Homo Sapiens: Long term prognosis - promising
“One last chance“ says Prof. Gaia, but warns 90% cull by Century’s end probable
As scepticism about climate change seems to be gaining traction around the world, a group of international scientists hit back last month with a comprehensive report reinforcing the facts and figures behind global warming. It not only updates the information of the UN’s IPCC report of 2007, but shows the situation is actually quite a bit worse. Isolated errors in scientific methodology do not negate the fact that climate change is real and likely to have catastrophic effects for us if we cannot control it, says Prof. David Karoly of Melbourne University.
While most of us hope we can muddle through in the way outlined for us by the UN, broadly speaking by keeping global warming below 2% by mid century, without changing developed world lifestyles, while managing to accommodate the rising expectations of fast developing nations like China and India, not to mention eradicating poverty and hunger among the world’s poor. We nonetheless have the nagging feeling we’re being sold a bill of goods and it just doesn’t add up. Is it any wonder then, many of us take comfort from the fact that the scientists and climatologists screw up from time to time, misreading or even manipulating the data to suit their argument, allowing us the luxury of sticking our heads firmly back in the sand and throwing the planet out with the bathwater. Or worse still, the suspicion that the powers that be have no idea quite how bad things will get or what to do about it and feed us bromides to avoid worldwide panic.
So let’s just remind ourselves that the preponderance of evidence is that things don’t look good and fiddling while the planet warms may just see us folk who are 40 years plus onward and out without too much discomfort, but anyone under 30 may very well find themselves living in some variation of a Margaret Atwood world with bleak prospects for what are, after all…. our grandchildren.
Whatever else is happening to our environment, not much of it good, it cannot be denied that polar ice caps and glaciers are melting and that the arctic tundra is beginning to thaw, giving up millions of years of stored methane. At some point, if not now, we will have reached the tipping point when global warming becomes irreversible with terrible consequences for our world as we know it.
What we may be looking at is a self-induced Doomsday scenario for much of our species. Don’t think it can’t happen because in the 4.5 billion year history of our planet it already has. I’m not just talking about the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. There is compelling genetic evidence to show that as little as 200,000 years ago the human population was reduced by a cataclysmic event from some 4 million souls to just 1,000 of us. We have in fact done rather well since then, but for most of that time our life on earth was nasty, brutish and short.
Do we really want to go back to that if we can avoid it?
Quite what you and I can do about it all is a good question. Individually, not much. however hard we try. Collectively however, there may be hope. Leaving aside the commercially motivated, that is why non-scientists nit-picking over scientific debate on global warming they do not understand and using such differences to wish away the problem is ultimately sterile and foolish. Given the consensus of scientific opinion it is both salutary and constructive to pay heed to those amongst us who have already shown how to overcome global environmental problems and who do not hold out great hopes for our future, while hoping they are wrong.
Failing that the best that is left to us is the hope that enough of us remain to evolve into a lot smarter version of Homo Sapiens Mk. II version to enjoy the sunny uplands of life on Earth again, some millennia hence. 90-year old scientist James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia theory, which describes Earth as a self regulating planet, and whose work on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) reversed ozone-layer depletion in the 1990s, is a convincing exemplar of what we can best describe as this long term pessimistic optimism. His is a stark view of the future of humanity. In his view we have one last chance to save ourselves- and it has nothing to do with nuclear power.
Here in Q & A format taken from his writings and comment is how he sees it:
If a CFC ban saved us from ozone-layer depletion, can something similar with carbon emissions save ourselves from climate change?
Not a hope in hell. Most “green” stuff verges on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is what finance and industry wants. It’s not going to do a damn thing but make a lot of money for some people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I’m not against renewable energy, but to spoil the decent countryside with wind farms is totally unnecessary. It takes 2500km2 to produce a gigawatt - that’s too much countryside.
What about work to sequester carbon dioxide?
Waste of time. It’s a crazy idea and dangerous. It would take so long and use so much energy it won’t be done.
Do you still advocate nuclear power as a solution to climate change?
It’s a good way to solve the world’s energy problems, but it’s not a global cure for climate change. It’s too late for emissions reduction measures.
So we are doomed?
Not exactly. There is one way we could save ourselves. That is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast.
Would it make enough of a difference?
Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of Co2 yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. 99% of the carbon fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little Co2 is released but the bulk of it converts to carbon. You get a few percent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won’t do it.
Do you think we will survive?
I’m an optimistic pessimist. I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4°C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we wouldn’t find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90%. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2,000 people left. It’s happening again. I don’t think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what’s coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing’s been done except endless talk and meetings.
It’s a depressing outlook.
Not necessarily. I don’t think 9 billion is better than 1 billion. Humans are like the first photosynthesisers, which when they first appeared on the planet caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen - a nasty, poisonous gas. It took a long time, but it turned out in the end to be of enormous benefit. I look on humans in much the same light. For the first time in its 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent, communicating species that can consider the whole system and even do things about it. They are not yet bright enough, they have still to evolve quite a way, but they could become a very positive contributor to planetary welfare.
How much biodiversity will be left after this climatic apocalypse?
We have the example of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event 55 million years ago. About the same amount of Co2 was put into the atmosphere as we are putting in and temperatures rocketed by about 5 °C over about 20,000 years. The world became largely desert. The polar regions were tropical and most life on the planet had the time to move north and survive. When the planet cooled they moved back again. So there doesn’t have to be a massive extinction. It’s already moving: if you live in the countryside as I do you can already see the changes.
If you were younger, would you be fearful?
No, I have been through this kind of emotional thing before. It reminds me of when I was 19 and WW2 broke out. We were very frightened but almost everyone was so much happier. We’re much better equipped to deal with that kind of thing than long periods of peace. It’s not all bad when things get rough. I’ll be 90 in July, I’m a lot closer to death than most, but I’m not worried. I’m looking forward to being 100.
