Pirate's Cove

They won’t know how bad doom will be till the crisis is already here, you know

We climate scientists won’t know exactly how the crisis will unfold until it’s too late

When we hold on to things for too long, change can come about abruptly and even catastrophically. While this will ring true for many from personal experience, similar things can happen at large scales as well. Indeed, the history of Earth’s climate and ecosystems is punctuated by frequent large-scale disruptive events.

When the air warmed and the last ice age was coming to an end, the continent-size glaciers – or ice sheets – stayed around for much longer than the climate would allow. Then parts of them collapsed in spectacular fashion. One such collapse – we still don’t know of which ice sheet – caused at least four metres of sea level rise per century and possibly also the following abrupt transition to a much warmer climate, only to be followed by an equally abrupt flip-flop between warm and cold conditions, before the onset of the stable climate we have enjoyed until recently.

This long period of stability seems to have ended already. Australia’s climate had been warming rapidly for many decades, and eventually the moment came when record-breaking extreme heat coupled with an exceptionally dry period created the conditions for a series of mega fires.

See, climate used to be natural, but now it’s totally manmade, especially those fires which were mostly set by humans. But, we’re going to blame carbon pollution

Predictive models are the lifeblood of climate science, and the foundation upon which political responses to the climate and ecological crisis are often based. But their ability to predict such large-scale disruptive events is severely limited.

Computer models: doomsaying in, doomsaying out

We know quite well that the climate we are about to create resembles that of millions of years ago, but we are mostly ignorant about how fast this will happen and what it means for humans and ecosystems. Yet scientists rarely point out the uncertainties in their predictions – in particular worst-case scenarios that are beyond the capability of models – and prefer to stick to the conservative but firm conclusions that can be drawn from well-established models.

Doom!

We must have the humility to accept how much we do not know – including at what point it is too late to prevent catastrophic tipping points and the consequent large-scale disruption. Only then can we free the political response from operating according to conservative assumptions and mid-range scenarios, and base it firmly on preventing a worst-case scenario.

“We know doom is coming, just not how bad, so, give the government your money and freedom. Oh, and us more money to scare you into giving up your money and freedom.” Funny how they keep telling us this isn’t about politics then proving it is about politics.