Discuss: Snap into Action for the Climate

PACA

good good post. Yes, the paradox of what it means to be human at this time in human history (and herstory).......we’ve got a good 500 more years to go…...how to savor it? how to prepare for the end? 30 more generations maybe….

For now, life is won der full!

Yes, Paca, a 2.5 million year picnic on the grass…..dreams! inventions! Elvis Presley! Brigitte Bardot! We need to give thanks and be grateful, and then start the long slog to prepare for what is coming down the pike, slowly, drip by drip, generation after generation, 100 200 300 400 500 years from now….... there are still some more good things to come I feel. but in the end, the end is nigh…... SIGH

Danny (Post 46)

Panic (noun):
Sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often causing wildly unthinking behavior.
(Oxford English Dictionary)

Is THAT what you really mean?

....and please (further to Danny!) my name is Troll 005-1/2. Respect, huh?

Hello, Ron (Post 42),

I have heard others argue, as you do, that “Paleoclimatic data indicate that the Earth has experienced large fluctuations in average global temperature in past eras.”

Somehow this is advanced as a reason to downplay the “breathless panic and exaggeration” that so offends you in Mike Tidwell’s article.

Are we supposed to dance with joy upon hearing about these geological precedents? Or lie down and wait for the waves to sweep away our houses and cities just because “it happened before” some 80 million years ago?

What troubles me about your formulation is that—unless I misunderstand your intent—I cannot feel the ethical core in your position. Where’s the outrage? Why so complaisant? It is certainly true that “earth will abide,” either as a barren rock with rotten seas or as a teeming swamp crawling with who knows what new species?

But yes, in the long run, nature will prevail.

Frankly, I feel more sympathy for Paca’s posts 43 and 48, because at least she is expressing a human response and concern for the damage we’re inflicting on ourselves, our plant and animal brethren and, in some strange way, upon the very chemistry and geology of the planet itself.

Outrage, grief, remorse, sadness, tenderness, etc., may be “soft-minded” responses to the cruel facts of geological time, but they strike a resonant chord in me.

We should have known better, but we didn’t.

The tragedy is that now we do know better—we can see and understand more than we ever did—yet still we proceed as if hypnotized by all our gadgets. Our heads nod before the television screens, and we laugh at the commercial “messages” designed to perpetuate our slumber.

I am no more enthusiastic about the geo-engineering fantasy than you are, especially if it is carried out in the same arrogant Promethean spirit that got us into this mess in the first place—the march of progress, man’s dominion over all creeping things, conquest of nature, etc.

I agree with you that, if we let it go so far as to shoot reflective mylar blankets or canisters of sulphur into space in an effort to do a technological “fix,” it will be one more example of our titanic hubris, yet another sign that we’ve blown our chance.

I would rather see a sudden, widespread shift in our awareness—a Tidwell “snap,” so to speak. So far, of course, the signs are not good. It seems that we WILL live on a hothouse planet. Millions—or billions—WILL suffer and die. We WILL take millions of species down with us. Whether we survive in sufficient numbers to form the nucleus for a second run at “civilization,” time will tell. Danny’s “polar cities” allow for this possibility, but I woul hardly call it a happy prospect.

I have a feeling, though, that a human-caused global die-off may provide a strict enough discipline that the human survivors may just learn to love this beautiful home that Paca already mourns.

I don’t know if it’s “too late” or not. But it does seem clear that we don’t have much time to dither.

Let me know if I’ve misread you, Ron.

Paco (not to be confused with Paca :)

Here’s what i have done:

i got rid of my car
i don’t use air conditioning
i grow veggies
i don’t have cable

What else can YOU do?

i cry about the polar bears too.

Dear Miss Volare:

What do I do? Here:

I don’t drive my car
(Prefer my bicycle)

I don’t use A/C

I eat veggies

I HAVE broadband data links
(Note the plural)

I READ THE LITERATURE
concerning polar bears - and much, much more

YOU need to do that too. Everyone.
Then you must vote. Before you do that you - we all - must open informed, probing discussion of all such issues.

Or else we die in our miserable garden scrubs. Neither the polar bears nor god will cry.

Panic is bad. Reading the literature is good. An earlier post - to take but one example from this discussion - referred to climate cycles 80 million years ago. Doubtless there were, that long ago. But the misquote of geologic literature points towards the malaise of irrationality, and, frankly, ignorance.

The base in the geologic data is that from Greenland ice cores. That information has been widely published over the past 20+ years. It refers to a time span of the most recent 120 THOUSAND (and not MILLION) years. And it defines very clear periods of climate warming and cooling, which includes the ‘Little Ice Age’ within the past 500 years.

We are now emerging from a longer than normal (in the context of these data) cool period.

Those are facts. We may deal with them. Or not.

The end-time believing people may reinforce a certain personal security in doomsaying. I have my doubts. Once again, reading the record: we’ve been here before.

We must - MUST - take many kinds of action. Considered action. Those who hang out on this discussion, too.

So. What do YOU do? Again?

To Bob Tyson, aka Troll 005-1/2 (Post 55), with respect.

I just visited your photographic website and was very impressed with the quality, poignancy and sensitivity of the photos. I assume you took them. Very well done. You might increase the time, however, that each image remains on the screen. The images deserve to be taken in, and the lap-dissolve sequencing moves along too fast.

Thank you, also, for your correction of my “80 million year” mistake. To be honest, I was simply reaching for a number that would convey geological scale, not trying to be “scientifically accurate.” I don’t regard numbers as the final determiners of value. To me they are images, more than anything.

For this poetic infraction you reduce me with your comment: ” . . . the misquote of geologic literature points towards the malaise of irrationality, and, frankly, ignorance.”

I confess, your honor, guilty as charged. I am irrational in many ways, and ignorant on many counts.

But I have to reject your charge of “malaise.” I could just as easily say that the worship of numbers is an irrational malaise. Or was it my earlier references to dreams—in all their blatant irrationality—that aroused your pique?

Don’t get me wrong.  I appreciate the amazing discipline and dedication of the scientists who took the Greenland core samples and managed to measure the CO2 content in the bubbles. The endlessly quantified data that reveal our global dilemma in its many aspects, actually enable us to estimate the degree of crisis we face.

But the greatest problem is ultimately a crisis of imagination. How indeed can we “mobilize” as a species to meet the environmental challenge, without a profound and sudden activation of the human imagination? The “irrationality” you find so loathesome will actually play a crucial, if yet undetermined, role in the awakening of humanity. Paradoxically, it was our vaunted reason and our scorn for the “irrationality” of the past that led to our worship of numbers, our view of the universe as a dead machine, and permitted the full expression of our rage against nature in the ethos of exploitation.

Numbers are important, yes. Rationality is important, yes. But as soon as we address the problem of motivation—the sine qua non for any effective global response—we move into the realm of moral, ethical, religious, spiritual, aesthetic and philosophical concerns that must take into account the whole person.

Is this too much voodoo?

Sincerely,

Paco

P.S. Paca, where did you go?