be welcomed, considering the pace of research and developments in the subject.