When will the Gulf Stream ‘shut down’ and how will it affect our part of the World?

Quick answer: It probably won’t shut down completely in the next century or two. It will almost certainly weaken progressively during the 21st century, and will have an effect on both UK climate and US sea level. 

 This means that the UK may experience an amount of cooling relative to the global average and the long-term local average, and the US Eastern seaboard may experience an amount of sea level rise greater than the global average and the local long-term average, both within this century.

In simple terms, even if the Gulf Stream does not shut down completely, the impact of a weakening of the system will be felt this century, and conceivably within the next 20-30 years. It has already been felt at least once (2009-2011), and the current CO2 concentration pathway suggests that this kind of thing can easily be repeated, is likely to be repeated.

Back in 2006 I spent some time trying to understand how the Gulf Stream worked and what the implications of climate changes would be for me, living in the UK. This included exchanging some emails with a few of the people who were active at the time in analysing the data and models, and a lot of reading.

In 2009, the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP09) published it conclusions about projected changes to the UK in the 21st century, which also leaned heavily on similar sources to infer likely scenarios for change to our climate.

Since that time, the issue has stayed in the scientific literature, and occasionally pops up as a matter of concern on the internet or in the media.

Most recently, the technically reliable RealClimate has drawn my attention again to the matter in a post: The Underestimated danger of a breakdown of the Gulf Stream System. 

This summarises a paper which draws attention to some of the limitations of the modelling of the Gulf Stream, or AMOC.

Whilst it is a very useful reference, including links to several recent developments in both analysis and modelling, it does not address a question which I raised in the comments section but have not yet had answered: When is this going to happen?

Even more recently, The open access Journal of Ocean Science has published a paper which, though it focuses on a different aspect (sea level rise), has a strong section on the AMOC and some interesting material on modelling: Changes in extreme regional sea level under global warming.

The Scripps paper (Wei Liu et. al.) applies a flux correction to better model the freshwater exchange in the system on which so much depends. It suggest that the Gulf Stream could lose about a third of its strength by 2100.

The Brunnabend et al  paper uses a reasonably new high resolution ocean model, POP, which is able to capture the mesoscale eddy formations in the north Atlantic and the impact this has on regional sea level rise. It also, as you might expect, provides a greater resolution for modelled AMOC flow under the scenarios used (RCP8.5). The model runs out to the end of this century, from an original baseline of 1950, and a comparison between the first and last twenty years of the model.

In that model: The maximum AMOC at 26◦ N decreases from about 20 Sv to about 5 Sv (red curve in Fig. 4a). The spatial pattern of the AMOC does not change, but the North Atlantic Deep Water shallows by about 1000m (Fig. 4b–c). The maximum strength of the AMOC at 35◦ S decreases (blue curve in Fig. 4a) by more than 60 %. The decline in the AMOC causes a rise in mean DSL of up to 0.4 m near the North American continent, mostly because of a redistribution of ocean mass towards these regions (see Fig. 1a).

*Note: Sv refers to Sverdrups: "...used almost exclusively in oceanography to measure the volumetric rate of transport of ocean currents..." This is derived from a model which assumes a high CO2 concentration pathway and associated global temperature change, so might be considered a ‘worst case’ result.

Where does this get us?

So far, I am at the stage where I’m reasonably confident that the Gulf Stream will demonstrate a severe case of Hiccups over the next 80 years, with has already begun. As in 2009-2010, there will be years when the current slows by 30% or more, resulting in seasons which are noticeably cooler than the long-term trend would otherwise suggest. 

This is the UKMO comment on the Winter of 2010, which followed the most recent hiccup:

The following represents an assessment of the weather experienced across the UK during winter 2009/10 (December 2009 to February 2010) and how it compares with the 1971 to 2000 average (the period used for the seasonal forecast). 
Mean temperatures over the UK were 2.0 °C below the 1971-2000 average during December, 2.4 °C below average during January and 1.6 °C below average during February. The UK mean temperature for the winter was 1.6 °C, which is 2.0 °C below average, making it the coldest winter since 1978/79 (1.2 °C). Over England and Wales it was also the coldest since 1978/79. Over Northern Ireland and Scotland, winter 2009/10 was comparable with 1978/79 and 1946/47, with only winter 1962/63 significantly colder in series from 1910. For northern Scotland, it was the coldest winter on record, with the highest number of frosts. A generally mild first 10 days in December was followed by a colder period. This cold spell persisted for the first half of January, with some severe frosts. After mid-month, temperatures rose to around normal before a return to colder conditions. These persisted for most of February, with only a few brief milder interludes mostly in the west and south.

For the sake of simplicity, I’ll assume that a slowdown of 30% roughly equals a drop in mean winter temperature of around 2 degrees. I am not aware of a similar ‘spike’ in the US Eastern Seaboard sea level and am interested to know if this has been researched.

This occasional and regional cooling has to be taken into the context of expected rises in global mean temperature (which will go on irrespective). As things stand, depending on the mitigation scenario, this is likely to mean a temperature rise of between 2 and 4 degrees out to 2100. Again, for simplicity, I’m going to use a median figure of 3c by 2100.

So, by about 2070, the cooling effect of the AMOC slowdown will be offset by the warming effect of the global mean, which at that stage would be between 1.5 and 2.5 degrees. This suggests that the UK will experience a number of cooler winters, comparable to 2010, for the next forty years. After that, its more likely that the cooler winters will be statistically more like recent seasonal averages, i.e., mild.

Meanwhile, back on the US Eastern seaboard, I am speculating that there is a chance that AMOC weakening events could enhance dynamic sea level rise and add 20-30 cm of extra level by the end of the century. This means that a rise of a metre in some areas is plausible by 2060-2070. Add the effect of storm surges and increased offshore cyclonic activity, and New York could experience ‘Sandy-type’ surges on several occasions, with the probability and frequency rising as time goes on.

This is a complex area of study and I have not really done it justice here; my hope is that the average lay person can get a bead on what a slowdown of the Gulf Stream actually means for us and our children.

It just seemed like the right thing to do

Back in the chain Gang

I've never exactly been a Player in the online climate science field, though have dribbled around the edges for some time and have occasionally received encouraging noises from scientists whose opinions I respect.

But in previous iterations, my blogs have received a few tens of thousands of readers, and, more recently, I have a steady readership when I post on Quora.

So, though it may be a small constituency, yet there may be some people who appreciate what I try to do online and it is for them, as well as myself, that I have decided to reopen the blog.

Why now? Mainly, because it feels as if Truth is under attack. Prejudice and dishonesty abounds and is sometimes rewarded. Decency is not in vogue, and being human matters less than being noisy/young/pretty/opinionated/a cat.

Which leads to my second reason: for some time I have been concerned that there is a moral issue in respect to climate science and future-casting in general which is being steadily eroded. And this issue is our treatment of, and respect for, each other as humans. 

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. It exists because many people think it important to remember the evil which can and has been done in our names, or with our consent. It is important.

As I spend more time than is healthy considering, analysing and speculating about our collective future, I am reasonably confident that our society is changing, not for the better. There is an ongoing and future injustice which, if the projections play out, represents a human harm, a level of suffering, which is not just comparable to the suffering of the holocaust, but on a scale so vast as to be almost unthinkable.

Seventy five years ago, there were people who saw what was happening in Europe, in Nazi Germany and elsewhere, a more virulent continuation of historic persecutions going back centuries, and they turned away. Some did not.

And this is why I have returned. If a vast, unspeakable crime against humanity is to be committed, it will not be with my consent, not in my name, and I will not ignore it or simply let it happen. I am opening a dialogue to people who understand the stakes in climate, politics, environmental and social Justice and injustices, and who believe that such depravity should not go unchallenged.

All this is very serious, but please don't be put off - I'll still sometimes make a joke.

Do I have Ebola Virus or a Hangover?

I feel hot. my head aches, I'm sweating, my muscles and joints ache, my throat is sore, and I can't seem to move. Am I sick?

The planet is warmer than it used to be, has heavily polluted oceans and atmosphere, is experiencing sea-level rise and Arctic sea-ice decline, is losing forests and biodiversity, seems to be experiencing more extremes of weather (in impact, if nothing else). Is it sick?

There are good reasons why doctors accumulate evidence before proceeding to diagnosis, even while sometimes treating symptoms. Two things are important: context and range of symptoms.

Why context? Take the first example. If I've been working as a nurse in a hospital in Liberia and I exhibit the symptoms described, one potential diagnosis which requires evaluation is the Ebola virus. Which would be bad.

On the other hand, if I played rugby yesterday in heavy rain, in the scrum, drank ten pints of beer afterwards during a lively singalong in the clubhouse, then walked home, and haven't been anywhere near West Africa or anyone who has been there recently, I might well describe the same symptoms to my doctor, but the diagnosis is most likely to be that a) I'm hung over, b) I'm too old to play serious rugby in the scrum and should know better - how do I expect my body to react? and c) Even if you are too drunk to feel it, walking home in just a shirt in forty degrees may have stimulated a reaction.

It is not just important to look for the context, it is essential. To answer the question 'why' requires proper investigation.

Why range? If I describe just one of those symptoms, say a sore throat, with none of the others, there could be several explanations or diagnoses, but hundreds can be eliminated because the symptom is not tied to any others. A sore throat and a headache might suggest a head cold. Add a temperature and aching muscles, perhaps influenza. Even with a large range of symptoms, placed into a context, a likely explanation is reasonably easy to find.

So, to Climate and the internet. There are very good reasons why it is important to gather evidence for a range of global conditions before attempting a diagnosis. Isolating one element is not very helpful, and cannot provide enough information on which to make any secure conclusions. One way to check out the 'records' is to use the IPCC assessment summaries, since they provide a reduction to readable size of a huge amount of very diverse information.

But you will very often see people arguing about, for example, whether the global temperature record is reliable, or if it is showing that the world is warming, or if the physics of AGW is a reasonable explanation. The reason that many of these people try to focus a reader's attention on any one of the possible 'problems' with the world and attempt to cast doubt on it's validity is because anyone who looks at the big picture cannot possibly be fooled.

As soon as anyone with a reasonable degree of intelligence looks at the range of evidence- the symptoms of the health of the world's natural and human systems - it becomes clear that there are a lot of bad signs in all sorts of places, that there are long-term persistent trends in many diverse measurements (the distribution of beetles, the volume of Arctic sea ice, global ocean temperatures, etc etc) -in other words, that the World is sick.

So it is extremely rare to see any genuine 'climate sceptic' looking at all the evidence. Or any of the evidence. Most often, what you will see is a recycled meme picked up second hand and spouted without thought as demonstration (as often as not) of a person's political or metaphysical world-view (okay, I'm being generous here).

So here is a suggestion. When you read a comment stream or argument on the web, ask yourself - is there more than one 'symptom' at question, or a 'single issue' focus? If someone is insisting on dealing with a specific 'fact' (often, these are actually false anyway), ask yourself (or them) whether they are seeing the big picture.

It's not about whether this year is warmer than last year in Alaska, or whether there is more or less ice than the long-term average this year in the Arctic, or whether any one scientist or another is correct. It is, and you know it is, much, much bigger than this.

Side note

Any one like to speculate what this graph shows and where it comes from?

Details and credits later...

Well, I'm disappointed by the lack of interest. It comes from here:

Millennial minimum temperature variations in the Qilian Mountains, China: evidence from tree rings
Y. Zhang¹, X. M. Shao¹, Z.-Y. Yin^1,2, and Y. Wang^1
1Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
²Department of Environmental and Ocean Sciences, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA 92110, USA
Abstract. A 1343-year tree-ring chronology was developed from Qilian junipers in the central Qilian Mountains of the northeastern Tibetan Plateau (TP), China. The climatic implications of this chronology were investigated using simple correlation, partial correlation and response function analyses. The chronology was significantly positively correlated with temperature variables prior to and during the growing season, especially with monthly minimum temperature. Minimum temperature anomalies from January to August since AD 670 were then reconstructed based on the tree-ring chronology. The reconstruction explained 58% of the variance in the instrumental temperature records during the calibration period (1960–2012) and captured the variation patterns in minimum temperature at the annual to centennial timescales over the past millennium. The most recent 50 years were the warmest period, while 1690–1880 was the coldest period since AD 670. Comparisons with other temperature series from neighbouring regions and for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole supported the validity of our reconstruction and suggested that it provided a good regional representation of temperature change in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau. The results of wavelet analysis showed the occurrence of significant quasi-periodic patterns at a number of recurring periods (2–4, 40–50, and 90–170 years), which were consistent with those associated with El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and solar activity. The comparison between the reconstructed temperature and the index of tropical volcanic radiative forcing indicated that some cold events recorded by tree rings may be due to the impact of tropical volcanic eruptions.

I'd have thought at least someone would have been interested enough to note that here is yet another Palaeo study, showing yet another 'hockey stick', but absolutely, entirely and unequivocally distinct from previous studies done anywhere, including the USA.

Might some people find this 'inconvenient'?

Beyond the rhetoric - is Climate Inaction a Crime against humanity?

In my 'speech' I used the term. by coincidence the same expression was used at the UN by the President of the Seychelles: 

"But how does that help us when we continue to ignore the truth? Climate change – on our current, avid path – is a crime against humanity.  We are all guilty.  And we are all victims. But increasingly, SIDS themselves, are refusing to be victims."

The full text of Mr Michel's (short) speech is here. SIDS refers to the Small Island Developing States group, of which Seychelles is a member.

Such a claim is, of course, rhetorically dramatic, but is there any substance to the idea that a Crime against Humanity may be committed, in the event that a binding International Protocol is not adopted at COP21 in Paris next year?

The aim of the next couple of posts, on the legal question of climate obligations aims to explore the idea that a failure of the Body Politic to sign a binding Protocol under the terms of the UNFCCC at Paris next year might constitute a criminal and prosecutable offence.

The meaning of the term has broadened in recent years. Since the Rome Statute in 2002, a 'crime against humanity' is defined thus:

For the purpose of this Statute, "crime against humanity" means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:[25]
(a) Murder;
(b) Extermination;
(c) Enslavement;
(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
(e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
(f) Torture;
(g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
(h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;
(i) Enforced disappearance of persons;
(j) The crime of apartheid;

(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health;

 The statute's explanatory memorandum also adds additional content for clarity:

(Crimes against Humanity) are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. However, murder, extermination, torture, rape, political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Isolated inhumane acts of this nature may constitute grave infringements of human rights, or depending on the circumstances, war crimes, but may fall short of meriting the stigma attaching to the category of crimes under discussion. On the other hand, an individual may be guilty of crimes against humanity even if he perpetrates one or two of the offences mentioned above, or engages in one such offense against only a few civilians, provided those offenses are part of a consistent pattern of misbehavior by a number of persons linked to that offender (for example, because they engage in armed action on the same side or because they are parties to a common plan or for any similar reason.) Consequently when one or more individuals are not accused of planning or carrying out a policy of inhumanity, but simply of perpetrating specific atrocities or vicious acts, in order to determine whether the necessary threshold is met one should use the following test: one ought to look at these atrocities or acts in their context and verify whether they may be regarded as part of an overall policy or a consistent pattern of an inhumanity, or whether they instead constitute isolated or sporadic acts of cruelty and wickedness.

The most obvious reason to say that 'climate inaction' is not a CAH (crime against humanity) is that the definition specifies an attack and an intent. In this sense it follows the usual logic of criminal law, that a crime requires an agent, a victim or victims, and an intent on the part of the agent.

But there are aspects of the impacts of climate inaction which, from the point of view of the (present or future) victims, have the characteristics of a CAH, without a particular agent. The IPCC AR5 attributes high confidence to climate impacts including death, sickness and other effects on human populations which would certainly fall into the category of 'causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health'.

In addition, it could be said that: ' a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings'... 'are part ... of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy)'...'other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice'... 'in order to determine whether the necessary threshold is met one should use the following test: one ought to look at these atrocities or acts in their context and verify whether they may be regarded as part of an overall policy or a consistent pattern of an inhumanity...' all might be viewed as descriptive of the impacts of climate inaction.

But the definition requires agency and intent. 

However, there are other elements of (International) Law  which might be considered relevant to the discussion at hand. Whilst it would be hard to establish that any individual or state has committed an act with malicious intent which constituted a CAH, one might reasonably ask, since there are an indeterminately large number of 'victims', i.e, people whose experience would include death or 'great suffering or serious injury', as well as a number of specifiable breaches of Human Rights, if the existence of the effect (the 'harm') does not imply the presence of an offence?

There are a number of further considerations which I will look at in the next post. These include - the culpability involved in a 'failure to act to prevent harm', 'nonfeasance', the international concept of the 'responsibility to protect', the ideas of peremptory norms, 'actio popularis', and other matters.

The speech I haven't heard yet - An open message to our leaders

Forty years. More.  However you count it, from whichever moment this started, our so-called leaders have been aware that we are living on borrowed time for decades. And what have they done?

For forty years we have known that this big blue ball, our planet home, the Earth, the natural and human systems which function in it and on it and form all that it means for us to exist, our home is suffering. We, the people of the World, are steadily and inexorably brutalising our home, and now the foundations are trembling.

Now we know, our intelligence and science and experience shows us, our victim, our much-beaten servant Gaia, has a fever. This fever is the warming climate to which we are already committed and which will continue to rage for many decades to come.

We know, as our ‘leaders’ know, that for decades we have been borrowing from the future to pay for our present prosperity. Our capacity to exploit the resources of nature and the resources of our poorer neighbours has now extended to include our ability to exploit the resources of time.

And so the time has come round once again, when our leaders will gather together for the 21st time to talk about what is happening, what might happen, and what might be done. To talk, yet not to act. To argue, yet not to decide. To show us, their citizens, their mandate, that they are ‘taking this problem seriously’, and yet, in making the face and making the noise, doing too little, too late.

If we let them, they will go away from these talks, like all the others, with no agreement, no commitment, no decision to take action. They will set aside the urgency of our problems once again and pass the problem on for future generations.

We need to let them know, in clear terms, that we will not tolerate their indecision any longer. Not in our name, not with our mandate. We are no longer just concerned, no longer worried, we are angry.

In our human history, there have been crimes so brutal, so appalling, that even now, many years after slavery has been abolished and so nearly eradicated, many decades on from the abomination of the Holocaust, these crimes still resonate so strongly that we are reluctant to recall them, we are almost afraid to mention their names. Yet here and now we must.

The evil that is slavery costs the lives of millions of people, and the liberties of millions more.  The evil that was the Holocaust, six million Jews and five million more human lives.

And we see the figures, the statistics and the estimates of those who will be displaced, whose lives will be cut short by disease, famine, drought. The lives already lost and yet to be lost. The dead people, the innocent victims of our polluting, destructive, acidifying, climate changing ways. 

Hundreds of millions.

If we do not demand action to prevent this now, we are signing up, in advance, to another, most brutal, most evil of crimes against humanity. And we should shout this out loud and clear for all to hear:

Not in my name.

Not with my consent.

We must make it clear to our leaders that we hold them to account. This appalling future of suffering, this crime against humanity, can be resisted. It can be reduced. Millions of lives can be saved. But only if we act now. The time to talk is done. We have heard the talk. We are sick of the talk. They must act.

Our leaders have on their shoulders the heavy burden of responsibility for the well-being of us all. But let us be clear; doing nothing, at this point in time, with the cost so transparent, is a conscious decision to permit evil. And so we say to you our leaders; by this measure we will see your true worth. By your decisions we will see the colour of your souls, and pray that they are not as black as oil.

And we must tell them, again, and again – not in my name. Not with my consent. Not with my mandate. 

You are not our masters, you are our representatives. We have entrusted you with the power and the means to act for us. If you will not act, we will judge you, as history will judge you, and we will see you as you truly are, to the depths of your souls. And you will lead us no longer into darkness.

We want you to take action now, in our name and in the name of generations to come. We want you to turn away from the path of evil and fight with us and for us to protect our fellow citizens, our brethren. 

This is our World, our home, these our lives, and we are angry. And if you resist us, we will bring you down. In all the nations of the Earth, we the people will stand for what is good and what is right. You can stand against us, or you can stand with us.

This glorious, magnificent, vital, big blue ball that is Gaia, the Earth – this is our World, and we will fight for it. This planet is our home, and we will defend it. These children are our children, and we will stand before those who threaten them and cherish and protect them. We are the citizens of the World, and we want action. We sisters and brothers, parents and children, rich and poor, we call you now to account, and say to you; we are your justification, your voters, your mandate, and we are telling you our will.

We want you to take action to protect us all against the ravages of exploitation and the abuse of the planet and our climate. 

We want action, and we want it now.

Every voice matters - the climate march in Knaresborough

It would have been lazy not to turn up, so checked the local options, to find that the nearest were at Newcastle or Knaresborough.

For those who don't know, Knaresborough is a small, pretty, historic town close to Ripon in North Yorkshire. It's a polite, quiet, well-mannered kind of town. Nice castle ruins, several nice pubs and coffee shops. Not exactly a hotbed of climate action passion, you would think.

But around 100 people turned up, including the local Green Party candidate for next year's election, Shan Oakes, who did most of the organising, by the look of things, and has posted some pictures here. The Canon of Ripon Cathedral, (didn't get your, name, sorry your reverence) was a prominent presence in his red garb, and gamely supported and joined in.

There were a couple of local church groups, a substantial anti-fracking group, and various others, including a number of ordinary Joes like you know who.

For a while it looked like the march was going to fizzle out before it started, when it was suggested that the numbers were too small to bother with the marching, but with a very little persuasion, it was clear that everyone very much wanted to march, so off we set from the castle green to the Town Hall, via the High Street, providing some small inconvenience for a few people in the traffic that built up behind us.

What was most impressive was the noise. These polite, terribly British (undemonstrative) marchers made a lot of noise, loud and proud, all the way back from the Town Hall to the Market Square, where after a few talks several folks headed of to the local parish for tea with the vicar - er -  canon.

It was a small gesture, as gestures go, but it was a part of a much bigger gesture, and clear that almost everywhere there are people who care enough about the future to give up their Sunday, stand up, and get counted.

Two police officers kept us company; thanks to them the march looked quite official, so gratitude for their forbearance.

Next up? back to the other bits of life for a day or two.

This is not a review of 'The Bone Clocks' by David Mitchell

Because other writers, experienced reviewers and interested parties, like Ursula K Le Guin in the Guardian (here), will do a decent job of it; though I found the New Yorker's extended piece somewhat over the top, with too much in the way of spoiler, and possibly missing the point, though that's probably just me.

This is a blog about climate change, philosophy, and whatever I say it is about, so why the sudden urge to discuss literature? Like my previous discussion of the writing of James Morrow, the urge is because I think it is pertinent and useful to read David Mitchell (the author, not the comedian, though the comedian is my kind of amusing, too).

If you are reading this because you share my interest in the near future of humanity, read the book, with a focus on the last seventy or so pages, which paints a picture which is both credible and frightening; it contains what is for me the best description to date of what we might expect (included the fascinating but flawed vision offered by Kim Stanley Robinson in the recent '2312' (also worth a read).

The Bone Clocks is connected in a casual but conscious manner to some of Mitchell's previous writings, most notably for me, Cloud Atlas, but also Black Swan Green and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. In both novels he plays with time and narrative, and incorporates two themes dear to my heart - the Future in a world changed by a changing climate, social order and politics, and Human Nature, in particular, the struggle to do good in a difficult world.

A part of Mitchell's appeal is that he is covering these subjects in ways which match mine to a large degree, so that, on these matters we share a vision of the future and our role in leading to it. There are times during reading when I stop and find myself thinking 'I could have written this' (which is not a presumption of talent on my part, but a recognition of material). The last time I had similar, regular experience of this was in the 1980's and early 90's, when I read a considerable amount of Michael Moorcock's work, and kept finding myself uncovering a narrative which I had just finished writing in my head a few weeks before - so frequent was this occurrence that it was almost spooky. When I told Moorcock about this, I think it freaked him out slightly, too.

It is interesting to note that the two authors share other features, most particularly, the persistence across time and narrative of certain core characters - metacharacters, consciously so, like Moorcock's Eternal Champion or Jerry Cornelius, or Mitchell's Dr Marinus - and the idea of the persistence of narrative patterns (in this, both are post-modern, post-deconstructionist writers).

Most significant, for this blog, is Mitchell's fairly consistent imagining, glimpsed in the background in Song Mi's story in Cloud Atlas, more fully rounded here in the Bone Clocks, in the later two chapters, set in 2025 and 2042 respectively. It is clear to me that I share something with David Mitchell here - our research, understanding, interpretation of the near future is very closely paralleled. We both imagine a future of bleaker weather, vastly divided social groups, and a strong distinction between life in the remnants of 'civilisation' (drawn out in Mitchell's more distant Shanghai, more proximate Iceland), and the residue of the 'uncontrolled' world, a place of violence and lawlessness. Much of the detail is inferred, hinted at, slightly nebulous - this isn't the epic prose of a vast sci-fi style future vision, but a more subtle, more open-ended imagining.

The other area of interest, and what lift's Mitchell's work into the traditional concept of the literary, is his concern with human nature, and the nature of good and evil. There are touches of this in his earlier work, but in The Thousand Autumns and here, the Bone Clocks, this is a pretty transparent theme. We know this from the presence of the narratives of the Horologists and the Anchorites. We can see it in the moral choices made by all of the characters, to whom (without presuming the author's intention) we can attribute certain internal dynamics which shape our empathy and their moral compass. Holly could said to stand for love, in particular, the love of the family, Hugo for the Ego - he could so easily have stepped out of 'Atlas Shrugg'd' - Crispin as the somewhat detached, ivory-tower self-isolator; they all have moral ambiguities, but there is no question about who the good guys and the bad guys are.

Reviewers (apart from Le Guin) seem to have struggled with the 'fantasy' element of the novel, but few have observed that this is a core metaphor - and Mitchell's decision to spell it out as narrative rather than leave it embedded in the text for the reader to puzzle out, is also a very post-modern approach to the concept of meaning in Narrative, something also featuring in Moorcock's writing. The reader is presented with at least three (I'll be honest, I can't really fathom out Ed's moral position, yet) different human ways of being - the loving, the distant, the selfish - seen in the context of a battle between the non-authoritarian, laissez-faire little acts of salvation undertaken by the Horologists, and the Murderous, self-perpetuating selfishness of the vampiric Anchorites.

There are other interesting sub-metaphors in play here, too ; science/reason vs mysticism, the other vs the self, lives lived conscious of meaning and its absence, engaged in the being lived. There is anough content and suggestion in the story, as there is in Mitchell's other work, to justify (and more or less, in my case, guarantee) a second or third reading.

So, if you want to know where much of my posting is directing itself towards over the past several years, read the book, and get a better, more engaging description than I could ever manage for myself. Just don't expect a happy ending.

Why has Hansen become an 'Advocate'?

One of the reasons its been quiet here is because yours truly has been busy mixing it at the Guardian. Occasionally, the odd little gem has poppped out of the cabbage patch and been reasonably well received.

Just now, someone else left a post on a John Abrahams article (here) which I felt the need to respond to. I'm quite pleased with the result, so here are the two comments:

Smith1867

05 September 2014 5:23pm

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In truth, I prefer the harder science, but frankly these do not get as many page views as the debunking posts.

Is how many page views your blog posts receive what you are interested in? Is that the primary reason for your participation in this blog? If so, then by all means follow more closely to your colleauge's approach. But beware that that is not a scientific blogging approach so much as it is a publicity approach in a sciency genre. Not really science communication in even a loose sense of the term.

A problem for all science communicators and the public who are their target, is that their scientific credentials are often projected onto their activist writings. Take Dr. Hansen for instance, a brilliant and well qualified atmospheric physicist he may well be, however his advocacy for, or protest against any given solution to the technical problem which is high atmosheric CO2 concentrations is no more qualified than any other intelligent layman. He is not a politician or an economist and solutions for the CO2 problem all require considerable expertise in these arenas. However, more often than not he is awarded the respect he has earned as a scientist for his socio-economic/political solutions. We are told we are not listening to "science" if we do not agree with his proposed solutions. Yet when discussing his solutions his scientific credentials hold no more weight than anyone else who accepts the concensus scientific position on AGW.

So you have to ask yourself, is this blog about science communication, which you are well qualified to author? Or is this blog about advocacy for or protest against highly complex socio-economic/political solutions, which you are no more qualified to author than any other intelligent layman?

If you choose the later, just remember that you are not communicating science and cannot project your scientific expertise onto your opinions about other matters.

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  Fergus Brown Smith1867

  05 September 2014 6:01pm

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  First, I think it is important to point out that the blog is a part of John's journalistic work, into which his science work feeds. As a journalist, he needs to earn his crust by bringing an audience into the Medium that pays him, so hits matter.

  On the main points you make: Let's say for arguments' sake that you, a scientist, along with a number of colleagues, spend several years working on a hypothesis and reach the conclusion that it really is likely to change the World as we know it, and furthermore, that the consequences could be devastating, and beyond this, that a certain course of action could reduce risks and harm considerably.
  So, of course, you publish. Then, for twenty years, nobody does anything about your findings apart from whinge and get abusive. The evidence mounts up, but the clock is ticking. Your original conclusions have been validated many times over, but still nobody seems to want to do anything to stop the harm or the potential devastation.
  So, what do you do?
  Firstly, as a scientist, you keep on proving your point, testing your work, and keeping up to date. You develop some kudos. Then, as a human being, you start advocating loudly and publically. Because talking about it scientifically and reasonably didn't work. But it still matters. It matters more than ever. So you shout, you protest, you publish, you lobby, and you do everything in your power to get the message across that this is serious, and it ain't gonna go away.
  No, bollocks. If it was me, I would have lost my patience years before Hansen did. Any normal, rational human being would do the same.
  Along with which, I'd get really pissed off with people who told me I had no right to meddle in politics or that my opinions had no validity.
  I think I've made my point...

On the impossibility of dialogue

In the busy thread below, this extended comment appeared. It contains some thinking which requires extended response, so I’ve done a lift and here it is up front.

The context is that the correspondent is a regular presence on the internet, commenting on climate change and global warming. His view and mine are different.

In the comment, he tries to explain why he thinks the way he does, to which I offer my efforts to understand.

Please note that his first language is not English, and make allowance that some of the expressions, which might sound abrasive, may be a function of linguistic difference, not necessarily aggression.

Here we go:

Let me suggest something: Pull back and consider that I am convinced you act in good faith and are honest, but you have been brainwashed.

I too have been brainwashed. The only difference is that I´m aware of the brainwashing and you seem to be oblivious (like 99 % of the population).

This is not a promising start. You set out by claiming your intellectual superiority to me, in that you have a privileged (and superior) epistemic status, because I am not aware that the world as I understand it is relative. I might be inclined to disagree with this.

The brainwashing isn´t the result of an overarching conspiracy. Some of it is genetic, some of it is deeply ingrained culture, some is early education, and some of it is impressed on you by the media, your friends, and your enemies.

Being brainwashed seems to be a positive survival trait in homo sapiens. Although many brainwashed populations were defeated and driven to extinction, others which practiced brainwashing as a higher art form, or got a bit luckier seem to have survived more often thanks to this brainwashing, which aligned most of society with the leadership, and moved them to perform as requested.

This is somewhat helpful. You are trying to describe your hypothesis, that our perception of reality is conditioned. In particular, you emphasise the social context of individual development (or call it the means by which I form my Weltanschauung (‘World-view’).

Thus my position is that a lot of what we believe is real isn´t really there. As my grandchildren would say, it´s all bogus.

Though your expression is a little clumsy, what is coming out seems to be a much simplified version of the ideas of Paul Feyerabend, for example, in ‘Against Method’. Feyerabend’s views are well summarised in Wkipedia (here).

So how does this impact the way I absorb information about global warming? First, I know there are actors trying to manipulate me to behave in a certain way. Why? Because whenever an issue arises which involves government decisions, subsidies, taxes, putting a drilling rig on the public library grounds, and moves like that I have to be manipulated to accept such decisions.

The position gets a bit more complicated here. This is because you introduce the Political realm. What you seem to be saying is that the information which is available about global warming has the same epistemological status as the information which we get from politicians or their employees. I think some people might object to this.

Do you see why you really can´t change my mind? As far as you are concerned I´m a ghost. I live in a different universe. You are trying to debate global warming, and I debate the way "they" manipulate us.

A part of the complexity is that you seem to have thoroughly mixed your resistance to political manipulation and your view of the nature of scientific endeavour. To you, these are manifestations of the same phenomenon – the untrustworthiness of given knowledge – and therefore they are the same thing. You reject Science as a whole, wholesale.

And why do you think you avoided the subject when I tried to use Kosovo and Iraq as talkng points? Because your comfort zone is in global warming and the associated science. You want to feel comfortable surrounded by your friends, sitting in a tall stone tower from which you can fling arrows and stones at the enemy trying to scale your walls.

Here, you are making presumptions about me which are not justified. I avoid discussing Kosovo or Iraq because I do not believe I have sufficient knowledge or understanding to comment on these subjects; I have no expertise or opinion which I trust.

And your characterisation of me in the second sentence is laughable. I have spent considerable time addressing your point of view and defending your right to express yourself, even when you have been illogical and inconsistent, yet you accuse me of attacking you. If you still see me as your enemy I would suggest that the problem lies not in my attitude but in yours. You have already decided that we must be enemies, so I cannot have any understanding of you or any human compassion. This means I cannot win. Your mind is closed to my humanity and identity; to you, I am just ‘one of them’. So who is acting in bad faith, you, or me?

On the other hand, I see this behavior as normal, quite human, and also misguided.

How very patronising and wise of you.

Almost everybody is the same. And this is why in the 21st century we see children being slaughtered with laser guided bombs in Palestine, and we look the other way. We have been brainwashed to accept this, and we can´t even bring ourselves to discuss it. And the odds are this post may even be censored, isn´t it?

Since I have both permitted every statement you have made on this blog, and defended your right of comment, even when it pushed libellous status, you have no grounds whatsoever to imply I might censor you, so this is just a personal insult.

To sum things up as best I can. You claim to be my intellectual superior. You set out a view of how the world (of understanding, or knowledge) is constructed. In this, you explicitly reject Science wholesale; to you, it is just as much in error as political propaganda. You frequently draw parallels between political events and scientific knowledge. You then remind me of why I am ignorant and accuse me first of being your enemy, then of repressing you, in spite of the visible contradiction of these in this blog.

Where does this leave me? If, as you say, all science is deception, then we cannot talk about science – not at all – by your terms there is nothing meaningful to say about it. But neither can we talk about anything which we might think of as being a shared human experience. So we cannot have any dialogue. Besides this, you have demonstrated that you do not respect me as an individual or as a human being; in particular, to you I am an inferior being. So you deny me any motivation to continue the effort to engage with you. Finally, you have established that, whatever I say and however I say it, you have determined that I am your enemy. I don’t need enemies, I want friends.

In conclusion, by your terms and rules, since there is nothing ‘true’ to say about science, every comment you make on science is a piece of hypocrisy. Furthermore, on your terms, nobody understands how things really are better than you, so you will never consider the possibility that you might be wrong, or the possibility that anyone else might have anything valid to say. This, too, given your views on propaganda, is hypocrisy. You deny the subject, the means, and the motivation to engage in dialogue. You have determined that discourse is impossible, so, unless you give me some reason to believe otherwise, I can do nothing better than remain silent.

For now, that is all I have to say on the subject.

Whistling at a different pitch

Having exorcised Mrs Merkl’s Swabian housewife, let’s get back to some more thinking.

I want to explore a sample explanation of why the Farmer and the Cowboy can’t be friends. Obviously, this is apropos of my concern over the effective communication of climate issues and environmental issues in general.

We recently discussed Truth – it’s easy to agree that this takes us in tricky directions. It can be hard to agree what makes a truth, and hard to agree the specific cases of whether something is true or not. So I’m going to move the focus on to the notion of Understanding, instead.

However and whatever forms of ‘knowledge’ we acquire (or, reducing it further, form of meaningful communication with which we agree), we tend to come to an understanding of reality, truth, fact, whatever, from two distinctive and often contradictory ways of understanding things. This is what Wikipedia says about Reason:

Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, applying logic, for establishing and verifying facts, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information.^[1] It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a definitive characteristic of human nature.^[2] The concept of reason is sometimes referred to as rationality and sometimes as discursive reason, in opposition to intuitive reason.^[3]

Reason or "reasoning" is associated with thinking, cognition, and intellect. Reason, like habit or intuition, is one of the ways by which thinking comes from one idea to a related idea. For example, it is the means by which rational beings understand themselves to think about cause and effect, truth and falsehood, and what is good or bad. It is also closely identified with the ability to self-consciously change beliefs, attitudes, traditions, and institutions, and therefore with the capacity for freedom and self-determination.^[4]

You’ll note that the article distinguishes between DISCURSIVE and INTUITIVE reason. This is what the Wiki says about Intuition:

Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason.^[1] The word intuition comes from Latin verb intueri which is usually translated as to look inside or to contemplate.^[2] Intuition is thus often conceived as a kind of inner perception, sometimes regarded as real lucidity or understanding. Cases of intuition are of a great diversity; however, processes by which they happen typically remain mostly unknown to the thinker, as opposed to the view of rational thinking.

Intuition provides views, understandings, judgements, or beliefs that we cannot in every case empirically verify or rationally justify. For this reason, it has been not only a subject of study in psychology, but also a topic of interest in various religions and esoteric domains, as well as a common subject of writings.^[3] The right brain is popularly associated with intuitive processes such as aesthetic or generally creative abilities.^[4][5][6] Some scientists have contended that intuition is associated with innovation in scientific discovery.^[7]

Both Reasoning and Intuition are legitimate ways of reaching understanding. Further, there is often reasoning embedded in intuition, and intuition likewise informs reasoning.

Science in general, say Mathematics as a paradigm, is basically rational; it has rules, structure, processes, precedents and checks. Without necessarily being complete or absolute, Mathematics is a profoundly rational activity. If you have learned the rules and the conventions, you can apply them to any number of problems of increasing complexity. It is largely consistent and logical. The ‘truths’ of Mathematics are results derived from within the syntax and semantics of the system, and their value is a function of their formulation, which is neither arbitrary nor contradictory. In other words, within Mathematics, 2 + 2 always = 4. The only way you can change this ‘truth’ is to change the rules or convention by which you understand the expression.

On the other hand, many people have an understanding of their world from an intuitive perspective, of which religion is an example. Let’s consider Buddhism as the paradigm. A person who ‘understands’ the underlying truths in Buddhism, the ‘Four Noble Truths’, does not necessarily understand them in a consciously rational manner. But this does not imply that her understanding is inferior to the understanding of a mathematician of the truth of the axioms of number or addition.

These are different ways of ‘understanding’. But they may not be quite so contradictory as you might think. For example, to reach a new solution or hypothesis, the mathematician may well start by having an intuition that something is wrong, that a certain type of procedure might correct the error, or have an insight into the nature of a problem which informs new possible resolutions. And the four noble truth of Buddhism can be laid out in a strictly formal logical ‘proof’, which suggest that, though understanding them may be intuitive, their meaning has a formal structure which allows them to make sense to our thoughts.

Religions have a long history of Reasoning associated with them in East and West. Some of the great thinkers in history were dealing with problems arriving not from science, but from a religious, intuitive source. But many religions also recognise, implicitly or explicitly, that understanding, or wisdom, about the world in the context of the religious system concerned, comes to the individual from a deep personal insight or understanding. Furthermore, this understanding is often opaque to communication; ‘The way that can be spoken of is not the true way’. Can we argue that wisdom is impossible under these conditions? Can we argue that the understanding of the Buddha is a false understanding? We can’t, for two reasons; firstly, because we have not nor can we ever strictly reach the same understanding that the Buddha has. Our insight must be our own, a personal understanding which might parallel what we have learned or experienced. Secondly, because the full detail of the nature of the understanding is beyond language (any language); it is a lived experience.

What am I getting on to? Well, obviously, people ‘understand’ Global Warming in different ways. A lot of people reach their understanding by reasoning, analysis, interpretation and evaluation of evidence, argument, and by testing the mechanisms and processes. Why would anyone look at it any other way?

I am speculating that one of the reasons why people might look for a different way of understanding Global warming is because they don’t trust what science is. Sometimes, the contradiction of the science is simply fuelled by ignorance – it is easy to distrust what you don’t understand, especially if you feel threatened by it. Sometimes a person can have such a strong negative prejudice about a message that they choose to contradict irrespective of understanding – this is why such behaviour is often labelled as ‘denial’.

But there are other people who are otherwise reasonable who turn away from the evidence and the arguments because they believe that science is something they cannot trust.

The problem is, Science is an institution as much as anything else. It works in relation to rules and conventions, exists within other institutions, is paid for by institutions. Science, it seems, has authority because it is an Authority – in this sense, it is a part of the ‘System’. More than this, Scientific argument is often derived from an apparent appeal to authority –precedence, existing assumptions, previous work, peer-review. It is an ‘Institution’ par excellence.

And a lot of people don’t trust Authority, They don’t trust Institutional models or processes, they see an underlying circularity in the self-justifications of scientific ideas, and they believe that, since Science is about authority, it suffers from the same weaknesses as other forms of authority.

This association is the problem. A person who is consistently ‘let down’ by a social or legal system, who is not protected but persecuted, who experiences injustice or repression at first hand by the hand of the System, learns in real experience that Authority and The System are inherently untrustworthy. This understanding is intuitive as well as evidential, so it has a strong force in the understanding. For such a person it is probably quite natural to mistrust and be cynical about anything which makes claims to authority. The natural default based in the understanding which exists is that first you assume the authority is either wrong or is lying, then you assume the authority has a self-serving intent and is indifferent to you, and is therefore fundamentally corrupt.

For young people, who often have an innate mistrust of the system in some form, or for those whose experience has led them to believe that no-one can be trusted, asking them to see things from a rational point of view has limited use. It is not the way their understanding has been formed. For ignorant people with strong prejudices it has no use, because they cannot even acknowledge the possibility that another understanding can exist at all. But it doesn’t mean that discussion is impossible.

Even the most intuitive person recognises the underlying formal structures which allow meaningful discourse to happen. They can accept the idea that an effect must have a cause, that if you add something to something you end up with something ‘more’. An ‘intuitive understander’ can be quite sophisticated, and even see the logical inconsistencies of their understanding. Simple logic and simple reasoning can work within a discourse to the point where a person can recognise contradictions and inconsistencies and acknowledge that these might undermine their understanding, so that, even if they sustain their understanding from intuition, they can agree that their understanding is irrational. It doesn’t mean, to them, that they are wrong.

So, can the Farmer and the Cowboy ever be friends? I would suggest yes, this is possible, but first they need to accept that what is already understood does not rest on mutually agreed conventions. But for a discourse to happen at all, there must be the possibility of logic. To start a discourse, to establish the conventions and terms of dialogue, the most important thing is to listen first, and avoid passing judgment based on your own conventions or understanding.

Possibly there will be more on this later, it depends.