The Big, Big Catastrophe is Unthinkable.

Humans could really mess things up, big time.

The problem with climate change isn't that the problem is too small.  It is that the problem is too big.  It is unthinkable.

Let's not worry about a big astroid.  If it blows us to smithereens it won't be our fault.   If the rotating iron core inside the middle of the earth makes some kind of polarity switch and we all get zapped by cosmic rays, well, that won't be our fault either.  


Lets contemplate for a moment nuclear war and ice ages, as a way to take our mind off of the frightening aspects of politics and messaging.  Humans tend not to prepare for unthinkable disasters.   They are too terrible to contemplate and they are expensive and inconvenient.  The chance of a full out nuclear exchange is not zero.   The chance that North Korea will prove its powerful self defense by striking out with a pre-emptive strike is much more than zero.    

Just threatened "All-out nuclear war."

     They have announced that North Korea is under imminent threat from the US and that they will do a pre-emptive defensive strike.

     They have enough nuclear weapons to destroy a few cities, while announcing that they have several more in reserve, doing to the US essentially what we did to Japan in 1945.  They would do what kidnappers do with hostages: show their ability and intent, then threaten to do more if their demands are not met.

     They have prepared to survive an attack.   They have super-deep subways and a civil defense program.   In messaging to their own people--also known as propaganda--they describe themselves as a spiked porcupine, able to protect itself from aggression.

     They have submarines, but they don't need them.  They have fishing boats and the ability to sneak a nuclear bomb onto freighter ship heading to any American container port.  Justified as self defense, a pre-emptive strike for their own protection, North Korea can kill 30 million South Koreans and 30 million Americans, and tell the US if we respond they will kill 50 million more Americans, our choice.

My point is not that horror of that scale is possible, because of course it is.  My point is that there are very, very few Americans who take action as if that can happen.   People buy liability insurance--and then umbrella coverages on top of that--against potential incidents that are very, very remote but we tend not to prepare for a much more plausible event because the event--a nuclear blast--is so unthinkable.

   Do readers of this blog have a supply of iodine tablets?  (They would be very useful in a period of nuclear radiation because our thyroid glands prefer uranium to iodine.  Give your thyroid a full-up supply of iodine so it doesn't go looking for uranium.)

  Do readers of this blog have a bomb shelter, a place where one's family can shelter underground for weeks or months, with food, water, a method for dealing with waste?

  Have readers protected their investment assets from the potential that one of those freighter ships with a nuclear bomb inside have been sent to the port of New York and New Jersey, and that the example-city demonstration blast will be at Wall Street?

My guess is no.  American policy has been to consider nuclear war as "unthinkable".  It has not been to think of nuclear war as a civil defense issue.  (In North Korea, it is a civil defense issue.  It isn't unthinkable to them, which means it isn't unthinkable.)

This gets us to the climate change debate.   Greenhouse gas levels are rising from levels of 100 years ago.  It is almost certainly important, although what changes it will make are uncertain because everything is connected.  Maybe warmer means more clouds, which means less sunlight which means cooler and it all balances out.  Or not.  Ice at the north pole seems to be melting.  That is not speculation.  It is measurable and obvious.  Will it mean net higher sea levels?  That would be expensive for the US, miserable for Florida, and catastrophic to Bangladesh.  Unfortunately for the Bangladeshi, Americans are not very concerned about them.  Presumably they will move to higher ground, their neighbors will not like it, there will be strife in Asia, but there is always strife of some kind in Asia, and Americans ignore it.

El Nino

But what if the effects are really big, and they effect us.   Again, there is a non-zero potential for this. Humans ignore this potential.  It is too terrible to contemplate.  We dismiss it as "scare talk." 

World climate is a delicate, interconnected thing.   Water temperature changes of two degrees in the western Pacific determine whether it is El Nino or La Nina.  The Southern Oscillation affects whether California is in drought or flood.

But there is something much bigger than that.  Reminder:  the earth is currently in an interglacial period, those rare 20-thousand year warm periods between Ice Ages.  Ice Ages last 200-thousand years, then for some reason things warm up, like now.  Civilization!  Then the Ice Age returns.   

This is not prediction.  This is history.

The warm half: the Gulf Stream

Isn't it good, then, that things are warming up?  It may stop a new ice age, right?  No.  Not necessarily.

(I realize some people dispute temperatures are actually changing more than normal.  What is not in dispute is that CO2 levels are higher, although some people dispute whether this is a problem.   What is not in dispute is that arctic sea ice is diminished from earlier centuries, but again whether this is abnormal or a problem is disputed.)    

The North Atlantic thermo-haline circulation.  Something very, very big and important happens in the North Atlantic.  Warm water from the tropics moves north, making moderating the climate of Western Europe, and the Northern Hemisphere generally.  During Ice Ages what is now called Canada and the northern USA and nearly all of Europe is covered in a mile deep pile of ice.  It looked like Greenland looks now.   The ice sheets came down to about the 42nd degree of latitude in the US--about to Boston, about to Chicago, about to somewhere south of Portland, Oregon.  It would change everything.    If global warming melts the Greenland ice cap too quickly it presumably would change the saltiness of the North Atlantic, thus--perhaps--turning off the thermo-haline circulation that keeps the Northern Hemisphere out of an ice age.  The land that is now France and Ohio looked like Greenland looks now--buried in ice--25,000 years ago and it could look that way again. Indeed, history says that it will.

The tiny difference in saltiness between the surrounding sea water in the North Atlantic and the saltier sea water from the Gulf Stream (saltier because evaporation from the warmer water caused its salt level to be greater, therefore be heavier, and therefore sink to the sea bottom and flow south, causing the Canary Current) makes the whole system work.  Fresh water runoff from Greenland could mess that up.  

Sailors noted this circle and used it

 Global warming isn't just the date when tulips bloom in our front yard; it can effect the future of civilization.  It can mess up an ocean current that is essential to maintaining life in the West.

Will CO2 and greenhouse gases cause global warming then trigger an Ice Age?  We don't know.   But we do know that Greenland's ice is melting rapidly and we do know that there is a great circle of circulation of warm and cool in the North Atlantic, and we do know that most of North America and nearly all of Europe is north of the 42nd degree of latitude.

Is the potential for triggering catastrophic climate change speculation?   Yes.  Do we know there will be a nuclear attack by North Korea?  No.  

But the consequences are terrible if they happen.  On matters that are thinkable--winning the Megabucks lottery or being sued for causing a fatal car accident--people take action.  They buy tickets and they buy umbrella liability insurance.   On things that are unthinkable, we do not.

And that is one reason why climate change is both a huge issue but not a good political issue for motivating generally uninterested and un-engaged people, even though the consequences are huge.  On the really, really important risks, people just don't want to think about it.