It's increasingly hard to pay attention to current climate change news in the midst of the burning trash heap of the U.S. Constitution as administered by Donald Trump and Elon Musk. And the co-presidents will make it harder to get news and analysis as they gut programs at NOAA, NASA, and other agencies, and make the very words "climate change" verboten.
However, information from many other sources is still out there. The recent, rapid upturn in global temperature is one topic that scientists have been trying to figure out. El Niño, changes in cloud cover decreasing reflectivity, decreases in pollution from intercontinental shipping doing the same…
But for whatever reason, there is new analysis about whether that increase in temperature may result in other rapid changes from reaching a tipping point. Dave Roberts, as usual writing what I am thinking, said,
...do we *know* we'll hit those tipping points, or a cascade of them, at a particular temperature level? No! There's tons of uncertainty in all this, in either direction.
But uncertainty is not our friend here. Do we really want to gamble with such existential stakes?
It's very difficult to discuss the current climate change situation without sounding like a lunatic. We're gambling with the *entire future of our species* and we are doing so with such callow thoughtlessness. It is crazy-making if you dwell on it too much.
That's the thing — and it's similar to the current Trump/Musk situation. Humans (or maybe just those of us in the West?) have such a status quo bias: we hate to sound like Chicken Little or the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf.
But the idea that betting the future of human civilization even if it's a 5% chance... seems off-the-wall to me.
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