Turning the Titanic
Steven C. Sherwood, a Professor of Geophysics in the department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University was recently published in Science (15 February, 2008) beneath a headline that read, Climate Change: A Titanic Challenge. Sherwood wrote in response to a November 23 article in Science by Richard Kerr, a Senior News Writer at Science who asked the most important and prescient question of our time, How Urgent is Climate Change?
Sherwood praises Kerr’s “excellent summary of the challenges facing action on climate change, and the reasons why we are unfortunately already committed to substantial warming.” While acknowledging Kerr’s list of issues that “compel action now,” Sherwood also argues, “Greater urgency comes from the rapid growth rate (especially in the developing world) of the very infrastructure that is so problematic.”
This is correct. Many people treat climate change as if it is not really changing at all, as if it’s holding still while we get around to fixing it. But in fact it is a rapidly moving target. The climate is undergoing dramatic and relentless change. Constantly. As I write this. As you read this. While we think about not making the climate worse, we are, each and every one of us making it worse. Much worse. While we talk about alternative energy, we are racing at breakneck speed to increase, not decrease our dependency on fossil fuels. As Pogo used to say, “We have met the enemy and it is us.” We are the agents of the change we claim to fear. We are the means of our own destruction. We are the threat we hope to avert.
Al Gore put it best when he said, “So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.”
Sherwood writes, “Mitigating climate change is often compared to turning the Titanic away from an iceberg. But this “Titanic” is getting bigger and less maneuverable as we wait–and that causes prospects to deteriorate nonlinearly, and on a time scale potentially much shorter than the time scale on which the system itself responds.”
Recently Nobel Prize-winning biologist, IPCC scientist and Chico State University professor, Dr. Jeffrey Price admitted we are running out of time and said, “It’s definitely coming to fourth and goal, there’s two minutes left, and we’re behind.” The climate is like a bridge or an elevator with a limited weight capacity. We don’t know the exact number but we know there is one and once we pass it, there will be no turning back. Some say we have already passed it while others give us no more than 5 or 10 years. The time for action is clearly now and yet is there any evidence that humanity understands how little time is left?
The Titanic must be turned even as it grows larger and more monstrous. The iceberg looms ahead. We talk about turning the great ship around but this is only talk. Scientists warn us and are ignored. They know what is coming. They understand that real efforts to avoid the calamity ahead have not begun. The clock is ticking and the insurmountable odds againsts us grow worse every second we delay. Is this madness? Look around and see. This nightmare is only beginning to unfold.
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