Still keeping busy — Dave
Changes in the oceans are happening too fast for most species to cope. It’s clear we are conducting a giant experiment on the planet and we don’t know what we are doing.
— ocean researcher Ulf Riebesell
There has been an explosion of new scientific knowledge during the 60 years I've lived on this planet, and that trend continues. One reason I write confidently about humankind's apparently bleak future is due to having a perspective rooted in science's ever-improving understanding of the natural world, and how human actions are affecting it. When people discuss the future, there's no reason to trust anyone who is unacquainted with the relevant science, or anyone who cherry picks that science to confirm their own biases. Worse yet, many people simply don't understand the science they're quoting, and use unstated, unsupported assumptions in conjunction with things they don't understand. I see this kind of behavior all the time.
That said, science is not some monolithic truth machine. Progress in understanding is often slow; mistakes are made. Away from the public eye, scientists argue strenuously with each other. There is always some degree of uncertainty in any published, peer-reviewed result. Obviously scientists share the same sort of cognitive biases which all humans have. Science is hard, even for scientists. The beauty of the "scientific method" is that the process of gaining greater understanding—critiques by others in the scientific community, pertinent new data, and all the rest—eventually arrives at something closely approximating objective truth.
But if science is hard, we must also acknowledge that time is short. It may appear that humans have many decades to figure out how their activities are altering the natural world, but it only appears that way. On any other natural (non-human) time scale you wish to define, the last century, this one, and the next one taken together constitute the blinking of an eye, basically no time at all. Since humans are always caught up in and enamored of their own short-term bullshit, they have no grasp of geological time—the Big Picture concerning life on Earth which science has worked out. Worse yet, myopia (shortsightedness) is almost certainly built right into the human animal.
So science is hard, but time is short. I will illustrate both sides of that dilemma today, starting with a result about phytoplankton which I reported on in 2010.
Conducting A Global Experiment on Planet Earth*
*... in which you learn more about phytoplankton than you ever wanted to know
On August 1, 2010 I discussed a paper called Global phytoplankton decline over the past century which had appeared in the journal Nature just before that date. In an update to that post which I wrote on September 20, I called the result "easily the most terrifying thing I've ever read concerning the human impact on the natural world." The authors Daniel G. Boyce, Marlon R. Lewis and Boris Worm, henceforth referred to as Boyce, et. al. (2010), claimed that phytoplankton populations (biomass) in the oceans had declined 40% since 1950. Terrifying, right?
At the time I had no reason to question the result, though I continued to have lingering doubts about it. It seemed to me that such a large decline over a period of 60 years should have had some pretty big, clearly noticeably effects on life on the oceans and the general health of the planet, but those effects have not been observed. So I waited for any updates that might come along—ideally, the scientific method is self-correcting.
Before reporting on the subsequent disputes about the decline, let us establish the fundamental importance of phytoplankton. Using Lisa-Ann Gershwin's simple definition, phytoplankton are microscopic, single-celled plant-like algae that drift in the ocean, e.g. diatoms, dinoflagellates and coccolithiphores.
Here is the beginning of the abstract of a letter to Nature called Climate-driven trends in contemporary ocean productivity (2006).
Contributing roughly half of the biosphere’s net primary production (NPP),
photosynthesis by oceanic phytoplankton is a vital link in the cycling
of carbon between living and inorganic stocks. Each day, more than a
hundred million tons of carbon in the form of CO2 are fixed
into organic material by these ubiquitous, microscopic plants of the
upper ocean, and each day a similar amount of organic carbon is
transferred into marine ecosystems by sinking and grazing.
And consider this from the link included in the abstract—
NPP—the net amount of solar energy converted to plant organic matter
through photosynthesis—can be measured in units of elemental carbon and
represents the primary food energy source for the world's ecosystems...
NPP is fundamental to all life on Earth, and phytoplankton in the upper ocean are responsible for roughly 50% of it. Doing the math, if the 2010 phytoplankton decline result were true, then roughly 20% of the Earth's NPP has disappeared since 1950. It hardly seems possible that such an enormous loss of NPP in such a short period of time would be without visible consequences. Yet, we observe no very-large-scale, comprehensive and detrimental changes in the biosphere (as of yet).
Now, consider these two graphs and text from NASA's Earth Observatory. Note well my emphasis in the text.
Because phytoplankton are so crucial to ocean biology and climate,
any change in their productivity could have a significant influence on
biodiversity, fisheries and the human food supply, and the pace of
global warming.
Many models of ocean chemistry and biology predict that as the
ocean surface warms in response to increasing atmospheric greenhouse
gases, phytoplankton productivity will decline. Productivity is
expected to drop because as the surface waters warm, the water column
becomes increasingly stratified; there is less vertical mixing to recycle nutrients from deep waters back to the surface.
top graph — About 70% of the ocean is permanently stratified into layers that don’t mix well. Between late 1997 and mid-2008, satellites observed that warmer-than-average temperatures (red line) led to below-average chlorophyll concentrations (blue line) in these areas. (Graph adapted from Behrenfeld et al. 2009 by Robert Simmon.)
bottom graph — As carbon dioxide concentrations (blue line) increase in the next century, oceans will become more stratified. As upwelling declines, populations of larger phytoplankton such as diatoms are predicted to decline (green line). (Graph adapted from Bopp 2005 by Robert Simmon.)
The meaning of these two graphs is summarized in the Earth Observatory text.
Over the past decade, scientists have begun looking for this trend in
satellite observations [top graph] and early studies suggest there has been a small
decrease in global phytoplankton productivity. For example, ocean
scientists documented an increase in the area of subtropical ocean
gyres—the least productive ocean areas—over the past decade. These
low-nutrient “marine deserts” appear to be expanding due to rising ocean
surface temperatures...
Continued warming due to the build up of carbon dioxide is predicted to
reduce the amounts of larger phytoplankton such as diatoms [bottom graph], compared to
smaller types, like cyanobacteria. Shifts in the relative abundance of
larger versus smaller species of phytoplankton have been observed
already in places around the world, but whether it will change overall
productivity remains uncertain.
The key word is the last word—uncertain. Continuing with the 2006 abstract cited above, we get this—
Here we describe
global ocean NPP changes detected from space over the past decade. The
period is dominated by an initial increase in NPP of 1,930 teragrams of carbon a year (Tg C yr-1), followed by a prolonged decrease averaging 190 Tg C yr-1.
These trends are driven by changes occurring in the expansive
stratified low-latitude oceans and are tightly coupled to coincident
climate variability. This link between the physical environment and
ocean biology functions through changes in upper-ocean temperature and
stratification, which influence the availability of nutrients for
phytoplankton growth. The observed reductions in ocean productivity
during the recent post-1999 warming period provide insight on how future
climate change can alter marine food webs.
The observed trend, not a happy one, "provides insight" on how changes in the ocean will alter marine food webs. Indeed, new phytoplankton results are coming in all the time. This one, called Algorithm Finds Missing Phytoplankton in Southern Ocean , seems pertinent to claims about longer term phytoplankton declines.
NASA satellites may have missed more than 50% of the phytoplankton in
the Southern Ocean, making it far more difficult to estimate the carbon
capture potential of this vast area of sea...
"This new algorithm allows us to detect changes in plankton numbers that have previously gone unnoticed," said Johnson.
"This better understanding of the phytoplankton population will, in
turn, allow us to gain a much more accurate idea of how much carbon this
ocean can take up."
The importance of phytoplankton and their role in our planetary
ecosystem cannot be underestimated. They form the base of the marine
food chain, produce half the oxygen on Earth and are partly responsible
for the ocean uptake of at least a third of total human induced CO2 emissions.
So it was important to understand why existing ocean color
satellites systematically underestimated the chlorophyll concentration
(a proxy for phytoplankton biomass) of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica.
Finding "missing" phytoplankton in the Southern Ocean might be considered Good News, but now consider this story. Ulf Riesebell is the source of the opening quotation at the top of this essay.
In the not so distant future, sunlight, the very source of life for
phytoplankton, will likely begin to kill them because of the ocean’s
increasing acidity, researchers from China and Germany have learned.
“There’s a synergistic effect between increased ocean acidity and natural light,” says Ulf Riebesell of the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany.
Riebesell added that it was also possible “phytoplankton could adapt”.
Researchers were surprised to discover that diatoms, one of the most
important and abundant types of phytoplankton, fared very badly during
shipboard experiments conducted by co-author Kunshan Gao, from the State
Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science at Xiamen University, Xiamen China.
Previous experiments in labs like Riebesell’s found that diatoms
actually did better in high-acid seawater, unlike most other shell-
forming plankton. Burning fossil fuels has made the oceans about 30
percent more acidic researchers discovered less than 10 years ago.
Oceans absorb one third of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from using
fossil fuels.
Did you catch that? — less than 10 years ago!
The good news is this has slowed the rate of global warming. The bad
news is oceans are now more acidic and it will get worse as more CO2 is
emitted. This is basic, well-understood ocean chemistry...
As expected under these conditions, certain types of plankton like
coccolithophores did not do well but surprisingly, diatom productivity
also declined...
Riebsell speculates that diatoms stressed by high-acid conditions
can’t cope with the energy they receive from sunlight at the same time.
Their study was published May 6 in Nature Climate Change.
“We don’t know at what point the combination of a certain level of
ocean acidity and sunlight leads to the decline of diatoms,” he said. This is just one of many recent studies finding negative impacts as the oceans become more and more acidic...
I will return to this report in the penultimate section of this essay.
As I said in the first section, science is hard. To truly appreciate what's happening on Earth, one needs to be comfortable with complexity and tolerate uncertainty. But complexity and uncertainty do not get human beings off the hook or change harmful trends. Regarding this global experiment humans are conducting, it's entirely clear from the results cited above that humans don't know what they're doing, literally or generally speaking. Scientists are literally trying to work that out with respect to the oceans, but that's the more trivial sense of Ulf Riesebell's observation.
Now let's take a brief look at criticisms from within the scientific community of Boyce, et.al. (2010).
Not A "Pearl Harbor" Moment
I became aware of the scientific dispute about the phytoplankton crisis when I read some posts by New York Times environmental reporter Andy Revkin, who writes the Dot Earth blog, the only remaining environmental blog published by "the newspaper of record." It's enlightening to review Revkin's take on the Boyce, et. al. (2010) phytoplankton decline finding.
The first post, written on April 26, 2011, is called On Plankton, Warming and Whiplash. The second, written on May 2, 2011, is called Researchers Defend Study Finding Plankton Decline. Let's focus on the first one, which documents the objections to Boyce, et. al. (2010).
Last summer [in 2010], a paper published in Nature, “Global phytoplankton decline over the past century,” caught the attention of climate campaigners and some media outlets because it concluded that warming of the seas over the last century was linked with a big and near-global decline in oceanic phytoplankton.
If that finding stood the test of time, it would indeed be momentous;
the vast clouds of tiny photosynthesizing organisms in the seas are an
important part of the carbon cycle and underpin the marine food chain.
There had already been some work, on short time scales, pointing to a blunting of plankton productivity in warmer periods.
Now, three “brief communications,” essentially rebuttal papers, have
been published in Nature pushing back strongly against the paper’s core
conclusion. Links to the summaries are below. I’ve queried the authors
of those papers and the original analysis and will post an update when
that discussion begins.
Climate naysayers have latched onto the rebuttals just as breathlessly as climate hawks latched onto the initial, if tentative, findings.
What’s up? Science.
I am not going to go carefully through the rebuttal arguments (I'm going to spare you). Revkin's second post reprints the response of Boyce, et. al.(2010), who defend their work. There are complex arguments regarding chlorophyll (Chl) measurements, which are a proxy used to measure phytoplankton biomass, meaning the data is in dispute. The graph below, which shows no declines in phytoplankton biomass in the North Atlantic, will have to suffice. You can find the highly technical back & forth in this pdf file from Dalhousie University.
From a rebuttal of Boyce, et. al (2010) by Abigail McQuatters-Gollop and 13 other marine scientists.
Rather, as Revkin implies in the last sentence above, my main point is that science is hard. That point does not require much further elucidation. For example, Revkin quotes this e-mail from Paul Falkowski of Rutgers University.
Dear All,
Inspection of the data reveal (not too surprisingly) large gaps is
several areas of the oceans and I seriously doubt their conclusion that
phytoplankton biomass declined by 40% over the past century.
Were that
so, we almost certainly wouldn’t be seeing the deoxygenation of large
areas of the open ocean today.
[My note: to understand this, consider hypoxic (low oxygen) or anoxic (no oxygen) zones in the oceans, especially near-shore in toxic algae blooms.]
Moreover (and I am surprised that Marlon
Lewis didn’t bring this out) the loss of chl [chlorophyll] (were it real) would
decrease the rate of warming in the upper ocean. Further, I didn’t
find the same trend in my analysis of the long term trends in
chlorophyll from the North Pacific (my paper with Cara Wilson, Nature
358, 741 – 743 (27 August 1992). Moreover Venrick et al reported a
large increase in chl in the central N. Pacific gyre starting around
1978 – the causes of this increase ([i]f true) have never been resolved (Science, 238, Oct. 2, 1987, pp. 70-72)
So, while the Boyce et al paper is certainly provocative, I would
wait another several years to see what the long-term trends in
chlorophyll are from satellite retrievals of ocean color. Here is a link to another paper with a completely opposite view.
As I said earlier, if there had been a 40% decline of phytoplankton biomass in much of the world's oceans since 1950, one would expect to see some pretty big, easily visible effects. As Falkowski points out, we see no such effects, or the wrong effects. Suffice it to say that there are enough open questions about Boyce, et. al. (2010) to cast it into considerable doubt.
However, there are some related, important points which center around Revkin's strange treatment of Boyce, et. al. (2010). Revkin didn't report on the paper when it came out. In fact, a Google search of the New York Times reveals that "the newspaper of record" didn't report on it at all in 2010, perhaps on Revkin's recommendation (or lack there of). Revkin describes and explains his own behavior in this regard.
I held off writing about the finding last year because, after I sent it
out to a batch of marine scientists for reactions, they expressed deep
reservations about several aspects of the research. I didn’t want
readers here to suffer from whiplash journalism (or science)...
How kind of Andy to be solicitous of—and, well, it must be said—just so sensitive to the possible suffering of his readers, people who might experience whiplash without his thoughtful intervention. Clearly he must protect us from Things We Could Not Possibly Evaluate Properly If It Weren't For Andy
Sarcasm aside, it is Andy's job to report this result even if he doesn't believe it, or the scientists he consulted don't believe it. He could have reported it with caveats. He writes for the New York Times for chrissakes!
Thus he is not free to pick and choose among which pieces of Really Bad News he will report on, especially when the papers in question are featured in peer-reviewed major science journals like Nature.
Apparently, then, there exists an Andy Revkin Standard of Excellence® in science journalism. Acting as the public's Protector and Gatekeeper, Andy only reports on results which meet all the requirements of this Gold Standard, which in turn sets the bar very, very high at the New York Times for informing readers about how human actions are affecting the biosphere.
To be sure, there are alleged "scientific" results I did not cover on DOTE because they did not meet my own standards, for example, the recently predicted but almost certainly bogus arctic methane release catastrophe, which came with a headline-grabbing $60 trillion price tag.
But I don't write for the New York Times, do I? And to be frank, most scientific results, even in the areas of study I'm most interested in, are simply not interesting enough to warrant special treatment. But Boyce et. al. (2010) obviously did merit special treatment, whereas a doomer prediction of a very short-term catastrophic methane release in the Arctic did not. One has to draw the line somewhere.
The phytoplankton result, even if it looks implausible in retrospect, raised public awareness (if ever so briefly) of the severe impacts humans are having on marine ecosystems. Revkin also quotes Ryan R. Rykaczewski, an author of one of the critiques of Boyce, et. al. (2010).
My thoughts on this issue are mostly consistent with those expressed by
Falkowski and Antoine below. Boyce et al. should be complimented for
their effort to address a pressing issue and for their use of a
historical data set, but the main finding of their paper is not robust.
Although the scientifically illiterate hoi polloi, also known as The General Public, are generally
uninformed, incurious, lazy, or stupid, or have some pre-existing,
unchangeable bias, or will not check back later to find out if what they "knew" in 2010 is actually true, there is still an obligation to tell them the Bad News for just the
reason Rykaczewski states.
Apparently, in Andy's Happy World, Reality must be edited (here by omission) so as not to send his readers the "wrong" message, which as it turns out is really the right message, even if the details are messy, or the science is occasionally wrong (see below). The fact that science is hard doesn't give Revkin or any other science journalist (including me) the self-granted prerogative of failing to inform the public about findings which may profoundly affect them. And the authors of Boyce, et. al. (2010) are still defending their claim, so the issue is not entirely resolved.
That said, Revkin does make an important point.
The eagerness to find the “Pearl Harbor moment” or line of evidence that jogs people to act on the long-term risk of human-driven climate change, combined with the “tyranny of the front-page thought,”
will long cause the kind of reaction that the initial plankton paper
engendered — and that past papers on frog extinctions, Atlantic Ocean
currents, ice-sheet behavior, hurricane dynamics and other facets of the
climate puzzle have done.
It’s useful to step back and take the long view on such work, if only to avoid neck pain.
This practice can also help sustain faith that the strength of
science, including climate science, lies in such struggles over new
ideas and information.
Revkin is right—Boyce et. al. (2010) was most likely another failed attempt to uncover a "Pearl Harbor" moment in environmental trends. One can easily see why people engaged in these issues, even peer-reviewed scientists, would engage in this kind of behavior—these things are born out of desperation. It is hard to watch one's efforts fall on deaf ears, as Revkin himself knows so well.
The problem of course is that there are no Pearl Harbor moments, at least not yet in 21st century. There is only an on-going, progressive decline in the Earth's ecosystems which will play out over decades to come. By the time humanity has an actual Pearl Harbor moment, you can turn out the lights because the party's over. Science becomes pretty much irrelevant at that point.
Regarding sustaining "faith [in] the strength of science," I will comment on that in the concluding section. Instead, let us look briefly at the ongoing, agonizingly slow (on human time scales) but astonishingly rapid (on the geological time scale) decline of marine ecosystems.
Time Is Short
The Seattle Times photographer Steve Ringman and reporter Craig Welch should be highly commended for their recent series of articles called Sea Change, in which they describe how "ocean acidification, the lesser-known twin of climate change, threatens
to scramble marine life on a scale almost too big to fathom."
There are three articles in the series, a general introduction called The Pacific's Perilous Turn, another on the imperiled Alaskan red king crab industry, and a third on how acidification is endangering oyster harvesting in the Pacific Northwest. Here's a graph from the second article.
Potential impact on Alaska’s red king crab industry — early projections suggest trouble ahead for red king crab fishing. Source: NOAA, Alaska Fisheries Science Center and Mark Nowlin of The Seattle Times.
In a moment you will see that the harvesting projections for Alaskan king crab are probably overly optimistic. The overview article on how acidification is altering the Nothern
Pacific Ocean contains a remarkable timeline which I will quote here.
This is really something to behold, check this out.
Changes come decades faster than expected
Less than a decade ago, scientists expected acidification wouldn’t harm marine life until late in the 21st
century. In the past five years, researchers instead have figured out
it’s happening now. Here is a timeline of what we thought we knew — and
how that changed.
Early 20th century
Scientists begin to understand how carbon moves between the atmosphere and the sea.
1999
A handful of scientists predict rising CO2 emissions may change sea chemistry enough to harm corals by late in the 21st century.
2003
Atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira predicts sea chemistry will change more rapidly over the next century than it has in tens of millions of years.
2006
Seattle oceanographer Richard Feely, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and others discover North Pacific sea chemistry has changed dramatically just since they sampled it in 1991.
Top ocean researchers release first major ocean-acidification report and brief Congress, highlighting marine changes they fear are possible by century’s end.
2007
Feely and colleagues take an ocean research trip between Canada and
Mexico and find enormous stretches of seawater already changing in ways not expected for 50 to 100 years.
Because of ocean currents, weather and geography, they figure out, West
Coast sea chemistry — unlike oceans at large — will worsen for decades
even if fossil-fuel emissions are cut.
2008
Scientists suspect sea-chemistry changes are killing oyster larvae in the Northwest, which would mean acidification is harming marine life at least a half-century sooner than expected.
Scientists predict tiny shelled pteropods, an important food for fish, birds and whales, will begin dissolving in Antarctica between 2030 and 2038.
2009
Oceanographer Jeremy Mathis finds the chemistry of water in the Gulf of Alaska changing more drastically than models projected.
2011
Mathis discovers CO2 levels in the Bering Sea are amplified
by melting sea ice. That exposes more ocean surface to fossil-fuel
emissions and lets in sunlight, which allows plankton to bloom and die,
boosting carbon dioxide even more. The pH of broad stretches of the
North Pacific is now so low several months of the year that some animals
already may struggle to grow shells.
2012
Scientists say they’re certain ocean acidification is killing Northwest oysters.
Computer models based on new data project that the acidified water that occasionally kills Northwest oysters will be common every day on half the U.S. West Coast in less than 40 years.
Scientist Nina Bednarsek finds pteropods in Antarctica already dissolving.
2013
Researchers show baby king crab die in high numbers when exposed to CO2-rich waters expected later this century. Mathis finds North Pacific sea chemistry at certain times of the year already is that bad.
— Craig Welch
Now you can easily see why the future of the Alaskan king crab industry is probably grimmer than the graph above shows. Life-destroying changes in ocean chemistry are coming at a fast and furious pace.
This litany of disasters will continue as the oceans become even more acidic over time. There may be lingering (and bogus) doubts about the so-called "hiatus" in surface warming of the Earth, but there are no doubts whatsoever about what this extremely rapid infusion of carbon into the oceans is doing to marine life.
All these alarming results are very recent. It is not surprising that when scientists knew enough to start looking for the detrimental effects of ocean acidification, they started to find them. But there is little uncertainty or bias in these very specific findings as we saw with Boyce, et .al (2010). The news is bad, and the pace of change is swift.
And then there is this, from the report on various phytoplankton studies I cited above (the one quoting Ulf Riebsell).
By 2040, most of the Arctic Ocean will be too acidic for shell-
forming species including most plankton. Significant areas of the
Antarctic Ocean will be similarly affected, oceanographer Carol Turley
from Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK previously told IPS.
The cold waters of the polar regions allow more CO2 to be absorbed
faster, turning the oceans more acidic sooner. The oceans haven’t seen a
rapid change like this in 60 million years, said Turley.
She warned that global warming is also raising water temperatures and
reducing the amount of oxygen in seawater in some regions. This is
another potentially dangerous combination.
“Our research suggests the impact of oceanic acidification upon
marine plankton could be more serious than previously thought,” said
John Beardall from the School of Biological Sciences at Monahs University in Australia.
Beardall and colleagues from several research centres calculate that
without major reductions in CO2 emissions, ocean acidity will have a
significant impact on phytoplankton before 2100. Their findings were
also recently published in Nature Climate Change.
It’s not just plankton. The large and continuing decline of oysters,
both wild and farmed, in the Pacific Northwest have now been linked to
increased ocean acidity. Scientists have shown that oyster larvae have
difficulty building shells in corrosive waters, according to a study in
the Journal of Limnology and Oceanography published last month.
“For the oceans, the Pacific Oyster larvae are the canaries in the
coal mines for ocean acidification,” said Richard Feely, a co-author of
the study and senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration...
Not only are the oceans big, covering 70 percent of the planet, they are complex. Recent work by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at San Diego reveals there is huge variability in ocean acidity levels. That makes “global predictions of the impacts of ocean acidification a
big challenge,” said Jennifer Smith, a marine biologist with Scripps.
The only prediction Riebesell is willing to make is about the high
likelihood of a major decline in the ocean’s biodiversity (number and
types of living things) if rates of fossil fuel emissions continue.
Roughly 80 percent of all life is found in the oceans.
Given these kind of results and projections, you've got ask yourself how much it really matters that the phytoplankton decline finding discussed above is most likely wrong, just another failed attempt to find a "Pearl Harbor" moment regarding human impacts on the environment. You can see now that it doesn't matter at all. Marine ecosystems are dying by degrees, a little at a time, bit by bit, continuously, inch by inch, little by little, piece by piece. That's the Really Bad News.
The Status Of Science In 21st Century
Generally speaking, humans fiercely resist fully acknowledging Bad News, especially when that news reflects badly on humans. All stories about environmental degradation fall under this general rule of thumb. Scientists are only human, so they too may resist looking honestly and openly at Bad News, although they are far less likely to retreat into denial than "normal" people are.
Science and its handmaiden technology created the prosperous, convenient lifestyles which billions of humans now enjoy. (Of course many other people have been left behind.) Yet, when science turns its attention to the unsavory aspects of human life on Earth, science itself gets attacked by those who can not tolerate this heavy blow to their self-image.
Thus science per se is not under attack in the 21st century. Nobody has a problem with science and technology when Elon Musk builds expensive electric cars running on lithium-ion batteries, or promises to whisk people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes. Science is only attacked when the news, whether it's evolutionary ffact and theory or the effects of ocean acidification, is perceived by large numbers of humans as violating the Human Conceit, which itself arises out of anthropocentrism.
In this context, we can evaluate Andy Revkin's statement "this practice [of withholding Bad News which may be untrue] can also help sustain faith that the strength of
science, including climate science, lies in such struggles over new
ideas and information." This is utter bullshit.
First, the phrase "faith in the strength of science" is a contradiction in terms. Despite the fact that science is carried out by deeply flawed and irrational humans, the scientific method seeks to uncover and usually achieves rational outcomes over time. Faith is not required, nor do scientists ask for it. Scientists are merely telling people the way it is or appears to be. In other words, science works, most everybody knows this at some level, and thus we enjoy the conveniences which theoretical and applied science (technology) provide.
You should now be able to see just how ridiculous it is to ask the General Public whether they "believe" that climate change is really happening and whether warming is human-caused. And yet, as if scientific results can be voted up or down like gay marriage resolutions or property tax referendums, Pew Research and other polling organizations continue to consult the public as though it matters what the The People believe.
More importantly, "struggles over new ideas and information" only become struggles when the news science delivers deals a near-fatal blow to what humans are doing and how they think of themselves. "New ideas and information" are rejected only in these cases. As usual, the truth here is psychological and buried in the human unconscious, which is an aspect of Reality Revkin has no access to, and, more crucially, doesn't even vaguely suspect exists. (In my terms, Revkin lives in Flatland, just like most everybody else.)
Scientists working in environmental disciplines are becoming more and more frustrated as they see their important work fall on deaf ears. Thus we see some scientists "cross the line" from academic science to outspoken activism, for example, Jim Hansen or Jeremy Jackson, Unfortunately, in so far as there is no generalized "struggle" over new ideas and
information when the news is bad, such science will continue to be
marginalized as the Earth's biosphere degrades to a point well beyond
redemption.
If humans are generally incapable of acknowledging the Bad News environmental science is giving them, then clearly it's game over for the biosphere. That's the position I've arrived at in the last three years or so. As I've said before, this view makes me a Determinist, meaning that bad future outcomes are written in stone and can not be changed by the actions of the relatively few humans who understand how dire the situation is, many of whom are researchers working in the Earth sciences.
However, for the relatively few humans who want to live a conscious life on this planet to the extent to which that is possible, meaning the people who want to know what the situation is, Bad News or not, looking at the science is an indispensable part of understanding and coming to terms with Reality.
And it is for that reason alone that reporting the Bad News to those people willing to hear it is worthwhile, even if science is hard and time is short.
Dave Cohen
Decline Of The Empire
September 25, 2013