My grandchildren Sophie and Connor and I need your help. We started a project, but we can’t complete it by ourselves. I noticed that there do not seem to be as many Monarch butterflies now as there were in the 1970’s. At that time, Anniek and I could look out on our small piece of land in eastern Pennsylvania and see several monarchs at the same time. Now we are lucky to see one at a time. Although climate change is probably not the biggest threat to monarchs at the present, if it were to affect the trees on the mountain in Mexico where they go to roost in the winter, it could become a problem for them.
The monarch population may be in decline in part because the milkweed plants that they are dependent on are diminishing as more land is developed and weeds are eliminated. So early this summer, Connor, Sophie and I dug up some milkweeds along the edge of Frogtown Road, where we expected they would get mowed, and transplanted them along our horse fence. Though it was late in the year for transplanting, about half the plants survived, albeit with some slightly yellowed leaves. We saw one monarch fliting about them and hoped it would lay some eggs.
Monarchs migrate thousands of miles each year, with those east of the Rocky Mountains wintering in Mexico, millions of them gathering on trees in a small region in the mountains. A single butterfly cannot fly the whole distance-it takes at least a couple of generations. A female lays eggs on a milkweed leaf. When an egg hatches, a tiny larva emerges and eats milkweed until it grows out of its skin. It does this several times until it is a one and one half inch long caterpillar. Then it finds a twig or a horizontal surface from which it hangs by its back legs, curled into a j shape and sheds its out skin, miraculously molting into a shiny green blue chrysalis about the size of an acorn. More miraculously two weeks later the chrysalis darkens, becomes transparent, and splits open, revealing a an orange and black butterfly with crinkled wings. After pumping fluid into the wings and letting them dry off, the butterfly flies away to find something to eat and resume the trip to Mexico, somehow sensing the direction that it must go.
When we returned from our trip to the shore this summer, we were surprised to find a caterpillar on our slightly forlorn-looking milkweeds and then another and then another. A few days afterword, one of them disappeared but we soon found it hanging upside down from the horse fence in a j shape, and later that afternoon it had become a shiny green blue chrysalis hanging by a thread. The next day, another caterpillar disappeared, but we found this one too on the horse fence, fifty feet away hanging in the j shape.
In September I had an operation to remove my cancerous prostate. Two days later Anniek drove us to our Pennsylvania home, stopping by the barn so I could check on the status of our “budding” monarchs. I shuffled slowly across to the horse fence, as the wounds from my surgery were just beginning to heal.
The first chrysalis dangled as a flimsy shell-its former occupant probably on the way to Mexico. The other chrysalis, the one fifty feet down the horse fence, was beginning to darken, and there were a few sparkles of bright colour within the shell.
Segments of bright orange and black wings could be discerned the next morning through the translucent chrysalis shell. When Anniek and I returned in the afternoon, we found a brilliant full sized monarch hanging upside down from the fence, attached by slender black legs, waiting for its dripping back legs to dry. I banged two pot lids together to scare off the horses. Their magnificent gargantuan heads poking around for their usual carrot treat could instantly have crushed the life from this remarkable insect.
I took pictures to show Sophie and Connor. We had seen only a few monarchs all summer. This one would need to go south quickly-monarchs fly ten to fifteen miles per hour-to stay ahead of the encroaching cold weather and find a mate. Next summer their granddaughter may stop by to lay eggs on milkweeds that we will have ready.
And next year we will do better, planting seeds from milkweed seed pods that we have collected. But their need to be more milkweed plants all along the way to Mexico. You and your children or grandchildren can help us with the project of planting or transplanting milkweed plants. It would be great to see an increase in the monarch population, or at least survival of the species.
Our monarch project speaks to an important issue raised in chapter eleven. The idea that life can be transplanted to another planet if it becomes no longer sustainable here. The notion that humans are so godlike that they could reproduce miraculous and fragile phenomena such as the monarch on another planet, or transplant them there, is patent absurdity. Once a species is gone, it is gone. And if we destroy this planet, we destroy ourselves.
As I gingerly sat down to write this afterword, post surgury, my attention was drawn to a five foot tall poster that Anniek had found at a garage sale years ago. It is a grainy blow up of an early 1950’s newspaper photo, recording a famous moment in baseball rivalry between the Brooklyn dodgers and the New York Yankees.
In it, the baseball is frozen in the air, ten feet above the ground. Scooter (Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto), who does not fill out his baggy uniform, is pulling up in horrified dismay as he realizes he cannot reach the ball. Billy Martin is caught mid dash, glove outstretched, hat suspended in the air behind him. Jackie Robinson, already nearing first base with his graceful stride, looks back over his shoulder. The fate of the World Series depends on whether the ball can be captured before it crashes to the ground.
That ball, today, is planet earth. We have reached the moment when we must make the full effort dash to capture our precious globe before it crashes and our team-the team of all species on our planet-is destroyed. But for our team, unlike a baseball team there will be no chance of a comeback, no next season to do better. This is truly our last chance.
How, though, can today be a critical moment when we do not yet observe great changes in our climate? As we’ve seen, the effects of climate change limited in the near term because of climate system inertia, but inertia is not a true friend. As amplifying feedbacks begin to drive our planet to tipping points, the inertia makes it harder to reverse direction.
The ocean, ice sheets, and frozen methane on continental shelves-all have inertia, resisting rapid change. Heat is pouring into the ocean and the ice shelves are starting to melt. Continued emissions growth will surely cause destabilization of at least the West Antarctic ice sheet.
How close we are to destabilizing frozen methane is unclear. There are already signs of an accelerated release of methane from high latitude tundra and the larger reservoir on continental shelves. So the amount of methane has been small. But if we continue to increase greenhouse gas emissions, the eventual destabilization of large amounts of methane is a near certainty. We must remember that human-made climate forcing is not coming on just a bit faster that natural forcing’s of the past; on the contrary, it is a rapid powerful blow, an order of magnitude greater than any natural forcing’s that we are aware of.
Storms of my grandchildren-when will these hit with full force? Already the air holds more water vapor then it did a few decades ago. The strongest of these storms that derive energy from water vapor –including thunderstorms, tornadoes, and tropical storms- are becoming stronger, and the associated winds and floods are becoming more extreme.
But qualitatively different storms will occur when ice sheet disintegration is large enough to damp high-latitude Ocean warming, or even cause Regional Ocean cooling, while low latitudes continue to warm. Global chaos will ensue when increasing storminess is combined with sea level rise of one metre or more. Although ice sheet inertia may prevent a large sea level rise before the second half of the century, continued growth of greenhouse gases in the near term will make that result practically inevitable, out of our children and grandchildren’s control.
Several uncertainties will affect the speed of more obvious climate changes emerge. One uncertainty about whether and how solar irriadiacence will change over the next few years and next few decades. As of October 2009, the sun remains at the deepest solar minimum in the period with accurate satellite data, which began in the 1970’s. It is conceivable that the suns energy output will remain low for decades, as it apparently did a few centuries ago, which may have been the largest contributor to the little ice age. But as we’ve seen contrary to the fervently voiced opinions of solar power aficionados, such low irridencese would not cause global cooling and would not stop the continued progression of global warming. This does not mean, however that the solar affect is negligible. Indeed if the sun pulls out of its current minimum soon, resuming a typical solar cycle there may be an acceleration of global warming in the next six to eight years. But whatever happens to the solar irradiance, the world is going to be warmer during the next decade (the 2010s) then it was at the present decade, just as the present decade is warmer then the 1990s.
The other major uncertainties that will influence how rapidly climate change effects become obvious are the amount of human made aerosols and the plant’s energy imbalance. Aerosols are the biggest source of uncertainty in terms of the overall forcing that humans are applying to the climate system. The planet’s energy imbalance is our best single measure of a change in atmospheric composition is needed to restore climate stability. Both require improved data.
But our imperfect knowledge of these quantities does not imply uncertainty about the direction that global climate is headed-the world is getting warmer, and it will continue to do so during the next few decades. On the other hand, better knowledge of these quantities will help us refine the atmospheric composition target that we must aim for. We already know that we should reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to, at most, 350 parts per million.
Key quantities we should watch to assess the status of potential climate tipping points are 1. The mass balance of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, including ice shelves and the principle outlet glaciers of the ice sheets, 2.The percentage of fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions that remain in the air, and 3. Changes in atmospheric methane. I will provide organization, discussion and updates of these and other key quantities at www.columbia.edu/-jeh1.
Here are reasons to focus on these quantities 1. If the ice sheets become more mobile, discharging more ice into the ocean, it will bode ill for both future sea levels and storms. 2. The percentage of fossil fuel carbon dioxide remaining in the air has averaged about 56% for decades. The other 44% being taken up by the land or ocean. The ability of the land or ocean to soak up carbon decreases, that could cause global warming to accelerate, which could amplify other feedbacks. 3. Methane is important because of the possibility of an increasing discharge from frozen methane.
You need to be well informed, to understand these matters, because you cannot count on governments, the people paid to protect the public, to deal promptly and properly with the climate matter. The problem with governments is not scientific ability-the Obama administration for example, appointed some of the best scientists in the country to top positions in science and energy. Instead the government’s problem is politics, politics as usual.
US government sciences, at least those at the highest levels cannot contradict a position taken by the president. And president Obamas assertion that he would listen to scientists did not mean that he would not listen, perhaps with even sharper ears to political advisors.
When you learn of a lightly publicized agreement with Canada for a pipeline to carry oil squeezed from tar sands to the united states, when you learn of approval for plants to squeeze oil from coal, when the president advocates an ineffectual cap and trade approach for controlling carbon emissions, when our governments funnels billions of dollars to support clean coal while treating next generation nuclear power almost as a pariah, you can recognize right away that our government is not taking a strategic approach to solve the climate problem.
The picture has become clear. Our planet, with its remarkable array of life, is in imminent danger of crashing. Yet our politicians are not dashing forward. They hesitate, they hang back.
Therefore it is up to you. You will need to be the protector of your children and grandchildren on this matter. I am sorry to say that the job will be difficult-special interests have been able to subvert our democratic system. But we should not give up on the democratic system-quite the contrary. We must fight for the principle of equal justice.
One suggestion that I have for now: support Bill McKibben and his organization350.org. It has the most effective and responsible leadership in the public struggle for climate justice. McKibben has done a remarkable job of helping young people get organized.
But as in other struggles for justice against powerful forces, it may be necessary to take to the streets to draw attention to this injustice. There are places that have begun to have some affect. The government in the United Kingdom, for example, may be turning against coal plants that do not capture carbon emissions-strong activism there is surely playing a role. There have been some locally effective actions in the United States as well. But overall results are small in comparison to what is needed. The international community seems to be headed down a path towards inadequate agreements at best. Civil resistance may be our best hope.
It is crucial for all of us, especially young people, to get involved. This book, I hope, has provided some assistance in understanding what policies we need to be fighting for-and why they will be the most urgent fight of our lives. It is our last chance
The monarch population may be in decline in part because the milkweed plants that they are dependent on are diminishing as more land is developed and weeds are eliminated. So early this summer, Connor, Sophie and I dug up some milkweeds along the edge of Frogtown Road, where we expected they would get mowed, and transplanted them along our horse fence. Though it was late in the year for transplanting, about half the plants survived, albeit with some slightly yellowed leaves. We saw one monarch fliting about them and hoped it would lay some eggs.
Monarchs migrate thousands of miles each year, with those east of the Rocky Mountains wintering in Mexico, millions of them gathering on trees in a small region in the mountains. A single butterfly cannot fly the whole distance-it takes at least a couple of generations. A female lays eggs on a milkweed leaf. When an egg hatches, a tiny larva emerges and eats milkweed until it grows out of its skin. It does this several times until it is a one and one half inch long caterpillar. Then it finds a twig or a horizontal surface from which it hangs by its back legs, curled into a j shape and sheds its out skin, miraculously molting into a shiny green blue chrysalis about the size of an acorn. More miraculously two weeks later the chrysalis darkens, becomes transparent, and splits open, revealing a an orange and black butterfly with crinkled wings. After pumping fluid into the wings and letting them dry off, the butterfly flies away to find something to eat and resume the trip to Mexico, somehow sensing the direction that it must go.
When we returned from our trip to the shore this summer, we were surprised to find a caterpillar on our slightly forlorn-looking milkweeds and then another and then another. A few days afterword, one of them disappeared but we soon found it hanging upside down from the horse fence in a j shape, and later that afternoon it had become a shiny green blue chrysalis hanging by a thread. The next day, another caterpillar disappeared, but we found this one too on the horse fence, fifty feet away hanging in the j shape.
In September I had an operation to remove my cancerous prostate. Two days later Anniek drove us to our Pennsylvania home, stopping by the barn so I could check on the status of our “budding” monarchs. I shuffled slowly across to the horse fence, as the wounds from my surgery were just beginning to heal.
The first chrysalis dangled as a flimsy shell-its former occupant probably on the way to Mexico. The other chrysalis, the one fifty feet down the horse fence, was beginning to darken, and there were a few sparkles of bright colour within the shell.
Segments of bright orange and black wings could be discerned the next morning through the translucent chrysalis shell. When Anniek and I returned in the afternoon, we found a brilliant full sized monarch hanging upside down from the fence, attached by slender black legs, waiting for its dripping back legs to dry. I banged two pot lids together to scare off the horses. Their magnificent gargantuan heads poking around for their usual carrot treat could instantly have crushed the life from this remarkable insect.
I took pictures to show Sophie and Connor. We had seen only a few monarchs all summer. This one would need to go south quickly-monarchs fly ten to fifteen miles per hour-to stay ahead of the encroaching cold weather and find a mate. Next summer their granddaughter may stop by to lay eggs on milkweeds that we will have ready.
And next year we will do better, planting seeds from milkweed seed pods that we have collected. But their need to be more milkweed plants all along the way to Mexico. You and your children or grandchildren can help us with the project of planting or transplanting milkweed plants. It would be great to see an increase in the monarch population, or at least survival of the species.
Our monarch project speaks to an important issue raised in chapter eleven. The idea that life can be transplanted to another planet if it becomes no longer sustainable here. The notion that humans are so godlike that they could reproduce miraculous and fragile phenomena such as the monarch on another planet, or transplant them there, is patent absurdity. Once a species is gone, it is gone. And if we destroy this planet, we destroy ourselves.
As I gingerly sat down to write this afterword, post surgury, my attention was drawn to a five foot tall poster that Anniek had found at a garage sale years ago. It is a grainy blow up of an early 1950’s newspaper photo, recording a famous moment in baseball rivalry between the Brooklyn dodgers and the New York Yankees.
In it, the baseball is frozen in the air, ten feet above the ground. Scooter (Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto), who does not fill out his baggy uniform, is pulling up in horrified dismay as he realizes he cannot reach the ball. Billy Martin is caught mid dash, glove outstretched, hat suspended in the air behind him. Jackie Robinson, already nearing first base with his graceful stride, looks back over his shoulder. The fate of the World Series depends on whether the ball can be captured before it crashes to the ground.
That ball, today, is planet earth. We have reached the moment when we must make the full effort dash to capture our precious globe before it crashes and our team-the team of all species on our planet-is destroyed. But for our team, unlike a baseball team there will be no chance of a comeback, no next season to do better. This is truly our last chance.
How, though, can today be a critical moment when we do not yet observe great changes in our climate? As we’ve seen, the effects of climate change limited in the near term because of climate system inertia, but inertia is not a true friend. As amplifying feedbacks begin to drive our planet to tipping points, the inertia makes it harder to reverse direction.
The ocean, ice sheets, and frozen methane on continental shelves-all have inertia, resisting rapid change. Heat is pouring into the ocean and the ice shelves are starting to melt. Continued emissions growth will surely cause destabilization of at least the West Antarctic ice sheet.
How close we are to destabilizing frozen methane is unclear. There are already signs of an accelerated release of methane from high latitude tundra and the larger reservoir on continental shelves. So the amount of methane has been small. But if we continue to increase greenhouse gas emissions, the eventual destabilization of large amounts of methane is a near certainty. We must remember that human-made climate forcing is not coming on just a bit faster that natural forcing’s of the past; on the contrary, it is a rapid powerful blow, an order of magnitude greater than any natural forcing’s that we are aware of.
Storms of my grandchildren-when will these hit with full force? Already the air holds more water vapor then it did a few decades ago. The strongest of these storms that derive energy from water vapor –including thunderstorms, tornadoes, and tropical storms- are becoming stronger, and the associated winds and floods are becoming more extreme.
But qualitatively different storms will occur when ice sheet disintegration is large enough to damp high-latitude Ocean warming, or even cause Regional Ocean cooling, while low latitudes continue to warm. Global chaos will ensue when increasing storminess is combined with sea level rise of one metre or more. Although ice sheet inertia may prevent a large sea level rise before the second half of the century, continued growth of greenhouse gases in the near term will make that result practically inevitable, out of our children and grandchildren’s control.
Several uncertainties will affect the speed of more obvious climate changes emerge. One uncertainty about whether and how solar irriadiacence will change over the next few years and next few decades. As of October 2009, the sun remains at the deepest solar minimum in the period with accurate satellite data, which began in the 1970’s. It is conceivable that the suns energy output will remain low for decades, as it apparently did a few centuries ago, which may have been the largest contributor to the little ice age. But as we’ve seen contrary to the fervently voiced opinions of solar power aficionados, such low irridencese would not cause global cooling and would not stop the continued progression of global warming. This does not mean, however that the solar affect is negligible. Indeed if the sun pulls out of its current minimum soon, resuming a typical solar cycle there may be an acceleration of global warming in the next six to eight years. But whatever happens to the solar irradiance, the world is going to be warmer during the next decade (the 2010s) then it was at the present decade, just as the present decade is warmer then the 1990s.
The other major uncertainties that will influence how rapidly climate change effects become obvious are the amount of human made aerosols and the plant’s energy imbalance. Aerosols are the biggest source of uncertainty in terms of the overall forcing that humans are applying to the climate system. The planet’s energy imbalance is our best single measure of a change in atmospheric composition is needed to restore climate stability. Both require improved data.
But our imperfect knowledge of these quantities does not imply uncertainty about the direction that global climate is headed-the world is getting warmer, and it will continue to do so during the next few decades. On the other hand, better knowledge of these quantities will help us refine the atmospheric composition target that we must aim for. We already know that we should reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to, at most, 350 parts per million.
Key quantities we should watch to assess the status of potential climate tipping points are 1. The mass balance of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, including ice shelves and the principle outlet glaciers of the ice sheets, 2.The percentage of fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions that remain in the air, and 3. Changes in atmospheric methane. I will provide organization, discussion and updates of these and other key quantities at www.columbia.edu/-jeh1.
Here are reasons to focus on these quantities 1. If the ice sheets become more mobile, discharging more ice into the ocean, it will bode ill for both future sea levels and storms. 2. The percentage of fossil fuel carbon dioxide remaining in the air has averaged about 56% for decades. The other 44% being taken up by the land or ocean. The ability of the land or ocean to soak up carbon decreases, that could cause global warming to accelerate, which could amplify other feedbacks. 3. Methane is important because of the possibility of an increasing discharge from frozen methane.
You need to be well informed, to understand these matters, because you cannot count on governments, the people paid to protect the public, to deal promptly and properly with the climate matter. The problem with governments is not scientific ability-the Obama administration for example, appointed some of the best scientists in the country to top positions in science and energy. Instead the government’s problem is politics, politics as usual.
US government sciences, at least those at the highest levels cannot contradict a position taken by the president. And president Obamas assertion that he would listen to scientists did not mean that he would not listen, perhaps with even sharper ears to political advisors.
When you learn of a lightly publicized agreement with Canada for a pipeline to carry oil squeezed from tar sands to the united states, when you learn of approval for plants to squeeze oil from coal, when the president advocates an ineffectual cap and trade approach for controlling carbon emissions, when our governments funnels billions of dollars to support clean coal while treating next generation nuclear power almost as a pariah, you can recognize right away that our government is not taking a strategic approach to solve the climate problem.
The picture has become clear. Our planet, with its remarkable array of life, is in imminent danger of crashing. Yet our politicians are not dashing forward. They hesitate, they hang back.
Therefore it is up to you. You will need to be the protector of your children and grandchildren on this matter. I am sorry to say that the job will be difficult-special interests have been able to subvert our democratic system. But we should not give up on the democratic system-quite the contrary. We must fight for the principle of equal justice.
One suggestion that I have for now: support Bill McKibben and his organization350.org. It has the most effective and responsible leadership in the public struggle for climate justice. McKibben has done a remarkable job of helping young people get organized.
But as in other struggles for justice against powerful forces, it may be necessary to take to the streets to draw attention to this injustice. There are places that have begun to have some affect. The government in the United Kingdom, for example, may be turning against coal plants that do not capture carbon emissions-strong activism there is surely playing a role. There have been some locally effective actions in the United States as well. But overall results are small in comparison to what is needed. The international community seems to be headed down a path towards inadequate agreements at best. Civil resistance may be our best hope.
It is crucial for all of us, especially young people, to get involved. This book, I hope, has provided some assistance in understanding what policies we need to be fighting for-and why they will be the most urgent fight of our lives. It is our last chance