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Our Moral Obligation
I am a doctor. A psychiatrist. Over the years I have heard many troubling stories about the human condition. I have worked with individuals who were "on the ledge" emotionally. I have worked with people who fantasize about killing people, and some who have. I have listened to people recount being tortured, abused. I have evaluated the psychological states of foreign leaders who threaten world security. I have heard the details about children who have died at the hands of people who were out of their minds with drugs or illness. People have died in my arms, dropped dead at my feet.
Nothing has prepared me for what I am currently hearing: scientists all over the world warning us about the threat of catastrophic and irreversible climate change.
As a member of several organizations that involve professionals working in the field of mental health, I am stunned that this threat to the health of the planet and the public is so underplayed by these organizations and their members. An official from one leading organization expressed regrets that she was unable to attend a recent forum wrestling with the psychological and mental health aspects of climate change and noted, "no one on the staff is interested." The person she anointed in her place cancelled.
One of the missions of these associations is to relieve human suffering. As practitioners we help people to face reality. We chip away at their denial knowing it can be a cover for behaviors that destroy their lives. When they see the world more clearly, we urge them to take charge - warning of the dangers of being passive.
Scientists every day are telling us that climate change is happening far faster than anyone had predicted and that the magnitude of the problem is unfathomable. "We have an emergency," warns NASA scientist James Hansen. "People don't know that. Continued ignorance and denial could make tragic consequences unavoidable."
Why are the organizations and their members, those most skilled at exposing the danger of denial and destructive behaviors, so silent about this crisis? Are they in denial themselves? Surely the science isn't disputed. Surely we don't believe that destroying life on our planet is "not our problem."
Our canon of ethics says we have a duty to protect the public health and to participate in activities that contribute to it.
Where, then, are the journal articles, the committee reports, the mission statements, action plans, letters to the editor, presentations, etc that attest to the gravity of what we are hearing? Where are the recommendations that show how to break through denial and get people to change - quickly? Are we not the very organizations to seize upon warnings and confront the world before it is too late?
We see through resistance, excuses, faulty reasoning. We "get" urgency, we "get" life-long consequences. We see the anger, anxiety and depression caused by the mistakes and shortcomings of a previous generation. We know about trauma from repeated exposure to horrifying events. We are trained, indeed we are ethically bound, to respond to emergencies.
What are we waiting for?
We are already seeing wildfires, floods, sea level rise, storms, droughts, risks to our national security, and a mass extinction.
Lethal global overheating - strike the innocuous sounding "global warming" - is not something that may happen in the next century or even mid-century - it is happening now.
All of us, urgently and collectively, have a duty to warn our patients, co-workers, families, neighbors, friends. We have a duty to act - within our professional organizations, in our communities, offices and homes. Climate scientists are desperately trying to tell us to reduce our carbon emissions - to stop building new coal plants, to switch to clean renewable energy, to embrace energy efficiency - to "pay any price, bear any burden."
Mental health professionals vigorously endorse requirements to report cases of child abuse. It is a legal obligation, but it is also a moral one.
Is it any less compelling a moral obligation, in the name of all children now and in the future, to report that we are on track to hand over a planet that may be destroyed for generations to come?
I respectfully request that we, as mental health professionals, make a unified stand in
support of actions to reduce the threat of catastrophic climate change.
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The answer to your question of What are we waiting for is in your article, Lise. It's denial. How can anyone face up to the enormity of the destruction of civilization in its own waste? When it's just your own life, or a village or a family, you still recognize that life goes on. To admit that the end of civilization is upon us is simply too much for many people.
Thank you for your bravery in coming out here with your plea and describing your fear and calling for action.
As someone who believes that ethics are more than a set of rules, as apparently you do, I also recognize that it is perhaps not a sufficient majority who also feels that way. Certainly the last 30 years have been proof enough of that. Without sufficient inner moral compulsion to act, a person cannot see that it's necessary, and not seeing that necessity, they will deny the existence of the moral imperative to avoid cognitive dissonance. They must see themselves as good, therefore they cannot see that their failure to act is bad, therefore they rationalize with escape and denial.
So an expert on Nuclear Waste Disposal wants to debate anyone and everyone on the concept of
The Greenhouse effect?
Look, I know enough about Nuclear Waste Disposal to known that we still don't apparently know what to do with it...right
To be fair, perhaps Melmoid is "Retired" and to be even more fair I suggest he doesn't know a lot about other sciences such as Astronomy.
This reminds me of a quote by someone I don't remember at the moment...
"We are all ignorant of something.
Your comments on nuclear waste disposal are sillyl. The problems of nuclear waste disposal required high level expertise in just about every field of science and engineering. To are just trivializing it.
Try realclimat
>Scientists every day are telling us that climate change is happening far faster than anyone had predicted and that the magnitude of the problem is unfathomable.
Some are--certainly the ones you are reading about. But the fact is it's not happening "faster than anyone predicted". It's happening slower than the models predict--and it's going in the wrong direction. Here's a chart of all the major temperature monitoring sources (NASA-GISS, Hadley Centre, and UAH and RSS satellite data) for this decade:
http://www
All cooling. How could warming be happening faster than expected, if the planet is cooling by every account? Please, educate yourself instead of just reading the eye-catching, heart-grabbing accounts. The more boring facts don't make headlines.
Codehead-- I think you and Sonofliberty should write up your "science" and send it to the Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy or a similar journal for possible publication. Then you can make your case in a detailed and logical order without the hyperbole thrown in. Let me know when it is published. I am open minded enough to read it.
>Codehead-- I think you and Sonofliberty should write up your "science"
Why? There are plenty of peer-reviewed articles in major scientific publications now. Do a little online research. Of course the "doom science" gets the press. It's pretty boring to say nothing is happening, and research that predicts cooling doesn't generate much excitement (it should--if true, cooling is more catastrophic than warming, just look at history and the effects of the little ice age).
Appeal to authority -- not a convincing method of argument, bucko.
Um, too short a timescale. That's weather, not climate. Plot from 1850. Do you not observe the unambiguous hockey-stick shape circa 1900?
>We are already seeing wildfires, floods, sea level rise, storms, droughts, risks to our national security, and a mass extinction.
Wildfires due to regulations limiting the the removal of brush, while we build closer to it, and some cyclical drought. Floods as usual, except we now have far more people building and living in natural flood planes. Sea level---you're saying the centimeters of rise the past century is... doing what? Sea level has been rising for 20k years, since the peak of the last ice age. "Mass extinction"? There were fewer cyclones the past 50 years than the previous, etc. And it's been cooling this decade, which is a far greater threat to humanity than warming (but it's out of our control, except to mitigate, in either case).
Melmoid...
Do you know anything about Astronomy?
Doesn't sound like it...
If you did, you would already know that the Greenhouse Effect exists...
If a planet has less atmosphere, it's colder than one that has more atmosphere.
If the Earth had as much atmosphere as the moon (which is very slight) it would be extremely hot
on the day side and extremely cold at night.
It's the atmosphere that allows life to exist on this planet.
Now, what happens if you make the atmosphere denser?
Surface temps get hotter...
Venus for example with an atmosphere 40 x as dense with day & night temps around 900 degrees F.
Hotter than Mercury.
Get it?
By our Industrial Revolution we are creating a denser atmosphere.
As a matter of fact I took some graduate courses in astronomy. Your science here is so full of holes it is not worth my time to refute it. You are better at condescension than science.
A couple of graduate courses.
Oh, very commendabl
I've been studying the stars most of my 52 years....
And I've actually made a discovery.
http://www
And my science is not mine per se but is based upon observational evidence and various space probes and a bit of "Carl Sagan" too.
Fact is that you probably know some of your own discipline but no one else's.
I think you've got a lot of research to do...bette
Heck and you don't even know about the collaborative efforts between pro's and am's?
>Venus for example with an atmosphere 40 x as dense... By our Industrial Revolution we are creating a denser atmosphere.
If we were even able to burn all the fossil fuels on the planet is short order, we could not begin to even pretend to free enough greenhouse gases to approach Venus. CO2 makes up 0.0385% of the atmosphere by volume. Of that, we've added 0.01%. Most of our "greenhouse gases" is water vapor and particles, which dominate the effect (and unlike the others, can work in both directions--warming or cooling). The Venus example is great for scaring people who don't know anything.
Codehead,
What I am saying is that we have several planets here to look at...
Mars with a thin atmosphere, Earth with a much denser atmosphere and Venus with an extremely dense atmosphere
And Venus is hotter than Mercury which is the closest planet to the Sun.
And what can we make of this?
When you increase the density of any atmosphere, you increase the ability of that atmosphere to trap heat period.
That's what's happening on Venus and it's the same thing that's happening here on Earth.
"We are already seeing wildfires, floods, sea level rise, storms, droughts, risks to our national security, and a mass extinction
Since when are wildfires, floods, storms,and droughts anything new in the history of the world. Severe episodes of all of them have always happened through the ages. Where is this sea level rise? I don't see it at the beach. And since all the oceans are connected and all the water will eventually seek a common level, if it's happening somewhere, it should be happening near where I live.
It's that their frequency and severity are increasing systematically.
The likelihood that you would notice a couple of centimeters of sea level rise is negligible. But add a couple-three centimeters a year for a century, and you'll flood Manhattan.
The additional water is coming from ice that's melting out from glaciers and the polar caps. It'll find a level all right--tens of meters higher than where it is now.
There is no scientific proof that man made activitities cause the planet's temp to rise. Since most environmental radicals believe in global warming like a religion, they don't need proof.
There is plenty of scientific evidence. But since you cannot tell the difference between science and religion, I don't think you could understand it.
Apparently there were a heck of a lot of scientists that were religous..
in fact they were Catholic Monks and Priests...
I recommend "Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist by Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ PhD
Are you telling me perhaps that Air Pollution is not real?
May I humbly suggest that you start here: http://www
So this post is advocating brain washing people into believing that catastrophe is coming? I think we should be good stewards of our planet but worrying about CO2 emissions is a waste of time.
No, this post is about psychiatrically and socially addressing the psychic distress the follows from a recognition of danger, and doing something to mitigate both it and the danger.
As a Doctor, you are used to dealing with family members who think they know what is wrong with your patient. In this case, the family thinks the patient has a terminal fever. Mr. Earth is suffering from runnaway global warming.
Let's see, what should a doctor do? Fortunately, there are four respected institutions that can provide global temperature information to you. Mr. Earth's temperature increased by about 1 degree centigrade over the entire 20th Century. The highest recorded annual temperature was in 1998. Since then, a whole decade has passed with slightly lower temperatures. 2008 was especially cool. No signs of fever there.
There is also adequate data for global ocean temperatures, which shows that temperatures have been generally stable over the past decade, and are below the recent peak. No signs of fever there.
What else could we check? Mr. Earth has polar sea ice cover, which generally shrinks when the planet warms. You check the most current data. The global sea ice level is marginally above the average for the 1979-2000 period. The Antarctic sea ice cover is well above the 1979-2000 average, and the Arctic sea ice cover is slightly (3.5%) below the 1979-2000 average. No signs of fever there.
As a doctor, what should you do? Immediately accept the opinions of the "friends of the earth"? On what basis are you morally required to accept their opinions? What is your alternative diagnosis, based on your experience as a doctor?
I would really like to read your diagnosis in all of its details. In what scientific journal have they been published?
Doctors have to apply logical methods to discover the what is wrong with their patients. I was hopeful that the author, or other doctors, might reveal these methods as they might fancifully apply to Mr. Earth's fever.
Possible secondary symptoms. If the oceans are warming in an accelerated way, then the rate of sea level rise should also be accelerating, as the water expands. Current data indicates that the rate of sea level rise is decelerating, which implies the oceans have changed in some way recently; their temperature rise has slowed, or stopped, or declined.
Such temperature moderations have been occurring during a period when the release of CO2 was accelerating. Therefore, CO2 appears an unlikely cause of significant warming. Maybe the best prescription for the patient is a placebo.
Lise--- There is certainly some deep seated psychological pathology going on here. I think it is fundamentally a spiritual problem brought about by the total failure of our religious paradigms. See the book Living in the Borderline by Jerome Bernstein.
"Surely the science isn't disputed" -- it IS disputed, my dear. The predicted global climate train wreck is based on poorly specified computer models that can't even predict past climate, much less the future. Thousands of scientists disagree with the supposed "consensus".
Given your level of anxiety I'd recommend you see a psychiatrist, except you are one.
It is disputed by folks but not by serious students or scientists on the subject. Just because you are so certain doesn't mean you are right. Have you looked carefully at the models and how they are validated? Do you have advanced training in climate science and mathematical modeling?
"not by serious students or scientists on the subject."
Could you define this for me? I have seen some pretty convincing evidence produced by what I took to be serious scientists.
>It is disputed by folks but not by serious students or scientists on the subject
Clearly, you haven't done much research. Christy, Spencer, Lindzen, Baliunas, Allegere, Ball, Soon, Freeman... (I could continue..
And might I humbly suggest that you start here: http://www
Put the models aside for a second; the temperature has measurably changed.
The "thousands of scientists" denying anthropogenic climate change amount to, like 0.0000027 percent of all climate scientists. I'll go with the majority on this one: it's the climate change version of Pascal's Wager.
>Can you deny that the shape of the graph is UTTERLY unambiguous?
It's also wrong (even if we leave out the future projections), according to historians, and many scientists. I don't believe science is up to a vote, but since you do (as you allude to in your post), I'll offer that more scientists and historians believe in the medieval warm period (absent in your chart) than don't. Also, it's well accepted that it was warmer a few thousand years ago than now (the "holocene climate optimum").
>Put the models aside for a second; the temperature has measurably changed.
Thanks goodness--I prefer temperature right now to the little ice age of just a few generations ago--a period that makes up much of the past on that chart.
>The "thousands of scientists" denying anthropogenic climate change amount to, like 0.0000027 percent of all climate scientist
You're making this up. Otherwise you could point us to some kind of accounting of it. Not that it matters (science isn't determined by a vote). (Besides, do the math--your numbers indicate many times more climate scientists than the number of humans on this planet--approaching the number of humans who have ever lived, even if "thousands" only means 2,000, the minimum plural. If you want to make stuff up, at least don't get sloppy.)
Even Charles Osgood of CBS doesn't believe this "surely the science isn't disputed" talk. He observes that our sun has grown unusually cool, which hasn't happened for a long time. Maybe, the influence of the sun is stronger than the influence of CO2. Maybe that could explain the stable temperatures lately, the cooling oceans, and the recovery of the global sea ice.
But who will tell the U.N. that they were wrong about global warming?
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