Too Many Apprentices

We have reached that unusual, happy state in science in which almost all knowledgeable people agree on something: climate change is happening because of human activities. The fact of climate change has been suspected for at least a half century, but it is only in the last two decades that most people familiar with the evidence came to accept it as a fact. For example, I didn't think much about climate change until the Nuclear Winter scenario was published (TTAPS, "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions," Science, V222, #4630, pp. 1283 ff  Dec. 1983). In turn, that report was suggested to its authors by the 1970s researches of Walter Alvarado & son on the extinction of dinosaurs by an asteroidal impact near the Yucatan peninsula. For me, the notion that climate change could occur came about as a result of those papers and the subsequent controversies; i.e., I first accepted the "because" clause in the first sentence, not the fact of climate change. I wasn't convinced that climate change was actually happening until sometime in the 1990s, when the accumulation of data pointed that way.

For the last decade, I have taken humanly caused climate change as a fact, but I have been uncertain about its further consequences. Would California turn into a desert? Would Russia be empowered by a northward extension of the temperate zone? What about the increased atmospheric water vapor due to higher temperatures? How would our food crops respond to these changing conditions, and what about forests and other plants? I worried that, once the planetary climate system is thrown out of whack, anything could happen. Filled with those questions and a sense of impending doom, I was impelled to learn what I could about chaotic systems and evolutionary adaptation. I wanted to understand what was happening, and how living things might survive adverse conditions. Unfortunately, everything I learned made the problem more acute. Ecological systems take centuries or millennia to adapt to changes in the geological environment. While living things do re-colonize regions blasted clean by volcanic explosions, full recovery does not happen quickly even if initial exploration and settlement starts a few years after devastation. Further, once chaotic change comes about, the eventual stable configuration is unpredictable; e.g., a once forested region could turn into a prairie or a desert. Because the climate system is chaotic, we cannot know what will be the eventual status quo, but we do know it will be many human generations before things settle down.

Reactions

I am a practical person. I have a lifelong belief in the application of reason, even if use of that term is very difficult to support in Philosophy. Having been a practitioner of science, I am especially concerned that humanly made hypotheses generate predictions that turn into verified experimental results. I really dislike run-away or unrepeatable experiments. I prefer order in my intellectual life, although I am willing to experience, even bring about, temporary disorder in order to discover "greater truths." This admittedly emotional preference drives me to oppose social and environmental changes which are predictably uncontrollable. That feeling is the basis for my strong preference for a planned, socialist society as opposed to unregulated capitalism. I am for change that works, not just any old change. Of course, where that sort of thinking (or feeling) leads is to fear and abhorrence of chaotic climate change. Since it is us - the human race - that is bringing about climate change while having little knowledge of the consequences, my knee-jerk reaction is simply: "Enough! Stop!" We should not be doing things that have unknown consequences, especially when those consequences have a high probability of being catastrophic. It is enough that natural disasters happen irregularly and without warning; we do not have add to them.

So it seems to me that a reasonable person would not want to bring about climate change, given our present circumstances and knowledge. Nonetheless, it is happening and human beings are doing very little to prevent it. It is possible that we have already passed the tipping point - a singularity or metastable point in the evolution of chaotic systems - which would make whatever we do irrelevant. I hope that is not so; I hope we have enough time to change our behavior so as to accommodate our Earthly environment. This brings me to what a reasonable person should recommend and do.

It should be obvious that population and resource use are interconnected. More people require more food, housing, clothing, etc. More of humanity increases the need for more of everything. That is not a problem until the planet is denuded by rapacious creatures. If clean water runs down the mountain, people drink it. All of the animals and plants drink it, too. As long as all of the biota (that includes us) drink less of the water than what is regularly supplied, things will seem to go along swimmingly. Nonetheless, a difficulty arises for those downstream, if upstream users pollute the water or do not return what they use to the stream. There is not, after all, an infinite supply of water. Thus, upstream users place constraints on downstream ecology, even in natural systems unaffected by human beings. We cannot understand riparian ecology in valleys without considering the surrounding hills and mountains. Thus, for example, in California it is impossible to separate conditions in the Sierras from the abundance of agricultural products available in our stores. Moreover, downstream effects do not stop in the valleys, because water flows to the seas and oceans. Thus we have the recent reduction or disappearance of salmon runs in Northern California rivers such as the Klamath and Sacramento. Again, everything is interconnected.

Observation of ecological change, together with evidence of human intervention bringing it about, leads to these questions:

The second question - sustainability - is usually controversial, partly because the term is hard to define. If, for example, we perturb a system which returns to its previous state when intervention ends, the perturbation did not affect system stability. When the system overcomes perturbations, or returns to the unperturbed stable state, it is sustainable. If the system becomes metastable when perturbed, it might end up in a different stable state as a result of intervention. If, as in enzymatic catalysis, the original stable state of the system is regenerated, that system is sustainable. If, however, the perturbed system cannot be regenerated, or the system becomes continuously unstable, the system is unsustainable. Seemingly stable systems may be unsustainable, if they are just an accident waiting to happen; e.g., houses built on ocean beaches or near the edge of cliffs.

For human purposes, we need to ask whether a proposed use will result in permanent, unalterable changes. When we cannot calculate results, an immediate caution is generated: go slow sand check everything. When we push things beyond our knowledge, nature takes over. For example, until an acceptable theory of airflow around wings was discovered in the 1920s, most attempts to develop air travel failed because of the high accident rate. At first, the U.S. Air Mail service depended on dare devil pilots who often lost their lives. Air mail did not take hold until the mid-1930s, when trained pilots and dependable air transport (e.g., the DC3) came into service. (That episode in mail delivery was a repeat of the failed Pony Express experiment.) In the end, it will not matter if temporary advantage is gained without regard for longer term effects: nature defeats and eliminates things which do not fit into natural conditions.

Consequences

Nature is already fighting back against unsustainable human uses of resources. Global climate change is a positive response to excessive carbon burning, in this case by making more of a "good thing;" viz., warmer temperatures. We are being encouraged to do more of the same, because it is comfortable for us, although it will seal our fate; specifically, fewer or none of us. Global warming will undercut human agriculture where it is most sensitive, in the supply of grains (corn, rice, wheat, etc). A reduced supply of grains not only causes malnutrition and famine among humans, but limits the supply of food for domestic animals and recyclable plant material for fuel.

Soy beans and most other living things have a homeostatic set point of optimum operation. Increasing the temperature or concentration of CO₂, does not necessarily increase the production of edible plant products. Under global warming conditions, soy bean production actually decreases because the plant increases its vegetation (leaves, stems, roots, etc.) at the expense of seed (bean) production.

Oddly enough, global warming could cause an Ice Age on the European landmass, if the Atlantic thermohaline flow, of which the Gulf Stream is part, is disrupted. Hundreds of millions of city dwellers all over the world, in places like New York and Los Angeles, will be forced out by rising ocean levels due to melting Arctic ice. Melting the Greenland ice cap could raise oceans by about 5 meters (~16 feet). Melting West Antarctica would add around 10 meters of water to the ocean. Those ice sheets are already melting at unprecedented rates, even higher than predicted by global circulation models. It appears even our most radical, alarmist scientists are "behind the curve" when compared to nature on the move.

I must reiterate a key point. Once those processes get started, no one knows how to stop them. No one knows how to put the ice back in  Greenland, much less Antarctica, or how to restart, much less create, a Gulf Stream. Now we are just as overwhelmed by the large-scale forces of nature as we always were. There is no obvious way to control those forces, just as we are unable to do much about mud slides in Malibu or Chengdu. Rich and poor alike must give way, accepting our role within the boundaries nature sets. That is the lesson Sorcerer's Apprentices are forced to learn on pain of death.

Self-Control

All that said, what is a reasonable person to do? What are our options?

I have to hope we have enough time to reduce our population to supportable levels. It is clear human beings have already exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet. Had we not done so, there would be no global climate change. The specter of famine is among us again, the first time in  many years. That shows what even a slight imbalance in the global climate regime can do, and how close to disaster we really are. We are standing on the edge of a cliff, watching the ground fracture and crumble around us. Our only chance for life is to run as fast as we can to safer ground. This means pulling out all the stops in a global effort to reduce and stop excessive human reproduction. I have expressed my support for the One Child Policy many times. I repeat it here. In each country and culture, we need to make clear the urgency of the situation and use appropriate means to get the required results. (No more Mr. Nice Guy!) This should be a U.N. priority.

There are straightforward arguments about equity and consequences which justify strident measures in this case. Every excess person is stealing the means of life from everyone else. It cannot be otherwise when there is not enough to go around. The alternative to taking regulatory action is to let nature take its course. In the absence of effective measures, the predictable end result will be that the rich and powerful will overcome and kill everyone else. That is always what happens in a dog-eat-dog world. I am reminded that Chairman Mao justified nuclear war as a Chinese strategy on account of numbers: since there are more Chinese than any other people, a Chinese would be the last man standing, so China would always win the competition. Mao's reasoning assumes the ultimate war would be waged by attrition, which is exactly what will happen due to global climate change, with or without nuclear weapons. Of course, the underlying premise of preventing natural depopulation is that the human race is worth saving. (This premise is curiously self-justifying, since it is a human decision to save the species that makes it so.)

Population reduction will take several generations to accomplish. Because population growth and decay is an exponential process, it is urgent to start doing something about it today. That is, delaying population reduction increases the population pressure by greater and greater factors, because reproduction is a chain-reaction process. As in nuclear reactors, careful control of reaction conditions is required to prevent a deadly explosion. This sort of thinking is what is required in managing human population.

Ergecology

 But, what of the human population between now and then? How are we to manage human needs that exceed planetary capacity? Again, we will have to hope that there is some restorable surplus we can use in the interim. If not, horrible things will happen.

The United States and China are the two largest contributors to global warming. India is likely to become another gross polluter during the next few decades. The Europeans and the Japanese have made the most progress toward sustainable societies, but they are not exempt from excessive resource use. Several European countries are actually undergoing population reduction, but they still use more than their fair share of global resources. The Japanese have a severe overpopulation problem, in addition to being totally dependent on imported oil, iron ore and other resources. Even famed Japanese self-sufficiency in food production is being lost as the seas are depleted of fish and farm land is taken for urban development. The United States might have negative population growth, were it not for continuing immigration. Africa, too, would have fewer people because of the AIDS epidemic and many other catastrophes, except for its exceedingly high birth rate. The South American population continues to grow rapidly, albeit at lower rates than a generation ago. So, for whatever reason, population does not have to keep going up, implying the global population problem can be solved. It is important to note that, apart from Africa, population reduction  is most easily implemented among the educated and wealthy. If so, socio-economic programs that increase wealth and education should be strongly encouraged and implemented, as is already happening in China and India. The trick in such programs is to adjust the increase in personal wealth (per capita resource use) so that integrated social consumption does not increase. This sort of program redistributes equity by giving to the compliant what was taken from the unborn.

The most immediate problems of pollution and resource use occur in China and the United States, because those two powers make more pollution and use more resources than anyone else. The two nations are, however, quite different with respect to what needs to be done.

The Chinese need to be convinced of the virtues of environmentalism. Shutting down China for a few weeks in order to make Beijing's air less lethal during the Olympics is commendable, but does not solve China's environmental problems. The Chinese need to slow down their economic growth in favor of cleaning up the rivers and coal burning plants. China needs to impose fair but strict environmental laws, and enforce them. This is not just a Chinese problem, because Chinese pollution has already reached across the Pacific into California, where it is increasing coastal urban smog and damaging Sierra forests.

In the same way, pollution from the United States has blown into Canada and Scandinavia, ruining lakes and fisheries as well as trees. While the United States is far ahead of China in its environmental laws, enforcement has often been lax and corrupt. While most Americans claim to be environmentalists, enthusiasm wanes when the cost comes out of one's wallet or jobs are lost. Such fair weather environmentalists must be transformed into serious devotees, because Americans need to reduce their overall consumption by quite a bit. The sacred golden cow of American Capitalism, ever increasing consumption, must be abandoned in favor of a more ascetic gods. While Americans need not become monks and nuns, they must make major changes in their lifestyles. SUVs and urban sprawl need to be replaced by public transport and townhouses. It is small, centralized cities that make efficiency possible, as in Europe. In this light, the current sub-prime loan crisis and skyrocketing oil prices actually present opportunities for major changes of national policy designed to correct our environmental transgressions.

Responsibility

I think the problems are soluble, providing most people start thinking for themselves. People have to free themselves from the advertising and social pressures which induce and reinforce conforming behavior. Zombies definitely will not solve the enormous problems before us.

In the famous myth, the sorcerer's apprentice lusts for the Master's powers, but has not yet learned the discipline of self-denial. One of the most important things to know is when to do something, and when not.

Posted 05/26/2008 04:09:32 PM                Last update: 05/26/2008

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