Science Is Never Settled, but Climate Change Science Is Reliable
Commentary by Pete Haug | FāVS News
Science is never “settled.” Good science often demonstrates that yesterday’s good science wasn’t quite so good after all. But in the long run, science converges on reality or, in nerd-speak, it approaches Truth asymptotically.
Nearly 60 years ago, I began studying ecosystems using computer-based simulation models. We explored how environmental systems behave with and without human influence. We analyzed effects of human activities on ecosystem dynamics. Conceptually, this is no different from studying how plants respond to different fertilizers.
The Limits to Growth
In 1972, MIT scientists published one of the earliest reports documenting environmental systems analysis. The Limits to Growth (LTG) examined interacting trends among five environmental components: industrialization, food production, natural resource depletion, pollution and population.
LTG concluded that if measures were not taken to address existing trends, the limits to growth on this planet would be reached within a century. The book created a furor similar to that surrounding climate change. It sparked outrage among economists, industrialists, politicians and other proponents of exploitative capitalism. Its conclusions were excoriated.
Ongoing studies resulted in updates published 20 and 30 years later. New data and improved methodologies confirmed much of the earlier projections. Considerations of global warming, climate change, limitations of planetary resources and questions of sustainability contributed to later assessments.
Conclusions were largely unchanged: humanity continues toward an environmental reckoning.
The IPCC
In 1988, the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to operate under the auspices of the UN Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization. Collaborative IPCC reports, issued periodically, are based on the best available science gauging global climate changes and their effects throughout the world.
The process is transparent. Findings include associated uncertainties. During the two and a half decades of IPCC reporting, accuracy has improved, and uncertainties have diminished. The science continues to converge, and the results aren’t pretty.
The ‘FUD’ Factor
The IPCC is reliable, not infallible, and therein lies a problem. Data-collection technologies and analytical techniques constantly change. (Think PC updates!) These changes exacerbate uncertainties inherent in climate-change research. IPCC reports include uncertainties.
Climate-change denialists undermine IPCC reports by exploiting uncertainties. They build “FUD” — fear, uncertainty and doubt — into their denialism. For many reasons — political, corporate, religious or other purposes — denialists distort IPCC analyses by cherry-picking uncertainties to question reliability of these peer-reviewed findings.
Partly because of FUD, it’s taken more than two decades for a critical mass of scientists, government officials and media to recognize realities, the enormities resulting from our changing climates. Yet, just as with the Limits to Growth study 51 years ago, trends are clear, even if precise numbers are not.
Some Upsides
In addition to studying climate changes, the IPCC considers potential impacts and vulnerabilities. Reports suggest ways to mitigate effects and otherwise adapt. Suggestions include underlying technological, economic and institutional requirements, such as social, economic and ethical concerns, as well as sustainable development.
This last point — sustainability — is critical for coping with a seemingly insurmountable problem. Energy use drives the first four Limits to Growth environmental components: industrialization, food production, resource depletion and pollution. Sustainable development requires continued use of energy, with a gradual phase-out of fossil-based fuels that drive climate change.
The fifth factor, driving the others, is population growth. Since I was born, 87 years ago, Earth’s population has increased more than four-fold – 400% – from two billion to 8.5 billion humans.
The good news is that population growth is slowing, and alternative energy is booming. Will these changes suffice in time? Land and ocean ecosystems continue deteriorating, driven by relentlessly changing global climates.
The earth-systems that support humanity are in crisis. We have the technology to reverse continuing degradation, but so far, we lack the will. Nations, politicians and industries continue to deny reality, often for strategic or financial gain. We lack a fundamental unity of purpose, a collective, collaborative will.
Earlier Warnings
In the 19th century, Baha’u’llah recognized global interdependencies, writing: “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.”
He warned against problems resulting from human excesses, exhorting humankind to global justice, moderation and restraint:
Whoso cleaveth to justice, can, under no circumstances, transgress the limits of moderation. He discerneth the truth in all things, through the guidance of Him Who is the All-Seeing. The civilization, so often vaunted by the learned exponents of arts and sciences, will, if allowed to overleap the bounds of moderation, bring great evil upon men … If carried to excess, civilization will prove as prolific a source of evil as it had been of goodness when kept within the restraints of moderation. Meditate on this, O people, and be not of them that wander distraught in the wilderness of error. The day is approaching when its flame will devour the cities …
Nature was nature before man was man. In the game of life, nature bats last.
