Doomer or Realist
I have to confess that I am a climate doomer, or at least, what mainstream climate experts, global institutions, and most media consider a ‘doomer’. Despite the bad image that being a ‘doomer’ implies, I accept it because I consider it the closest to reality. Though it seems to be all around us, reality is difficult to assess -you have to be willing to peel away all the layers of status quo pronouncements that are rarely set in the right context.
What prevents most people from seeing the evidence without much wishful thinking is the human need for solutions and hope. This hope is also fostered by the feeling that it is impossible for a species that has achieved such incredible cultural and technological heights, to prove incapable to solve the climate problem and ensure humanity’s existence and that of many other species.
Why am I a doomer? Because after studying a lot of the available information, I have concluded that all the Earth’s systems on which our species depends have already reached an irreversible state that will be very difficult to mend in a human timescale. As a realist, I have found that just two variables, put in the right context, are enough to conclude that our problem is unsolvable.
The first variable is the Earth’s energy exchange unbalance, an instability of planetary dimensions that directly expresses the trouble we are in — the climate havoc that is threatening our survival and that of many other species. This energy unbalance can be expressed in the term radiative forcing which quantifies the excessive heat that the Earth is experiencing due to the increase of greenhouse gas concentrations and the damage it causes.
To understand radiative forcing it is useful to see how our planet’s energy exchange works. The Earth receives radiation from the sun in the form of light and then reflects it as infrared radiation (heat), some back into space and the rest goes back to Earth. The percentage of gases in the atmosphere determines how much energy is reflected or absorbed, keeping the Earth cool or warm, respectively.
The percentage of gases in the atmosphere is the main regulator of the Earth’s climate so this is why the raise in greenhouse gases is quite important. Fortunately, our atmosphere is mostly composed of nitrogen and oxygen (21%) –gases that don’t absorb infrared radiation (heat) while greenhouse gases like CO2, methane, and water vapor easily absorb it. The mounting excess of these heating gases has been creating a very worrisome energy unbalance in which the Earth receives more solar radiation than it reflects.
Here is a graph of the Radiative Forcing since 1979 calculated by NOAA.
The Earth’s unbalance is important because it causes a variety of feedback mechanisms. One is the vicious cycle caused by the effects of the radiative forcing, which disproportionately heats the Polar Regions causing the loss of the Earth’s white areas, reducing even more the reflection of heat back into space, and further warming the planet. This vicious cycle, in turn, unbalances atmospheric and oceanic currents, disturbing weather patterns and creating a very unpredictable climate that damages the harmony of ecosystems, agricultural success, and habitability for humans. This network of unbalances ends up hindering the capacity of many species, including humans, to quickly adapt, leading to a series of extinctions.
The climate damage caused by the Earth’s unbalance is becoming each year worse, making it impossible to restore to its former condition in a human timescale. The fuel-intensive processes that caused this unbalance have also left a trail of pollution that has deeply affected the health of ecosystems adding to our environmental problem. The generalized pollution will also be very difficult to remedy and will continue degrading the environment for a long time. For example, the mountains of plastics caused by our consumerist society can last from hundredths to thousands of years.
What I described above is what I mean by reality. Reality is the mounting unbalance of the Earth that will continue affecting the complicated systems of the planet while rendering it more and more unfit for supporting most species and humans. The radiative forcing is like a load on the shoulders of humanity that reduces each day our chances of survival on Earth.
If this is the main problem, what are the optimistic mainstream climate experts doing to reduce this burden from our shoulders? They admit there is a difficult problem that fortunately can be solved if we follow certain rules and modify a little our behavior. Apart from that, they go to conferences in their luxurious private planes to meet other experts and world leaders to finally conclude that the world has made a lot of progress! Despite the dire situation, they are always keen to say that the catastrophe can still be averted as long as countries and corporations continue reducing their emissions so we don’t reach the temperature limit set by the experts.
The whole hope is based on reducing man made emissions, a topic that leads to very heated conversations about which country or what company is good or bad depending on their promises to reduce them. The funny thing is that according to the people in charge of assessing country or corporate emissions, the current science is not up to the task of accurately measuring emissions and there is no way to independently verify whether national governments or companies are telling the truth.
Emissions are counted by adding the industrial processes and energy consumption of the whole country and calculating the probable emissions that they produce. In this very loose method, it is very easy to count certain processes and disregard others, since there is no way to asses these numbers in an objective way. This means that countries can very easily brag about their incredible emission reductions, net zero, or carbon neutral status, without making any real effort and more importantly, not affecting the real concentration of gases in the atmosphere.
Many corporations have another trick up their sleeve -carbon offsetting by planting trees or claiming an area in a forest as a carbon sink to offset the corporation’s emissions. This all sounds great but according to a study made by Die Zeit, Source Material, and the Guardian, the world’s leading carbon standard offsets market, Verra, admits that up to 90% of rain forest projects are chimeric and don’t save any emissions. Despite their lack of effectiveness, these offsets are very useful for the image of corporations -for example, Google has claimed its carbon neutrality since 2007, just by relying on this green label that has nothing to do with reality.
The carbon sink strategy is used not just by corporations but by climate experts who base their models on hypothetical carbon sinks that are useful for green-washing but not in reality. Most of the carbon sinks they rely on are losing their carbon-absorbing capacities, thanks to the extractive practices and extensive pollution related to the same industrial apparatus that has caused the climate problem. The big forests have been logged and extracted, the soil has been overworked with industrial agricultural methods and the ocean has become too acidic -who could expect these damaged areas to still act as carbon sinks? Only over-optimistic climate experts!
The deep problem with the prevalent obsession with emissions is that their concern remains mainly in the human sociological realm, without ever touching reality -the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These gas concentrations continue increasing, unbalancing the Earth and enhancing the radiative forcing that hovers around the planet like an immense and unmovable dark cloud that affects everything.
The following graph shows the cognitive dissonance between the idealized efficacy of climate agreements and strategies for emissions reduction and the real world of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. This cognitive dissonance is expressed by the make-believe world of climate conferences and hypothetical climate models contrasted with the real world of ruined crops, destroyed towns and ways of life, and the increasing number of climate refugees and deaths caused by extreme wet-bulb or freezing temperatures, hunger, and thirst.
Despite all the emission-reduction efforts, it is evident that CO2 continues its upward path. The problem is that CO2 is a very potent contender because it happens to be a very stable molecule! Scientists have calculated that once it is added to the atmosphere, it hangs around for a long time, between 300 to 1,000 years. This means that there is a very high probability that the mass of CO2 in the graph and its corresponding radiative forcing will accompany Earth for many generations to come. Methane’s radiative forcing will do the same since its short life is compensated by the fact that after a few years, it degrades into CO2.
This means that even if all the climate accords and carbon reduction schemes worked, the radiative forcing related to the mass of CO2 that is already there will continue unbalancing the Earth. This reality is confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization:
“The accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is irreversible on human timescales and will affect climate for millennia.”
This means that the present proposed solutions like stopping fossil fuels or economic degrowth would reduce some man made emissions, but as we saw before, their effect on the reality of the planet –the unbalancing of the Earth –will be quite minuscule.
The idea of stopping fossil fuels leads me to the second reason for my ‘doomer’ or ‘realist’ views -the energy problem. Everyone knows by now that fossil fuels are the culprits of our climate problem and this has led to a race to replace them with supposedly less polluting alternatives: renewable energy.
Our real efforts at renewables started in 1990, so the above graph shows their development from then until 2021. Despite all the optimistic reports in the media about incredible advancements in renewable energy, the amount of energy given by wind and solar -most people’s hope- is minuscule compared to fossil fuels.
Renewables’ very slow real growth for about 23 years shows how difficult it would be to replace the 80% of fossil fuels that we currently use, in a near future. Renewables’ infrastructure requires a huge increase in the mining of copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium, rare Earth minerals, etc, etc which would necessarily need the use of fossil fuels. This means that the assurances of renewable energy as the answer remains in the human realm without touching the reality of energy.
If an intelligent alien came to Earth and would familiarize itself with the state of the planet, it would see the problem immediately and most likely join ranks with the climate doomers. It is enough to see the radiative forcing (excessive heat) caused by just one gas, CO2 on the planet, to know that the planet’s problems can’t be fixed in a human timescale.
The aliens might offer a trip back to their planet to the person who can design a method to greatly reduce the Earth’s energy unbalance in the shortest time, without adding emissions that would negate the efforts.
This would entail a significant and rapid reduction in greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere so that the planet would reflect the same energy as it keeps. The alien would know there is no winner because it is impossible –the supposed winning method would require a fantastic colossal machine that would quickly suck the greenhouse gases while using non-emissions fuels.
Such a solution -the same one we need -obviously belongs to the world of illusions since it would require an impossible transgression of the energy laws of the Universe. All the meetings, pledges, climate, and economic models are conceptual aids that help us believe that we can do something. In reality, the only real constraint, the one that affects us all, is the energy unbalance that disturbs our climate.
The planet has had energy exchange unbalances many times during its history but this is the first time that such a big population is facing it. Some people might think that reversing the Earth’s energy unbalance can be done with more technology but let’s just remember that we are dealing here with a problem of planetary dimensions. The energy unbalance and its effects are a very complicated network of systems that affect and are affected by a myriad of feedback mechanisms –all leading to more disequilibrium and unpredictability. All I know is that this situation is not good for humans and this is why I am a ‘doomer’.
