Science Update: Shifting the Baseline

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In response to the ever-accelerating crisis known as abrupt climate change, the conventional approach is to shift the baseline. Instead of admitting the planet is at or near 2 C above the 1750 baseline, governments and many scientists have determined the baseline is actually 1981-2010, or later. This allows so-called scientists and self-proclaimed political leaders to claim Earth is “only” 1 degree Celsius above the 1750 baseline. Adherence to the Precautionary Principle is clearly unfashionable. Lying to retain privilege is rampant.

We have known for decades that the 2 C number set in stone by economist William Nordhaus is dangerous. We were ”running out of time” to deal with greenhouse gases in 1965, according to the chief of the American Petroleum Institute. Fourteen years later, it was Edward Teller informing Big Oil they needed to change. Exxon accurately predicted where we were headed in 1982, and not only failed to heed the warnings, but kicked the warnings and the future of humanity to the curb. Al Gore and Carl Sagan testified to Congress in 1985 that we must act now on climate change. In late June 1989 Noel Brown, the director of the New York office of the United Nations Environment Program, indicated we had only until 2000 to avoid catastrophic climate change.

About 16 months after Brown’s warning, the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases set 1 C as the absolute upper limit in October 1990. In doing so, they concluded that, “Beyond 1 degree C may elicit rapid, unpredictable and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage.” In other words, they described the initiation of self-reinforcing feedback loops.The Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gaseswas the predecessor to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and 1990 was their final year in existence before they passed the proverbial baton to the IPCC. Climate-change speaker and writer David Spratt said 0.5 C was too high in October 2014. I identified 65 irreversible self-reinforcing feedback loops in my “Climate-Change Summary,” last updated more than five years ago.

In April 2006, climate scientist James Hansen said, “I think we have less than a decade to avoid passing what I call ‘point of no return.’” More than three years after passing the 10-year mark, he called my idea of near-term human extinction “crazy.”

In September 2018, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said we have until 2020 to turn this ship around. The ship powers on, full steam ahead.

It was undoubtedly too late to reverse abrupt, irreversible climate change in 1977 when Nordhaus shared his genocidal opinion, much less in 1989. After all, the aerosol masking effect was strong at least as far back as the Roman Empire, according to peer-reviewed literature published in 2019. And comforting words aside, we haven’t done anything to prevent our own extinction in the wake of warnings, distant or near.

In October 2018, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicated we have until 2030 to hold global-average temperature at 1.5 C above the ever-shifting baseline. Yes, that’s correct: The United Nations is recommending a global-average temperature well below the current temperature as a “target.” Unfortunately, our species does not have until 2030 to do anything, much less hold the global-average temperature below its current level.

Actually, we might have one way out of the ongoing climate crisis. As I have mention a few times recently, the MEER:ReflEction framework created by Dr. Ye Tao at Harvard University’s Rowland Institute offers a positive path forward. However, it seems asking people to give up a few minutes of privilege is too great a sacrifice to save life on Earth.

To quote the late, great American writer Kurt Vonnegut in his breakout book, Slaughterhouse-Five, “so it goes.” Vonnegut used the phrase 106 melancholic times in Slaughterhouse-Five, after describing somebody’s death. Once more will do for me: “so it goes.”

It’s impossible to pay too much homage to Vonnegut. I’ll finish with the last line in the last book he saw published, A Man Without a Country. It was published in 2005, and it concludes with: “People did not like it here.”

I, for one, like it here. I would love to retain habitat for our species, and others, on Earth. After all, as Vonnegut also pointed out in A Man Without a Country, quoting his uncle Alex: “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”