Forum Post: Are We Falling Off the Climate Precipice? Scientists Consider Extinction
Posted 10 years ago on Dec. 18, 2013, 12:21 a.m. EST by LeoYo
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Are We Falling Off the Climate Precipice? Scientists Consider Extinction
Tuesday, 17 December 2013 10:30 By Dahr Jamail, TomDispatch | News Analysis
I grew up planning for my future, wondering which college I would attend, what to study, and later on, where to work, which articles to write, what my next book might be, how to pay a mortgage, and which mountaineering trip I might like to take next.
Now, I wonder about the future of our planet. During a recent visit with my eight-year-old niece and 10- and 12-year-old nephews, I stopped myself from asking them what they wanted to do when they grew up, or any of the future-oriented questions I used to ask myself. I did so because the reality of their generation may be that questions like where they will work could be replaced by: Where will they get their fresh water? What food will be available? And what parts of their country and the rest of the world will still be habitable?
The reason, of course, is climate change -- and just how bad it might be came home to me in the summer of 2010. I was climbing Mount Rainier in Washington State, taking the same route I had used in a 1994 ascent. Instead of experiencing the metal tips of the crampons attached to my boots crunching into the ice of a glacier, I was aware that, at high altitudes, they were still scraping against exposed volcanic rock. In the pre-dawn night, sparks shot from my steps. The route had changed dramatically enough to stun me. I paused at one point to glance down the steep cliffs at a glacier bathed in soft moonlight 100 meters below. It took my breath away when I realized that I was looking at what was left of the enormous glacier I’d climbed in 1994, the one that -- right at this spot -- had left those crampons crunching on ice. I stopped in my tracks, breathing the rarefied air of such altitudes, my mind working hard to grasp the climate-change-induced drama that had unfolded since I was last at that spot.
I haven’t returned to Mount Rainier to see just how much further that glacier has receded in the last few years, but recently I went on a search to find out just how bad it might turn out to be. I discovered a set of perfectly serious scientists -- not the majority of all climate scientists by any means, but thoughtful outliers -- who suggest that it isn’t just really, really bad; it’s catastrophic. Some of them even think that, if the record ongoing releases of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thanks to the burning of fossil fuels, are aided and abetted by massive releases of methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas, life as we humans have known it might be at an end on this planet. They fear that we may be at -- and over -- a climate change precipice hair-raisingly quickly.
Mind you, the more conservative climate science types, represented by the prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), paint scenarios that are only modestly less hair-raising, but let’s spend a little time, as I’ve done, with what might be called scientists at the edge and hear just what they have to say.
“We’ve Never Been Here as a Species”
We ARE falling off the climate precipice but there is not much that we can do to avoid the drastic consequences with our present social organization and consciousness. I take some solace from our having sweat glands (very rare among mammals) and our being mostly hairless so our ancestors might have had lived in very hot places. Perhaps we can adopt the new survival meme that being naked is cool. Beyond that, invertible mylar clothing with one side being silver and the other side black can help temperature control. Moving to ocean side can also help. Wearing a wet diaper on our heads can avoid heat strokes.
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The US has become a net energy exporter, yes we are in danger of extinction.