Embodied Human Consciousness, Abrupt Global Climate Change, and Freedom - S. David Stoney, Ph.D.

II. ABRUPT GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE - Is Nature preparing a devastating 1 - 2 punch of rapid global warming (sea level rise, droughts, severe storms & floods) followed by rapid cooling (reduced temperatures - especially in northern latitudes - and additional crop loses, more general aridity, and rapid reduction in habitable lands)? Is the political leadership of our country capable of acting with courage to move our society towards adapting to the climate cycle or will greed and denial carry the day?
     This section has several parts. Understanding our Predicament, provides an introduction to the global climate cycle and the stark choices it presents us with in terms of sherperding our resources and moderating our population growth. Our Present Situation, a new section, briefly summarizes, albeit in a somewhat dark, poetic way, my assessment of the current situation. Confronting Climate Change, is the beginning of my attempt to highlight what can be done. Currently it includes an essay on confronting climate change, a PowerPoint Slide show about possible responses to global warming, and sample letters - to newspaper Editors and to members of Congress - urging a bipartisan effort to begin coming to grips with the looming threat. Please use all or parts of these letters to begin to alert your neighbors. Climate Change Links, provides descriptions and links to a few quality sites that are concerned with the issue of global climate change. If you're interested in the science of global climate change, this is the place to start.

"Until a few decades ago, it was generally thought that all large-scale global and regional climate changes occurred gradually over a timescale of many centuries or millennia, scarcely perceptible during a human lifetime. The tendency of climate to change relatively suddenly has been one of the most surprising outcomes of the study of earth history...Some and possibly most large climate changes (involving, for example, a regional change in mean annual temperature of several degrees celsius) occurred at most on a timescale of a few centuries, sometimes decades, and perhaps even just a few years." (Adams, J., Maslin, M. & Thomas, E. Sudden climate transitions during the Quaternary, Progress in Physical Geography 23: 1 - 36, 1999. For WWW version click here.)

"Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed... The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy makers. At present there is no plan for improving our understanding of the issue, no research priorities have been identified, and no policy-making body is addressing the many concerns raised by the potential for abrupt climate change...Considering the known limitations of climate models, it is not currently possible to ascribe probabilities to future abrupt climate changes." (Committee on Abrupt Climate Change of the National Research Council, Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises, Washington, DC: National Academy Press, pgs. 1, 82, 2002. For WWW version click here.)

"Recent research suggests that once temperature rises above some threshold, adverse weather conditions could develop relatively abruptly, with persistent changes in the atmospheric circulation causing drops in some regions of 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit in a single decade... There are some indications today that global warming has reached the threshold where the thermohaline circulation could start to be significantly impacted...This report suggests that, because of the potentially dire consequences, the risk of abrupt climate change... should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern." (Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, a report prepared for the Department of Defense, circa 2003)

"Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect." (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Abridged Edition by Helmut Wiemer, English Abridged Edition by Arthur Helps from the translation by Charles Francis Atkinson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pg. 396, 1991.)

Understanding Our Predicament. A short description, with figures, references, and links, of the 'new,' disquieting world that climate scientists have revealed to us. The variety and possible dynamics of worse-case interglacial phase population patterns are described, patterns which depend upon the timing of the development of conscious knowledge regarding abrupt global climate change - and any will to action - relative to the abrupt ending of this interglacial phase by a 1 - 2 punch from Nature.