Against Environmental Panic

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The Chronicle Review | June 17, 2013

Against Environmental PanicBy Pascal Bruckner

In Jesuit schools we were urged to strengthen our faith by spending time in monasteries. We were assigned spiritual exercises to be dutifully written in littlenotebooks that were supposed to renew the promises made at baptism and to celebrate the virtues of Christian love and succor for the weak. It wasn't enough justto believe; we had to testify to our adherence to the Holy Scriptures and driveSatan out of our hearts. These practices were sanctioned by daily confessions under the guidance of a priest. We all probed our hearts to extirpate the germs of iniquity and to test, with a delicious thrill, the borderline separating gracefrom sin. We were immersed in an atmosphere of meditative reverence, and the desire to be good gave our days a special contour.

We knew that God was looking down on us indulgently: We were young, we were allowed to stumble. In his great ledger, he wrote down each of our actions, weighingthem with perfect equanimity. We engaged in refined forms of piety in order togain favors. Regarded from an adult point of view, these childish efforts, whichwere close to the ancients' spiritual exercises, were not without a certain nobility. They wavered between docility and a feeling of lofty grandeur. At least w

e learned the art of knowing ourselves, of resisting the turmoil of puberty.What a surprise to witness, half a century later, the powerful return of this frame of mind, but this time under the aegis of science. Consider the meaning in contemporary jargon of the famous carbon footprint that we all leave behind us. What is it, after all, if not the gaseous equivalent of Original Sin, of the stain that we inflict on our Mother Gaia by the simple fact of being present and breathing? We can all gauge the volume of our emissions, day after day, with the injunction to curtail them, just as children saying their catechisms are supposedto curtail their sins.

Ecologism, the sole truly original force of the past half-century, has challenged the goals of progress and raised the question of its limits. It has awakened o

ur sensitivity to nature, emphasized the effects of climate change, pointed outthe exhaustion of fossil fuels. Onto this collective credo has been grafted a whole apocalyptic scenography that has already been tried out with communism, andthat borrows from Gnosticism as much as from medieval forms of messianism. Cataclysm is part of the basic tool-kit of Green critical analysis, and prophets of decay and decomposition abound. They beat the drums of panic and call upon us toexpiate our sins before it is too late.

This fear of the future, of science, and of technology reflects a time when humanity, and especially Western humanity, has taken a sudden dislike to itself. Weare exasperated by our own proliferation and can no longer stand ourselves. Whether we want to be or not, we are tangled up with seven billion other members ofour species. Rejecting both capitalism and socialism, ecologism has come to powe

r almost nowhere. But it has won the battle of ideas. The environment is the newsecular religion that is rising, in Europe especially, from the ruins of a disbelieving world. We have to subject it to critical evaluation in turn and unmaskthe infantile disease that is eroding and discrediting it: catastrophism.

There are at least two ecologies: one rational, the other nonsensical; one thatbroadens our outlook while the other narrows it; one democratic, the other totalitarian. The first wants to tell us about the damage done by industrial civilization; the second infers from this the human species' guilt. For the latter, nature is only a stick to be used to beat human beings. Just as third-worldism was t


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he shame of colonial history, and repentance was contrition with regard to the present, catastrophism constitutes the anticipated remorse of the future: The meaning of history having evaporated, every change is a potential collapse that augurs nothing good.

What is the carbon footprint, after all, if not the gaseous equivalent of Original Sin, the stain we inflict on Mother Gaia?Catastrophism's favorite mode of expression is accusation: Revolutionaries wanted to erase the past and start over from zero; now the focus is on condemning past and present wrongs and bringing them before the tribunal of public opinion. Noleniency is possible; our crime has been calculated in terms of devastated forests, burned-over lands, and extinct species.

The prevailing anxiety is at once a recognition of real problems and a symptom of the aging of the West, a reflection of its psychic fatigue. Our pathos is thatof the end of time. And because no one ever thinks alone, because the spirit ofan age is always a collective worker, it is tempting to give oneself up to thisgloomy tide. Or, on the contrary, we could wake up from this nightmare and ridourselves of it.

It happened in 1989, and that seems centuries ago. The world was emerging from the cold war; the Soviet Union, exhausted, was allowing subject peoples to escapeits rule and preparing for its transition to a market economy. Euphoria reigned: Western civilization had just won by a knockout. Twice, in the course of the p

ast century, it had triumphed over its worst opponents, fascism and communism, two illegitimate children to which it had given birth and which it was able to suffocate.

When the Soviets bowed out, enthusiasm vied with fear: An adversary is securityagainst the future, a permanent competitor who forces us to reshape ourselves. Though we can never be sure of the affection of those closest to us, we can always count on the hatred of our enemies. They are the guarantors of our existence;they allow us to know who we are.

Who will claim, as communism did, to substitute another system for our values? Who will challenge us on such a large scale? Fundamentalist Islam? Even if it isgaining ground in many countries, accompanying the growth of a secular mentality

like its shadow, it is directed primarily against Muslims themselves, whom it considers lukewarm and complicit with the modern world. There are useful enemiesthat make you fertile and sterile enemies that wear you out. Islamic terrorism is a cancer that teaches us nothing except paranoia. Combined with the work of the secret services and the police, sang-froid and prudence are the best responsesto the bombers' barbarity.

It is difficult to reconstruct a credible adversary that is dispersed to the four corners of the earth and that can have all sorts of faces. We have to go further, to the roots of the problem. And the problem is our aggressiveness, our relentless attack on nature. We are told by the philosopher Michel Serres, for example, that people stupidly fight one another without realizing that the real battle is not where they think it is. For centuries, we have waged war on the world b

y trying to dominate it; now we have to wage war on war, sign an armistice withwater, trees, stones, the oceans. As Serres writes:

The damage we have inflicted up to now on the world is equivalent to the ravagesthat a world war would have left behind it. Our peacetime economic relationships are arriving, continuously and slowly, at the same results that a short globalconflict would produce, as if war no longer belonged to soldiers alone. ... Weso-called developed nations are not fighting among ourselves anymore, we are allturning against the world. This is a war that is literally a world war, and twice over, because everyone, in the sense of human beings, is inflicting losses on


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the world, in the sense of things.

How can this malaise be transformed into a justified anger? How can its target be identified? By designating human beings as the danger par excellence. Rousseaualready did so, in mile, contrary to all the optimism of the Enlightenment: "Man, seek no longer the cause of the evil; you yourself are the cause. There is noevil other than the evil you do or suffer, and both of them come from you."

Numerous authors tell us that humanity as a whole has gone off-course, and thatit has to be understood as an illness that must be immediately treated: "Man isa cancer on the earth, ... a throwaway species, like the civilization he invented," writes Yves Paccalet. And Nicolas Hulot, the French environmentalist, writes: "The enemy does not come from outside, it resides within our system and our consciousnesses."

For the past half-century we have, in fact, been witnessing a slide from one scapegoat to another: Marxism designated capitalism as responsible for human misery. Third-worldism, upset by the bourgeoisification of the working classes, substituted the West for capitalism as the great criminal in history and the "inventor" of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism.

With ecologism, we move up a notch: The guilty party is humanity itself, in itswill to dominate the planet. Here there is a return to the fundamentals of Christianity: Evil is the pride of the creatures who are in revolt against their Crea

tor and who exceed their prerogatives. The three scapegoats can be cumulated: Ecologism can reject the capitalism invented by a West that preys on peoples and destroys the earth. It is a system of Russian dolls that fit one inside the otheruntil the final synthesis is reached. That is why so many old Bolsheviks are converting to ecologism in order to broaden their palette of accusations. This amounts to recycling anticapitalist clichs as one recycles wastewater: Ecologism adds a supplementary layer of reprobation, claiming to be the culmination of all earlier critiques.

Thus a whole segment of the South American left has seized upon this hobbyhorseto reinforce its credo: "We have two paths: either capitalism dies, or Mother Earth dies," said Evo Morales, president of Bolivia. The globe becomes the new proletarian that has to be saved from exploitation, if need be by reducing the huma

n population to 500 million, as some opponents of "speciesism" proclaim. Consider the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (Vhemt), a group of individuals who have decided not to reproduce themselves:

Each time another one of us decides to not add another one of us to the burgeoning millions already squatting on this ravaged planet, another ray of hope shinesthrough the gloom. When every human chooses to stop breeding, earth's biospherewill be allowed to return to its former glory.

To extend our sense of responsibility to all coming generations is to empty it of its meaning, to put a titanic weight on our shoulders.In the 19th century, the French historian Hippolyte Taine already said, "I lovemy children too much to give them life." Even Jared Diamond, who has written a m

agisterial study of the disappearance of societies, gives voice to a strange dream: "If most of the world's six billion people today were in cryogenic storage and neither eating, breathing, nor metabolizing, that large population would cause no environmental problems."

The despondency is striking, given that our lives are still extraordinarily pleasant. Everywhere the culture of lament prevails. We have to wear grave expressions on our faces and wrinkle our brows: The perils are so numerous that we can hardly choose among them. Sounding the death knell is our viaticum. Saving the world requires us to denigrate everything that has to do with the spirit of enterpr


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ise and the taste for discovery, especially in the field of science. We have ceased to admire; we know only how to denounce, decry, whine. The capacity for enthusiasm is dying out.

That is because at the turn of the 21st century a paradigm change took place: The long list of emblematic victimsJews, blacks, slaves, proletarians, colonized peopleswas gradually replaced by the planet, which has become the paragon of all the wretched. It is not a specific community that we are asked to identify with, but rather a small spaceship that carries us and groans. It is no longer a question of transforming the world but of preserving it.

An example? Sir Martin Rees, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, published a book with a resounding titleOur Final Hourin which he gave humanity a 50 percent chance of surviving the 21st century, because of its proliferation andits wicked inventions.

This sort of literature is proliferating and turning into clichs. The litany of failure is endless. Ecologism has become a global ideology that covers all of existence. In it are found all the faults of Marxism applied to the environment: the omnipresent scientism, the appalling visions of reality, the admonishing of those who are guilty of not understanding those who wish them well.

All the foolishness of Bolshevism, Maoism, and Trotskyism are somehow reformulated exponentially in the name of saving the planet. Authors, journalists, politic

ians, scientists compete in announcing the abominable and lay claim to a hyperlucidity: They alone see things correctly, whereas others vegetate in the slumberfrom which they will someday awaken, terrified. They alone have emerged from thecave of ignorance in which the human herd mills around, deaf and blind to the obvious.

Why do we in the West take such pleasure in predicting our own disappearance? Insituations of all-out war, foreseeing the worst is proof of lucidity: "You've got optimists and pessimists. The first died in the gas chambers. The others haveswimming pools in Beverly Hills," Billy Wilder remarked in 1945. There can be adesperate optimism and an active pessimism, a source of energy. But defeatism is also the second home of privileged peoples, the contented sigh of big cats purring in comfort. A tragedy that strikes far away transforms the platitude of our

everyday lives into a high-risk adventure: We are living on the edge of the abyss! To sound the alarm is to re-enchant the routine under the sign of danger.

The fear is permanent, its object is purely contingent; yesterday it was the millennium bug, today it is global warming and nuclear energy, tomorrow it will besomething else. This alarmism is as lazy as nave optimism and no less illusory. The adepts of the worst-case scenario are still the victims of a fantasy of omnipotence: For them, to prognosticate a hateful destiny is to ward it off. It is one thing to teach the science of catastrophe as a science of reacting to and resisting disproportionate misfortunes; it is another to believe that we will be able to cope with mistakes by forecasting them.

In this rhetorical intoxication, the future becomes again, as it had once been i

n Christianity and communism, a tool of blackmail. The Catholic religion asked us to sacrifice our present joys for the sake of gaining eternal life, while Marxism asked us to forget our bourgeois happiness and embrace instead the classlesssociety. Ecology calls upon us to adopt a rigorous diet in the name of future generations. It was the German philosopher Hans Jonas who invented the concept of"anticipatory remorse." Our technological and scientific power so far outstripsour knowledge that we are forced to imagine all the wrongs that we might inflict on our descendants by living as we do.

Worrying about what does not yet exist: Is that a gesture of love or the worst k


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ind of argument, an excess of scrupulous conscience? For fear of soiling our hands, we prefer to cut them off right now. How far can responsibility go without turning into an abstraction? To extend our sense of responsibility to all cominggenerations is to empty it of its meaning, to put a titanic weight on our shoulders. By being accountable for everything, we are accountable for nothing.

Exhausting ourselves trying to imagine the craziest scenarios for tomorrowa bacterial infection, computer bugs, intergalactic wars, meteorological or nuclear cataclysms, falling asteroidsand sacrificing everything to the conceptual ectoplasmof "future generations" is to buy a conscience on the cheap and to close one's eyes to present scandals.

To change the world, change life. To this formula inherited from Rimbaud and thecommunist tradition, ecologism adds a fundamental corrective: We have to changeour lives in order to preserve the world. For ecologism, the domestic becomes immediately political, and we can permanently inflect the course of societies byturning off lights, turning down the heat, and becoming economical and if possible vegetarian, which would reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

Since our mode of production is destroying the planet's resources, the first thing we have to limit is our desires, and a sense of restriction must be inculcated in everyone. The home, where we enjoy ourselves with those close to us, is theepicenter of the crime. It is there, in the warmth of the family, that the conspiracy against the earth is fomented, in a mixture of negligence, greed, and dep

endency that constitutes the heart of civilized corruption. We are all potentialkillers who subsist only by destroying.

This amounts, as we have seen, to an enormous restoration of Original Sin underthe auspices of the extinction of species, the collapse of marine ecosystems, and rising temperatures. The slightest acteating meat, turning on a radiator, letting the water run while you brush your teethis heavy with unexpected consequences.

The past century has, in fact, invented a phenomenon that condenses in its temples all the ignominy of the human race: consumer society. The consumer combines three radical defects: He behaves like a predator by contributing to the lootingof the planet's resources. He is an anthropological monstrosity, a Pavlovian being, driven by rudimentary instincts of hunger and satisfaction. Worse yet, he is

a kind of Sisyphus doomed to eternal dissatisfaction, repeating the process over and over. Prey to artificial needs that make him the slave of his own well-being, he sees only his material interest, to the detriment of his freedom and of the common concern.

In short, every discourse agrees in denouncing him: Vulgar, selfish, wasteful, he insults our ideas of justice, equality, and beauty. "[M]ass society," TheodorAdorno said, "did not first produce the trash for the customers, but the customers themselves." In other words, the buyer, in turn, is transformed into human junk. That is the terrible impact of commodification on subjectivity. It engendersrobots that all desire the same objects before moving on to others, of which they will soon grow tired as well.

Rousseau had already grasped this perverse mechanism of insatiability:

[A]mong men in society, other things are involved: It is primarily a matter of providing for necessities and then for the superfluous; afterward come delights and then immense wealth and then subjects and then slaves; there is not a momentof respite: What is most singular is that the less natural and urgent the needs,the more the passions increase, and worse yet, so does the power of satisfyingthem.

Progress is a curse: It forbids us to be content with our condition, makes us av


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id for the slightest innovation, and the phenomenon is amplified in a mass society in which millions of individuals are in the grip of the demon of rapacity. "The superfluous is something very necessary," said Voltaire. But this appetite isboth diabolical and mediocre; apart from the fact that it gives rise to a factitious abundance, it arouses the desire of the masses, who aspire in vain to equal the affluence of the most prosperous groups.

Fortunately, in the depths of the abyss, redemption is possible: We can mend ourarrogant ways by adopting an extremely ascetic code of behavior.

Here we have to examine a rhetorical tactic that is frequently employed in environmentalist literature, and that was first extensively used by Christianity: Less is more. The last on earth will be the first in heaven; the fools of this world will be the wise in the next; blessed are the simple-minded, for they will begolden. This way of thinking in antonyms, the notion that evil is a hidden goodthat will be revealed at some later point, constitutes above all a machine for legitimating a state of affairs. Apparent iniquity masks a promise whose fulfillment we have to be able to wait for. This kind of reasoning was very fertile in the works of the church fathers and of Leibniz, and also in those of the theorists of the "invisible hand," from Mandeville to Hayek, without forgetting totalitarian regimes that made it a fearsome weapon for subjecting people.

In environmentalist propaganda, this kind of logic consists in reversing values:Since wealth leads to despair, need ought to elicit a return of hope. In fact,

the progress of the material standard of living in the United States has been accompanied by an undeniable decrease in real happiness among most Americans. Conclusion: Since having more means being less, having less will mean being more. Amarvelous acrobatic act: We have to voluntarily deprive ourselves in order to enrich ourselves spiritually. Subtraction as amplification!

You will need to get rid of your car, take showers instead of baths (and the showers must be limited to four minutes; little hourglasses are sold for the purpose), stop buying imported fruit and vegetables, practice "locavorism" (that is, eat only locally produced food), decrease or even halt your consumption of meat and fish, avoid the elevator and even the refrigerator.

Each of us has to kill the frenetic consumer within us, for he is the scruffy wr

etch who through his greed is causing the melting of the polar icecaps, the risein sea level, tremors in the earth's crust, acid rain, and who knows what else.

Are you cold in the winter? Put on a sweater, for heaven's sake, instead of turning up the heat, and go to bed early. Yves Cochet, a member of the European Parliament, tells us: "We have to manage to live with 50 percent less electricity. ... We have to take maximum advantage of daylight." And our friend of humanity further suggests a surtax on those who make excessive use of electricity and heating systems. Are we going to set up police brigades that are responsible for switching off electricity and enforcing a curfew?

What is worrisome about ecologism is that it energetically insinuates itself into the most intimate aspects of our livesour eating habits and our clothingthe bett

er to control them. The project here is authoritarian. On reading its recommendations, we can almost hear the heavy door of a dungeon closing behind us.

Either the lugubrious prophets are right that we are rushing toward the abyss, and the only avenue left is the human race's voluntary or involuntary self-extinction, or there is still room for maneuver, and we should explore it fearlessly.The ecology of disaster is primarily a disaster for ecology: it employs such anoutrageous rhetoric that it discourages the best of wills. It tries so hard to avoid our ruin that it will hasten it if we follow its recommendations and wrap the planet in cellophane like a Christo sculpture. (In the Swiss and Austrian Alp


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s, some ski resorts have covered glaciers with isothermic blankets to keep themfrom melting.) Either ecology persists in imprecations and sterile gestures, orit returns in a lucid way to the great idea of humanity's moral progress, learning from its earlier mistakes.

A race has begun between the forces of despair and those of human ingenuity. Inother words, the remedy is found in the disease, in the despised industrial civilization, the frightening science, the endless crisis, the globalization that exceeds our grasp: Only an increase in research, an explosion of creativity, or anunprecedented technological advance will be able to save us. We have to try topush back the boundaries of the possible by encouraging the most fantastic initiatives, the most mind-boggling ideas. We have to transform the increasing scarcity of resources into a wealth of inventions.

Every new invention must strike the heart of human desire, elicit astonishment,and allow people to embark upon an unprecedented voyage. It is a narrow door (Luke 13:24), but it is the door to salvation. We have to count on the genius of the human race, which is capable of overcoming its fears in order to improvise newsolutions.

If a generous defense of the environment is to develop in the course of the nextcentury, it will exist only as the servant of humans and nature in their mutualinteraction and not as an advocate speaking through an entity called "the planet."

The friends of the earth have for too long been enemies of humanity; it is timefor an ecology of admiration to replace an ecology of accusation.

Save the world, we hear everywhere: Save it from capitalism, from science, fromconsumerism, from materialism. Above all, we have to save the world from its self-proclaimed saviors, who brandish the threat of great chaos in order to imposetheir lethal impulses. Behind their clamor we must hear the will to demoralize us the better to enslave us. What is at stake is the pleasure of living togetheron this planet that will survive us, whatever we do to it. We need trailblazersand stimulators, not killjoys disguised as prophets.

Pascal Bruckner is the author of many books, including The Paradox of Love (Princeton University Press, 2011) and The Tyranny of Guilt (Princeton, 2010). This essay is adapted from his new book, The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse, published by Polity Press.

paulroden

What will it take to wake up the public at large to the tyranny of dictatorial governments, multinational corporations, the centralized electrical utility companies, fossil and nucelar fuel industries that are destroying the planet and enslaving us all? We need to transition to a more democratic and sustainable economy that thinks globally but acts locally. We need a financial system that is dem

ocratically regulated by main street not Wall Street. It is only through democratic and nonviolent engagement that we will change the world for a more sustainable future.

Marshal_Law

The author's point is that discussions regarding the environment have degenerated into talk of catastrophe and apocalypse. To refute him, you cite "fossil and nucelar (sic) fuel industries that are destroying the planet and enslaving us all


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" Have you no sense of irony?

mbaker1973

The fossil fuel companies aren't destroying the planet. What is being destroyedis humanity in the name of "helping people in need". This Agenda 21 stuff fromthe UN is TYRANNICAL and it is DESTRUCTIVE OF PEACE.

iburke

Yikes: "Ecologism"? And "two ecologies"?

At least in academic circles, let's use the word appropriately. Ecology is not apoint of view; it is a discipline. It is the study of how organisms interact with the environment.

We are losing the word, I realize. But what this article focuses on is NOT "Ecology" and oh dear God, let's not invent "ecologism". This article is about "environmentalism", a point of view that advances the state of the environment over the state of the economy.

Gopher63Casting environmental concerns as pseudo-religious ("ecologism") falls into thesame trap of extremism as he accuses many "enviro-prophets" of promoting. Equating it with a religion is just as disingenuous as the conservative epithet of evolution as "Darwinism". Then again, he was apparently trained under conservative Jesuits. My non-Catholic concept of "Original Sin" is not the expulsion fromThe Garden but for just being human (but not to the secular extremes Bruckner does. He should be aware that the "dominion'" cited in Genesis actually meant (and means) stewardship (and we've been doing a pretty lousy job of that throughout history). He terms ecologism asbeing lazy but also lumps those who would improve the situation into the same boat. Yes, extremism, bred out of an unrealistic demand for certainty, is rampant on both sides of this issue (as with many),

including his. As usual, the answers are somewhere in the middle. Then again,extremism obviously sells ideas and books, including his. Follow the money.

mbaker1973

Extremism is a result of the idea that, "the ends justifies the means". There are professors in college that will read this response who are Reconstruction orProgressive education theorists, and they will pretend that they're not doing what they intend to do, because they are treated by the ruling class favorably. They don't care about the students' futures at all. They want to be part of theupper class, ie. at the top of the social order.

Susan Jonas

The worst use of a anemic thinking. Theory that uses great eloquence to obscurereality and necessity. How very sad that my alma mater publishes this nonsense.As literary theory it has validity, but as science, social science, ethics, policy

TrevorSG


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You'd think from reading this article that anyone who talks about climate changeas something more than an opportunity for the entrepreneurial spirit is a "killjoy." Its political analysis is that we need more technology, not different power arrangements. The fact that corporations profit from pollution, and pass the consequences off to others as "externalities," is completely ignored, so capitalism itself remains uninterrogated as a social system. Calling for hope in dark times is one thing. But this is really courting naivete.

sciencelibrarian

Despite all the author's wild analogizing and fantasizing, and his seeming downplaying of the genuine seriousness of the global environmental situation and hiscastigation of those who call attention to it, I have to say that I agree with what apparently is a main conclusion of this piece: "We have to count on the genius of the human race, which is capable of overcoming its fears in order to improvise new solutions."

Reythia

Agreed. What I find ironic is that, without the scientific and pro-environmentmindset that the author so despises, we wouldn't even know the problem is out th

ere to "fear", much less be able to find a "solution" to it!

mbaker1973

There are a lot of things that environmentalists do ignore. For example, peoplejump to the conclusion that there have been more tornadoes and such but it can't possibly be because of the fact that there are more people, homes, and businesses in the areas where they happen. Additionally, over the past 2 to 3 decades,there are literally thousands of more weather spotters and weather enthusiastswho are spotters that weren't doing it 20 or 30 years ago. There were quite a few events that went reported as being something different, such as tornado damage being determined to be "straight line winds", just because nobody ever saw the

tornado. There is also a misconception on what a tornado is, and just last week the media tried to sensationalize a "Derecho" as if it's the first one this year.

Additionally, it doesn't take heat to create tornadoes. On the days that thosetornadoes in Oklahoma occurred, it was in the mid 80s, not the record heat during the drought in the previous two years. This year, it's been hot here but notas hot as the past two years and as a result we've had more rain here. The water isn't evaporating nearly as rapidly as it was during the drought of 2011 and first half of 2012. There have not been the major wild fires in Texas this yearlike what occurred in the Hot, Dry air during 2011.

The conditions that led to the tornadoes had to do with a variety of meteorologi

cal conditions. There was dry line, a low pressure system, and a cold front. There was wind shear present. This means that there winds at the lower level ofthe atmosphere coming from the se, then northerly winds near the cold front, andwesterly or southwesterly winds near the dry line. Each of these occur at different levels of the atmosphere so when the warmer moist air collided with the cooler, drier air it began to rise. Due to the different direction in winds, it began to spin as it rose to the cooler parts of the atmosphere, thus creating super cells. That isn't all there is to it, but these are the basic conditions required for those big tornadoes.


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Reythia

Huh? I don't deny any of what you've said. Nor do MOST scientists. At best, people will say that greater variability in precipitation MAY occur as the climate warms, for two reasons:1.) because more water is released into the water cycle as the polar ice caps melt (so there's more available to use as rain)2.) because more heat in the atmosphere means more energy, and that energy is what can power storms (so there's a chance of more storms)

But I'm not really sure why you're so excited about tornados. Most of us climate change scientists don't have anything to do with them and have no particular opinion on how they're being impacted by climate change. It's hardly our fault that the media gets excited about every storm being "caused by global warming!!!!!". WE don't claim that, as a glance through technical papers will clearly show.

megginson

We might want to watch the straw men here. Are *some* environmentalists extremists with an agenda that takes advantage of what we're doing to climate? Of course. (And some of them would like to toss me overboard for my firm belief that we have to explore carbon-free nuclear energy as a way out of the climate mess we're

creating for ourselves.) But that first sentence tosses all into the same bucket, and it is not fair or accurate to do so.

And concerning that statement that "it doesn't take heat to create tornadoes." Of course it does. The first law of thermodynamics says the energy in a tornado has to come from somewhere, and heat energy is ultimately the only energy available to a storm event such as a tornado. What it doesn't take is *temperature*, and that is a different thing, so the argument about it being only in the 80s whenthose tornadoes were spawned is irrelevant. Any climate scientist (or any physicist, for that matter) can explain the difference. It is in good part the confusion between temperature and heat that led climate scientist Wally Broecker to state publicly and repeatedly his great regret at having coined the term "global warming" to describe anthropogenic climate disruption--it contributes greatly to

the confusion.

What is undeniable (verified many different ways, including by direct satelliteobservation of energy input and output for the earth system) is that we're adding heat energy to the earth system, which ultimately provides more energy for tornadoes and other extreme weather events. But no climate scientist worth her or his salt is going to claim any certainty about whether that led to those tornadoes (and don't confuse climate scientists with the media), even if the great majority of those scientists believe it likely that we're going to see more of them and/or more powerful ones. Again, straw men aren't helpful.

EllenHunt

The problem is, that if he had any idea about the science of it, he would know that it was misguided environmentalism (anti-nuclear activists) who for all practical purposes created global warming. (And no, we would not be significantly more radioactive than we are if we were nuclear.) So instead of nuclear power, which is carbon free, we have global warming.

David Robinson


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According (even) to the UK Met office the world has not been warming for 17 years? What problem? Why do we need hysteria for something that is not happening? Just askin' The author has a point!

Reythia

Friend, I'm not a tree-hugger, I don't think we should all give up our cars, I've got no problem with nuclear power, and I've no interest in going "back to nature". What I AM is an aerospace engineer working as an oceanographer who has personally computed the sea level rise and polar ice melt over the past 10-20 years. And I've got friends who do paleoclimate work (who believe the same things Ido, from the first sentence) who can compare what we're seeing now with what'shappened before.

We're NOT environmental activists, most of us. We're responsible scientists. We can't help it if some vocal minority has used our data to further their cause.But we get REALLY offended when you claim that we're lying or making up result

s to further a cause which we don't even agree with!

Climate change IS happening. It's got nothing to do with anti-nuclear activistsor tree-huggers. It's basic science and it's such a big signal that a respectable, neutral scientist literally CANNOT ignore it in her climate-related data.Sorry, but you're simply wrong here.

(And by the way, there are plenty of anti-climate-change people who are terrified of nuclear power, too, for reasons I don't completely understand.)

Reythia

Don't worry, be happy?Well, if ignorance is bliss, I suppose that's true.

However, most of us ACTUAL scientists (the vast, vast majority of whom do NOT espouse the extremist beliefs/policies described here) do not particularly find ignorance blissful. As such, we get curious about things. And some of those stud

ies tell us fascinating things, like that Greenland is melting about 215 Gt/yr for at least the past 10 years. And then, being curious (but not particularly depressed or pessimistic), we start to wonder why that is. And then we start to wonder what will happen in the future. And at that point, we start to wonder ifthat's really the future we want.

You see, most scientists are actually DREAMERS, not "killjoys". But we're an odd type of dreamer, one that believes that we have the ability to change ourselves and the world around us, if we all act together in concert. We believe that we ARE the "trailblazers and stimulators" recommended here, but that you can't blaze a trail until you know where you are now, where you've been, and where you want to go. Otherwise, you'll just find yourself wandering aimlessly in circles.

I'd be very interested in seeing this site post an article on this subject fromthe perspective of an ACTUAL scientist who studies the environment, and not oneof the rare far-lefters that the media so loves to quote, either. Most of us who study things like climate change are not pessimists and killjoys, but are actually guardedly optimistic dreamers: we believe that we can make rational, limited, and affordable changes which will make life better in the future. More, we know it's possible on a large scale, since we've done it in the past (see: ozonehole, acid rain). We see no reason we should choose to blind ourselves to well-known facts, simply because they are troubling and might require work to resolve.


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Cees de Valk

Too much dreaming, not enough thinking and not thinking deep and wide enough, dear Reythia. That is what holds back many employed as scientists today. Researchand the saving of planets do not go well together. Too many people have enteredthe game for reasons other than curiosity and fascination. It inevitably leads back to a Medieval culture of science. Reading about the lives of the people whoactually made great discoveries can teach you a lot about this.

Reythia

....If you say so. As an aerospace engineer who works with science satellites,that's generally not what I'VE seen. Most of us went into engineering/science because of our childhood dreams and have never really stopped dreaming, but we DID gain the needed tools to work toward those dreams along the way.

What's your experience in the area, precisely? Because this line, in particular, interests me: "Too many people have entered the game for reasons other than curiosity and fascination." I know of very, very few people who choose to go through some of the hardest college programs if they aren't curious or interested insome way in their field. Why would you, when the money isn't as good as some p

rograms where require easier classes?

mbaker1973

So, since you're a scientist, what happens to ice when you mix it with salt water? The water doesn't freeze at 32 degrees F when it gets more salt mixed in itdoes it? If you're curious, that is a pretty easy question to ask. No, salt water doesn't freeze at 32 degrees F. It has to get colder in order to freeze.

Reythia

Huh? I mean, yeah, it's true that mixing in salt lowers the freezing point of water. That's a matter of equilibrium, whereby mixing in ANY foreign ingredientwill lower the freezing point of a liquid. That's why we salt (or sand) our roads in the winter and also why margaritas stay liquidy even though they're belowfreezing. Basically, the salt ions interfere with the freezing process. When freezing DOES happen (at a lower temp), the water that freezes is actually freshwater, with the salt precipitating out. This is important when it comes to the freezing of salt water into icebergs at the poles, for the record, and is why thepolar deep water is more saline (and thus denser) than water elsewhere.

But... I really don't understand why you're asking this. It's totally unrelatedto anything I posted. What are you trying to get at????

Marshal_LawNicely done, Mr. Bruckner. But you are in a temple of True Believers at The Chronicle. The comments are already nasty, expect many more.

Nathaniel M. Campbell

For all of his feints of being "in-the-know" because of his Jesuit education, Bruckner is remarkably ignorant of the history of western civilization, especially


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in its Christian variants.

It was Augustine who coined the term mundus senescens to describe the last age of the world some sixteen hundred years ago -- a world grown old and tired, dwindling to its final end. There is no need to think that western society has somehow invented this paradigm from whole cloth in the last decade or two.

And the visionary theology of Hildegard of Bingen in the twelfth century is replete with the notion that, as humanity contains and reflects as a microcosm the macrocosm of the world, so the ravages of human sin are reflected in the degradation of the environment, while holiness restores and renews the health of the earth: evil begets aridity, while grace enlivens viridity.

As with so many extremist writers of the post-religious world, Bruckner sees only apocalypticism's "fanatacism" and evil: he neglects to uncover its equally rich history of producing optimistic activism (see, for example, the aforementionedHildegard of Bingen's visions of the future: a mixture of both dark pessimism and radical optimism). While it is true that the fear of catastrophe can paralyze, it is equally true that it can provoke us to act positively for change.

Elizabeth Sodapopoulo

Beautiful, beautiful essay. It was very exciting and refreshing to read someone

else out there notices what many of us have been noticing.

dpcowboy

"Sittin' on a fence" best describes this essay, although he may be right. I findthe Blutos spouting the disparagement of Global Warming to be unfit. I find thekilljoys who want me to walk everywhere barefoot equally odd. Making up new words (ecologism"???) and tripping psychedelically into these thoughts and theoriesmust be an amusing distraction, but really, is anyone out there moved by this exercise of pen to paper?

fisherman

No one should be moved. As a technically trained sales engineer my company sent me to school to write understandable letters for and to buyers ---most of themcollege educated. The curriculum used 5th-8th grade reading level as our guide. How large will his readership be in todays world.

AGFoster

Brilliant writing. One only waits for his mindless detractors to take the likesof Jim Hansen to task at least as far as the IPCC does. But one suspects his detractors don't read newspapers, much less IPCC reports. --AGF

yandoodan

Ellen, if you had read the accompanying essay, "The Gallic Gadfly", you'd have learned that Bruckner stated elsewhere "...that the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident 'merely confirms a concern that preceded it and was looking for something tojustify itself,'" as the essayist puts it. The essayist then commented, "That sentiment registers dangerously close to denialism." Bruckner was, clearly, stating that environmentalists had long been concerned that nuclear power plants were


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inherently dangerous, and that this concern had experienced a drought of 60 years with no non-Soviet confirmatory instances -- until Fukushima. This, far frombeing close to anything dangerous or extreme, is astoundingly obvious. It is also pro-nuclear. By the way, you fail to make any specific points against any of Bruckner's arguments. You might want to watch that in the Chronicles of Higher Education.

haygoody

I appreciate the comparison between what Bruckner calls "ecologism" and religious fundamentalism, though to be fair his is neither the first nor the most rigorous analysis of the religious overtones of Western environmentalism. I also appreciate the warning against panic, and I suspect it's really this particular emotional reaction to the phenomenon of climate change that he is deconstructing here, calling our attention to, rather than addressing the phenomenon of climate change itself, which he does not seem to think particularly worthy of comment. As much as I want to agree with the former point--there is a note of panic in imagining that a strict regulation of one's activities and consumption can make any difference in a problem of this scale, and we may need to imagine some more productive ways of coping with this enormous problem and its mitigation--I don't thinkthe kind of formalist insouciance displayed here is any more productive. The reason so many environmentalists are panicking is not just because of our latent desire to punish ourselves and our species; it's because, drought, species loss,

superstorms, and other impacts now linked to climate change notwithstanding, they've seen very little willingness from political and environmental leaders to address these issues seriously. How much of this so-called panic is actually frustration?

http://chronicle.com/article/Against-Environmental-Panic/139733/

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Against Environmental Panic