Imagine, if you will, waking up one day to the realization that Earth’s climate is changing, and humans are to blame.
Imagine having heretofore dismissed - or simply not have paid attention to - the notion of global warming. Then one day a friend posts a meme, or you hear a snippet of news, and think, “Wow. I guess that sh*t’s real. What’s up with that? I think there’s a real scientific debate about how much warming humans are causing, and about how bad things are going to get. Lemme Google climate change and see what I can find out.”
Imagine, also, that you’re a reasonably well-educated person who is not likely to fall down a denier rabbit hole, or cozy up to easily debunked sources, or trust websites that are clearly untrustworthy. Imagine that you turn to mainstream news outlets, respectable scientific sites, and US government agency research and communications. Imagine that you reason that you will be easily able to find out (portentous music) THE TRUTH.
REMINDER: climate change is real. There is no legitimate scientific “debate.” A number of climate change “tipping points” have been defined, and we have already passed the first of them: die-off of warm-water coral reefs.
Per Wikipedia, “As of September 2022, nine global core tipping elements and seven regional impact tipping elements are known.”
Wiki continues: “Out of those, one regional and three global climate elements will likely pass a tipping point if global warming reaches 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). They are the Greenland ice sheet collapse, West Antarctic ice sheet collapse, tropical coral reef die off, and boreal permafrost abrupt thaw.
This is an emergency.
Human-driven planetary warming is caused by human activity: anthropogenic heat production and the greenhouse effect resulting from greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions have been rising since the Industrial Revolution - and per the “hockey stick” graph of global temperatures, the resulting rise in higher average global temperature has been staggering.
But back to you, theoretical person who has just twigged to the onrushing disaster, and is now trying to find out what to do - if there is a way out - if we have any hope of slowing or stopping the global temperature rise, with its concomitant climate tipping points and ecological (and human) disasters.
Turns out, finding the unvarnished truth is not easy.
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The first hurdle, of course, is that there are varying interpretations of the same data sets: some wildly hopeful, others searingly despairing, and others somewhere in the middle. No one knows the absolute truth. What is “true” is, in some sense, in flux. The situation is developing. Incredibly complex systems are interacting - reinforcing and ameliorating each other in real time. We are witness to disasters unfolding - also in real time. While the preponderance of evidence points in a not-terribly-hopeful direction, it is possible to find, and latch on to, nuggets of hope - slivers of a silver lining.
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The next hurdle is finding communications that are not couched in “hopium” or slanted to appear more positive than an unsparing look at the evidence would suggest.
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And of course each reader comes to the material with an existing slant - a political slant, but also a mode of engaging with the world that is less or more hopeful and optimistic.
So a reader’s individual lens, plus the editorial slant of whatever they are reading, complicated by the overwhelming need of many communicators to make our current predicament seem less dire equals… confusion.
And that natural confusion is not helped by communications that couch and obfuscate and elide and confuse by using, frankly, weasel words, that do no one any favors by masking a sometimes harsh and uncompromising reality.
Let’s look at what NASA has to say.
NASA’s page Is it too late to prevent climate change? was last updated on October 23, 2024, when Joe Biden was still president. (I’d honestly thought it would have been taken down by now.)
The complete text of the page linked above is inline below. I’ll re-post it under that, with a few annotations.
Is it too late to prevent climate change?
Humans have caused major climate changes to happen already, and we have set in motion more changes still. However, if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the rise in global temperatures would begin to flatten within a few years. Temperatures would then plateau but remain well-elevated for many, many centuries. There is a time lag between what we do and when we feel it, but that lag is less than a decade.
While the effects of human activities on Earth’s climate to date are irreversible on the timescale of humans alive today, every little bit of avoided future temperature increases results in less warming that would otherwise persist for essentially forever. The benefits of reduced greenhouse gas emissions occur on the same timescale as the political decisions that lead to those reductions.
Without major action to reduce emissions, global temperature is on track to rise by 2.5°C to 4.5°C (4.5°F to 8°F) by 2100, according to the latest estimates.
But it may not be too late to avoid or limit some of the worst effects of climate change. Responding to climate change will involve a two-tier approach:
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“Mitigation” – reducing the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
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“Adaptation” – learning to live with, and adapt to, the climate change that has already been set in motion. The key question is, what will our emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants be in the years to come?
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And now, with some notes:
Is it too late to prevent climate change?
YES. The climate has already changed, as the writer acknowledges in the next sentence. Why even phrase this as a question?
Humans have caused major climate changes to happen already, and we have set in motion more changes still. However, if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the rise in global temperatures would begin to flatten within a few years.
IF WE STOPPED EMITTING GREENHOUSE GASES TODAY?!?! We couldn’t even get this year’s COP30 closing document to include a mention of fossil fuels - after sending diplomats and oil company lobbyists to a fancy conclave every year for over a quarter of a century! (Never mind the fact that many of them flew to these junkets in private jets and that acres of Amazon rainforest were bulldozed for a road to the COP30 venue.
Temperatures would then plateau but remain well-elevated for many, many centuries.
Plateau where? The phrase “well-elevated” does not tell us. How high temperatures go will make a huge difference in outcomes. To keep that “plateau” at 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial is almost impossible, as the generally mealy-mouthed IPCC has said. And to plateau ABOVE that could be civilization ending.
There is a time lag between what we do and when we feel it, but that lag is less than a decade.
“Less than a decade” sounds heartening, until you realize that “less than a decade” also means that we humans have to get our act together on a timescale that is vanishingly small for our contentious, argumentative species and our oil-mad, money-hungry leadership.
While the effects of human activities on Earth’s climate to date are irreversible on the timescale of humans alive today, every little bit of avoided future temperature increases results in less warming that would otherwise persist for essentially forever.
Way to bury the lede. NASA hereby admits that the changes we’ve already lumbered into WILL NOT BE REVERSED within our lifetimes. We humans alive on the planet today will never see another pre-industrial climate day. Ever.
The benefits of reduced greenhouse gas emissions occur on the same timescale as the political decisions that lead to those reductions.
This. Makes. No. Sense.
Without major action to reduce emissions, global temperature is on track to rise by 2.5°C to 4.5°C (4.5°F to 8°F) by 2100, according to the latest estimates.
But what does this mean? What are the differences between a 2.5C and a 4.5C rise? Bueller? Bueller?
Also, that phrasing — “by 2100” is worse than useless. All it does for most readers is push the time horizon of serious consequences out to the end of the century, when there are already serious consequences NOW.
But it may not be too late to avoid or limit some of the worst effects of climate change.
The word “may” is doing some seriously heavy lifting here. Also, it would be useful to include just a sampling of what “worst effects” will entail: what would you have included if you were editing this page? There’s a lot to choose from, from intimately individual (drowning in your SUV as a flash flood rips through your town, being incinerated by a wildfire sweeping down through the Oakland hills, collapsing from heatstroke during a sweltering Iowa summer, sustaining a bad injury while taking a flight to see your family for Thanksgiving) to global in scale (failed harvests, mass migration, ecosystem collapse).
Responding to climate change will involve a two-tier approach:
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“Mitigation” – reducing the flow (I love “the flow” - it sounds so gentle and elegant!) of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
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“Adaptation” – learning to live with (“learning to live with” mudslides and clear air turbulence and brutal summer temperatures and rolling brownouts and supply chain disruption and crop failure and dangerous outdoor temperatures…), and adapt to the climate change that has already been set in motion. The key question is, what will our emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants be in the years to come? The “key question?” YA THINK?!?!
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Here’s the brutal truth: Emissions. Keep. Going. UP.
And at least in the United States, my country of origin, we do not have an excellent track record of either pushing back against Big Fossil Fuel, or adopting policies that might mitigate some of the worst effects of the changing climate - particularly now, in these parlous, perilous, proto-fascist political times.
It’s understandable, I suppose, to want to look on the bright side. It’s fundamentally dishonest, but understandable.
The communications disconnect, however, can be truly shocking.
While wildfires rage, floods devastate communities, hurricanes rip out entire cities, and desperate, hungry people are on the move, the “official” stance, and the editorial slant taken by popular media, is that there’s time - there’s hope - and there’s a solution. All we have to do is:
In America, the Trump administration plans on deleting FEMA, for crying out loud!
We probably can’t even save ObamaCare, much less enact new regulations to help citizens who are burned out or rained out or mud-slided into oblivion from climate change.
As for “slashing emissions,” AS IF. One in every 25 participants at the COP30 shindig was a fossil fuel lobbyist. The US government is leaning, HARD, into “drill baby drill.”
Forget rationing beef, or lowering the speed limit, or putting a hard limit on the number of ICE engines the average citizen can own for non-industrial use, or phasing out private jets or, heaven forfend, halting the diversion of catastrophic amounts of water and electricity to Artificial Intelligence.
I have included a plethora of links in this piece that provide accurate, uncompromisingly grim information. But there is also a LOT of journalism and “educational” material out there that leans hard into a couched, cautious, hopium-laden style of climate change communication.
This is not limited to NASA, of course. Popular journalism addressing climate change relies heavily on “might” and “may” and “renewables” and “net zero” and wildly delusional “immediately slash emissions” territory.
Below are some links that peddle what I have been calling hopium: “steps you can take” as an individual, purported “silver linings” if you interpret the data just right and don’t look too hard, rephrasing as “opportunities” what are clearly not positive outcomes. These are not just from outlets like The Royal Society (who I do not expect to be hard-hitting) - but also from, for instance, Greenpeace and The Guardian, where it’s normally possible to find less egregiously positive spin.
What are the solutions to climate change? - Greenpeace UK
Six Actions to Limit Global Warming to 1.5°C | ETC
Keeping global warming to 1.5°C: challenges and opportunities for the UK
Still a chance to return to 1.5C climate goal, researchers say
Actions for a healthy planet | United Nations
9 things you can do about climate change
I do not want to be dismissive of the work being done by excellent journalists and talented writers. But part of me wants to scream, “Are the scribblers producing this copy barking mad?”
And despite my obvious panic, it’s true that it is not the end of the world. Not yet, at least.
But there is a huge amount at risk. Dangers we can’t even predict are approaching. We’re already seeing literal “death and destruction” every day, including droughts, fires, floods, rain bombs, and hurricanes - together with other calamities of an overloaded, overstressed planet, like pollinator colony collapse.
What we had on this beautiful blue natural spacecraft, our island home in the vastness of the cosmos, is already gone, and it is not coming back. Reporting on climate change, either of the hopium-laced or the sterner, more honest variety, frequently fails to make that heartbreaking case right up front. And it should.
We’ve already lost an incalculable treasure - the delicate, beautiful, bountiful Holocene balance of sun and rain and seasons and shade, of beneficial insects and pollen and loam and predictable growing seasons. We’ve lost those summer days we remember, the brisk autumns, the bee-buzzing orchards, and the cool, shaded date palm oases. We haven’t lost all of the creatures yet - the slow lorises and sea turtles, penguins and meerkats, marmots and puffins - but that’s coming species by species, and sooner than you probably think.
The glorious relative tranquility of the climate we grew up in as humans, with its normal paucity of howling hurricanes, bomb cyclones, and fire tornadoes, is gone.
What we are at risk of losing completely is the entire ecosphere. And that includes us.
And I would just gently suggest that a little bit more attention to this basic fact be paid by the popular media, and our government, when addressing the situation.
The truth, after all, is out there.
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Thanks, as always, for reading. I also have a Substack: climaterevolutionnow.substack.com (But please don’t read this entry there — the DK version is much more edited and polished, and I have actually had some sleep. :-)
