The Thousand Year Itch
Posted by Bronny on Tue 29-Mar-2011 at 6:51 pm
This article is about climate change. That might seem an odd subject for a website devoted to speaking out against religious extremism, but bear with me.
Many of the religious Right identify as evangelicals, who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. That leads them into outright conflict with the world of science, in particular with facts about the origins of the universe and the solar system, earth history, and the evolution of the human race. The Bible of course preaches a primitive cosmology and direct creation of humans. While not all evangelicals are young-earth creationists, any discussion of these subjects usually leaves them floundering over a nonsensical and irrational theology. Climate change is yet another area where evangelicals find themselves in conflict with scientific knowledge.
Now one might ask how a particular group of Christians could come to an almost universal contrarian position on climate change, given that there appear to be split opinions amongst the general public, when it is not a topic on which religious faith would offer any guidance. One reason is their deep mistrust of science, another is blatantly political. Evangelicals generally identify with the economic and social policies of the right wing of politics, which generally opposes climate change mitigation on economic and ideological grounds, particularly in America. Attempts to mitigate climate change are seen by these folk as an evil plot of the environmental movement designed to bring down the capitalist West. A third reason may be that evangelicals believe in the imminent return of the Messiah, and worries about the fate of the planet in the distant future become irrelevant to them.
The subject line of this blog refers to a statement made by Australian Climate Commissioner, Professor Tim Flannery, who was interviewed by right-wing journalist Andrew Bolt on talk-back radio on March 25. In response to persistent questioning by Bolt about the temperature effects of climate change mitigation policies in Australia, Flannery responded “If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years.”
The contrarian blogosphere and some Opposition politicians went apoplectic over this comment, believing they had exposed a massive weakness in the argument for climate action. But their reaction merely highlights their own stupidity and wilful ignorance.
When Bolt gleefully pounced on Flannery, exclaiming that it didn’t seem like much of a result for all the efforts being put into it, Professor Flannery pointed out that doing nothing risked “triggering a change we can’t control”. Bolt completely ignored this comment, but it is the whole point of any climate policy.
The real message from Flannery’s comment is that there is inertia in the system. Human activity has increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere from 280ppm to 390ppm. From ice-core analysis it is known that, prior to the industrial era, CO2 levels had not risen above 280ppm for over 300,000 years. Temperatures will not drop for centuries because it will take that long to reverse the trend and get CO2 levels falling. An analogy might be an ocean liner travelling at full speed. If power output is reduced, it will slow down but will not stop. Even if the engines are shut off completely, the ship will travel a long distance before it comes to a standstill. That is inertia.
Even if we act now, warming will still go on for several decades because of the inertia in the climate system. We might reduce the amount of CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere, but that won’t stop the levels increasing, it will merely slow the rate of increase. And we can’t do much about the quantity of CO2 that is already there.
The best we can hope for in the decades ahead is to hold average temperatures to not much above present levels, and prevent temperatures rising further. Why is that so difficult for contrarians to understand? Why are the consequences of doing nothing not blindingly obvious?
The greenhouse effect is real. It can be demonstrated in the laboratory, and arises because certain molecules, such as CO2 and methane, absorb energy when exposed to infrared light (heat) reflected from the planet’s surface.
The greenhouse effect is what makes the earth habitable. Without the greenhouse effect, the earth’s average surface temperature would be the same as the Moon, which is the same distance from the Sun. The moon’s average temperature is -15°C.
Without the greenhouse effect, Venus would be cooler than Mercury, because it is further from the Sun. In fact, it is much hotter, because of a runaway greenhouse effect.
Religious fundamentalists, redneck radio shock-jocks and other contrarian zealots only make themselves look foolish when they choose primitive ignorance over advances in scientific knowledge. Fortunately all Australian political parties (with a few renegades in the Liberal Party), agree on the need to cut emissions, although they disagree on the best method.
More info on the controversy:
Letter to The Australian by Prof. Flannery (28 March)
Thousand-year vision fuels climate fight (The Australian, 29 March)
