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Today you will learn from expert guest Judith Curry about climate systems, why thy exist, and how we might positively influence them to solve climate change.
Judith Curry's expertise is climate dynamics, extreme weather, prediction and predictability of weather and climate, philosophy of science, and decision making under deep uncertainty. She has been elected as a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. and the American Geophysical Union. Her research has been recognized by the Henry J. Houghton Research Award from the American Meteorological Society. She is also president and co founder of Climate Forecast Applications Network, or CFAN. She founded CFAN to translate cutting edge weather and climate research into forecast products and services that support the management of weather and climate risk for public and private sector decision makers. She has been frequently called upon to give U. S. Congressional testimony and serve as an expert witness on matters related to weather and climate.
Follow Judith:
A changing climate has been the norm throughout the Earth's 4.6 billion year history. The Earth's temperature and weather patterns change naturally over time scales ranging from decades to millions of years.
Natural variations in climate originate in two ways:
More recently, human activities are influencing climate by changing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, altering the concentrations of aerosol particles in the atmosphere, and through land use and changing land cover.
Article 1 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change defines climate change as: A change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.
The UN thus makes a distinction:
This redefinition of climate change to refer to only human caused climate change has effectively eliminated natural climate change from the public discussion on climate change. Any change that is observed over the past century is implicitly assumed to be caused by human emissions to the atmosphere. This assumption leads to connecting every unusual weather or climate event to human caused climate change from fossil fuel emissions.
Scientific investigations of the dynamics of the climate system have more in common with systems biology and economics than with laboratory physics and chemistry, owing to the inherent complexity of the system and the inability to conduct controlled experiments. Complexity is not the same thing as complicated.
Complicated systems have many parts. But simple chains of causation. Complexity of the climate system arises from the chaotic behavior and non linearity of the equations for motions in the atmosphere and ocean, and also the linking of subsystems for the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, and glacier ice.
Striking a balance between the security of basic food, water, energy, and material supplies with the least possible impact on the environment, including CO2 emissions, is arguably the greatest challenge of the 21st century.
The U. N. Paris Agreement has presupposed a moral obligation to control climate change by eliminating fossil fuels and achieving net zero emissions. They have bypassed the moral dilemma of preventing future harm from climate change versus fulfilling our duties to currently living humans. Even if we successfully eliminate CO2 emissions by 2050, we are unlikely to perceive any benefits to the climate in the 21st century. Even beyond the technical issues, greater realism is needed about the uncertainties in politics the pursuit of control.
Our hubristic aspirations for control fail to acknowledge the wickedness and systemic aspects of the climate change problem and its proposed solutions. Yes, we can seek to lower emissions as low as reasonably practical, ideally while minimizing our regrets and maximizing our opportunities through the energy transition. But we should not pretend that we are controlling the climate.
There is growing support for climate politics that harnesses enlightened self interest rather than focusing on austerity. This plays to the values of the central objectives of human flourishing and thriving.
There are three major policy issues that fall under the climate umbrella:
Energy system R&D and reducing vulnerability to extreme weather are primarily dealt with by national and subnational entities and can be expected to receive widespread political and economic support since they support local self interest.
Another strategy is to eliminate the mismatch in timing of the costs versus benefits of energy and climate policies. Any near term emissions reducing policies should also provide short term benefits, with the long term goals of reducing CO2 emissions taking on secondary importance. Clean energy that increases abundance and reduces costs is an example. The reduction of methane emissions from fossil fuel production is another example that has short term benefits.
Adaptation strategies to reduce vulnerability to extreme weather events also provide near term benefits. Once we acknowledge that we don't currently know how to stabilize concentrations CO2 on the timescale of decades, and in any event, can't control the climate, we can search for new and more effective approaches for improving our energy systems and reducing our vulnerability to extreme weather, all the while focusing on supporting human flourishing and thriving in the 21st century.
Three different solution oriented directions are evolving with regards to climate change.
Big Data
Big Data Approaches are an outgrowth of the information technologies that have driven Big Tech. We now have the capability of collecting and analyzing massive amounts of data. Climate relevant data are being collected from diverse sources that include smart sensor networks, cell phones, and constellations of small satellites with an emphasis on geospatial and hyperlocal data.
Big data approaches, when interpreted by machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches, have great potential for providing information and knowledge for managing the risks of climate change. Big data analytics are most useful when they are interpreted by human intelligence and combined with theory driven and or small data approaches.
Climate Tech
Another trend that comes from the culture of big tech is climate tech. Climate tech is defined as technologies that focus on reducing or sequestering greenhouse gas emissions, or addressing the impacts of global warming. Climate tech entrepreneurs are developing diverse products, ranging from carbon accounting software, to agricultural technology, to electric vehicle batteries, to nuclear fusion projects.
There is a substantial migration of engineers underway away from big tech and towards the new opportunities in climate tech. Climate tech is currently regarded by many to be a generational investment opportunity and the most exciting space in tech.
Wicked Science
Wicked science is a process that is tailored to the dual scientific and political natures of wicked societal problems. As such, wicked science is massively transdisciplinary, including natural sciences and engineering, along with social sciences and humanities. Wicked Science uses approaches from complexity science and systems thinking in a context that engages with the political roles and perspectives of decision makers, planners, and other stakeholders.
Wicked problems and the strategies devised to address them cannot be defined by scientific experts alone, but include the experiential and operational knowledge of a range of stakeholders. Combining and integrating knowledge from diverse disciplines and other sources to provide insights, explanations, and solutions to wicked problems is a substantial challenge.
For the solution orientation of wicked science to be meaningful, we need an overarching philosophy for navigating wicked problems. We need to acknowledge that control is limited, the future is unknown, and it's difficult to determine whether the impact you make will be positive. We need to accept that climate change will continue to disrupt natural systems and human well being. Genuine transdisciplinary understanding and collaborations across disciplines and with a broad range of stakeholders is needed for meaningful contributions to wicked problems.
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