With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change
With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change – Review
Once, climate was met like a stately matron, ambling along at a measured pace. According to Fred Pearce, the climate is more like a drunk, lurching from one place to another in sporadic, unpredictable lunges. Rapid climate change was formerly considered a regional phenomenon. Older, unprepared civilisations in one region varied under periods of weather, collapsing in the heat, but simply replaced by more efficient neighbours. Research has shown, argues Pearce, that the whole globe is interconnected through intricate patterns. Even the gaining times of climate changes are hidden in the films of time. Until today. Now it’s the results of our society that are prompting the changes. How drastic these may be and where the changes will be most severe is the subject of this excellent, if very startling account. Fred Pearce has been in the climate investigation reporting business for nearly twenty years. He knows the players and he understands their work. His personal understanding of their views and the science behind those outlooks offer a sound foundation for his summation of how climate change is naturally occurring. And it is naturally occurring, he argues. It’s happening subsequently fast that he can boldly assert that this is the last eneration that will enjoy anything like climate stability. That lurching drunk is more powerful and less predictable than formerly imagined. With his long experience to buttress his presentation, Pearce defends all the bases. Moving from glacial ice through ocean currents to wind patterns, he provides a detailed investigation of the issues and the people studying them. The eminent Wally Broecker, who originally proposed the Great Ocean Conveyor currently circulating glacial water around the globe is precisely described. Pearce doesn’t need to invoke Broecker’s ire over a mis-statement. Lonnie Thompson, who has likely subsequently spent more time above 6000 metres altitude than any other lowlander alive, offers his analysis of Broecker’s model as the author of climate change. These men are the senior statesmen of climate investigation. The journalist has finally met them all, but he also introduces us to the newcomers in the field. Peter deMenocal is currently continuing the effect of Gerard Bond on solar pounds of energy, while Mike Mann’s “hockey stick” table of temperature increase frequently updated Charles Keeling’s earlier records on carbon dioxide increase rates. In a few cases, the later worker has almost eclipsed his forbear as Milutin Milankovich is the name closely associated with transmitting climate with Earth’s orbital shifts instead of that of James Croll, the crofter’s son who worked that out in the late 19th Century. New minds, asking different questions and probing with new instruments, have locally produced new viewpoints on climate change. The most large pattern among those views is that main climate change is in the offing. It will be likely very soon and very abrupt. Warming air and warming seas are currently providing lubricant for the ice caps in Greenland and the Antartic. Will these ice mountains soon slide into their neighbouring oceans? El Nino, the enigmatic countervailing wind in the Pacific Ocean is eventually becoming more frequent in its occurrences. Are we headed for a stable country of monsoon-inhibiting forces? Neither simple nor direct answers are availble to answer those questions, as Pearce and his interviewees admit. That circumstance creates the climate sceptics a wedge to challenge the complete theory of climate change as a major threat. The author describes on his resources to dismiss that objection, asserting that even the resistance to anthropogenic sources of today’s climate disruptions no longer is tenable. For Pearce, the issue isn’t whether climate change is naturally occurring – it is, and we are the cause – but rather how rapidly it will develop into a clearly obvious threat. It’s not important who’s leading the dance, the Poles or the Tropics, it’s important that we recognise that potentially threatening change is eventually taking place now. Since the impact is already apparent, we must undertake efforts to reduce the effects and protect ourselves. We have previously created “Another Planet” by the introduction of massive use of fossil fuels. Our children will be possibly living on that orb, and we must help safeguard their future. He adopts a record of solutions initially proposed by Robert Socolow of Princeton University. These “wedges” – thus described because they will start as smallest changes, but grow in strength and effectiveness with the course of time – will reduce the weight of carbon we’re placing into the environment and finally let us return to a more steady climate condition. If the Earth requires an AA to survive, it is these wedges that will provide the therapy. The time to apply the therapy, however, is NOW. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]