Sorry, this is blunt. On #disasters and #ClimatePolicy and #meteorology
“What is safe for me?” is a question many National Weather Service forecasters and television weathercasters fielded over the past week about #Florence (and so many other natural disasters). But that’s the first wrong question. Or, “Should I stay or should I go?”
These are the wrong questions. The responsible meteorologist can give you forecasts and likely impacts, with appropriate levels of uncertainty. Emergency management can provide guidance on what actions to take. Communities and individuals have a shared responsibility on this one. But fundamentally, we have to make our own decisions. In life or death situations, it is critical that they be well-informed.
The pulmonologist can’t tell you which cigarette you smoke will cause the lung cancer that may kill you.
The #publichealth community can’t fingerprint which air pollution episode was the one that permanently damaged your lungs.
The gastroenterologist may not be able to tell you which contaminant you ingested was the one that made you ill.
These are also the wrong questions.
Doctors can tell you that these things are bad. Similarly, climate scientists can see the symptoms of a warming world in real and modeled storms. Increased heat & liberated water vapor --> more rain. And now, new information shows how rapidly the ocean is warming.
The right question is, “What is safe for humanity?” [Or, how can we rid our ecosystems of the worst invasive species on the planet, industrialized humans?]
Our exposure limits are set too high for the 6 (and only 6) categorical #airpollutants. Industry resists each and every change or addition, and #EPA is now self-crippled. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 (2007!, defying the Bush Administration!) that EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants from tailpipes. And in spite of 10 years of effort, the #GOP (largely, but not exclusively) continues to ignore it, or fight any attempt to do so, or to extend such regulation to the other major pollutant source, fossil fuels used for power generation. And mercury and others are problems, too!
Now, about #hurricanes and #climate.
Was #Florence caused by #climatechange? The other biggies? No.
Are hurricanes and other storms changed as a result of warming? Yes!
Globally? Yes! Locally? Yes!
Are impacts worse? They can be! How do we know this? Because we build models that are testable based on physical and dynamical heat and energy exchange mechanisms that we can measure.
#ClimateChangeIsReal
Scientists continue to study complex feedback mechanisms on storm energetics. You can’t supercharge a heat engine such as the Earth system without creating consequences. Jim Hansen once imagined a landscape filled with 1 or 2 Watt light bulbs covering every square meter of Earth's surface, and did a rather simple calculation of what that would mean for heating the atmosphere. It is still a very instructive example of a system that is out of balance. Excess heat must be redistributed or dissipated. In the ocean and atmosphere and pedosphere and cryosphere and biosphere. And we don’t fully measure or understand any of these. Yet. But scientists are learning more and making successful predictions as to root effects. And they are not favorable to species, globally.
Fingerprints are being detected. Nevertheless, they are still easier to detect and predict than human behavior. And fundamentally, humans have made bad decisions in planning, preparation, and response. At the community level and individually. That’s tragic.
What is the right question?
What can we as a society do to fix things? Some suggestions:
- Stop the political/free-market interference with scientific determinations of which pollutants should be regulated and at what levels.
- Move as quickly as possible to a carbon-free energy/transportation system.
- Ensure all residents have access to shelter, power, comfort after tragedy.
- Educate the public about the importance of clean air and water.
- Support independent scientific research.
- Don’t hire a power company from Whitefish, Montana to fix a broken power grid in Puerto Rico. (How’d that one get in there?)
- Improve public education re: disaster risks.
- Honor the heroes but do what you can to keep them from undue risk.
- Don’t shame the victims.
- Demand accountability.
- Reduce waste.
- Fossil fuels? Stop government supports (corporate welfare subsidies). They just line the pockets of the companies that extract, move, and deliver them. Washington I-1631 will be interesting to watch roll out if it passes, too.
And finally, we can all be that better human being. You know the one. The ones that your parents or older siblings, aunts or uncles, or grandparents read to you or told you about when they tucked you into bed.
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