Of fire and ice; speaking of the end is good

Some distinct and recent possibilities deserving of dignity:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, grouping 2,500 scientists from 130 countries, is also set to say that oceans will keep rising for more than 1,000 years even if governments stabilize greenhouse gas emissions [my emphasis].

To refrain from the mere alarmist hyperbole, note also:

The Gulf Stream bringing warm waters to the North Atlantic could slow, although a shutdown is highly unlikely, it says.

This is encouraging, as it would be hard for 'Europe' to oppose US-welfared corporate monarchs from under several feet of ice.  The related Boston Review article by Kerry Emanuel, meanwhile (via woods lot), is quite informative. 

Although, I'm personally a little disappointed that it neglects to mention either John Muir (for whom walking months on end upon glaciers in Alaska with wool blanket and a hunk of cheese was terrific fun), nor the distinct possibility that the gulf stream (also one of my heroes) may shut down (we don't really know) as it previously did, were Greenland to continue with its exponential melting (as all signs indicate it will, and inevitably it will, for at least half a century).

Kerry's leaf analogy is striking.  It may be accurate to say, "Prediction beyond a certain time is impossible," but surely there is still ample room for informed speculative thinking about the future (without which, one should certainly argue, there is no future – by very definition – at all).  Again, the mere realization of the fact of a forty-year delay is profoundly world-shattering.  Recall what Chad Harbach wrote recently:

It takes forty years or more for the climate to react to the carbon dioxide and methane we emit.  This means that the disasters that have already happened during the warmest decade in civilized history (severe droughts in the Sahel region of Africa, Western Australia, and Iberia; deadly flooding in Mumbai; hurricane seasons of unprecedented length, strength, and damage; extinction of many species; runaway glacial melt; deadly heat waves; hundreds of thousands of deaths all told) are not due to our current rates of consumption, but rather the delayed consequences of fuels burned and forests clear-cut decades ago, long before the invention of the Hummer.  If we ceased all emissions immediately, global temperatures would continue to rise until around 2050.  &nbep;  This long lag is the feature that makes global warming so dangerous.  Yes, this is how we would destroy ourselves – not by punching red buttons in an apocalyptic fit, but by appropriating to ourselves just a little too much comfort, a little too much time.  Like Oedipus, we've been warned.  Like Oedipus, we flout the warning and we'll act surprised, even outraged, when we find out what we've done.

Well I'm no scientist, and if these facts are in any way inaccurate, then I'm all ears.  In any case though, one thing is crystal clear:

 

>Plotting the global mean temperature derived from actual measurements and from proxies going back a thousand years or more reveals that the recent upturn in global temperature is truly unprecedented: the graph of temperature with time shows a characteristic hockey-stick shape, with the business end of the stick representing the upswing of the last 50 years or so. But the proxies are imperfect and associated with large margins of error, so any hockey-stick trends of the past may be masked, though the recent upturn stands above even a liberal estimate of such errors.

It's hardly surprising how adjusting for human influence (the path in red) causes a most noticeable up-tick circa 1965, precisely when the military-industrial complex began its paranoid race to release more and more chemicals (and specifically, organochlorines) than ever before.   

In keeping with the spirit of the IPCC, Kerry's conclusions are committed to a skepticism.  And admirably so, if not also a somewhat idealized neutrality.  That is to say, only, that it's possible that they remain not nearly sober enough:

In pushing the climate so hard and so fast, we are also conscious of our own collective ignorance of how the climate system works. Perhaps negative-feedback mechanisms that we have not contemplated or have underestimated will kick in, sparing us from debilitating consequences. On the other hand, the same could be said of positive feedbacks, and matters might turn out worse than projected. The ice-core record reveals a climate that reacts in complex and surprising ways to smoothly and slowly changing radiative forcing caused by variations in the earth’s orbit. Far from changing smoothly, it remains close to one state for a long time and then suddenly jumps to another state. We do not understand this, and are worried that a sudden climate jump may be part of our future.

I'm not sure Kerry would agree, but surely it is still our ethical (even literary) duty to read between the lines a little (to imagine this "much worse than projected"), not in order to play God, precisely, but to reassert a profound and genuine Conservatism and humility on the part of science – that which  may in fact be our only saving grace.  An environmental principle of "first do no harm," even, the ethos of which has yet to appear (as far as the current author can make out) in any significant manner.