Crossing The Line: It’s one thing to be told that anthropogenic global warming is a real and steadily worsening problem that the world needs to address with the utmost urgency. But, it’s quite another to be informed, with Zen-like calm, that the planet is trapped, inextricably, in a deadly process of runaway climate change that can no longer be reversed.
TEN YEARS – TOPS. That’s all the time the human species
(along with every other complex organism on Planet Earth) has left. At least,
that’s all the time Emeritus Professor Guy McPherson, climate-change doomsayer
extraordinaire, reckons we have left. Ten years – or less.
It was enough to leave the usually unshockable Paul Henry
spluttering helplessly in front of the television cameras. Henry, and everyone
else who witnessed the breakfast show host’s disturbing interview with the
genial Arizonan academic.
Because it’s one thing to be told that anthropogenic global
warming is a real and steadily worsening problem that the world must address
with the utmost urgency – lest by the end of this century, or the next, things
start getting uncomfortably warm. But, it’s quite another to be informed, with
Zen-like calm, that the planet is trapped, inextricably, in a deadly process of
runaway climate change. A process whose every contributing factor is now
worsening exponentially, and which long ago passed the point where human
intervention might have averted the next great extinction level event in the
planet’s history.
The most catastrophic extinction event, to date, called by
some “The Great Dying”, occurred approximately 250 million years ago. The event
featured volcanic activity on a truly massive scale (we’re talking lava flows
kilometres thick) to be followed (or, perhaps, precipitated) by an equally
destructive asteroid strike. (The asteroid is estimated to have measured nine
kilometres across!)
Obliterating clouds of smoke rose to the heavens and fire
fell from the sky. Carbon-dioxide levels skyrocketed and the atmosphere
throbbed with heat. Oxygen levels plummeted and upwards of 90 percent of
creatures living in the sea, and 70 percent of those living on the land,
perished. So complete was the devastation that for a period of 10 million years
there was insufficient plant matter to be compressed into coal. Geologists call
it the “coal gap”.
How can the accumulated CO2 emissions of a mere
two centuries of human industrial civilisation possibly equal the combined
impact of the Siberian Traps and an killer asteroid? Surely Professor McPherson
is guilty of the most grotesque and irresponsible alarmism?
That is certainly the judgement of his peers. According to
the Science Editor of the Climate
Feedback website, US geo-scientist, Scot K. Johnson:
“In many ways, McPherson is a photo-negative of the
self-proclaimed ‘climate sceptics’ who reject the conclusions of climate
science. He may be advocating the opposite conclusion, but he argues his case
in the same way. The sceptics often quote snippets of science that, on
full examination, don’t actually support their claims, and this is McPherson’s modus operandi. The sceptics dismiss
science they don’t like by saying that climate researchers lie to keep the
grant money coming; McPherson dismisses inconvenient science by claiming that
scientists are downplaying risks because they’re too cowardly to speak the
truth and flout our corporate overlords.”
Johnson’s words would be extremely reassuring if only
McPherson’s visit to New Zealand hadn’t coincided with the release of the
Arctic Resilience Report (written by scientists from the Arctic Council, a body
made up of the eight countries whose national territory falls within the Arctic
Circle). The Report warns that the Arctic is “undergoing rapid, sometimes turbulent
change beyond anything previously experienced”.
The Council’s findings are echoed by the director of the United
States National Snow and Ice Data Centre, Mark Serreze. He told Scientific American that, even in Winter,
the Arctic ice-sheet is continuing to shrink. It’s a polar phenomenon without
known precedent: “I’ve never seen anything like it this last year-and-a-half”.
That would be the same year-and-a-half during which, month
after month, global temperatures have exceeded all previous records.
The beatific Professor McPherson takes all of this gloom and
doom in his stride. He has made his peace with the planet, which, he’s
convinced, is about to undergo its sixth extinction level event. He counsels us
to hold fast to those we love, and to devote ourselves to living, if not long, then
well. Not so much Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance, as Zen and
the Extinction of Everything More Complex than a Microbe.
Some, of course, will not choose to “go gentle into that
good night”. Others, like President-Elect Trump, will continue to deny the
reality of global warming. Me? I’m putting my faith in humankind’s near-perfect
record of predicting the wrong future.
This essay was
originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The
Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 2 December 2016.
