Troglodyte: A member of a tribe that lives in caves: one who is reclusive and resists his society’s attitudes (and mores) – Webster’s dictionary.

Truth be told: It used to stop me in my tracks that the so-called Republican “Right”/”Tea Party” (whatever the heck they are supposed to be) sooner or later risks severe damage, even destruction, of the planet …. at least as far as any breathing life that moves might sense it …. rather than rigorously, specifically and scientifically engage in what is at stake …. and when …. with this stuff we call “global warming”. Scientifically rigorous …. with two biased, flawed studies now re-examined and corrected …. means the scientific consensus is clearly overwhelming (i.e., unmistakable, clear, convincing, beyond reasonable doubt …. beyond any normal legal basis for action) that:

• Human emissions definitely increase carbon

• Carbon increases heat

• Heat, unquestionably, increases impact on life … often massive and often negative.

I would like some other way to say this because no people, at bottom, are “demons”, or even, “troglodytes”. All people are possibilities and all people have an intention to make a difference in this life. This is the case even where that intent is constrained or “pulled” by preconceived notions, auto-pilot reactions, or the “strongly held” points of view that one could call “fixed” mindsets (see Carol Dweck, “Mindset”).

To Deny (Webster’s): 1. to “declare” untrue. 2. to disclaim responsibility for, or connection with.

Note: To simply declare something untrue (as to simply disclaim it versus rigorously assert, prove or demonstrate it), requires no, zero!, evidence or logic, scientific or otherwise. In denial, one can simply declare/disclaim something …. anything …. as untrue – simply because one says so, by “declaring” it so …. as if one can deny a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g merely with the dismissive wave of one’s dismissive hand. Inside the language structure, and intent, of “denial”, there is zero accountability for evidence, logic, prediction, degrees of certainty, statistics, modeling, et al. …. denial is a pretense of “knowing” (or not “knowing”) by “declaring” it to be so!

Whatever has shaped and colored that denial, “that refusal”, I found myself puzzled, saddened and angered by what I might call the adolescent defiance of some of our leaders, especially, “the Right”/”Tea Party” – what I, with some genuine affection, call our “American Troglodytes”.

Whatever you know, reader, or have discovered or researched, I offer to you that unequivocally global warming is on its way. Actually, it is already here, arrived …. already launched, begun, in full play.

Enter Jack Welch: A man highly regarded and respected as a leader worldwide and a past CEO of GE during its incredible growth stage, was asked about global warming. He called upon Pascal and his wager (see Bloomberg Business Week – February 25th, 2007).

Essentially it is this. In Pascal’s era, the so-called “Enlightenment”, there was (as today) considerable debate as to whether or not God really existed …. and would or should the prudent man (essentially meaning white, male, educated with property) believe in God or not?

Pascal reasoned thus:

If I believe in God, and there turns out to be no God, okay; I’ve wasted some time, some genuflection, some emotions, some money and some “good faith” unnecessarily, even though I may have been improved a bit or much by my concern, and, life does and will go on.

However, if I choose to not believe in God, and there really is a God, I am up a creek without a paddle – especially with all the horrific after-life condemnation and suffering most religions like to guarantee will ensue. ☺

Enter global warming. Actually, entered global warming – back to James Watt and the steam engine (about 1750) and coal, and a finite atmosphere. If one recognizes that if you run one lousy, single 26 mile marathon straight up, you’re pretty much out of, what we normally call, “the atmosphere”. This marathon/”normal” atmosphere is 1/1,000th the circumference of the planet and 1/320th of the diameter.

It is not infinite.

It is not even “big”.

A note on how we “know” what we “know”: What is transparent to us, or invisible to us, we take for granted.

Much of what we know is invisible to us, because we simply assume or “believe” it. Like air is to us, the lens or filter through which we see, understand and interpret this very world we live in is transparent, thereby invisible, to us. We inhabit (actually l-i-v-e- inside of ) assumptions and beliefs that are transparent and invisible to us. For example, this invisible, transparent nature of ordinary “air” to us is taken for granted by us, daily. Similarly, the models in our head, the models and maps of reality of our world and “the” world, that we have and carry around in our heads, we don’t actually see at all … let alone see or identify these assumptions and beliefs as models, maps, lenses, filters, beliefs – rather, we see through them, like a lens. Because these models (world views, frameworks, mindsets, the takenfor-granted assumptions that we have in our heads) operate like lenses and filters, they are transparent …. and thereby, invisible …. for human beings. This makes it difficult for us to account for and deal with the models of reality, beliefs and assumptions we carry around in our heads.

Nonetheless, our mental lenses that are normally transparent and invisible to us can be accounted for, distinguished for what they are, eventually seen for what they are and dealt with (just as other things that occur as transparent or invisible to us do get seen – just as the air, or eyeglasses, or unconscious habits, can be made, upon examination, conscious, distinct, clear, discernible, and accessible). Regarding global warming, the consequences can and will become catastrophic if we decline, or refuse to, address, and account for, the models of reality in our heads (our lenses, filters, frameworks) that shape, frame and quite literally give us what we can see, at all, or consider, or imagine, at all …this constrains our thinking, our words, our actions.

If we became committed now to transition and transform our energy systems into clean systems – beyond fossil fuels and petro-carbons (“beyond” means “that which includes and yet goes beyond, further than” our current global warming…. fueled by 90,000,000 – 90 million – additional tons of carbon per day) and we did more than we needed to …. if we tightened our belts one notch too many and we suffered some real physical and financial inconveniences, some real hardships, some real stress at times, put out some real sweat …. and we didn’t “have to” do so much, so soon…. then we’re still left with this impact: Efficient and clean systems that can run sustainably – and accountably – pretty much “forever”.

Not a bad net impact.

Example: Germany, a formidable economic competitor, is a concrete, specific example already on the way that has shifted its energy systems to renewable (3.1% in 1990 to 22.5% in 2012 …. see Wikipedia, 4/14; Bloomberg). A 20% increase in 20 years. For Germany, that is a lot of ground covered, with a commitment to 35% renewable by 2020 and 80% by 2050! Imagine what the US would do if we aligned on it.

To align means to share, to move, in a common direction. Agreement does not mean people agree on each detail, position, or means along the way. People do share a common direction.

Worth noting: A “pragmatic center” could emerge, politically, if stood for, resourced and organized. Many, many people are market-oriented, fiscally disciplined, rigorous, yet socially progressive, with no party to represent them fully.

Or, alternatively, rather, than work to generate a workable, political alignment …. Such as what we might call a “pragmatic center”…. we could, as some say, simply attempt to politically and legally overcome/ overrun the political opposition of the stubborn few, who may be “taking down” the rest. This could be a tough (yet worthwhile) practical fight if it were to come to that (or if it is already at that).

However, if global warming is real, physical, and already here, and is exponential (note: we have no direct historical experience of the speed of an exponential impact) and it is total (with no escape anywhere – not in time, nor in space) and we choose to ignore it, deny it, fake it, trivialize it, pretend it, or say – as many Tea Party types do – fxxx you to it …. (“global warming is a lot of “crap”) …. and some Tea Party types are saying that, point blank …. then “our” game (humanity) is likely over by 2100, or at least so incredibly stressed with physical damage and human suffering (by 2100) that being a human being maybe won’t be worth the candle.

Why?

Because – minus viable technical, cultural and political breakthroughs – we are in deep doo-doo.

Note: Genuine breakthroughs almost always require lots of people, especially committed, bright, capable people, interacting a lot, generating, testing, formulating, shaping, challenging, new and old ideas, possibilities and actions which challenge, re-frame, adopt, correct gazillions of ideas, urgently, with a commitment to workable action (as in The Apollo Project or The Marshal Plan or The Manhattan Project or The American Revolution, or The Civil Rights Revolution, or the recovery from The Depression, or winning World War II, or the emergence of professional women, or today, our Internet and telecommunications). Even with the grace of such technological “miracles”, the solution remains at bottom: Us (people) – “us” means everyday people (citizens) – taking it on, together.

It is not the will that is missing. That kind of resolve is still down the road. For now, it is simply the willingness to look, to consider, to try on and try out: Where are we taking the natural world, this earth that is the physical source of our lives?

So, good reader, even if you are unclear, though maybe a bit worried; or you adopt, by happy default, the ever popular pose of some …. “que sera, sera” …. (the shrugged indifference of “what will be, will be”) …. or you generally do not get it that 99.9% – virtually all – of the world’s scientists, including the highest-ranked National Academy of Scientists, say that climate change is real and man-made, in very large part by human emissions (see “That Used to Be Us” by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum) you could take Jack Welch’s advice regarding Pascal’s wager and global warming:

Maximize the odds of where the greatest upside is and minimize the odds of where the worse downsides are.

Bring Welch’s view on global warming and Pascal’s view regarding God together …. and apply it to global warming.

If: Climate change ain’t the case, and we do take it on, now, we will have done more than we had to before we had to; and we’re left with, at bottom, that life does go on, greatly updated and improved by our renewable, non-carbon energy systems. This could include all houses (residential real estate) and that commercial, industrial and electrical systems use and are run on renewable, non-petro carbon energy systems and utilize, plug in, fully electric cars…. on renewables. In this way, our buildings and cars would handle (reduce; eliminate) most of carbon emissions – renewably.

If: Climate change is the case – massive and growing – and we don’t act now, massively and increasingly, the game – human civilization – may be over …. at least as we know it now …. as any kind of tolerable, attractive human endeavor.

Possibly. 

Conceivably.

Probably?

Note: In 1750, carbon did begin to rise in the world. Steam/coal was then becoming the source of energy and work, which had been …. for thousands of years …. human and animal energy. It is at that 1750 point that carbon started to rise decisively, building an ever steeper curve (now exponential – see graphs below).

Definition:

Insidious: Hidden and cumulative (Webster’s).

A Junior High School Science Experiment:

• Take a box with its top side open and paint it black

• Put it in the sun

• It will get hotter and hotter and hotter

• Now, in addition, take a thin, 1/16” pane of glass and place it on the open top (like a see-through ceiling). The box now gets much, much hotter at an accelerated rate.

• This is the planet earth.

• The 1/16” glass is invisible, yet decisive. This is the “glass” of the industrial emissions blanket for the last 260 years.

Over at least the last 800,000 years, and most likely 20 millions of years before that, carbon as measured in ice cores (et al. – see BBC News, 4/28/10; Climate Change, 2001: The Scientific Basis; Wikipedia), has fluctuated between 180 – 380 carbon parts per million (ppm) atmospheres. 380 was essentially the highest in that outside range. (See Blair Henry, Global Warming in a Nutshell; The Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change).

According to the historical timing of carbon cycles and heat cycles, we should now, 2013-14, be in a cooling cycle (see Henry, Supra). With the Northeast/Mid-West winter of 2013 – 2014 as real regional exceptions, we’re not. We’re heating up fast, where, according to historical cycles, we should be cooling down. (Note: Since the 1880’s, when temperature measures “began,” the 10 hottest years have happened since the late 1990’s.) Something has intervened in the cycles and I (along with thousands of professional scientists) propose to you that it’s called “industrial emissions”. We’ve stepped on it, and in it. We are steeply raising carbon levels and we have already surpassed the 400-carbon ppm – now – and we are going up something like this: 

not:

The top graph is exponential. The bottom graph is linear and incremental. The bottom merely continues current rates of speed. The top accelerates.

Guess which graph, which condition, has the much greater impact?

Note: Our planetary carbon (and thereby, heat) is the top graph. If we stopped all emissions cold, 100%, totally – NOW – the carbon we put in the atmosphere currently (at 90,000, 000 —- 90 million —- tons additional each day, globally) planetary heat would still go up—

Maybe not this:

But, still like this:

And currently, we ain’t even slowing it down, let alone stopping it. How come? (See Part II, please).

© Tony Smith