How big a concern is climate change?
Once we have established that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is an accepted reality - that global warming is happening and that we are the primary cause of it - what do the scientists have to say about how serious it is and what we should be doing about it?
Avoiding extreme language
Before we address these questions, we should note that there is a tendency for people to use extreme terms to describe the threat of climate change, such as “destroying the planet”, “doomsday”, “apocalypse” and “global catastrophe". While climate change understandably arouses concern, use of such terminology is probably more counterproductive than helpful to the discussion. One reason for this is that it is highly emotive, unnecessarily introducing an element of hysteria and anxiety to the discussion, which is not constructive.
More importantly, they are unhelpful because they are incredibly vague, creating confusion as to what exactly is being described. For example, suppose that we concluded that climate change is “destroying the planet”. What does that actually mean? It could mean, for example, that it causes major disruption and damage to animal and plant ecosystems in many places around the globe, a very concerning situation. But it could also mean the end of civilization itself! The difference between these two possibilities carries major ethical and theological implications. The reader, responding to the emotive language, will likely draw the more extreme conclusion, affecting their whole outlook on the matter.
In order that we can properly relate to the situation and answer these questions, let us try to put things into perspective with an appropriate analogy. No analogy is perfect, but hopefully it will be close enough to give us an intuitive sense of what is going on here.
Introducing B
B was essentially a healthy young man, but who had always suffered from extreme fatigue. In his mid-twenties, he was able with difficulty to get through a full day’s work, although his productive capacity was quite limited. When he came home each day, he’d have a bite to eat and collapse into bed, not having energy for any other activity. He had been to many medical specialists over the years, but no one ever diagnosed him with a medical condition. Their conclusion was that he was completely healthy, just unusually low on energy. They had tried numerous treatments on him, but none made any significant impact.
The development of FFT
One day, his endocrinologist, Dr T., contacted him to tell him that there was a new drug coming out that could be effective for him. Called FFT, it was showing very interesting results when it came to raising energy levels in animal experimentation and was now cleared for human clinical trials. Of course, Dr T. warned, there are always risks of side-effects with these drugs, but if he was willing to take the risks, he satisfied the criteria to be part of a trial. B decided to go for it.
Given that FFT was a powerful drug, they initially started him off on a small dose, allowing his body to adjust to it. B felt a significant difference almost immediately. His energy levels started to climb. He could get up in the morning with less difficulty, get much more work done and come home with some energy remaining, enabling him to stay up longer. They took regular blood tests and carefully monitored his cardiovascular and nervous systems. Everything looked great and the doctors gave him the thumbs up to increase the dose.
As the dose increased, B’s quality of life continued to improve and the change was transformational. He was now able to enjoy life so much more. He could now engage in regular exercise, improving his fitness and muscle tone. He could also engage in activities outside of work, developing a social network and working on himself as a person, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. His life was unrecognizable from what it had previously been.
Emerging side-effects
The clinical trial continued for several years and B wasn’t complaining. Over that time, he did occasionally experience some unusual phenomena. One year, he found himself coming down with the cold three times and the flu twice in the space of 6 weeks. Although, it was a bad cold and flu season that year. He was also surprised that cuts on his body were healing very slowly and poorly. Every few weeks he would also experience brief sensations of numbness in his limbs, and occasionally he would find himself feeling unusually hot or cold without explanation. He didn’t think too much of it. Although, after one set of tests, the head trial doctor, Dr CS contacted him, wanting to meet and discuss his results.
With some foreboding, he arrived at the meeting. Dr CS welcomed him warmly, but quickly cut to the chase.
“B,” he opened, “we know FFT has done incredible things for your life. As we were monitoring you, we noticed some changes happening over time. We detected an ongoing drop in your white-blood-cell count, initially minor, but over time started to become significant. Some of the nerve-conduction studies that we did indicated possible damage to parts of your nervous system. We also saw unusual activity from your spleen and your thyroid gland. At first, we weren’t sure that FFT was the main cause, but as we carried out more tests, we concluded with high confidence that it is.”
The prognosis
“What’s going to happen to me?” asked B nervously.
“I’m sorry”, Dr CS said apologetically, “unfortunately we aren’t prophets or fortune tellers. We can’t tell you exactly what’s going to happen. We can only speak in terms of probabilities and what we expect might happen. The good news is that we don’t believe any of the issues we’ve detected are life-threatening and we don’t think you’re going to die any time soon. We have four major concerns: your spleen, your thyroid and your immune system. Let’s go through them.”
“Our hematologists reported that the spleen damage is quite advanced. Whatever we do now, it might not be possible to save it. Thankfully your liver is in good shape, so even without a spleen, your liver should hopefully be able to adapt to the new reality and take over most of the spleen’s function, such that it won’t be significantly debilitating to you. So we’re not overly worried about that.”
“The thyroid?” prompted B impatiently.
“The thyroid is more of a concern,” said the doctor reticently. “If you continue with FFT business-as-usual, your thyroid will be at great risk. One can live without a thyroid, although it’s not so easy to do so. You’d need to have hormone replacement therapy for the rest of your life and you’d still be likely to face issues, such as with regulating body-temperature, which you’ve already started to experience.”
“As for your immune system,” Dr CS continued, “even if we continue with FFT, it will still be quite strong. Nevertheless, the chances of serious infection will rise significantly. For example, the incidence of serious staph infections for someone your age is around 2 in 10,000 people. For healthy people, it’s really a negligible risk. Based on your data and the latest studies, the risk for you would jump to a staggering 5%. And in twenty years, it would go up to 10%. Staph infections can be very debilitating, very hard to treat and in some very rare cases even deadly. I think it’s highly unlikely that you would die from staph or a similar infection, but it is still a serious risk.”
Before we proceed any further with our story, let’s pause to understand what it means. You may have got the gist of it, but there’s quite a bit of nuance there, so we’ll unpack it now.
So who is B?
Our patient, B, represents what is called the biosphere. The biosphere is the portion of the earth that supports life, including the oceans, parts of the atmosphere and the land surface, as well as the organisms that live there. Put differently, it consists of all living organisms and their environments.
In our analogy, B’s welfare as a human being depends significantly upon his physical health, which itself depends upon the proper functioning of numerous complex systems within his body, such as the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, the immune system, the digestive system and the endocrine system. As our story began, his physical health was pretty good. Nevertheless, his welfare as a whole was less than ideal, because his productivity and quality of life were limited.
As far as the biosphere is concerned, its “health” also depends upon the proper functioning of numerous complex physical systems, such as:
The water cycle: ensures that the organisms have a stable water supply,
The carbon cycle: whereby carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere is absorbed by plants and other “carbon sinks”.
Ecosystems: Living creatures live in complex webs of interdependence that must be maintained in order for them to survive and thrive.
Suitable and consistent climate: Different species require specific climatic conditions in order to survive and thrive.
Over the last several millennia and until relatively recent times, the biosphere has operated in an essentially healthy and stable manner*. Nevertheless, until the last two-and-a-half centuries, human productivity and quality of life was somewhat limited. The curse of Adam, that man would eat bread by the sweat of his brow (Bereshis 3:19), still weighed heavily on his shoulders, with the burden of agriculture demanding the lion’s share of his energies.
* Granted, there have certainly been major disruptions to human and other life, such as the Black Plague, to name just one of many, but the biosphere as an entire system has operated quite stably.
The Development of FFT - Fossil-Fuel Technologies
All this was to change with the development of the “wonder-drug” FFT, or fossil-fuel technologies, most notably the combustion engine, which set off the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century*. As its name implies, its effect on society was truly revolutionary, transitioning the global economy worldwide from being agrarian-based to factory-based, whereby machinery was able to multiply production output by several orders of magnitude.
* While fossil-fuel technologies are the major cause of large-scale GHG emissions, there are others, such as large-scale cattle farming, which currently leads to approximately 14% of emissions worldwide.
Since then, humanity has not looked back, and the impact of fossil-fuel technologies has accelerated dizzyingly over the past two centuries, transforming our lives for the better in so many ways as to make them completely unrecognizable in comparison to their former state. Fossil-fueled vehicles have enabled rapid travel across the city and across the globe. Farming technology has made it possible for a relatively small number of people to produce greater amounts of food in a relatively short time that once took a whole society an entire year of labor to produce. Appliances powered by electricity generated by combustion engines have freed us up from many of the chores that would have once burdened our lives, enabling us to live better than the kings and queens of yesteryear. Medical technology has greatly extended life spans and improved quality of life. And the list of benefits goes on and on. These are all incredible blessings, giving us opportunities to develop our lives in so many ways, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Emerging side-effects
The biosphere, like B’s body, is incredibly resilient to all kinds of stresses to its numerous systems. Nevertheless, in recent decades it started to emerge that despite all the blessings and benefits that fossil-fuel usage brought to the biosphere, it also generated serious side-effects.
Dr CS represents climate scientists, together with scientists of other kinds, who started to become aware of major changes to the climate, dangerous levels of pollution and a serious loss of biodiversity worldwide. For our purposes, we will focus exclusively on climate change and its impacts (although, it should be noted, dangerous air pollution has been shown to cause health problems leading to millions of premature deaths per year).
Already in 1985, an international meeting of scientists took place in Austria, concluding that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases could cause a historic rise in global temperature. In 1988, as concern about the possibility of climate change began to grow, numerous governments, including the US Reagan Administration, supported the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), in order to report to governments what scientists know about climate change. The IPCC consists of leading scientists of all relevant fields from 190 countries. It does not conduct research, but rather publishes reports based on its assessment of the current body of scientific knowledge as expressed in the peer-reviewed literature.
In subsequent decades there has been an explosion of climate research. From 1990 until the time of writing, the IPCC has released six assessment reports, one roughly every six years, summarizing the latest findings.
In terms of establishing the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions to date, three major research goals have been undertaken, seeking to confirm:
Whether or not human-induced global warming is happening.
Whether the climate is changing in problematic ways.
Whether these changes can be attributed to human-induced global warming.
If all three are true, then it is established that human impact on the climate is very problematic.
Is human-induced global warming (AGW) happening?
Ever since 1990 it has been established unequivocally (i.e. indisputably) that the atmosphere, the land surface and the oceans are all warming on average, although different regions within these spheres have warmed by different amounts. In 2023, the global mean temperature was measured to be, on average, 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels (i.e. prior to 1750, the advent of the Industrial Revolution).
According to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6)*, 91% of the warming of the climate system was caused by the warming of the oceans and, based on abundant evidence, it was extremely likely (95-100%) that human activity was the main cause.
In other words, global warming is happening and human beings are extremely likely to be the main cause.
* See section 2.1.2
Has the climate changed in problematic ways?
While extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, flooding, drought and the like have always occurred, in recent decades, there has been a marked increase in the frequency and intensity of these events. Additionally, there have been gradual ongoing changes, such as sea-level rise and ocean acidification.
The impact that both of these changes have had on human lives, ecosystems and infrastructure has been found to be widespread, including heat-related human deaths, coral bleaching and death, drought-related deaths of trees and destruction of ecosystems, sometimes irreversibly. Some regions are certainly more vulnerable than others, both in terms of their level of exposure to the climate impacts themselves, as well as in terms of their resilience and ability to adapt in response to the impacts.
A particularly striking example of an impact from climate change is the 2003 European heatwave, which was found to have led to the deaths of at least 70,000 people. Research found that a significant proportion of those deaths could unequivocally be attributed to climate change, which at times caused temperatures to reach dangerously higher levels than they otherwise would have.
The bottom line is that the climate has changed in problematic ways.
Can these changes be attributed to human-induced global warming?
Much research has been dedicated to establishing whether these impacts could be attributed to human-induced climate change. In some cases, the connection was made with high or very high confidence (i.e. by the vast majority of scientists), while with others, it was only with medium confidence.*
* The level of confidence is a technical term indicating the range of probability within which these findings lie. A detailed break-down of impacts and the degree of confidence with which they can be attributed to climate change can be found in the AR6 Working Group II Technical Summary.
So, the latest evidence has confirmed that fossil-fuel technology is now known to create pretty serious “side-effects” for the biosphere. What can we expect if we maintain a “business-as-usual” approach to greenhouse gas emissions?
The world’s prognosis
Like B’s spleen damage, some climate damage will be unavoidable, even if we completely stop greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow. Emissions from the past and those continuing until the present have caused massive amounts of heat to be stored in the oceans, which will gradually be released over the coming decades, causing temperatures to continue to rise. Islands and coastal areas on the verge of being submerged as sea levels rise may not be salvageable. Neither may regions which are turning to desert as a result of changed climate conditions. However, a business-as-usual approach would expose the world to much higher risks of future damage, akin to the potential irreversible damage to B’s thyroid and immune system.
While it is impossible to make accurate predictions with such complex systems about exactly how things will unfold, what scientists do say is that climate change is a “threat multiplier”, which means the following: Even without climate change, extreme outcomes such as famines, flooding, extreme heatwaves, food and water insecurity, species extinction will still occur with a certain average frequency and intensity. It’s not like climate change created these threats. However, climate change takes those threats and multiplies them, making them likely to happen more frequently and with greater intensity. And the warmer the globe gets, the more these threats will multiply. In terms of the probabilities, every tenth of a degree is expected to make a significant difference to the damage inflicted, which translates to an increase in expected deaths, poverty and damage to ecosystems and species.
So in answer to our first question, the threat of climate change is very serious and cannot be dismissed. Let’s now proceed to our second question:
How should the world be responding to it?
To get an idea, let’s continue with the story of B.
After hearing this prognosis, B started to get emotional. “If you’re saying that I have to stop the FFT, I can’t. I just can’t.”
“I understand how you feel,” the doctor said comfortingly, “and we were thinking the same way. We have already raised the issue with the study's ethical review board, as well as your personal situation. Because of your unique circumstances, they’ve authorized us to examine different scenarios of treatment in order to work out the best way forward for you. We’ve been analyzing your data and doing some very sophisticated statistical analysis to try and determine how each scenario could unfold.”
“Ok, so what are the options?” asked B, a bit more settled.
“Well, we’ve already discussed the business-as-usual approach, which exposes you to a high risk of major problems.”
The “cold turkey” option
“Let’s look at the opposite extreme, if you were to stop taking FFT immediately. As you already know, you would gradually go back to your previous energy levels and quality of life. Not where you want to be. In terms of the side-effects, it’s important to realize that FFT has a very long half-life, which means that it stays in your system for a long time. Even after you stop taking it, the symptoms would continue to progress significantly and things would get worse before they eventually plateaued.”
“You’d continue to become more immuno-compromised for a while and therefore somewhat more vulnerable to illness, but far, far less than if you continued business-as-usual. Some of these issues would be reversible, some irreversible. But at least, you’d stop the problems becoming far worse.”
A nuanced approach
“I hope you have a better option coming,” said B.
“Well,” said the doctor, “there is a new family of drugs that are coming out now that produce similar effects to FFT, but operate along different pathways, known as the RET family of drugs. They are not yet as effective as FFT, but now that FFT’s problems are coming to light, a huge amount of research and development has sprung up around the RET family. We are optimistic that with ongoing research and development they will become almost equivalent, if not equivalent, to FFT, without the side-effects. We would seek to transition you over to these drugs gradually, but as quickly as possible.”
“What sort of time-frame are you thinking of?”, asked B, “I’m a bit apprehensive about dropping the FFT.”
“It’s a delicate balancing act,” the doctor explained. “If we wean you off the FFT too quickly without being able to provide an adequate substitute, you’ll really struggle in terms of quality of life. On the other hand, in terms of preventing damage, we can’t stop fast enough. We will have to pick our battles and try to develop a transition schedule that will address the most severe threats, while also bolstering you to be able to cope with the threats we can’t prevent.”
“We believe we can do this if we can cut your FFT dosage by half in the next 10 months and eliminate your FFT use completely in the next 24 months. The question is whether we’ll be able to maintain your quality of life without major disruption. That will depend on the rate at which the RET drugs continue to improve. There are a lot of variables at play and a significant amount of uncertainty. But a lot of research investment is going into it, so we’re optimistic.”
“Be aware, though, that the transition from FFT to RET drugs isn’t going to be so easy. The drugs operate along different pathways and don’t completely align with each other, so you can expect to develop symptoms as a result of the mismatch. Also, it looks like you might have to cover the expense of the RET drugs yourself in the short-term, and they’re not cheap. However, the benefits in doing so, will save you a lot of money in medical bills in the long-term.”
“So,” B piped up, “it’s just a matter of working out the doses of FFT and RET that I’ll be taking? That doesn’t sound so complicated.”
Three-pronged response plan
Dr CS thought for a second before responding, “Well, it is going to be more complicated than that. Ultimately, we’re going to need to employ a three-pronged plan to address this challenge, consisting of:
Mitigation or limitation of the damage from FFT, which involves transitioning over to RET, with all that that entails. We want to employ mitigation as much as possible to minimize the risks to your health as much as possible. However, we cannot prevent all possible risks in this way. Therefore, we will also have to employ the following complementary strategies.
Adaptation to the physical changes you will be experiencing, so that you can continue to maintain your quality of life. One example of this would be to adapt to a decline in thyroid function by taking hormone replacement therapy. Another example might be to adapt to having a more compromised immune system by avoiding environments where you are at greater risk of infection. These would be significant changes to your lifestyle, but hopefully, with time, you’d simply adjust to them as just another part of life.
However, we can’t stop you from contracting infections, and therefore another strategy is needed, which is:
Developing resilience to enable you to bounce back from infection. This will involve things like maintaining a healthy diet and doing regular exercise, having even more regular health checks and setting up an emergency action plan to ensure that any problematic developments that arise are addressed promptly and competently.”
“With all three strategies together, it’s not going to be quite the kind of lifestyle you’ve been living in recent years, but hopefully it’s not going to be a nightmare either.”
“Alright then,” B said brightly, “so when can we start?”
Back to reality
The moral of the story is that we can’t continue business-as-usual when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, but neither is it realistic to go “cold turkey” overnight either. Fortunately, we have middle options involving replacing fossil-fuel technologies with renewable energy technologies (RET), enabling us to strike a balance between minimizing emissions, mitigating the risk of damage, and maintaining quality of life.
Given that every fraction of a degree is highly significant, it is clear that the sooner we can eliminate greenhouse gas emissions the better. Efforts to do this have been coordinated internationally since 1995, when world nations established the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Delegates meet annually at the Conferences of Parties (COP) to negotiate collaborative goals. At COP21 in 2015, 197 nations adopted the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty, which sets a target of holding the increase in global mean temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.
Because we would only be mitigating the problem and not solving it, it would also be necessary to adapt to climate change. To just mention a few examples, communities might need to relocate to avoid increased vulnerability to flooding. More investment might be needed to develop better water storage and distribution systems in order to cope with water scarcity during droughts. Steps might need to be taken to protect ecosystems which are threatened with more hostile climatic conditions.
Additionally, steps should be taken to make our societies more resilient to be able to respond to the shocks that climate change will inflict on us, such as developing heat-resistant crops and developing our health system to be able to cope with a greater incidence of heat-related illness.
Summary
Using extreme language to describe the concern about climate change is unhelpful. It generates anxiety and is vague in terms of giving an accurate sense of what is being discussed.
Based on what the scientists are telling us, the situation of climate change is somewhat analogous to the plight of a patient, who discovers that his life-changing treatment for lethargy - FFT (or fossil fuel technology) also has serious debilitating side-effects whose severity will only increase with time.
Continuing business-as-usual is very dangerous, but going ‘cold turkey’ is not an option either. A nuanced approach is necessary, weaning him off the problematic treatment in favor of safer ones (renewable technologies) as quickly as possible.
Because we cannot solve the problem of climate change, we will also have to use a three-pronged strategy of:
Mitigation - limiting the problem by gradually cutting out greenhouse gas emissions,
Adaptation - taking steps to enable ourselves to survive in a world with climate change.
Developing resilience - strengthening ourselves to be able to cope with, and recover from, the shocks of climate change.
So the scientists are telling us that although climate change is not likely to be the end of civilization itself, it is still a very serious problem and that we need to respond to it seriously.
