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Drought 2012 (photo: Crane Station / flickr)
Now that the hottest summer on record is drawing to a close, are we any closer to admitting that climate change is upon us? If not, why not?
It might have something to do with the five stages of grief. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified these stages as denial, then anger, followed by bargaining, depression, and acceptance. With record drought killing our cattle and our corn, West Nile virus sweeping the country, and Arctic ice sheets melting away, it’s no surprise that millions of people are responding to these frightening signs of environmental decline in stages.
Nobel Laureate Steve W. Running first proposed this frame for understanding the popular response to climate change in 2007. I’d like to go one step further and suggest a sixth stage: The Work.
Denial, the first stage of grief, can be quite comfortable. The U.S. media is in many ways co-dependent with the denialist camp. It rarely connects the dots between extreme weather events and climate change, making it easy to remain blissfully ignorant. Our politicians are also prolonging this denial stage by rarely uttering the term “climate change,” as though the words themselves were obscene.
The second stage — anger — sums up the likes of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. These talk show hosts are at their most vitriolic when they attack climate scientists or advocates of fossil fuel alternatives. Their ferocity gives license to the crazies who issue death threats against climate scientists: they would rather shoot the messenger than listen to the message.
The next stage, bargaining, comes when the deniers begin to acknowledge that global temperatures are indeed rising, but claim it’s due to natural causes. Or they take a stance like ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson’s — admitting climate change is a major, man-made problem, but claiming that the answer is to “adapt” to it instead of changing our behavior.
Depression is a familiar state to me and my fellow climate change activists. If the truth will set you free, the truth about climate change may set you free to take anti-depressants for the rest of your life. Every weather abnormality comes with a sense of dread. It’s at this point that we lose people. Denial starts to look attractive.
Acceptance is the hardest stage, because what experts tell us lies ahead is so damn scary, it will make you want to hop into Rush Limbaugh’s lap and stay there: We are surpassing all of scientists’ worst-case scenarios by a long shot — we are now on track to an 11-degree Fahrenheit rise by the end of the century, according to the International Energy Agency. We’ve broken over 4,000 temperature records in the United States just this year, and scientists tell us record droughts, floods, storms, and forest fires all may become “the new normal.”
We must accept this dreadful prognosis if we are to act appropriately.
But acceptance does not mean that all is lost.
After years of working through these stages, I’ve discovered a new sixth stage: doing The Work. This means taking courage from each other as we look this monster in the eye and fight side-by-side in the battle of a lifetime. Systemic change — not just light-bulb change — is what’s required now. This must include everything from replacing the GDP as an outdated measure of progress to getting schools to teach climate science and arm the next generation with the facts.
Together, we can get a glimpse, beyond despair, of a world of transformation and rebirth that is possible if we’re courageous enough to fight for it. After all, our planet will eventually restore itself to a state of equilibrium — we just have to make sure humankind is around to witness it.
This op-ed was originally published by Other Words.
31 Comments
Highly recommend piece of social psychology.
It should come as no great surprise to us, that an incremental collective grasp of a bad situation will follow our human traits of grief control.
Unless and until the stridency of our scientific authorities’ warnings are found to be permissible by the MSM, our continued inapprehension of the calamity we’re facing and our needed acceptance of its truth will continue to be postponed as something to think about and to deal with later.
It never ceases to amaze, our collective stupidity is so easy to sustain.
‘Zat so? The chart on the left, here, which compares a few Hansen scenarios with reality, finds that even his “Rapid decrease of CO2 after 2000″ scenario is hotter than what has actually transpired. I.e., his best case scenario is worse than what transpired (though not by a lot).
So, your claim of “all” of scientists, blah, blah, appears to leaving out the inestimable Dr. Hansen.
I have to wonder: who else are you leaving out?
Really! You mean that we were not “on track”, before, but are now “on track”? Since 2000, temperatures have mostly moved sideways. From about 1970 – 2000, there was some notable warming.
You seem to have inverted the relationship between the very recent past, and the 30 year period, just before it.
Perhaps if you were more specific, and gave links, we could more easily figure out what your claims are.
The 7th stage is “We’re f*cked anyway no matter what we do so lets Party!”
you make a living doing this, don’t you?
Try this one metamars.
No.
Every single one of those graphs end in the year 2000. That being the case, how will you confirm or disconfirm my statement about 1970-2000 vs. 2000-2012?
Of course, you can’t.
Meta get with the program dude, EXXON-Mobil CEO REX ( AKA KING) Tillerson says AGW is real enough, time to move on in the debate. You guys are now at the negotiation stage of grief and Rex says the party line now is that we’ll adapt. It seems Meta that you are still hanging back with RV$H and the other deniers @ the anger stage of grief, maybe you didn’t get the memo?
Thank you so much for this wise and timely post, Ms. Wysham. It is telling that the second comment in this thread is from a climate denier (as was noted, probably a professional one). The ranks of the “metamars” are dwindling, and their arguments appear shriller and more detached from reality than ever as the inevitable happens: we here in North America start to feel the effects of the climate instability that our high carbon lifestyle has caused.
Voices such as yours are important to hear at this pivotal time in history, when climate change/ocean acidification/species extinction are making humanity’s choices starkly clear – continue down the destructive path we’re on, or chose a different, more equitable one that also provides our children and grandchildren with the clean air, clean water, and stable climate that we (like other species on earth) depend on. It is truly an existential question, such that many of us shy away from “hugging the monster” and doing the work that needs to be done. For the past 3 years I’ve looked the climate change monster in the eyes, for the sake of my children and their future children, and have found that doing “The Work” is so much more satisfying and energizing than trying to deny/ignore this threat. If only every parent and grandparent who stays up at night agonizing about this issue would realize that, we could turn this around. There ARE solutions – but the first step to solving a problem, to quote T.V.’s Dr. Phil, is recognizing that you have one. The earth (and physics) isn’t going to wait around much longer for us to “get it”.
You mean the glaciers and the ice are NOT really melting? You mean the exceedingly high temps these last few years and the drought are not really happening? Well, then, shit I’m going back to sleep and then tomorrow I’m gonna buy a Hummer.
One comment about this post. You say GDP is outdated. What would you replace it with? And GDP also measures the grand profit machine, arguably one of the prime movers of this whole thing.
For those people ready to do “The Work” I would invite them to investigate Citizens Climate Lobby, a grassroots group committed to creating the political will for a sustainable climate and empowering individuals to exercise their personal and political power. CCL comes with this recommendation from Dr Hansen:
“Most impressive is the work of the Citizens Climate Lobby, a relatively new, fastgrowing, nonpartisan, nonprofit group with 35 chapters across the United States and Canada. If you want to join the fight to save the planet, to save creation for your grandchildren, there is no more effective step you could take than becoming an active member of this group.”
You mistake him for someone who wants facts. He is an amateur scientist and he’s got all he needs, thank you.
Rather pedantic.
I heard the other day they’re leaving sun screen around for the polar bears.
One of the suggested replacements is suggested by the small kingdom of Bhutan, which has been measuring Gross National Happiness, or GNH, since the 1970s:
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-04-06/talking-happiness
The denial merged with anger will be a real problem when fueled by feelings of guilt as ongoing events repeatedly rub the faces of the deniers in the fact that they each had their part, directly or indirectly, in furthering the ongoing catastrophe.
They could tell themselves they were deliberately misled… and it would be true… but there’s the fact that the the tools who misled them are all too often the same tools who also provided “validity” to a non-sustainable framework of other beliefs for the deniers…. and those tools have a hefty paycheck riding on keeping the charade going as long as they can regardless of the damage done.
It’s going to be more than a little bit crazy… the collective and almost-random mental flailing about of all too many of the deniers trying to avoid accepting responsibility for their actions are going to cause a lot of additional damage.
And as always the the worst of the hypocrites will be found among the “champions of personal responsibility”… the tools… egging the deniers on.
metamars. You are a joke.
Nice essay. I mourn with you.
As a scientist with considerable background in biology. I have to say even though I long ago gave up expecting reason from humans in a group I have been surprised at the depth of the denial and the amazing betrayal by our business community so actively promoting denial.
I have no idea if we have hit the tipping point or not but there will be one instant in which the process will become impossible to reverse or even modify. Seeing the Greenland ice melt this summer, even if briefly, makes me feel it is so very close. Once the reflective ice is gone there won;t be enough aluminum foil to cover the poles.
Here’s a clue. There is strong evidence that climate change is occurring. If you attach a reasonable probability that it is happening, then you can make decisions. If the probablity is 100% then critical action must be taken. If it is 25% then other action may be taken. Then we should look at the worse case scenario, uninhabitable planet? Only the rich and their lackeys will survive?
metamars is playing the up the down escalator game with his temperature references:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47
the c3headline site metamars cites seems to simply plot the data wrong:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/updates-to-model-data-comparisons/
Only for a while… and only that much by trampling the rest of us under for just that much longer.
But denial as practiced by the elites goes beyond whistling past the graveyard and enters the realm of quiet insanity… sometimes not so quiet…
Not only will they not stop, they will use the catastrophes as an opportunity to “straighten a few things out.”
They don’t stop… they won’t ever stop.
Y’see, since they broke their collective leash they don’t know how to stop.
Being rich will provide some insulation from the bumps ahead, but certainly is no guarantee of survival. This will certainly be true when the anger of the masses is focused on those who have profited from, and suppressed corrective action on, our current catastrophic situation.
I see. Is NorthernGal also a “joke”?
The diarist has made a false claim, I corrected it, with a reference, a for this thankless act of truth telling, I’m described as a “joke”. NorthernGal, OTOH, tells us
(emphasis mine), though no explanation has yet appeared that would negate my reference.
Well, perhaps you just have a weird sense of humor.
Here’s some more material for you to laugh at: This reference plots sea ice extent. Artic sea ice extent is definitely down, antarctic sea ice is above the 30 year baseline 1979-2008.
Since CO2 is widely accepted as “well mixed”, if human CO2 production was the primary culprit for Arctic sea ice loss, shouldn’t we also expect Antarctic sea ice extent to be down?
As part of metamars’ never-ending quest to make people laugh, I posted about my own half-baked hypothesis on climate change at Lubos Motls’ blog, basically wondering aloud whether solar-related changes in radioactive decay rates are the mechanism behind the extremely high correlation of time averaged temperature readings and atmospheric CO2. (I’m not going to bother digging up the references; what’s the point? For anybody interested, search for Pangburn, and Endersbee).
Now, Motls has posted on this subject, but disputes the idea of solar-related variable radioactive decay, and instead suggests that nuclear events on earth may vary due to solar neutrino collisions. Whatever the underlying cause, nobody has tried to relate this phenomena to temperature variations that we measure.
I recently did a back-of-the napkin calculation to see if solar-related variations of radioactive event in the seas might explain anything observed, but came up with a negligible effect.
As yet, I don’t think anybody has explained Pangburn and Endersbee’s (separate) analyses. I doubt the climate modelers would ever attempt doing so, seriously.
Flail much?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/sea_ice_south.php
Flail fail.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice-intermediate.htm
I looked at your first reference. I don’t see anything that contradicts what I wrote. Thus, I fail to see how I’ve “flailed”, at all.
Not that there’s enough data presented to allow for a definite fail (i.e., contradiction). My reference graphs all months, relative to the baseline. Your table picks out two months. Thus, at the least, my reference has 6x the data, and yours is not a table of anomalies, anyway (though you could calculate them, easily enough, wrt the ’79-2000 baseline that your reference gives). Actually, my graph appear to give continuous data (I suppose re-computed on a daily basis), so in this case will have much more than 6x the data of your table.
I didn’t refer to a specific graph in my reference, because the graph wasn’t labeled with something like ‘Figure 10a’. However, I’ll give you the link, now.
You can clearly see that Antartic Ice is positive with respect to the (labeled) 1979-2008 baseline. Whether you like it, or not. Eyballing my referene, you can clearly see that if you averaged Antarctic sea ice anomalies from mid-2008 to present, the average would be positive. Also, if you averaged from mid 2007 to present, it would also be clearly positive. Again, whether you like it, or not.
It’s also obvious that 2001-2003, Antarctic Sea Ice extent was negative. But, so what? Nowhere did I claim that there was never any interval of time, since 2000, when Antarctic Sea Ice extent anomaly was negative.
Do you understand the concept of ‘anomaly’ wrt a specific baseline? Yes or no? If “yes”, then if you have a reference which contradicts my statement, go ahead and present it. Otherwise, it is you that has failed.
No, I was quite specific about what date ranges I was referring to, which, furthermore, were non-overlapping. Your pretty graph uses overlapping regions.
While your graph was basically propaganda, designed to make climate skeptics look like fools or deceivers, the question of how long an interval to consider in order to make a valid statement about climate (as opposed to weather) is a valid concern. The rule of thumb is 30 years, but I’m not aware of any fact of nature which supports a 30 year minimum.
In fact, the sideways movement of temperature, showing up an increasing divergence with model predictions since about 2000, is what has caused may scientists to change their minds ‘climate science’.
Huh? Looks to me like they’ve plotted the same data, though your reference only has data through some point in 2009, while mine goes through all (apparently) of 2010. Your graph also shows Hansen’s predictions are warmer than what was actually observed, thus contradicting the diarist’s claim that
Isn’t it obvious that, at least in the case of Hansen, this claim by the diarist is FALSE??
I linked to it. You ignored it.
You insist on treating the Arctic and Antarctic as identical situations when they are literally polar opposites.
Call it flailing, grabbing at straws or whatever else you like… it’s not facing reality.
The pages I linked to explained clearly that the Antarctic is the opposite of the Arctic, being a land mass surrounded by ocean, and that the ice on the land (by far the bulk of the multiyear Antarctic ice) and the ice on the sea behave very differently over the course of a year than their Arctic counterparts.
The Antarctic land ice is decreasing and it is decreasing at an accelerating rate. The land ice is the killer.
The Antarctic sea ice, which is mostly seasonal and only a fraction of the Antarctic multiyear ice, is indeed increasing due to complex conditions that do not apply in the Arctic… but the increase is not, absolutely not enough to counter the loss from the land ice.
An small increase in Antarctic sea ice in comparison to the massive land ice losses is a very thin thread to try to hang your quasi-religious denialism upon.
Don’t feed the trolls – engaging in any kind of debate with anti-science cherry picking deniers just prolongs the process of moving through the 6 stages that Ms. Wysham refers to above.
There are more than enough people out there uneasy about the current situation, if not completely aware of the kind of massive threat that climate change/ocean acidification/species extinction poses to our children and grandchildren, to make a difference. We’re close to the tipping point in the public conversation, too, not just in the arctic.
I didn’t look at your other links, because the first one indicated that you were posting irrelevant stuff, while claiming I was a “flail”. Nobody has admitted the diarist made a false claim, climate commenters at FDL generally put forth talking points as arguments, etc., so I expected more of the same from you.
I myself have noted, in fdl, that there’s gravitometric data to show that polar mass was decreasing (which surely means, if accurate, that the ice covering was decreasing, since nobody seriously expects that the mass under the ice cap is going to shift away from the pole.) I didn’t know that there was other lines of evidence to show ice mass was decreasing.
If it’s decreasing, the questions that arise are “how quickly?”, “what are the historical comparisons?” (generally not available for any length of time), and related to the prior question, “what are the causes?”
The typical believer in climate catastrophism believes or assumes that they know the answers. It’s anthropogenic CO2, things are always getting generally worse, etc. You didn’t see anybody else challenge the false claim by the diarist about
did you? That because (I assume) people really believe this.
There’s a very recent paper on temperature reconstruction on the AntArctic Peninsula, which show temperatures were 1.3C warmer 11,000 years ago. And yet, average temperature proxies from the beginning of the Holocene show cooler temperatures.
There’s both lots of variability, as well as lots of uncertainty, in these temperature reconstructions. It’s the job of historical climatologists to try and explain these variations, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve succeeded, to the extent that they can make trustworthy explanations of current variability. We’ve seen, time and again, bad analyses, gross distortions, and, ah, let’s call them suspicious corrections to datasets*. The climate modelers – who ignore substantial criticisms leveled at them by Freeman Dyson literally decades ago – have not improved on their models’ accuracy, in spite of billions spent.
I recommend that you take their explanations and predictions with a huge grain of salt.
BTW, since you referred to me as adhering to “denialism”, would you be so kind as to tell me precisely what I am denying? I certainly don’t deny that the climate changes; nor do I deny that anthropogenic CO2 has a mild warming effect on the climate. So, WHAT, precisely, am I in denial of?
* e.g., Argos buoy data, which showed a slight cooling of oceans since about 2003, was corrected to show a slight heating. AFAIK, all “corrections” to data, in recent years, have all been in the direction of increased global warming. Strange, eh?
While the Exxon CEO and Exxon company publicly are very cool about climate change, under the table they have poured many dollars into the denialist camp. Also, big money flows from Exxon to right wing politicians who would not be so comfortable with their idiotic positions on the climate were it not consistent with what the energy industry wants.
Exxon’s big schtick is “We help the areas where we are” – here we are, funding minority students, helping put a well in in CountryCan’tPronounceIt, working with inner city students (then bringing them on as interns!) here in refinery city …
It’s the same pitch as Shell – we’re doing it with clean energy! Even BP has some neat ads (it’s lots cheaper than maintaining the Alaska pipeline or spending money to not cause any of the 5 or more BIG environmental disasters they have caused in the last decade).
Misdirection, misdirection, money can buy anything when it comes to peoples’ brains.