Physicians have a view of the world that makes them especially able to understand the concept I called the "Seneca Cliff." Here, Lukas Fierz, Swiss physician, provides some basic principles that apply to collapses of complex systems, it doesn't matter if we deal with human bodies or entire civilizations. The basic behavior is the same: collapses start slow and often unnoticed, and then strike hard by a combination of mutually reinforcing factors. The final result may be that someone dies, or that an entire civilization goes down to the dustbin of history, or even that an entire ecosystem is destroyed. It happened, and it will happen again.
A painting by Holbein, presently at the Kunstmuseum in Basel. It was one of the sources of inspiration for this post by Lukas Fierz
Guest post by Lukas Fierz
Taboos and illusions in the
environmental question
I am not a climatologist, but as a physician, you
only master certain areas and otherwise you listen to various other
specialists. We are also used to deal with uncertainties: e.g. If you are
considering an operation, you estimate the chance of success based on the
patient's age, nutritional and physical condition, morale, heart health and
previous illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes etc. Every risk factor
reduces the chances of success. Inability to calculate anything precisely does
not release you from making an estimate.
Similarly, the uncertainties in the climate
discussion do not release one from making an assessment. There we are
unfortunately hindered by some taboos and illusions, but let’s
try:
I grew up in Basel where in the museum hangs a
picture of the dead Christ, painted by Holbein 500 years ago.
This made a deep impression on me and I had it
above my desk for years: A mercilessly realistic view of our God, his passion
and the end of us all. We have to measure our actions against this end. Until
then we must do, what we do as well as possible and not lose time. And there is
already the first taboo, death. Death being repressed in the
prevailing consciousness, much that is related to it cannot be seen.
Later I studied medicine and learned some
principles:
1.
Illnesses often
begin in secret: First symptoms
are often not the beginning, but the last act. A drunkard or a smoker take
decades to ruin their liver or lungs; this goes unnoticed because the organism
compensates. Once jaundice or shortness of breath occurs, the further course is
not in decades, but rather years. Similarly, if our bees die, this is not a
beginning but the end, because they have been poisoned already for a long
time.
2.
Risk factors
for disease can more than add up: E.g. depression
occurs in one percent of the population every month. A serious stress factor (death of family member,
loss of workplace, illness, etc.) adds two percent more. Two stress factors add
three percent. With three stress factors, one could assume depression in nine
percent, but it is 24 percent: Suddenly the risks multiply. Similar mechanisms may
apply in other situations.
3.
Patients and insurances
want forecasts. Diseases often remain true
to themselves: A patient with multiple sclerosis who is only slightly disabled
after ten years, will probably not be in a wheelchair after another decade.
4.
This is only
true in the absence of self-reinforcing mechanisms: The most dreaded example is the narrowing of the aortic valve, the
valve of the main artery. The heart adapts, uses more energy, generates more
strength and pushes enough blood through the valve; patients can even practice
athletics. But when the heart can no longer get enough blood for its own energy
requirements, heart failure and death occur within seconds, We physicians are
terrified of such self-reinforcing and uncontrollable mechanisms.
5.
In our
profession there are authorities: If a
physician repeatedly has made diagnoses missed by everyone else, he will get a fabulous
reputation. You believe him with advantage, even if you don't quite understand
his reasoning.
6.
Cheating is
useless: If the patient dies you are dealt with by the
pathologist or the coroner. They are merciless.
Let's apply this wisdom to
the environmental situation:
In 1972 the Club of Rome fed whatever one knew
into a computer and he predicted that if we don't stop economic growth and limit
the population at four billion, ecosystems will destabilize in the middle of our
century. They even mentioned the greenhouse effect hoping for a timely solution.
The limiting factor was pollution, not scarcity of resources or of land. Whoever
pretends that the Club of Rome is discredited because it incorrectly predicted
a resource shortage tells a lie or has not read the report. Later, the Club of
Rome corrected, that perhaps even a population of 8 billion could be
sustainable, but they explicitly stated that the consequences of human
aggressiveness could not be modelled.
In 1988 James Hansen first demonstrated that the
greenhouse effect was happening while predicting the future warming with great
accuracy to this day. Hansen is an authority. If he questions official
forecasts and measures, this must raise concern.
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James Hansen is taken away by police in
shackles
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The Paris Treaties of 2015 wanted to limit the
temperature increase to 1.5 or 2 degrees. And this brings us to the illusions:
First illusion: The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change) takes 1850-1900 as the starting point which gives a temperature rise of
more than one degree. But industrialization started 100 years earlier, and
starting from the lower pre-industrial values we have already reached the 1.5
degrees.
Second illusion: From the start it was clear that the Paris 1.5-degree
target would be missed. James Hansen speaks of a fake deal. If it were kept,
the temperature would rise above 3 degrees, over land twice as much. Moreover,
the Paris Agreement assumes large-scale sequestration of CO2 from the air,
which Hansen describes as illusory.
Third illusion: Hardly anyone keeping the Paris Agreements we are underway
to global warming of 4-5 degrees by 2100, again meaning about the double over
land.
This is official mainstream, i.e. the predictions
of the IPCC.
The fourth illusion assumes that this
is hysterical alarmism. Even the greenhouse effect is denied although he has
been proven more than 150 years ago.
But in fact, all statements made so far are not
alarmistic, but rather too tame,
Fifth illusion: Many think that the temperature increase is
linear. But it becomes faster, as one sees with the naked eye:
Even the IPCC suffers from this illusion: Before
2015 they talked of limiting the increase to 1.5 degrees by 2100. In 2018, the
IPCC moved this to 2040. American climatologists immediately objected: The IPCC had
forgotten that greenhouse gases continue to rise which takes the 1.5 degrees to
2030, a shift of 70 years in some years.
The sixth illusion holds that the
greenhouse mechanism is the whole story. This would be bad enough, but the many
positive feedback mechanisms are even worse because according to Hansen they were
always match-deciding in the previous history of the earth and they can cause
tipping points.
The IPCC neglects these feedbacks, because precise
predictions are impossible. However for a physician, they are more frightening
than anything else: All go in the wrong direction, each can become
uncontrollable, and their effects can not only add, but possibly multiply. And
then, developments can be shortened to years.
The seventh illusion imagines that the
CO2 concentration only depends on how much we blow into the air. However almost
a third of the CO2 emissions have been absorbed by the ocean and a warmer ocean
no longer absorbs, but releases CO2.
Similarly with trees and vegetation: So far, they also
absorb almost a third of the CO2 emitted. Most CO2 compensation programs work
with actual or alleged reforestation. But we are already losing forest through
logging and fires. And with a temperature increase of four degrees by the year
2100, the trees
will die off over large areas, like the coral reefs, and thus trees will change from being a CO2
buffer to CO2-production. The German Climate Pope Schellnhuber says: "We kill our best friends". CO2 emissions will increase, even with zero emissions by humanity!
Not counted by the IPCC either.
In the eighth illusion the ice melts
slowly, but things accelerate in the Arctic. Wadham, the Pope of Ice, believes that without snow and ice, the
reflectivity of the earth decreases and warming becomes 50 percent greater.
That may bring us to six degrees by 2100, twice as much over land. Not counted
by the IPCC.
The ninth illusion was that the
permafrost would not thaw until the end of the century. But it is already
thawing, and methane is bubbling there and elsewhere and rising rapidly in the
atmosphere. This short-lived but very powerful greenhouse gas can acutely
accelerate warming with self-burning becoming a matter of years. Not counted by
the IPCC.
The tenth illusion: At a higher
temperature, the air stores more water vapor, also a greenhouse gas. Several
models predict a decrease in cloud cover, which could further accelerate
warming. Not counted by the IPCC.
The eleventh illusion is that
everything goes slowly. But geologically, the pace of the current changes is
unprecedented, ten times faster than the
fastest changes in the last 65 million years.
Twelfth illusion: It’s not only the climate that endangers us, but
also the extinction of species, at an extraordinary pace in terms of earth
history. It’s still rather climate-independent, mainly caused by hunting and by
the loss and poisoning of habitats due to expanding human population and activity.
E.O. Wilson thinks that half of the earth should be reserved for wildlife if
one wanted to stop this extinction.
Let’s summarize, like a
surgeon before an operation:
The first symptoms of disease are
omnipresent: droughts, fires, glacier retreat, loss of species, not a
beginning, rather the beginning of the end. The biosphere can no longer
compensate.
The effects of causal factors - CO2,
methane, water vapor, forest fires, cloud loss, ocean acidification,
pesticides, habitat loss - don’t necessarily just add up, they sometimes
multiply with unpredictable results.
But a physician panics above all about the multiple
self-reinforcing feedbacks: ice melt, methane release, forest fires, CO2
release from soil and ocean. There is little handle against such
self-reinforcing mechanisms, even if they occur individually, and even much
less if they work together.
The 1,5- or 2-degrees goal is out of
question. The Paris Agreement is fake, the governments reactions
inadequate or contra productive. Only with luck will we reach four or five
degrees at the end of the century, but this is improbable, because the self-reinforcing
feedbacks have already all kicked in. Some experts expect six or seven degrees,
meaning twice as much over land, which human civilization cannot survive.
For Johan Rockström from the Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact Research, with four degrees of global warming the earth can only feed
four billion people. This means widespread wars for a living space that will
become increasingly scarce.
Because death is tabooed in our consciousness we
are unable to see him, even if he stares directly into our eyes. I don't blame
idiots like Trump. But rather the climatologists, who do not tell the whole
truth. And the Greens, who are raving about the 1.5 degrees, a lie to the
voters.
Last but not least, we come to the second
taboo: Nobody wants to see the fact that we are too many. We are
reproductive machines and reproduction is programmed into us as the most sacred
goal. Therefore many - e.g. our benevolent Greens – prefer to believe into the
illusion that reduction of consumption is enough.
Admittedly, only the wealthy produce the pollution:
The ten percent of the wealthiest probably fifty percent, the 50 percent of the
wealthier almost all the rest. But a large part of resource consumption and
pollution is forced because we have to live in megastructures, which need
energy-guzzling transports.
Some want to solve the problem by eliminating the
privileges of the top 10 percent or even - according to old revolutionary customs
- by eliminating the top 10 percent of the privileged, e.g.by guillotine. But
even half the burden is too much. Therefore one would have to guillotine the
wealthier half. This would work if the remaining half would not want to multiply
and become wealthy, with industry, meat consumption, cars, airplanes. This they
are already trying to do all over the world, e.g. in India, for the noble
savage is just another illusion.
Many whose birth is not avoided by birth control
will be killed by manslaughter, starvation and disease. That’s the reality we
should face. Two generations of one-child family would be more humane.
Lukas
Fierz (79), from a Swiss family of musicians and scientists became a
physician and neurologist. Shocked by the report of the Club of Rome
together with others he founded the Swiss Green Party for which he sat
in the national parliament without any effect. He fought the resulting
depression as an amateur cellist with music once played on the Titanic
(live recordings on playlist “Music for Titanic”). Moved by the climate youth, he began to participate in the discussion again with his Blog “Letting down humanity”.
