Being a climate scientist is interesting. It’s not like a radical change, for much of my academic career I’ve had connections to climate science. Even as an astrophysics undergrad, many of my earth sciences professors were connected with the world of climate change studies. My Master’s and PhD were about topics specifically influenced by rising temperatures and changing ocean dynamics. I was not studying global warming itself, but I had to know about it, I worked with people who’d contributed to the IPCC reports or run complex climate models.
And yet, actually being a climate scientist is interesting. It’s like before I had a backstage pass, but rarely the time to use it, and now I work backstage every day.
What’s particularly relevant for this blog is the debates. They’re all public, but now I have more insight into who takes which sides and why. Ultimately, the debate is settled over basic issues like is the globe warming and did we cause that. The evidence is too damn strong, and while objections are still raised they never hold up to analysis so they end up slinking away.
That doesn’t mean there’s no uncertainty. We know warming will continue for decades while we keep emitting greenhouse gases. We are sure to overshoot the goal of 1.5°C of mean global temperature rise (relative to the pre-industrial average).
But between the deep uncertainty in how successful countries will be at scaling back emissions, and uncertainties in how the complex climate will respond to that reduction, we’re left with scientists discussing with each other (again, openly, nothing’s happening in the shadows here) over whether things are really bad, or really really bad.
The consequences of global warming are going to get worse and worse, and their impacts will disproportionately harm the poorest people in the world. But we really don’t have a definitive answer on how fast recovery could be even in ideal circumstances. As more and more studies are done, we are starting to narrow in on an answer, but while some studies say warming will persist long after we hit net-zero carbon emissions, others suggest that if we can hit net-zero that warming will slow down.
Which ties into the long standing debates over how to talk about climate change for the sake of policy and activism. We need to be clear how dangerous it is, how many problems already exist, without giving into “doomerism” – the idea that it’s too late to do anything at all so buckle up for the worst. We need to communicate that there’s a massive amount of mitigation possible if we act now, without feeding the belief that we can solve it all. The reality is the worst cases have not been ruled out, the most likely cases are still very dangerous, substantial mitigation is possible, and adaptation will be vital. All true.
Just some stray thoughts I’m having while in a meeting on an international, multi-disciplinary climate research project.
Haggis & Hash Browns 