Ross Douthat Doesn’t Understand The Arctic’s Dire Situation
Ross Douthat’s NYTimes op-ed this week gives what is probably the smartest conservative version of skepticism about climate action. Unfortunately, it’s still deficient and inconsistent with the observed facts of climate change.
Douthat’s main defense of foot-dragging on climate action is that “observed warming hugs the lower, non-disastrous end of the spectrum of projections.” Although this claim about warming is defensible, it doesn’t tell the full story of climate change, namely that scientists have often underestimated other key indicators of climate disruption. Atmospheric warming is important, but probably even more important for the near-term are issues like ocean acidification and warming, Arctic regional amplification and polar ice loss.
These non-warming signs of climate change are crucially important, because unlike atmospheric warming, which rises or falls in a more or less continuous fashion, problems like Arctic ice loss can happen in “step-wise” — i.e., sudden changes can happen very quickly. Indeed, this step-wise change is in fact exactly what has been observed regarding the Arctic sea ice loss. It is a matter of objective fact that, since the 1980s, the Arctic has lost over 70% of its summer volume. That is not a typo or an exaggeration: Arctic summer ice has been reduced to roughly one-quarter of its 1980 levels. Contrary to Douthat’s reassurances that scientists have exaggerated the threat of climate change, scientists have actually routinely, drastically underestimated the amount of Arctic sea ice loss that has in fact occurred.
Worryingly, the consequences of an ice-free Arctic are mostly unknown, as there is no simply precedent for it in the modern record. Atmospheric scientists say there is a significant likelihood that an ice-free Arctic could lead to serious disturbances in global ocean currents — and indeed, the Gulf Stream current that keeps Europe abnormally warm for its latitude has already shown signs of withering. Earlier this year, a group of academic earth scientists in Europe noted that nearly half of the highest-quality models predict an abrupt breakdown in this circulation during our grandchildren’s lifetimes.
The consequences of a Gulf Stream slowdown or shutdown could be world-historically catastrophic within just a few years. According to current best predictions, agricultural output in Western Europe would be immediately imperiled, as temperatures are expected to fall and precipitation dry up. Similarly, Eastern Europe’s agriculturally-vital Loess Plateau and the grain-growing regions of East Asia would also face abrupt changes. Given this severe disruption that is expected from a disturbance in the Gulf Stream, it would be reasonable to expect, as a result of climate change, serious famines of the type that likely helped to ignite the Syrian conflict would become commonplace in regions across the world.
It may well be too late to avert a sudden change in the state of the Arctic, and its truly frightening potential consequences. But taking serious action today to reduce runaway carbon forcing would give us a lot more room to give the planet a chance to breathe — and perhaps, to heal itself. And if we are to avert this potential disaster, then admitting to ourselves the scope of the problem is a necessary first step.
