Analogies

Welcome to my blog.

As discussed earlier, we humans have a narrow perspective and due to our tunnel vision, cannot see what will happen in the future or what is happening somewhere else on this planet.

Indeed, we must have a small brain. This brain has a limited ability to comprehend its surroundings according to the knowledge it has gained.

This ability, however, is not constant and it can be greatly increased by certain means. One of the most effective ways of doing that is to give analogies. This is because we understand a thing much better if we compare it with something which we already know.

The best example of this is the “Ozone layer –Montreal protocol.”

When the scientists explained to the policymakers about the ozone layer being a thin protective shield all around the Earth akin to a protective shield around an alien space ship, protecting the life on Earth from harmful cosmic rays and ultraviolet radiation, the arguably less knowledgeable policymakers could connect to the analogy well and it took no time for the acceptance of the “Montreal protocol to ban the use of Chlorofluorocarbons in air-conditioning units.”

Unfortunately, global warming is too complex and does not fit in one such analogy. This explains why the Kyoto protocol failed (even after 2 decades of negotiations) and the Paris Agreement is also going the same way. Another reason could be the lack of consensus about what is needed and the apparent high cost of mitigation (apparent because in reality, the cost of not doing mitigation is much higher, not only monitory but existential i.e. monetary loss to an individual cannot be compared to deaths of millions).

However, there are quite a few analogies which can aptly explain certain aspects of global warming or the situation presently we are in.

Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist, who is often credited to giving us the famous “Hockey stick graph” of rise in global average temperature and who is the author of multiple books on Global warming including “The Tantrum that saved the World” and “The Madhouse Effect”, has given the “Minefield analogy”. He says the present situation is akin to “humanity entering a minefield”. Imagine a 100 people want to cross a field where thousands of mines are buried.  Who will step on a mine and which mine will blast, which will be the last moment of whom is impossible to predict? This sudden blast of a buried mine is akin to humanity crossing “a Tipping point.”

Peter Kalmus, another climate scientist and author of an excellent book on personal climate solutions - “Being the change, Live well and Spark a Climate revolution” Has given a different analogy.

 According to his description, we the humans – all 7.5 billion of them are sitting on a giant car which is speeding towards a cliff of Climate breakdown. We have an accelerator and a brake underneath our feet. Every time we are using fossil fuels, we are pushing the accelerator and every time we take climate action (this means choosing the right alternatives like renewables or not choosing to fly or not eating meat or beef or pork among others), we are pushing the brake. It is up to us what to choose.

Another common analogy is the Titanic analogy. We are all sitting in a large ship akin to Titanic. This ship is headed towards an iceberg. The men sitting in the Watchtower (i.e. the scientific community) have seen from their telescopes (i.e. their gadgets including satellite data, ice core data, ocean sediment data, temperature and radiance data etc.) and warned us about the approaching iceberg. But most of the passengers in the ship (the laymen or us), despite knowing the fact that they do not have a telescope nor do they know how to use one, are busy debating if there is an iceberg or not. Most are having no knowledge of the iceberg and are enjoying their lives completely ignorant of the situation. Some are saying that the iceberg is small. Some, like the captain of the ship (akin to our governments or political leaders), want to drive the ship full speed in the direction of the Iceberg assuming that the people sitting on the watchtowers have defective telescopes or that they do not know how to use them.

Another scientist and evolutionary biologist, Guy Mcpherson, who also is an author of multiple books on climate change including “Extinction dialogues” and who is a famous proponent of the term “Near term Extinction” i.e. Extinction of the humans in as small as 10 years from now, has described it slightly differently. The current situation is like a big boulder of rock or snow which is rolling across a steep slope covered with snow. At the start, it rolls slowly. As it rolls down, the snow on which it is rolling tends to stick to the boulder and this increases its size. As its size increases, it starts rolling with an even greater velocity and its destructive potential keeps increasing. By this, he wants to explain that today whatever Global warming we are seeing is a small portion of what is possible. As warming increases, multiple positive feedback loops like the release of methane from the melting Arctic sea ice and permafrost, become active. These positive feedback loops keep reinforcing each other and thus the warming has the likelihood of increasing to enormous proportions and once it does, the situation would be completely out of our control.

Still, others say that the situation is akin to a boulder rolling across a slope with multiple cliffs on the way. Every time the boulder falls a cliff, it gains more energy and starts rolling faster. The cliffs are also called as tipping points, once we cross a tipping point, more and more reinforcing elements add up and thus the warming becomes accelerated.

As described by Prof V. Ramanathan of Scripps Institute of Oceanography, we are choosing to send our children on a flight (the Earth itself can be considered as a mega spaceship and all our children its potential future passengers) which has 1 in 20 chance of getting wrecked. According to his paper in PNAS, there is a 5 % chance i.e. 1 in 20 chance of the global average temperature increasing above 5 degrees, which if happens can lead to so much destruction of the ecology as to make complete extinction of Humans or even extinction of life on Earth a distinct possibility. 

An analogy described in my book is the Roller coaster analogy.

The current situation is akin to all our children, more than 1 billion of them, sitting on a big roller coaster which has a deficient track ahead. A roller coaster with an infinite track ahead having a slope which is less at the start but it gets steeper as the roller coaster moves ahead in time.

Indeed, we as parents with our choices in daily lives, have purchased the tickets and made them sit on it. And now, the caretaker (akin to the scientific community) of the roller coaster has come and told us about the gap in the track a few miles ahead.

The slope of the roller coaster is very high at the point where a deficiency exists and at that point, the breaking systems would not work. Our children would be doomed if they are still sitting on the roller coaster when it reaches the gap. Indeed, today we have the break of the roller coaster in our hands.

If we want, we can push the brakes and stop the roller coaster from going full speed ahead and bring the children back to safety.

If we ignore it now (giving any excuses like our job or daily chores or holiday or television or movies), when our children do realize the danger when it comes close, they won’t be able to do anything to stop the speeding roller coaster due to its speed.

It is us parents who should decide whether we are willing to continue business as usual with complete focus on profit disregarding all the warnings given by scientists and give the gift of an uninhabitable hothouse planet to our children in inheritance, or we are willing to face some hardships, discipline ourselves and have the will to understand this problem and take steps towards solving it and quit living with our faces buried in sand disregarding all the signs of climate breakdown.

Another analogy described in my book is the Donkey-Railway crossing analogy. Imagine a donkey who is grazing right on the tracks. A train is about to pass from the track. The caretaker of the railway crossing is trying hard to explain the donkey that it is not sane to remain on the path of a speeding train which can arrive any time soon. Remember, the donkey does not understand GPS or other gadgets which the caretaker is using to track the train. Thus, if the donkey considers the caretaker a fool for giving the warnings to him, you know who is the real fool. Another important thing to remember is that the few twigs of grass which the donkey would eat (akin to the few rupees/dollars one might earn or the economic development the Government might bring about) would matter the least when the train is in the process of crushing the donkey. Similarly, the few bucks we make today, when we focus on profit or economic development disregarding the scientist’s warnings and continue our tree cutting or fossil fuel burning spree in the name of economic development, would vanish into thin air as soon as the entire economy collapses due to Climate breakdown, something we experienced in multiple parts of the World, the best example being Kerala floods destroying 10,000 km of roads.

The bottom line is that the graph of warming is an exponential one. What that means is that if we are sitting on the graph and look behind (i.e. in the past or on the left side of the present location on the graph), it is flat and the rate of rising in temperature or rate of warming is hardly anything in the past, however as we go towards the future, the rate of warming skyrockets and in a matter of years, we may cross multiple tipping points and warming might increase horrendously. Needless to say that such an abrupt increase in warming, commonly called as Abrupt Climate change or Runaway global warming is not only likely but would be completely out of our control and when this happens, any amount of human intervention will not help and the warming would progress relentlessly. Opinions vary among experts as to whether the warming of more than 5 degrees is possible. 

However, such warming events and mass extinction events have occurred in the past several times. And lead to almost disappearance of the majority of species.  Even if we humans survive this catastrophic event and avoid our extinction for some decades due to technology, we cannot save other species from going extinct due to this. And the Earth would be a Hothouse planet, the majority of the Earth may become un-inhabitable and life in such a planet would be close to hell. Not every country can cope up with such catastrophic warming and thus disastrous consequences of Global warming are not necessarily equal to all countries. The poorer lot is going to suffer much more and it would be harder to safeguard citizens of currently developing or underdeveloped nations. This inequality can cause wars between countries for as little as food or water, including nuclear wars, a distinct possibility.

This does not mean that we lose hope and choose the “No action” alternative saying that we are anyways doomed. The gaps in understanding of us Humans are many and significant. Thus, these worse case scenarios should not be ignored and should help to motivate more of us into maximum action. Majority of us, ignorant of the reality of the present situation, just living their lives in complete ignorance or denial of the scientific data, is not exactly a good picture for our children.

 Written by: Dr. Rohit Kale

Follow on Twitter: @RohitKale23

Contact on: drkalerohit23@gmail.com

Website: saveourmotherearth.in

Author of the book: How the Homo Sapiens Blundered