On Climate Change and Line Calls

King Arnulf:  Everyone stay calm! This is not happening!

Quick excerpt from Erik the Viking

Erik the Viking, 1989

“Living is easy with eyes closed…” – John Lennon

There is a funny thing about being human: Our perspective is inextricably linked to our perception.  And, since there are six billion people walking the planet, the net effect is that there are potentially six billion different perspectives, or views of reality. This could easily be construed as evidence of our maker’s grand sense of humor.  But the real proof that the earth and its human guests are but actors in God’s own comedy reality series is the fact that humans, in almost all cases, have an inherent hubris: they believe their own opinion is the objective reality.  Me excluded, of course; I am quite humble – I don’t suspect that my opinions are fact…. I KNOW them to be.

So, knowing everything that I know, and more importantly, being keenly aware of all that I don’t know, has made for an interesting journey.  For the longest time as a tennis player, it seemed to me that the game had a disproportionate amount of downright cheaters.  The reason is this: In tennis, unless you are playing on the professional tour, players judge the shot of their opponent.  The rules are such that you must be certain that a ball is not in bounds, in order to judge it as being out of bounds.

In tennis, several times in each match, tennis balls land in a “gray area,” where you are anywhere from 1 to 99 percent sure a ball is out, yet not 100% positive.  In this case, the rules state you must call the ball in.  However, the overwhelming majority of players, when even 51 percent sure that the ball is not in, will indeed call it out, thereby breaking the rules.  Could it be true that the overwhelming population of tennis players doesn’t know the rules?  Unlikely.  Hence my conclusion that the game of tennis both selects for and allows for cheaters and cheating.  It is indeed puzzling to me that 80 percent of the folks I see off a tennis court are loathe to cheat, yet 80 percent of those on a tennis court routinely cheat.  You do the math.

A similar phenomena seems to exist around the subject of climate change.  The preponderance of data suggest that the earth is in a warming cycle, and fortunately, few disagree with this, as even the most fervent climate change deniers admit that the earth has warmed from the last ice age, circa 10,000 years ago.  But there is also more than ample evidence that the actions and habits of humans are (if not the outright cause), certainly exacerbating the warming of our planet.  If this is true, it is bad news, as we humans – entrenched in our ways – are quite reluctant to change.  So, it is much more convenient to hold out for the belief that the warming is just another of mother nature’s cyclical fluctuations.

At last check in America, the majority of its citizenry remain comfortable in the abyss of climate change ignorance, by assuming that ‘the science is not settled.’  So it follows that changing the nature of commerce, for example, would be a drastic solution to a perceived conspiracy borne of a marriage of a eco-hippies and a left leaning media.  But the reality, according to the overwhelming majority of those in the know about climatology – subject matter experts – is that there is irrefutable evidence that: human beings are heating up the planet quickly, and there is a correlation between that heat and the economic growth spawned by the industrial age.

While the scientific method is our closest proxy to an objective reality, like just about everything, it evolves.  And by implication, it is a moving target.  So, conclusions are made based on evidence at hand, and then updated or changed as more evidence comes to light.  What it is not is static dogma, like, for example, the word of God as expressed in various religious texts, such as the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, the Upanishads, etc.  So, on one hand, you have 9 out of 10 climate scientists saying humans are bringing the warming of the planet to potentially dangerous levels, and on the other hand you have theologians corroborating the implausibility that God would allow for this form of apocalypse (because it has not been foretold in say, ‘Revelations’), while relying on the 1 scientist in 10 who finds a flaw in the climate change studies as evidence.  The result is some miniscule ambiguity surrounding climate change.

Once again, from my vantage point, to deny the writing on the wall regarding climate change is nothing short of stupid.  And, the fact that a majority in this country take that very position is confusing to me.  Because, when I look around, I don’t see many stupid people. Yet, if the majority of Americans fall into this category, more than half of those I see should be, well, stupid.  So once again, my supposition that tennis players are cheaters and climate change deniers are stupid seems to differ from my anecdotal observations, as the expected numbers of the sleazy and the dumb don’t correlate to the general population of those I observe.

There must be another explanation as to why tennis players call ‘in’ balls ‘out’, and why the majority of people don’t see humanity-created climate change.  Here is where the benefit of being right all the time comes in handy:  The occasional epiphany.  In reality, and in most cases, the tennis players aren’t cheating, and the climate change deniers are not stupid.  (Sure, there are a few outliers that are cheaters in tennis and dumber-than-dirt climate change deniers, but very small numbers relative to the general population.)

The phenomena at play here is another cold stark reality about humans:  In the face of even a little ambiguity, people see what they want (or need) to see.  And I mean this quite literally.  In the case of the tennis player, a close ball will look absolutely out when it is absolutely vital for it to be out.  The eyes will play tricks, the brain will deny reason, warp perspective, bend reality, and many other tricks, to perceive the world in the ways that provide the most comfort and conform to a person’s desire.

In a recent interview, Bob Lutz, a climate change denier who made his living in the auto industry and was recently Vice Chairman at General Motors, proffered his support of his belief that climate change was a hoax propagated by the likes of Al Gore and others who had financial interest in green industries.  The evidence that supported the weight of his denial was the fact that over the last decade, record amounts of CO2 were emitted globally, yet warming over the same decade, (while the hottest decade on record) stayed somewhat level over that time despite the huge growth in CO2 levels.  So in his mind, warming has been decoupled from CO2 levels.  In the face of ambiguity, he must interpret that humans DRIVING CARS (his industry) couldn’t be the cause of the destruction of the planet. Otherwise, he would be an unwitting accomplice to the end of the world as we know it – a position untenable for any person to take during years that are supposed to be ‘golden.’  Further, as a Berkeley alumna career executive with post graduate degrees, it is unlikely that this guy is stupid.

Applying even a little of his logic would reveal that, if the earth had natural cycles, the last decade could have combined a natural cooling cycle with the warming that the elevated CO2 caused, to create a decade where the temperature did not rise proportionally to CO2 levels.  But such logic and reason would be dismissed by Mr. Lutz, and my compassionate side would not want to convince him otherwise, because he seems like a nice guy.  And, if he did believe he was culpable for some of the warming, by not driving the industry toward less polluting automobiles, he might live out the remainder of his years in a funk of depression.

However, being aware of this very human trait is the first step toward transcending it.  And if we all could be more aware of our personal biases (me excluded as I see things objectively), we might be more inclined to make adjustments to what we see in the spirit of seeing what is real.

It has been a relief to have this elevated level of understanding regarding my tennis comrades.  Most are not cheaters after all.  They are just humans, seeing what they want to see in the face of ambiguity.  And there is further comfort in the postulate that the majority of Americans are not actually dim, just firmly convicted to a perspective that serves up comfort.

However, we must reach consensus soon regarding the climate.  If we could all agree that we are creating a problem, it might expedite a solution.  And it will happen.  It is not going to take too many more extreme weather events before most everyone will be touched by a hurricane, the lack of winter, record setting heat waves, droughts and deluges.   Soon, the evidence will be irrefutable to all but the outliers. There will be but one reality to perceive.

When Buddha observed that attachment to desires causes suffering, perhaps he knew that desires can warp and mutate perspective.  Anyone who has gone through the honeymoon phase of a relationship can vouch for the reality altering effect of those damn ‘rose colored glasses’.  And while honeymoons are nice, so is knowing what you will be tethered to … for the rest of your life.  And while it would be more comfortable and less scary to see a snake and think it a garden hose, that perspective will not hold out when you step on it and it bites you.

Tim Handley