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Dienstag, 24. November 2020

Taboos and infantile illusions about our environment

(first published in abridged form on Ugo Bardi's Blog "Cassadra's Legacy" on 23.10.2020 and in German on Journal21.ch on 20.11.2020, updated 11.5.2021)

Prof. John Schellnhuber, advisor to the German Chancellor and the Pope and the inventor of the two-degree target, showed us his Potsdam Climate Institute three years ago. At the end, in his office, which had been used by Einstein, his summing up was that he could not see how humanity could still escape from the climate trap.

Schellnhuber is frequently in the media, but never had one heard such an alarming statement from him - reason to investigate how serious the situation could be.

I am not a climate specialist, but as a physician you only ever master certain areas and inevitably you have to listen to various other specialists and work with them. One is also used to dealing with uncertainties, e.g. if an operation is considered, the chances of success are estimated based on the age, nutritional and physical condition of the patient, previous illnesses and his morale. Every risk factor reduces the chances of success. That you cannot calculate anything precisely does not release you from making an estimate.

In the climate debate, it is often said how difficult it is because you don't know anything exactly. But here, too, the uncertainty does not release one from making estimates. In this we are hindered by all sorts of taboos and illusions, but I'll tell you what I found out: 


I grew up in Basel and there in the museum hangs the dead Christ, painted by Holbein 500 years ago. The picture made a deep impression on me as a young person and I had it above my desk for years. This mercilessly realistic view of our God, his passion and the end of us all. I was and am convinced that we have to measure our actions against the moment when we ourselves are in this state. Until then, it is important to do what we do as well as possible and not lose any time. And already we are with the first taboo, death. Because it is repressed in the prevailing consciousness, much that is connected with it cannot be seen. 

Some principles of medicine ...

I then studied medicine in Zurich, and there one could learn some principles:

Illnesses often begin in secret: the first symptoms of illness are often not the beginning of the disease, but its last act. For a drinker or a smoker to ruin their liver or lungs takes many decades; this goes unnoticed because the organs can compensate. If jaundice or shortness of breath then occur, the further evolution will not have to be measured in decades but rather in years.

Disease-causing factors can more than add up: According to a large epidemiological study,  depression occurs in approximately one percent of the total population per month. If there is a severe stress factor (death of a family member, unemployment, illness, etc.), there is two percent more, i.e. three percent depression, with two stress factors three percent more. With three stress factors at the same time, 24 percent will become depressed. Suddenly the risks multiply (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9824167/).

We often have to make forecasts over years and decades for patients and insurance companies. This is possible as long as diseases remain true to themselves: If a patient with multiple sclerosis is only slightly disabled after ten years, he will probably not be in a wheelchair after another ten years.

Direction-changing aggravations can occur in disease: This becomes clear if e.g. in the case of high blood pressure or high pressure in the eye (glaucoma) one measures new peak values in rapid succession: This means that the disease enters a progressive stage and, under certain circumstances, evades control.

Self-reinforcing mechanisms can lead to hyperacute aggravation. The most dreaded example of this is the narrowing of the aortic valve, the valve of the main artery. The heart initially generates more force and pushes enough blood through the valve, and the patients can even practice athletics. This goes on until the valve is so tight that the heart can no longer get enough blood for its own energy requirements, which leads to heart failure and death within seconds. We doctors are terrified of such self-reinforcing mechanisms because they are unpredictable and uncontrollable.

There are authorities in our profession. These are doctors who have repeatedly made diagnoses that everyone else has missed. Word gets around, such colleagues have a fabulous reputation, and you believe them with advantage, even if you can't quite follow their reasoning.  

Cheating does not count.
When the patient dies, you are dealt with by the the pathologist or the coroner. They are merciless.


... Applied to the environmental situation

In 1972 we were shocked by the first Report of the Club of Rome. What was known back then was fed into a large computer. It turned out that if we don't stop economic growth and stabilize the population at four billion, ecosystems will destabilize in the middle of the 21st century. The report already mentions the greenhouse effect with the hope that a solution can still be found. The model calculations said that the limiting factor was not scarcity of resources or land, but environmental pollution. All those, e.g. editor Dr. Eisenring from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung who claim that the Club of Rome predicted a resource shortage and is therefore not credible (https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/ewiges-wachsen-ist-kein-hirngespinst-ld.1564968), everyone who claims this is lying or has not read the report. Later, the Club of Rome corrected with drooping and choking that the earth might just be able to accommodate eight billion, but explicitly said that the consequences of human aggressiveness could not be modeled.

In 1988 James Hansen alerted us for the first time to the fact that the greenhouse effect shows itself in a detectable global warming. He predicted further warming with a still primitive model, but quite accurately to this day. This man is therefore an authority. If he questions the official forecasts and measures, this must be cause for greatest concern.

Illusions about Global Warming

The Paris Treaties of 2015 intended to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 to 2 degrees compared to the pre-industrial value. Swiss and German even in 2021 still talk about this goal and how to achieve it. And so we are already in the middle of the illusions:

First illusion:
Already at the signing of the Paris agreements it was clear that the 1.5 degree target was unattainable. James Hansen - my authority - speaks of a fake deal. If all agreements were kept, the temperature would rise 2.4 degrees, over land more. In addition, the agreement expects the large-scale capture of CO2 from the air, which James Hansen and other experts call illusionary (http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2018/20181206_Nutshell.pdf, p. 44ff and https: //www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05938-3).

Second illusion: only a small minority of states are complying with the agreement. Therefore, according to some calculations, we are on the way to global warming of 3,2 degrees by 2100, again over land more.

So far the mainstream predictions. 
 
There is a third illusion, namely that this is all alarmism and hysteria. 
 
Even more widespread is the fourth illusion, namely that the statements made so far are the whole truth. Unfortunately this is not the case.

Fifth illusion: Many think that the temperature rise is and remains linear. But you can see with the naked eye that it goes faster and faster: 


Even the IPCC suffers from this illusion: In 2018 the IPCC advanced the 1,5-degrees increase from 2100 to 2040. American climatologists immediately objected: The IPCC had forgotten that greenhouse gases will continue to rise from today. This means that 1.5 degrees will come as early as 2030, a shift of 70 years in a few years (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07586-5). And the IPCC takes 1850-1900 as a baseline for warming. But industrialisation and the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere started a hundred years earlier, and with that we probably will reach the 1.5 degrees warming in the next years. Further acceleration is to be expected.

The sixth illusion is that the greenhouse mechanism is the whole story. That would be bad enough, but there are also many positive feedback mechanisms that make things worse. They go slowly, but according to Hansen they have always been game-deciding in previous geological history (http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2018/20181206_Nutshell.pdf). And the fact that this feedbacks can anytime lead to a tipping of the situation was the justification of the 1.5 or 2 degree target. The IPCC does not include these feedbacks because they cannot be calculated precisely. As said in the introduction, for a physician such feedbacks are more frightening than anything else, because each can become uncontrollable individually, because they all go in the wrong direction, and because their effects may not only add up, but possibly also multiply. This can shorten the development to years.

In the seventh illusion the CO2 concentration only depends on how much we blow into the air. Almost a third of our CO2 emissions have been absorbed by the ocean, which led to acidification and problems for marine animals, but relieved us. But a warmer ocean will no longer absorb as much CO2 (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/oceans-do-us-a-huge-service-by-absorbing-nearly-a-third-of -global-co2-emissions-but-at-what-cost).

Similarly the trees and vegetation on land and in the ocean have so far absorbed almost a third of the CO2 emitted. Most of the CO2 compensation programs work with actual or alleged reforestation. We are losing forests through logging and fires already now. And with a temperature increase of 4 degrees, a widespread dying of trees and forests is predicted (https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6488/261/), similar to the dying of coral reefs. Therefore vegetation, instead of being a CO2-buffer is becoming a CO2 producer. The German Climate Pope Schellnhuber says: "We kill our best friends" (https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/terra-x/interview-hans-joachim-schellnhuber-klimawandel-100.html). This means that compensations through afforestation will be void and CO2 emissions from vegetation will be self-propelled even if we reduce our emission to net-zero. Not counted by the IPCC either.

The eighth illusion was that the ice was slowly melting. In the Arctic, things are going faster than expected (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/arctic-sea-ice-global-warming-climate-change-predictions/). With loss of snow and ice the reflection of the earth decreases so much that we can add up to twenty percent to any predicted global warming. That will bring us not over 3 but over 4 degrees by 2100, more over land. Also not taken into account by the IPCC.

The ninth illusion, until a few years ago, was that the permafrost in Siberia and elsewhere would not thaw until the end of the century. It's already thawing (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/arctic-permafrost-is-thawing-it-could-speed-up-climate-change-feature/), and there and elsewhere methane is bubbling from warming soils and its concentration rises rapidly in the atmosphere. Methane as a short-lived but very strong greenhouse gas can acutely accelerate warming and make our self-burning a matter of years. Not counted by the IPCC.

The tenth illusion was that this was all. But recently, several climate models have been predicting a decrease in cloud cover, which could further accelerate warming (https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-clouds-are-the-key-to-new-troubling-projections-on- warming). Not counted by the IPCC either.

The eleventh illusion is that everything goes slowly. But geologically speaking, the fast pace of the current changes has never been there. Ten times faster than the fastest changes in the last 65 million years (https://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/august/climate-change-speed-080113.html), and still accelerating. Hundreds of temperature records have been broken since 2019, with several monthly highs and 2020 threatens to be the warmest year ever recorded. As a doctor, one looks at such a development with the greatest concern because it substantiates the suspicion of a malicious acceleration.

Twelfth illusion: everyone is talking about the climate. We also have a second problem, species extinction, which is also happening at a pace that is extraordinary in terms of geological history and that is just as threatening for us. For the time being it is still quite independent of the climate (https://phys.org/news/2020-09-humans-climate-driven-rapidly-mammal.html): Because the main reasons so far are hunting, as well as loss and poisoning of habitats by a steadily expanding human population and activity. E.O. Wilson, the great biologist, thinks that half of the earth would have to be reserved for "wildlife" if one wants to stop the extinction of species.

Like the surgeon before the operation

The first symptoms of disease on earth can be seen everywhere: droughts, fires, glacier retreat, loss of species. As a doctor, you don't see this as the beginning, but as the beginning of the end (https://lukasfierz.blogspot.com/2019/05/how-biosystems-tip-over.html). The biosphere is no longer able to compensate.

And we see a variety of causal factors: CO2, methane, water vapor, cloud loss, ocean acidification, pesticides, habitat loss. As a doctor you know that the consequences might not only add up but sometimes can multiply in an unpredictable manner.

What makes the doctor panic above all are the multiple self-reinforcing mechanisms: ice melt, methane release, CO2 release due to forest fires, forest diebacks, soil and ocean warming. We have little handle against the leverage of such self-reinforcing mechanisms even when they occur separately (think of aortic stenosis), let alone when they add up or possibly multiply. The demonstrable acceleration of the warming and the recent accumulation of maximum values ​​suggest that the course is already changing direction for the worse.

The 1.5 or 2 degrees by 2100 are empty talk, the Paris Agreement is a fake, a false alibi, because it is not even adhered to. Many governments are making the situation worse (Russia, Australia, Brazil, India, and so far also the USA). It is only with the greatest of luck that we will have a temperature rise of not much more than three degrees by the end of the century, but that is also not likely, because the self-reinforcing feedbacks have all already started. Some are already talking about four, five or more degrees. That still means more over land, and human civilization cannot survive that. And neither can the majority of the biosphere. At least now I know why Schellnhuber sees no way out.

For Johan Rockström from the Potsdam Climate Institute, just four degrees of global warming mean that the earth might only be able to carry four billion people, perhaps even less (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/18/climate-crisis-heat-is-on-global-heating-four-degrees-2100-change-way-we-live). That would mean widespread wars, where old patterns of struggle for living space will reawaken, for living space that will become increasingly scarce and ultimately no longer available.

The fact that none of this can be seen is primarily a consequence of the illusions mentioned - in the words of Christian Morgenstern’s «Palmström» one would say: «Thence his razor sharp conclusion that what should not be cannot be». But such thinking is undisciplined and infantile. It could only be forgiven in a seven year old, but not in a responsible adult.

That lost sense of reality may have the deeper reason that death is largely tabooed in our consciousness. Therefore we are unable to perceive him, although he is staring us directly into the eyes. I don't even blame the idiotic climate deniers. But I blame the climatologists, who pretend there is a way out, although they know otherwise. And the Greens, who do not think through the problem with consequence and still babble about an illusionary 1.5 degree target, thereby betraying their electorate.


Farewell to taboos

Last but not least, we come to the second taboo: Nobody wants to see the fact that we are too many. That is also a taboo because we are reproductive machines. Reproduction is programmed into us as the most supreme and sacred goal. That is why many - e.g. our Greens – prefer to lull themselves into the illusion that renunciation will be enough.

Granted, it is only the wealthy who pollute the environment. The ten percent of the wealthiest perhaps fifty percent of the pollution, the 50 percent of the wealthier almost all the rest. But a large part of the resource consumption and the pollution is forced by the fact that too many people have to live in concentrated megastructures, which need energy-guzzling transports.

Some see the solution in eliminating the privileges of the top 10 percent. According to their rhetoric one could even conclude that they would prefer to eliminate the top 10 percent of the privileged - e.g. with the guillotine, according to the old revolutionary custom. But even half the burden would be too much. 

That's why you would have to guillotine the wealthier half, which would include us Swiss amongst others. But even that would only be useful as long as the remaining half did not want to multiply and become wealthy, with industry, meat consumption, cars, airplanes, as is it happening now, for example, in India and many other countries, because the noble savage is only one more of our illusions. 

Many human beings who are not avoided by birth control will be killed by manslaughter, murder, starvation and disease. This is the reality that we should face. Two generations of one-child family would indeed be more humane.
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