A couple of times in the last year I've seen letters in my local papers to the effect of "We were warned about acid rain, nuclear winter, Y2K, a new ice age, the ozone hole, food shortages and all the rest. None of it happened, so why should we believe in the global warming advocates?"
Aside: I've been trying recently to be less sarcastic when arguing with people, especially creationists. But I cannot resist observing that it would explain a lot about climate "skeptics" if they really do live on another planet, where there was a nuclear war last century and no nuclear winter. And yes, both the letters included that example - which is partly what drew them to my attention.
Things like acid rain, or the ozone hole, are relatively quick and easy to fix. We spent the money to get rid of CFCs, it was not especially expensive, and already the hole is closing up. We cleaned up industrial pollution, and the acid rain cleared up. The low cost of action, and the potentially high cost of inaction, meant they got fixed before they got genuinely serious, and so people can forget what might have happened and claim that it was a big fuss about nothing.
Global warming is different. Huge amounts of economic growth have been based on fossil fuels; even more is expected. Fossil fuel usage permeates the economy, and substitutes are genuinely difficult to find. Changeovers will be expensive both initially and in ongoing costs. The effects of the problem are slow and subtle, and a lot of people think they can just move out of the way if there's a problem... at least, a lot of the rich people who are generating most of the carbon dioxide think that.
A few years ago I thought we were really going to do something early and proportionate - even George Bush was publically saying action was needed, and his party (which has many of the skeptics politically attached to it) had been turfed out. But time has been wasted, and the US particularly has focused on looking harder for fossil fuels; there are stories now about US energy independence, and this is not by switching to solar.
So even if the world gets together and takes serious action, it won't be the kind that results in people writing letters to the paper 50 years from now saying "we were told the planet was getting warmer and we spent all this money and nothing happened - why should we spend money on asteroid defence?" The best I am hoping for now is that we limit the temperature rise to a few degrees, and avoid setting off any of the really big positive feedback loops. And it will not happen until the temperature rise really starts to bite.
This is unfortunate; people will die, species will become extinct, landscapes we enjoy will vanish, enormous amounts of money will be spent on mitigation. But it's also a good thing.
Humans as a species are now so numerous and technolologically capable that we really can make serious differences to the world we live in. We've done it before on a local scale, chopping down forests and introducing new species, but always there has been somewhere else to go afterwards (even if its inhabitants reject the refugees). Now that we can alter the entire planet there is nowhere to move on to and no other society that remains unaffected. We have to grow up and take responsibility for what we do and how we do it.
Global warming will not destroy life on earth or even endanger humanity. We could lose a few billion people and not be seriously threatened - this happens to other species all the time. What it will destroy is the illusion that everything will be taken care of by God or Mother Nature or Destiny or Technology or something. It will become part of the historical record that something we did, that many people didn't even believe could make a difference, resulted in serious long term environmental change - and that it could have been a whole lot more extreme if we hadn't changed our ways.
That's a valuable thing. Better we learn that one with global warming than nuclear winter, and you can be sure there will be more of these challenges in our future.
Aside: I've been trying recently to be less sarcastic when arguing with people, especially creationists. But I cannot resist observing that it would explain a lot about climate "skeptics" if they really do live on another planet, where there was a nuclear war last century and no nuclear winter. And yes, both the letters included that example - which is partly what drew them to my attention.
Things like acid rain, or the ozone hole, are relatively quick and easy to fix. We spent the money to get rid of CFCs, it was not especially expensive, and already the hole is closing up. We cleaned up industrial pollution, and the acid rain cleared up. The low cost of action, and the potentially high cost of inaction, meant they got fixed before they got genuinely serious, and so people can forget what might have happened and claim that it was a big fuss about nothing.
Global warming is different. Huge amounts of economic growth have been based on fossil fuels; even more is expected. Fossil fuel usage permeates the economy, and substitutes are genuinely difficult to find. Changeovers will be expensive both initially and in ongoing costs. The effects of the problem are slow and subtle, and a lot of people think they can just move out of the way if there's a problem... at least, a lot of the rich people who are generating most of the carbon dioxide think that.
A few years ago I thought we were really going to do something early and proportionate - even George Bush was publically saying action was needed, and his party (which has many of the skeptics politically attached to it) had been turfed out. But time has been wasted, and the US particularly has focused on looking harder for fossil fuels; there are stories now about US energy independence, and this is not by switching to solar.
So even if the world gets together and takes serious action, it won't be the kind that results in people writing letters to the paper 50 years from now saying "we were told the planet was getting warmer and we spent all this money and nothing happened - why should we spend money on asteroid defence?" The best I am hoping for now is that we limit the temperature rise to a few degrees, and avoid setting off any of the really big positive feedback loops. And it will not happen until the temperature rise really starts to bite.
This is unfortunate; people will die, species will become extinct, landscapes we enjoy will vanish, enormous amounts of money will be spent on mitigation. But it's also a good thing.
Humans as a species are now so numerous and technolologically capable that we really can make serious differences to the world we live in. We've done it before on a local scale, chopping down forests and introducing new species, but always there has been somewhere else to go afterwards (even if its inhabitants reject the refugees). Now that we can alter the entire planet there is nowhere to move on to and no other society that remains unaffected. We have to grow up and take responsibility for what we do and how we do it.
Global warming will not destroy life on earth or even endanger humanity. We could lose a few billion people and not be seriously threatened - this happens to other species all the time. What it will destroy is the illusion that everything will be taken care of by God or Mother Nature or Destiny or Technology or something. It will become part of the historical record that something we did, that many people didn't even believe could make a difference, resulted in serious long term environmental change - and that it could have been a whole lot more extreme if we hadn't changed our ways.
That's a valuable thing. Better we learn that one with global warming than nuclear winter, and you can be sure there will be more of these challenges in our future.
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