1GWBlog – Prologue

June, 2020

Here s a journey to wrestle with the angels. My series of blogs on global warming and climate change. My intent is to explore and educate. Me, and others as they wish. I am not here to convince anyone about any thing.

Where to begin? I have posted the final results first, as Blogs 135AGW and 135BGW. Now we go back and dig up some supporting details.

The climate of our earth has a long thread, beginning billions of years ago, and extending into a future we cannot imagine accurately. I intend to cover this whole spectrum, bit by bit.

I am choosing to begin where we are now, for three reasons:

·       The past is gone; most of us would not want to live in those times. Our future is not here yet and has some uncertainties. The best chance we have for recognizing truth and acting / or not acting on it, is right NOW.

·        My upcoming winter course at UBC, from the Earth and Oceans Science Department is going to cover geological history in some detail, as well as looking into the future. So, I will be better equipped to deal with our geological past later in this effort.

·        I am presently (well?) equipped to deal with NOW, plus / minus.

Michael Dowling was the first one to show up for this blog. Many years ago, I went to a Christmas Eve service at a Catholic Church with Michael. I quite liked the priest. I vividly remember the priest saying that he was humbled to be standing in front of the people who were there. Because he was well aware that some / many of those present came to church only once, or maybe twice, each year. He understood that those people, especially, expected profound and meaningful words from him at that time. They had come for the magic of Christmas.

Likewise, I am mindfully humbled to be talking to some of my friends and acquaintances about global warming and climate change.

I have no hidden agenda. I believe that global warming has been happening for many years now and it is likely that higher temperatures (are changing) will change our broader climate. But I don’t care if any of you believe this, less or more. That’s entirely up to you. I am here to present what I have come to know in a concise way, in the context of a broad range of information. I will present a mix of facts, scientific principles, scientific speculation and my opinions. And I will be mindful of identifying information by these categories. I will provide some references, so you can look at the same sources as me, if you wish.

For me, the best part of my recent UBC Geography Climate Change and Society course was the consideration of the role of society, the beliefs that people have and the actions they might take. There is a broad spectrum of folks out there.

My recent course had about 70 people 20 to 25 years of age, and me, the outlier. I reckon they wondered about me at first, but they eventually acknowledged, on the last day of classes, the value to them of my years of life-experience and an engineer’s perspective. At the beginning of class, the professor did a survey:

·        30% were fully convinced that climate change is real.

·        50% were not entirely sure.

·        20% skeptical,

·        0% deniers.

The survey was repeated on the last day of class. 85% were then fully convinced of the reality of climate change and 15% not entirely sure.

I am telling you this so you might realize that many younger people readily believe that climate change is real. Even with little information. It’s a no-brainer to them. And they want action. They are driving our politicians. They are nipping at the heels of us old farts. Bring em on, we need their freshness.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have people who do not accept the temperature measurements as real. When you are anchored in such a place, it’s gotta be tough to be open to any facts, even harder to be objective.

I am a seeker and believe the truth lies between these two poles. That’s where I have been wandering and wrestling, looking for truth (my truth at least). In that, I have tried to set my preconceived notions aside. More fundamentally, I try to check my ego at the door. And be open and rational. To look at all of the evidence, while not limiting my focus to just what my tribe is saying. It’s a very big multi-facetted picture, which you can’t begin to see completely until you set your biases aside.

I am a chemical engineer. So, I am predisposed to focusing on the chemistry; I have to fight that so I can see other parts objectively. The professor in my last course has a physics background. Geologists know a lot about the earth’s distant past; they will be inclined to fix on that, assuming tomorrow is just going to be more of yesterday. Financially oriented people tend to focus on the costs of remedial actions, assuming that we can’t afford that. Sometimes, what we know limits our ability to engage what we do not know; our expertise confines us.

Climate change has become part of business decisions and actions. The science-based activities now cover a broad spectrum, including the social sciences and political science. Insurance companies are increasing premiums and denying some people insurance of any kind. Businesses are getting on the “net-zero” (more on this later) bandwagon; for a small fee you can discharge any guilt as you pump your gasoline. They will buy some new trees on your behalf. Investors are pushing mutual fund managers to be more ethical. The ground we have stood on for so long is slowly shifting towards a different reality. Why is this all happening?

Meanwhile, searching for the truth actually bothers some people. Partly because the truth, once found, may have implications for actions which they do not welcome / do not agree with.

A comment in a NASA publication:

“As the earth moved out of the ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming.”

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page3.php#:~:text=As%20the%20Earth%20moved%20out,ice%2Dage%2Drecovery%20warming.

Now, why is that? In the distant past, very few people were about; Mother Nature was on her own. These days, we are crowding Mother Nature, poking her and shoving her. Is she getting angry?

I have seen the intellectual / emotional chaos that open forums generate. Not going there. I will work at providing good, objective, rational answers to questions.

Blackie Manana

The End of this Blog