HISTORICALCLIMATOLOGY.COM
  • Home
    • Archived Best of the Web
  • Features
    • Archived Features
  • Interviews
    • Climate History Podcast
  • Projects
  • Resources
    • Tools
    • Databases >
      • CLIWOC
    • Bibliography
    • Videos
    • Links
    • Tipping Points
  • Network
    • On Facebook
  • About
    • Our Team
    • Definitions

Understanding a warmer world.

11/5/2011

 
As reported widely in various media outlets, the U.S. Department of Energy recently calculated that, in 2010, global emissions of carbon dioxide rose by the largest amount on record, and are now higher than the worst-case projections envisioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change four years ago. Meanwhile, the prospects for technical solutions seem more dubious than ever, even those as seemingly straightforward as whitening our cities. The need for immediate action to lower global greenhouse emissions and limit future warming to 2 degrees Celsius is more urgent than ever, but the chances for any kind of comprehensive or effective deal to emerge from this month's climate summit in Durban, South Africa are dismal at best.  

In the West, popular alarm over the prospect of global warming has been diluted by years of skepticism driven by free market fundamentalists, funded by industries that have too much to lose. Worse, the western financial crisis, stimulated by hyper-capitalist practices similar to those that threaten the world's environment, has placed climate change legislation on the political back burner. In America, the world's second-largest producer of carbon, the prospect of a climate change "skeptic" winning the White House in 2012 is a very real possibility. 

Many regimes in developing nations - of which China is the most important - draw a similar link between carbon production and economic growth, reasoning that it is unfair to ask burgeoning economies to abort their own growth by compensating for the excesses of the west. In fact, at Durban the BASIC group - Brazil, South Africa, India and China - will argue that in the first half of the century the developed world should absorb from 239 to 474 billion tons of carbon dioxide as developing countries continue to pollute. In the long run it is likely that any prospects for an effective climate settlement limiting warming to a "reasonable" level will be torn apart in the vortex of changing economic relationships and continuing mistrust between east and west. 

Earth's climate, then, will almost certainly get much warmer. How much warmer is, of course, uncertain. Who can say how environmental changes outside of anthropogenic global warming will interact with unpredictable, perhaps unimaginable political or cultural developments over the coming century? However, the best projections currently available chart a rise in global temperature of at least 4 degrees celsius by 2100, an increase that could fundamentally alter the geography and biology of the planet. In many respects the crisis could hasten its own solution, as modern humanity,  its gigantic population so dependent on western monocultures and capitalist structures, must either change dramatically or face a truly unprecedented demographic disaster.

The looming, seemingly unavoidable catastrophe on our horizon prompts a very simple question: can we look into the past for answers? If what's to come is so unprecedented, is history any use? Unlike scholars in other disciplines, historians are always reticent to say that the past is any guide to the future. How can it be when every variable changes throughout time, obscuring any superficial similarity between historical events and present challenges? Historical climatologists might study the Medieval Warm Period and catalogue its influence in the course of human history, but can studies exploring a 1 degree Celsius rise in global temperature 800 years in the past have any relevance for our understanding of global warming? 

In an era when many historians have chosen to be "active" - to engage the present context for their historical interests - the answer is as clear as the question. History is an imperfect guide to the future, historical research can benefit from abstraction, but historical climatology can still provide us with one of the deepest and most sophisticated visions of the relationship between climate, local environments, and humanity. In a warming world, few pursuits are more worthwhile. 

    ​Archives

    March 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    March 2021
    June 2020
    March 2020
    December 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    September 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    November 2011
    September 2011
    March 2011
    December 2010
    October 2010

    Categories

    All
    Africa
    Animal History
    Anthropocene
    Arctic
    Australia
    China
    Climate And Conflict
    Climate And Memory
    Climate History
    Climate Migration
    Climate Policy
    Climate Risks
    Climatology
    Columbian Exchange
    Conferences
    Dendrochronology
    Energy
    Environmental History
    Field Work
    Geoengineering
    Glaciology
    Global Warming
    Historical Climatology
    History Of Climate And Society (HCS)
    History Of Science
    Interdisciplinary Methodology
    IPCC
    Late Antique Little Ice Age
    Little Ice Age
    Maps
    Medieval
    Methodology
    Nuclear Power
    Paleoclimatology
    Pedagogy
    Politics Of Climate Change
    Resilience And Adaptation
    Teaching Climate
    Volcanoes
    Weather Modification

    RSS Feed

  • Home
    • Archived Best of the Web
  • Features
    • Archived Features
  • Interviews
    • Climate History Podcast
  • Projects
  • Resources
    • Tools
    • Databases >
      • CLIWOC
    • Bibliography
    • Videos
    • Links
    • Tipping Points
  • Network
    • On Facebook
  • About
    • Our Team
    • Definitions