The devil we don’t know
There’s a kind of deadly synergy, governed by the mathematics of chaos, that makes interacting dynamic systems so unpredictable. It’s what Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park, Dr Ian Malcolm, meant when he said a butterfly flaps its wings in China and we get rain in Central Park. We just don’t know the details of how multiple changes in the climate will affect the whole.
We do know this, it won’t be good. Hoping climate change will turn out to be a good thing is like going on vacation and hoping your house will clean itself before you get back. Not likely. Climate change isn’t just one thing. It’s many systems competing and interacting with each other. The results can and will be deadly. It’s like “polypharmacy,” what really killed Elvis, the unpredictable combined reaction of several prescription drugs. It’s just such interactions that we can’t predict.
In other words, all the dire predictions about the bad things that will happen to the planet as a direct result of global warming are two dimensional. There’s a third dimension we don’t know about, so we can’t talk about it specifically. But it won’t be good.
This is understood in Europe. It’s understood here that Central Europe’s recent floods, caused by “Storm Boris,” were compliments of climate change. We had a vestige of it over the weekend here in southern England, with rains that fell with an intensity that is not usual. Fortunately the Central European storms were foreseeable and proper measures could be taken to minimise the loss of life — this time. As climate change affects more and more weather systems, much of that predictability will go away. Chaos is going to be the order of the day going forward.
To be sure, we have our loonies here. Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are two specimens of the type. But for the most part America’s radical shift to the right hasn’t made it to Europe just yet, and more sedate heads continue to prevail. The absurd notion that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by scientists and leftwing politicians isn’t so widely believed here as it is in the United States.
Irrespective of the political challenges, there are several things we MUST do, things that will be impossible to do if Trump is elected president. First, must get our worldwide carbon footprint down to zero as quickly as possible. Second, we need to invest in and develop alternative energy sources with the same vigorous commitment and ingenuity with which we went to the moon. Third, we must address the elephant in the room, we absolutely must bring China, the world’s greatest industrial polluter, into line.
Sound like a tall order? It is. I don’t make the rules here, I just acknowledge what they are. The biggest problem with climate change is the devil we don’t know. The only thing we can be sure of is he will be a monster. And he’s coming whether or not we are ready for him. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.