HOPE IN THE FIRE

Many people are dealing with existential dread this week as the west coast of the US is on fire. Millions of people are trapped in their homes and untold secondary consequences are sure to occur. I knew this was coming and am not surprised.

In 2014(?) my brother argued that man made global warming wasn't real and pointed to resources that argued against it. I followed the people behind those sources for awhile and determined they were in every case blinded by confirmation biases. They were constantly engaging in the same behavior and thinking they accused the other side of. Months of research led to zero concrete evidence that human-caused climate change was not real.

Concluding that human-caused climate change was definitely real led me down the path to install solar in my home and get an electric car. All told I invested the majority of my work bonuses for 3 years into significantly de-carbonizing our family. I traded in a car I loved to go electric. I wanted to get a Model 3 but cancelled the pre-order when I didn't know when the car would come. It didn't make sense to wait purely for my personal desire.

I generally looked to the IPCC report for guidance on the effects of global warming but was worried about how little we understood. Many other sources looked at rain averages vs damaging impact of higher variability around the mean. We could clearly see the difference in Los Angeles as heavy rains turned mountains green and then yellow shortly thereafter. How much rain was irrelevant to the fire risk. We also clearly didn't understand how the ocean was warming and the impact that would have.

At some point I stumbled upon what had happened in the Permian Extinction. Over 70% of land life and 95% of sea life were wiped out over the course of thousands of years. Learning more about it established a clear mental model in my head. If we burn all of the fossil fuel in the ground, then we're likely to see a 10 degree Celsius temperature rise and kill of most of the life on earth. And that is over thousands of years. Accelerate the pace of change and it could be worse.

That mental model means I am not going to be surprised by anything that comes from global warming. Who knows what the tipping point really is. Who knows how local climate will be impacted. Who knows how bad things like thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. will get because they don't show up in the fossil records. As bad as it gets I will always have an expectation that it could get worse.

So why am I hopeful? Because earlier impacts will lead to earlier actions. Painful impacts in the US are more likely to lead to change than if they had occurred elsewhere. I know how we can adapt and manage the impacts. Humans have a tremendous capacity to adapt as individuals and societies. History shows that nature is bound to destroy life itself at some point in the future. Only humans can prevent that from happening. Being forced to face the truth and deal with existential threats earlier is a good thing.