Climate change is worrisome, but what exactly are we worried about?
What is climate ?
This one's easy, if weather is the state of the atmosphere at a given time and place, climate is the long term average of weather in a given place, typically averaged over 30 years. Well, how do we exactly measure climate ? With 5 major parameters, temperature, pressure, wind, humidity and precipitation (rain or snow).
Of course these variables change across seasons, more temperature during summer, more precipitation during monsoon, but over multiple years these values follow a consistent pattern and hence, remain predictable. Predictability is important here because it helps us decide our ecosystem's infrastructural properties, directs necessary changes in our lifestyle, maintains agricultural crop cycles as well as helps flora and fauna to regulate their lives.
So now, what exactly is changing ?
Wait a minute, we know this one, its temperature right !
The most spoken about, perhaps the most visible change, is infact our planet's surface temperature. The term Global Warming is almost used synonymously with Climate change. But it only covers a fraction of this whole affair.
Climate change is the significant and long term change in the planet's climate system, lasting for decades or even centuries. And it's not only an increase in temperature, it's the erratic behavior of multiple climate variables, like unusually high or low temperature causing more heat waves or cold waves, unusually high or low precipitation causing floods or droughts, changes in wind intensity causing frequent cyclonic activity etc.
Is it happening for the first time ?
It's nothing new, the planet has gone through many such changes over the course of history. The earth has experienced five major climatic shifts in the past 2.6 million years, alternating between long ice ages (70000-90000 years) and shorter warmer interglacial periods (10000-30000 years).
During an ice age, the majority of the planet's water is stored on the land as huge glaciers. At the peak of the last ice age, which was around 18000 years ago, the sea level was 120 m lower than today and Asia and North America were connected through a land bridge. Canada, North America, North of Asia, much of Europe and southern Africa were covered with ice caps. Ice ages are usually caused by periodic changes in Earth's tilt and orbit, called Milankovitch cycles. This shift in tilt and orbit lowers the amount of sunlight different parts of the world get, causing ice age.
Lucky for us, the last ice age ended around 12000 years ago and we entered into this warm interglacial period, the Holocene. If we look at previous cycles, earth would start preparing for the next ice age about now. "If you look at what was happening prior to the industrial revolution, summers were actually getting colder in the northern hemisphere. They've been getting colder for at least the last 6,000 years, so we were definitely on that trend," says Dr. Steven Phillip, a climate modeller and palaeoclimatologist at University of Tasmania. But now that possibility has been reduced because of all the greenhouse gases we've put in the atmosphere, which have warmed the planet.
Didn't we just avoid an Ice age ? Isn't that supposed to be amazing ?
Umm, no, not so much. Read on to find why.
Save the planet, Seriously ! Planet is fine...
I researched all this information about ice ages, just to take a dig at one slogan, Save the Planet.
The seas have risen 120 m in the last 18,000 years. Just because we are familiar and comfortable with the current sea levels, it doesn't mean that's where they're "supposed" to be forever. Sea levels have been higher and lower, temperatures have been hotter and cooler, the planet was, is and will always be here. Let's stop ignoring the actual issues by romanticizing this fight with the "Save the Planet" narrative. I was first introduced to this idea by none other than the great comedian, George Carlin, in this absolutely brilliant stand up piece -
Then what's all the fuss about ? Why are all alarms going off ?
If you watched that video, you've probably already understood why. It isn't about the planet, it's about the fragile and mortal living beings of the planet. While ice ages are natural, current global warming is largely man made. Natural changes are not something humans can do much about. They cannot be mitigated, they can only be sensed and adapted, which is easy because they often happen so slowly. This slow rate of change gives the living species adequate time to adapt to newer climate conditions, making this transition a lot less brutal.
In the current situation, the rate at which the changes are happening is way too fast, none of the living species, be it ocean creatures, land dwellers or vegetation can achieve the adaptation speed it requires. As we studied in chemistry, fast reactions often result in violent consequences. Destabilizing the planet's equilibrium at this rate, is bound to result in extreme weather, intense climate events which are too hard to predict, thus resulting in immense damage to the living beings.
Climate change is just a symptom...
Climate change is just a symptom of a larger underlying problem. The real culprit here is our current capitalist economy, which is not only depleting our finite natural resources rapidly, but at the same time also degrading and polluting the whole ecosystem of the planet. Below I've classified the detrimental impacts of capitalist economy on three major sections -
- Impacting those who haven't caused it - When I say living being, I don't only mean humans. Animals and vegetation are the most directly impacted by increasing human activities as well as changing climate. While rapid extraction and industrialization is destroying their natural habitat, changing climate conditions are making it very hard for them to regulate their lives. They're threatened, endangered and are going extinct at no fault of their own. Another section which may fall into this category are underdeveloped regions, the ones who didn't contributed much to this problem and aren't developed enough to shield themselves from climate change, so will be forced to bear its dire consequences.
- Impacting future human generations - Not a lot of people can relate to the ones in the future but trust me, they're going to have the real struggle fighting climate change. They are going to be left with a very degraded and polluted planet and they'll have no means to fight it because earth now has very little resources left, on which most of our current civilization is dependent. The rate at which the changes are happening and resources are depleting, the future human generations won't even have enough time to adapt, hence will be forced to lead a very tough existence compared to us.
- Impacting current human generation - In the history of earth, no human civilization had attained such technological advancements so that it could dig up minerals and fossil fuels creating such a complex and sophisticated society as we have now, with concrete establishments, agriculture, energy, transport and all sorts of manufacturing systems. All these systems evolved in a particular climate and are very much threatened by the changing climate, simultaneously threatening the comfortable existence of current human society. More than environmental degradation, the current economic practices have made humans more susceptible towards social and cultural degradation.
The Real Challenge...
Good News is, since this problem is caused by humans, we also have the opportunity to solve it. But that's where the real challenge begins. The research around climate change has started way back in the 1970s, but till now, very limited measures are taken to slow down the core harmful practices. Even after achieving such feat at science and technology, that we can successfully predict the consequences of climate change, our governments and industries are not swift enough in taking action, contrastingly they're promoting the extraction based projects even more while denying climate change altogether.
Furthermore, denying the climate change slows down the large infrastructural adaptations needed by our complex systems. Governments aren't even thinking about making the cities and agriculture more resilient towards extreme weather, simply because they're in denial. Needless to say, we're forced to bear much more adverse outcomes than we ought to. And that is where the anxiety kicks in, the alarmists shout and despair increases.
This is just a glimpse of the overarching problem of climate change, tip of the iceberg you can say. I hope I was able to establish that climate change isn't just an environmental issue, but it is a problem largely created by the ideological flaws of our society. The causes and effects of climate change are much more intricate than I can possibly portray in one article. So next up, I'll dig deeper into these causes, effects and solutions of climate change one by one. Stay curious.