Bright sunshine and a cool breeze this afternoon — the day keeps on going.
Oddly paradoxical, a couple of new environmental-related studies reported today reveal the weirdness and tragedy of climate change.
One is on natural effects, and the other on human affects.
An aspect of global warming — the greenhouse effect — is that a “blanket-effect” formed by CO2 traps heat and thus warms the planet. This blanket makes matters worse, and although it ‘…may cause a brief pause, global warming is expected to speed up…‘ as more and more emissions are released.
Dangerous, but really nothing outlandishly new.
In the other study, we’re truly fucked.
Apparently to our great misfortune, we’re not wired for it: ‘Part of the reason, according to these studies, is that – for the human brain – climate change simply does not compute.’
(Illustration found here).
Mankind is caught between a rock and a hard place.
We’re causing the damage, and really don’t have the ability to understand. Even in the double face of science and real-world events interfacing on a growing scale, there’s slowness to grasp the horror, much less do something about it.
From a must-read piece on this actual problem at the Guardian — some highlights:
For one thing, human brains aren’t wired to respond easily to large, slow-moving threats.
“Our brain is essentially a get-out-of-the-way machine,” Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard best known for his research into happiness, told audiences at Harvard Thinks Big 2010.
“That’s why we can duck a baseball in milliseconds.”
While we have come to dominate the planet because of such traits, he said, threats that develop over decades rather than seconds circumvent the brain’s alarm system.
“Many environmentalists say climate change is happening too fast.
“No, it’s happening too slowly. It’s not happening nearly quickly enough to get our attention.”
…
“In a way, it’s unfair to expect people, homo sapiens, to do this kind of monitoring, to do this kind of decision making, because we’re not wired for that,” said Elke Weber, a professor of management and psychology at Columbia University.
Considering how irrational individual minds are, business, which is at least “theoretically rational,” may have more capacity to lead a climate change response.
Once historical notions of the primacy of short-term profitability are swept aside, that is.
And from Tima Bansal, executive director of the Network for Business Sustainability in London, Ontario, Canada, and a professor at the Ivey Business School, the key human ant-verbiage: “Short-termism is the bane of sustainability.”
Just another example of how shitty the situation — our own freakin’ selves!
And add the freakin’ GOP: ‘Conservatives who reject the science of climate change aren’t necessarily reacting to the science, according to a new study from researchers at Duke University. They’re reacting to the fact that they don’t like proposed solutions more strongly identified with liberals.’
They’re programed via a already-designated hot-wire, though.