Apparently on the theory that misery always appreciates good company, several readers have directed me to this article about British scientist James Lovelock and his warning that catastrophic global climate change is both imminent and unstoppable:
Within the next decade or two, Lovelock forecasts, Gaia will hike her thermostat by at least 10 degrees. Earth, he predicts, will be hotter than at any time since the Eocene Age 55 million years ago, when crocodiles swam in the Arctic Ocean."There's no realization of how quickly and irreversibly the planet is changing," Lovelock says. "Maybe 200 million people will migrate close to the Arctic and survive this. Even if we took extraordinary steps, it would take the world 1,000 years to recover."
C'mon Jim, give it to us without the sugar coating. We can take it.
It would be easy to view this as just another kooky end-of-the-world theory, if it weren't for the history of some of Lovelock's other kooky theories -- like the time in the late '70s when he hypothesized that chlorofluorocarbons wafted high into the stratosphere would eat great big holes in the ozone layer, exposing first the polar regions and then the rest of the earth's surface to increasingly harmful ultraviolet radiation. What a nut.
As far as I can tell, Lovelock's latest crackpot (or should I say "crockpot"?) idea is still the minority opinion among climatologists, most of whom seem to believe we have perhaps 70-100 years before the seriously disasterous greenhouse effects kick in -- although Jim Hansen, the NASA scientist, has suggested that unless major cuts in Co2 emissions are made within the next decade, the process will become every bit as irreversible as Lovelock claims it already is.
But the evidence that the human species is in a whole heap of trouble keeps piling up, like the research work in Amazonia (referenced in the Lovelock article) that suggests the world's largest rain forest is extremely sensitive to drought, and that many of its tree species probably can't survive more than three years of it. (Most of eastern Amazonia is currently in the second year of the worst drought on record.) If trees start to die en masse, the ground will be exposed to direct sunlight, which will dry out the soil, which will cause the understory to die, which will, within a very short period of time, create either an African-style savanna or a moon-like desert, depending on the amount of aluminum silicate in the soil.
If Amazonia dies, the enormous carbon reserves currently trapped in its biomass will be released -- adding, perhaps, to the enormous quantities of methane being untrapped in the arctic as the permafrost melts and vast, prehistoric peat bogs start to decay at an accelerated rate.
This, in turn, could accelerate the melting of the north polar ice cap, allowing darker water and rock to absorb more of the sunlight that snow and ice reflect back into space, warming the permafrost even more, releasing more methane, heating the earth even more, causing cause more tropical rain forests to dry up and/or burn, releasing more Co2.
We're talking, in other words, about a cascade effect, in which various natural processes all feed into each other in a series of massive positive feedback loops, quickly driving the global mean temperature higher -- much more quickly and far higher than most existing ecosystems can tolerate or adapt to.
Voila! A couple of decades of that and we'll have the biggest mass extinction in the history of the planet. Human, meet Mastodon. Mastodon, Human. Charmed, I'm sure.
This is the kind of news that really tempts me to give up blogging, quit my job, abandon my family and go look for a good Zen Buddhist monastary in which to contemplate eternity while awaiting the end.
Or, at the very least, maybe I should put a disclaimer at the beginning of each Whiskey Bar post saying something like:
"While the political and/or economic topics discussed herein could be very important, it's also possible that they don't matter jack squat because the world as you and I know it is about to be parboiled."
I mean, why get agitated about a U.S. nuclear strike on Iran if we're all going to die in a decade or two anyway?
Well, not all of us, maybe:
"I'm an optimist," [Lovelock] says. "I think that after the warming sets in and the survivors have settled in near the Arctic, they will find a way to adjust. It will be a tough life enlivened by excitement and fear."
I realize Lovelock is just trying to console us here, but it's hard not to be reminded of a bit of dialogue from this end-of-the-world black comedy:
Dr. Strangelove: Mr. President, I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. Space could be made available at the bottom of some of our deeper mineshafts. . . President Muffley: But look here doctor, wouldn't this nucleus of survivors be so grief stricken and anguished that they'd, well, envy the dead and not want to go on living?Dr. Strangelove: To the contrary, sir. I think the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead! Ahhhh! (His right arm reflexes into Nazi salute. He pulls it back into his lap and beats it again. The gloved hand attempts to strangle him.)
It's hard to know how seriously to take all this. Let's face it: Up until now, warnings about the end of the world have always been wrong. But one can also imagine similar theories being dismissed in cases where extreme pessimism was clearly warranted -- like, say, the Norse colony in Greenland, circa 1300:
Olaf: Lars says if we don't diversify our food sources and learn to live like the skraelings, we'll destroy the fragile meadows we depend on for our survival.Thor: That Lars and his crazy ideas. We've always gotten by in the past, haven't we?
Of course, if Lovelock is right, Greenland could end up being the Florida of the 22nd century -- in which case I'm sure future generations of the Bush family will find a way to screw it up, too.
Actually, if Lovelock's "Gaia Hypothesis" is correct, and the planet really does act like one big self-regulating organism, then what's coming won't be the end of life on earth, but rather the fever that kills the germs (think of the human race as a particularly nasty yeast infection) and restores the patient to her former health.
I hope Mother Earth will forgive me if I don't send her a get-well-soon card.