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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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Global warming is bad news for winter sports. But that's not the only way climate change will mean culture change, too.
The meltdown of Arctic sea ice may end traditional hunting and fishing for Arctic peoples. Ocean acidification's impact on coral reefs may eliminate symbolic species, like Melanesia's "place spirits" within dolphins, sharks and rays.
These changes will be as global in scope as global warming itself, according to a preliminary analysis published in the journal Nature Climate Change. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Whether it be cities in the developed world walloped by superstorms—ahem, New York—or failed crops for subsistence farmers.
In fact, climate change may mean migration—and the loss of a sense of place for folks as disparate as Pacific islanders whose homelands drown, to herders forced to abandon their pastoral ways in the Sahel. Such adaptation will be a key cultural challenge of the next century—as will fostering the kind of global communication that can connect with the local concerns of individuals and communities to reduce climate risk.
Of course, modern culture is responsible for climate change thanks to our insatiable hunger to burn fossil fuels. That fire, as it changes the atmosphere, may consume whole ways of life.
—David Biello
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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19 Comments
Add CommentAssuming climate change is real, it could just as easily add thousands of miles of nice coastline, millions of additional acres of arable land and grapes growing in England again as they did during the nice comfortable medieval warming period.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry to break the news to the author but the 1993 Storm of the Century was also a giant hurricane, that collided with a winterstorm, polar air and smacked the entire country from the Great Plains to New York and Mexico to Canada. There is nothing new about superstorms and they are not getting more frequent or worse. The only difference today is we have about 6 billion more targets for those storms to kill.
I am not sure what is more ridiculous, the climate model predictions which ignore all possibilities but one or the vast array of various Armageddons you warmists come up with. It is not that the Armageddons are not possible, it is the total lack of consideration for anything else. For every armegeddon scenario you come up with, there is another scenario that results in no net change or possibly an improvement. A new assumption uncovered, the assumption that Climate change is actually bad.
It is a simple matter of statistics. There are very many ways for things to be worse and MANY fewer ways for them to be better. Thus we can expect that for every one thing that is better there will be a whole bunch of things that will be worse. Even when many things are at least theoretically neutral they still have to be adapted to. If a river changes course or a coastline changes that's not bad or good, but it still costs billions of additional dollars to adapt to.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are also things which simply cannot improve. Biodiversity is a one-way street effectively. In anything like a human timescale it can only decrease.
Expecting the good to cancel out the bad seems rather optimistic, perhaps even naive. Even if it is possible we need to consider the wisdom of buying ourselves insurance against the bad outcomes. Just because your house might not burn down doesn't mean you don't buy an insurance policy on it.
"I am not sure what is more ridiculous, the climate model predictions which ignore all possibilities but one or the vast array of various Armageddons you warmists come up with."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not sure which is more ridiculous, calling people names [warmists, change deniers] or pretending that human activities have no effects or consequences. I wonder if those who deny the science behind the opinions that human acts have consequences are also Christian Scientists when it comes to medical science. If they are not then they can accurately be called hypocrites. The methods behind both are the same.
A secular society needs its own apocalyptic vision, it would seem. The rumors of Scientific American's dumbing down have not been overly exaggerated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen the scientific blue-ribbon panel regarding the IPPCC's advocacy-language put them in their place, their was nothing for the accretion of green activists, eco-fanatics, and better informed but ill-advised enviroboffin academics such as Andrew Weaver to do but migrate to greener fields. National Geographic and Scientific American apparently provide a suitable ecological niche.
Perhaps it would be more disincumbersome to tell climate change Armageddists to get off the backs of global economic decision-makers and stop trying to turn decagigabuck decisions around computer modeling that represents the least of what legitimate scientific hypothesis-testing, predictive or postdictive, is concerned with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think I've made myself thoroughly less unclear.
That should read decaTERAbuck decisions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArticle: excellent
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisComments: near 100% climate-change denier drivel
That's what SciAm now gets for having heavy-handedly censored comments from researchers and pundits on US science politics and behavioural psy and which went against the personal opinion of certain lesser SciAm editors and self-centered bloggers: not a single intelligent comment in sight, only warmists posting their usual Romney loser blues.
The evidence of the exclusive presence of warmists and climate twats proves that SciAm has indeed dumbed down. I would expect denier publications to resort to censoring comments it doesn't like. That SciAm has allowed one book-plugging editor and two bloggers to chase off practically all intelligent commenters puts it right along those Limbaugh fans.
And while I fully appreciate this article, it complements work I've done in early summer and will be added to my Biello file of useful articles, I have not read more than two intelligent comments in the last month on the whole of SciAm online. I have in fact noticed the now permanent absence of commenters whose opinions were to me an integral, complementary, informative and vital part of my online SciAm reading.
The denier comments here? Proof of online SciAm's new level.
OTOH I now spend far less time on the online edition since there are nearly no interesting comments anymore. Makes me reconcentrate on the print edition. As long as you don't try to tell me that this was the purpose of the comment censorship all along.
I have only this to say about climate models. "They are meaningless".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTake as an example the world wide financial problems. The financial system is much less complex than the weather and we understand it much better.
People have a monetary interest in the results of the predictions of the economic models and many people are engaged in trying too understand it..They are highly motivated to get it right and yet no one predicted the
collapse that occured.
Climatologists start with the presumption that man
made global problems are occuring and then tweak the model to give the desired result.
I suspect that there may be some truth to their claims but the science behind much of it is questionable or non existant and their rush to blame everything that happens on global warming without any study flys in the face of any kind of science and undermines any faith in their claims. They are their own worse enemy.
Every paragraph in this article starts with this _______ (may) happen . All you have to do is fill in the blanks. Everything that happens is blamed on global warming and anything bad that could possibly happen is
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisalso blamed on global warming ......(maybe).....Cooommeee
onnnnn guuuyssss
Aliens (may) land and help us resolve all these
problems but it is highly unlikely.
Science isn't built on certainties man. When someone says "may" or talks about correlations they're only being honest in expressing uncertainties. Do you fire your Dr when he tells you you might have condition X and we'll have to do more tests?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are no global financial models. The problem space is entirely different and has drastically different mathematical characteristics. You can't easily make direct comparisons and being able to model climate doesn't indicate that you know how to model mass human behavior, or that it is even a tractable problem. We know far more about climate and it is much easier to measure.
As for no one predicted the collapse... plenty of people predicted it. Trust me, many people were not caught by surprise at all.
I don't understand the charge that anyone is "rushing to blame everything on global warming without any study" when we've spent billions of $ doing exactly that study. You are correct that models can't prove anything, but OTOH we would never build large buildings, bridges, etc if we didn't know the models of them ACTUALLY WORK. When time and time again what your model predicts is later observed it may not ever constitute PROOF of the model, but it does constitute validation.
The other thing is models are one thing, but models aren't climatology. They are a tool used by climatologists. One of the most common, these days the most common, mistake people make is to simply reduce the field to computer models and then dismiss the entire science on the basis of some (ill formed) opinions about models.
As for bias... I know no way to measure this one way or the other. The people who are accused of bias claim objectivity, but in the vary nature of the beast you can't ever prove you're objective. It is as much name-calling as children yelling "kooties" on the playground. I mean what we can say is that climatologists are practicing scientists, and so far in history in every field of scientific practice consensus has converged over time on a good model of how the world actually works. I see no reason to single out climatology as some sort of unique science which is different from all the others. Occam's Razor tells me the more likely explanation is that climatology is roughly correct and some people just refuse to acknowledge the truth.
Would the weight of more ocean water, pressing down on the earth's mantel, cause the land masses to be thrust upward? At one time Timbuktu was a lush tropical paradise. The Nile floods used to reach the great pyramids of Ghizza.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy do we get so bothered when things don't fit our picture of what we want it to be.
And we now have a million cable-news stations telling us it's the end of...............
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChange of culture? The last time I was on a Pacific island the residents were drinking Cocla Cola and at Mcdonald's while linked into Wifi.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHint...folks in the heat of Australia and the cool of Canada have more or less the same culture....it's 2012 and not 1612.
"Would the weight of more ocean water, pressing down on the earth's mantel, cause the land masses to be thrust upward? At one time Timbuktu was a lush tropical paradise. The Nile floods used to reach the great pyramids of Ghizza.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy do we get so bothered when things don't fit our picture of what we want it to be."
There are in fact complex relationships between ice, ocean water, ground water, and land elevation. However the differences aren't vast and seem to be more localized. Its not like some areas are going to rise 1000's meters. If you look at the coastline of say Norway you see the Fjords. This type of coastline is created because of isostatic rebound as massive glaciers melted off the land 12k years ago. This has resulted in some areas rising as much as a couple 100 feet. It can make a significant difference to the COASTLINE, but probably not much to global climate.
Again, I think the question is why would we be tempted to assume that any of these secondary effects would be any more likely to cancel out AGW than they would be to make it worse or just be climate neutral? Even if a change is in some sense possibly beneficial the change itself causes problems as people have to adapt and costs are incurred.
@ Patrick:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I have responded to others, why are you so adamant in advertising your ignorance and pompousity? You indirectly refer to climatologists as "idiots", yet, through what you have written, you have shown that reference to more depict your own intellect. Every single one of the points that you attempt to make is false; I need not get into your naive interpretation of what you believe science to be. I hope, though, that you have an agenda, and are not the expected result of the current level of the American educational system.
It is mainly Americans that will be hit the hardest by Climate change, as they refuse to take any measures to combat it. The bigger they come, the harder they fall!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreen House effect (the so called Climate crisis) / Carbon space/Carbon Credit shall be redefined considering the interest of the entire segment of the mankind of the globe. The tiny segments don’t have the right to pollute the global environment. Global movements need to be organized for the protection of the global environment as well as for the protection of the long term sufferers of the largest segment of the people. The pollutions are to be restricted except those are not critical for the interest of the large segment of the people. (The cold region people need more heat for their survival and the same shall be available from the surplus from the hot countries) Pollution doesn’t have any boundaries and the benefit of the mankind should not have any boundaries. A large number of poor are badly affected due to pollution of river water and air (sweet water crisis will be there and to have drinking water one had to spend money a lot, to have fresh air one has to buy air Conditioner). Globally organized people’s Movement is essential for re-evaluation of Environment Pollution in compliance with the Human Development, Geographical locations, Cultural background, Living Style and Economic Practices.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCapitalism is a system which has been incapable of providing for the 1,000,000,000 people who are starving in the world. There is no sign that it will be capable of surviving the forthcoming ressource depletion, climate change and reduction of biodiversity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA rational system that sees the need to take care of this fragile planet is urgently needed.