Climate Change is…Real

Back in August, Ed and I went to see the first ever live performance of “The Truth Has Changed” by Josh Fox at Cornell. It was an astounding performance. So rarely have I ever been so rapt with attention and struck by someone’s brilliant skill at communicating deeply complex material in an utterly fascinating way1. The place Mr. Fox started his show was with the simple question, once asked of him by one of his audience members; “how do we know what we know?” He really rolls this around in his mouth like a fine wine. “How do we know what we know. He invites you to really contemplate it.

This is a really really important question in an era of fake news and non-overlapping lifestyle “bubbles.” This is also where I want to start this week of the “Climate Change is…” series. Climate Change: Do we think it is real? As in a thing that is actually happening? How do we know? Why do I feel so comfortable saying “I know it is real,” and moving on. And how does anyone who is not actually a climate scientist feel comfortable asserting this?

Personally, I fall back on two lines of evidence: (1) expert knowledge (of others), and (2) witnessable events (in our own lives and in the news).

Expert Knowledge

If my readers were a random sample of the American public, half of you would already know that 97% of scientists agree Climate Change is real and caused by human activities. The other half of you would be under the widespread misconception that there is an ongoing debate among scientists about whether or not Climate Change is real and human induced.

The first half of you would be right. There is no debate about whether Climate Change is real. Not “no,” as in “essentiallyno,” or, “for all intents and purposes no.” I mean nothing any scientist would call a scientific debate exists about whether or not Climate Change is a real, man-made, phenomenon whose effects we are experiencing. This doesn’t mean you can’t find a person who is a scientist who will argue with you about it, but only that you will not find an informed, credible scientist (one who is actually an expert in a field that can speak directly to this issue), without serious conflicts of interestwho will argue with you about these points. It is as black and white as any scientific consensus gets. 2

Now, while I am a scientist, I am not a climate scientist, or a chemist, or a physicist. I have never taken a class in geology, nor even earth science in high school. So given that climate science is not my area of expertise, I do not purport to speak about climate change as an expert from that field. However, as a scientist, I can vouch for the functionality and credibility of science itself (and the lack thereof, sometimes). I am versed in the scientific process, and understand the logic of how it works, and when it can break down. I am happy to talk at length with anybody reading this who is not a scientist, but is curious to understand better how this works. Most people don’t care and that is okay. But my background makes me very comfortable accepting a consensus reached by a bunch of scientists from another field. And you should be able to feel comfortable about that too. If you feel like you are not really sure if or when you can trust the things scientists say, keep reading to the end of this section. Otherwise, feel free to skip down to “Witnessable Events,” no need for me to belabor it for you…

When you can trust the “experts:”

The three key features I look for to indicate information is reliable in a field that is not my own are the following: (1) no serious conflicts of interest exist in the people generating the results (like, don’t believe everything scientists working for the tobacco industry say about tobacco); (2) the peer review process is in place. This generally means that the results of the research in question are published in a respectable scientific journal, one that generates multiple (usually 2 or 3) individual reviews by other experts in the field. This ensures that basic scientific standards of objectivity were met. Then with these two things in place, (3) a reasonable level ofconsensus among such experts and their results. The jury has done due diligence in good faith, and come to its decision.

Why you can trust the experts:

The, shall I say legitimate?, scientists we hear from, unlike businessmen/women and politicians, have a system for policing themselves built into the very structure of the way they obtain their funding and share their results. Scientists prioritize policing themselves. That is why the first two elements I mention above—careful monitoring of potential conflicts of interest, and independent review by other relevant experts—are built into the vast majority of the work done by science funded through the various federal research organizations (like the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administation (NOAA), etc.). Most of the research on Climate Change has been done and published in reputable journals that require disclosure of conflicts of interest and ensure rigorous peer review.

Thus, the consensus that has arisen from the science done in these thousands of labs (!), by thousands of people (!), from as-many perspectives, indicates these people are all onto developing a detailed understanding of a real thing that is actually happening. That thing is Climate Change, and those scientists know lots and lot about it. More than any of us wants, or needs, to know.

All this is to say: don’t feel like you have to be able to teach it to believe it. Also, don’t feel like you need to get into the weeds with any denier about Climate Change. You don’t have to prove or know the science yourself. That is not your job. It can be helpful if you are into it and that is where you want to spend your time. However, this is not required to participate in solutions. Instead you can just say, “I trust the results of the 1000s of studies and the scientific consensus scientists have reached.” You might want to back that up with something like, “I trust the logic and process of science on the whole to be our best guess at what is true.”

And then point them to some of those experts to check it out for themselves, such as these:

NASA’s: Climate Change, How do we know?

NASA’s: Climate Kids, How do we know the Climate is Changing?

9 Ways we know humans triggered Climate Change

6 irrefutable pieces of evidence that prove climate change is real

AAAS: What we know

If any one has other favorite sources, let me know and I can add them.

Witnessable Events

I wanted to add this part just to recognize a lot of us, myself included, believe Climate Change is real because we witness the evidence of it directly, and/or indirectly, on the news or through friends elsewhere. Every year there is a new series of crazy weather experiences and extreme weather events to supplant the record-breaking ones from last year. It is true that there have always been weather extremes, and records will alway be broken given enough time, but I think even people with no scientific background, with different political leanings, and from any place around the country or even the world can agree, the weather has been observably “wonky.” We sense that extreme weather events seem both more common and more extreme, and the people who study and track this sort of thing can confirm that this sense is true.

I’m feel like every day I am watching how Climate Change is influencing the weather in my little corner of the world. And I have been watching for at least ten years. My observations are consistent with the science: a lot of the changes are subtle, and a little non-intuitive. The changes are not absolute, they are “on-average.” I don’t experience that the temps just a little bit warmer, all the time. That’s what Climate Change averages out to across the planet. What I experience instead are things like no two summers are alike. Makes no two growing seasons alike. Those August thunderstorms I remember as a child that would interrupt the summer heat, now seem scattered all over the year. I heard thunder in the middle of the afternoon going to pick the kids up from school the other day. Thunder in central NY in January is weird. I do remember thunder in winter growing up. Once. It was rare enough to make an impression on me.

Complete seasons seem to become overtaken by some weather pattern of either consistently hot and dry weather, or cold and wet weather, but no two years or seasons are quite the same. Whatever sense I have of what is “normal” is constantly challenged and undermined. We do still get snow, sometimes lots of it. But less of it overall. Later in the season. I’ve finally adjusted to not expecting winter to settle in until mid-January instead of mid-to late December. The swings in temperatures are wild. Unseasonable temperatures, both too hot or too cold, appear annually it seems.

I really feel it in the downpours. When it rains, it really rains. The big drenching drops that would really excite me in childhood, forcing us to slow down the car or pull over while driving. What was a rare summer event seems to have become the norm over most of the year now.

I want to acknowledge these stories don’t prove Climate Change is real. They are just the other pieces of why I believe it is true. Seeing is believing. In this case, witnessing is knowing. It is personal that way. It is personal for all of us who are perceiving this.

Here’s a movie recommendation along these lines: For one of the very best, most gorgeous and visceral, visualizations of Climate Change in action, there is really nothing like Chasing Ice. This documentary, and the book by National Geographic photographer James Balog, showcases the results of Balog’s “Extreme Ice Survey.” It is hard for a documentary about Climate Change to have a climax, but without ruining it I will say this one does. And honestly, thinking about it now makes me tear up a little remembering the power and meaning of it, it is so amazing and disturbing.

Last Minute Reason # 3…Because it Just Makes Sense

Thinking about it just a little bit more, I guess I feel like there is actually a third reason I believe Climate Change is real, and I think I would call it logic. Is that fair? Like, cause = effect. Like, how could there not be Climate Change? Did we really think we could just completely resurface significant proportions of the planet and not risk messing up something? Do we really believe we can endlessly burn stuff and the atmosphere will just absorb it?

I too have the understanding that the world is a very big, vast place. But not that long ago, in a span of time I can imagine from my own years of life, the wide and vast world was relatively wild and covered with vegetation. Like the little birds in last week’s post, we were small things in big landscapes. Now, almost everywhere any of us go, human beings dominate the landscape. All judgements aside, there are so many of us digging and burning and tilling and manufacturing…our default mode seems to be to take stuff out of or off of the ground and burn it until it disappears into the air. Tree and forests? Gone. Prairies? Gone. Coal bed after coal bed? Gone. Gallons and gallons of oil? Gone. Remember every burned substance I just listed is at some level the bodies or remains of individual organism! Carbon sequestered from the air! How could this not accumulate into some sort of net impact? We have just misunderstood the balance of the size of our impact on the actual size of our planet. Either the world has gotten smaller than we thought it was, or our influence has grown, but either way the planet is finite and of course we’re changing it. Of course Climate Change is real.

Knowing Why we Know is Important

Going back to where I started all this, I think the main point of Josh Fox’s show was this: We now find ourselves in an era of instant, long-distance, customized, self-serve communication. The internet especially gives us great and immediate access to such amazing information, and such thoughtful digestions of it. I love love love the good content you can find in journalism, blogs, podcasts, and shows and movies. But the internet and this new world of communication has a dark side too. It gives people with power—people who might also want something from you that may or may not be in your best interest—two things: information about you, and access to you. There are definitely wolves out there in sheep’s clothing. As we go through our lives and try to map what is real in order to best navigate our journeys, we really have to be in touch with how we know what we know. In this case, I believe the men and women and studies and processes and institutions that are set up to gather information objectively. And aided by their guidance, I believe my own eyes.

Footnote 1. I’ve linked to the show’s International Wow page, and his Wikipedia page, respectively, but neither tells you much. Last I knew he was touring this show to “get out the vote” for Nov 2018, and it was being recorded for an HBO movie, and he was open to invitations to perform his show. Don’t know where it stands now. Ranks as a 5 star recommendation from me. If someone knows, let me know. ↩︎

Footnote 2. As for the details of what exactly is transpiring, and what this means for the future, there’s lots of discussion and debates about those sorts of things. ↩︎