The Climate Crisis Future

Agenda

Late last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its much anticipated summary for policymakers of its fourth assessment report, the first since 2001. Its "headline" was simply that due to more and better data, the experience of the past several years, and refined climate models made better by using them to "predict" what's already happened (which shows that they're a pretty sound method to predict what hasn't yet happened), the consensus of almost all climate scientists is that major climate change is underway, with serious consequences over a very long time, and that it is largely being caused by machine emissions of greenhouse gases, principally CO2.

Not exactly a shock, but it's the finality of the scientific judgment that is important. As Patrick Kennedy at Blue Climate says: "The big science debate is over. It is time for policy makers to take actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

Well, yes and no. Certainly the debate on the reality of the Climate Crisis should be over, and as far as climate scientists are concerned, it is. But there's much to be discussed about what this report means for the world, what it forecasts for the future, and how climate scientists differ on aspects of this relatively conservative assessment. All that is still playing out, and will for some time. (There's a first, fairly detailed take on what the summary is all about-- but in plain language-- here at Real Climate.)

There is also a lot to say about what dealing with the Climate Crisis will require of us, not just in terms of legislation and political action, but in attitudes and skills. That's something this site will particularly be grappling with in the coming days and weeks. Discerning some outline of what the Climate Crisis future may look like is another longterm goal this site will likely return to, again and again.

But of course we need to be looking at specifics as well--technologies, policies, political and cultural and social efforts that can be applied even without a detailed knowledge of what the future might bring. Reducing emissions, adopting energy-saving measures, clean energy alternatives--these efforts are ongoing and need to be accelerated. But we need equally to come to some sort of strategic focus, and we would be wise to anticipate what we'll need to work on, in terms of attitudes and skills, as we go along.

One area that I've already identified as crucial is language: how we talk about this. I've written about the softness and vagueness of scientific abstractions and bureaucratic argot, the confusing jargon and mind-numbing detail (and even this so-called summary of the IPCC is full of all of that.) Monday's Daily Show showed some of the consequences--the meaning of the report is so vague or buried in detail that its main impact is bewilderment.

Take the often repeated conclusion that global warming is caused by "human activity." This is the earth-shattering conclusion of this report (and the pun is intended), but it sure doesn't sound very imposing. Human activity? Like what? Running about? Waving our hands? Playing tennis? Picking flowers? Dentistry? Dusting books? Sex? Just what human activity are we talking about? Humans have been active for many centuries--what's so important about it lately that it's causing the climate to change?

It's not human activity. It's industrial activity, the machines that give off enormous quantities of gases that collect in the thin layer of the earth's atmosphere and trap the heat so completely that the planet's climate is changing radically and extensively.

Why we're doing this is a major key to why we're having so much trouble facing up to the fact that we have to do these industrial activities differently, and consciously, for unfamiliar reasons: to prevent future catastrophe and a catastrophic future.

Those discussions will continue here. While this topic will be confronted directly it's also another reason to make the subject of language, of the use of words to communicate, a more prominent feature of this site, as expressed so well in today's quotation. And so shall it be.