An interview with Guy McPherson
I was fortunate enough to speak with Professor Guy McPherson (GM) who is the “world’s leading authority on Abrupt Climate Change leading to Near-term Human extinction”. Guy believes the Environment will change so rapidly over the coming decade that the Earth will become Mars-like. Guy speculates that it will be highly unlikely the human species will survive past 2030.
This is my first proper post to the Steemit Community, so I hope you like it and I really would appreciate any ‘upvotes’ and comments to help me get off the ground here – there’s plenty more to follow! Enjoy!
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[0:00] Music.
[0:27 – 1:41 Host & GM introduction]
[1:41 GM] I'm a conservation biologist so I study speciation and extinction and habitat, most notably habitat because habitat is what is required for every organism to persist. I was working on a book with a colleague, the book was about precipitation and global climate change, and to that point we were writing in 2002, editing it actually, putting together a bunch of edited chapters that we invited from numerous experts, and in putting together this broad array of information about precipitation, climate change, ecosystem response, individual species response, it became clear to me that we don't have long. At that time, 2002, I concluded that we were headed for human extinction by 2030, as a result of abrupt climate change, and the subsequent loss of habitat for humans. Since then it has become clear that conclusion was conservative, based on the evidence that has accumulated in the last 15 years so. It was a gradual process through this ever-increasing body of evidence that seems to accumulate at a faster speed every single day. [More here]
[3:12 Host] You do have a few critics out there and some of them have labelled you as an Anarchist, I even heard the FBI have monitored some of your University lectures, I don't know if that's true or not?! Is that a label you identify with?
[3:29 GM] Yes! Most people don’t know what anarchism is, anarchists take responsibility for themselves and for their other community members. Anarchism is consistent with tribalism and it's how we lived for the first 2.8 million years of our genus homo on the planet. It's how we lived for the first approximately 200,000 years of Homo sapiens, our favourite species on the planet! It's only been since civilizations arose, a few civilizations a few thousand years ago that required that we start living quite differently and concluded that there is only one way to live. So I am an anarchist, and I’m an anarchist because I know what it means, it doesn’t mean Molotov cocktails every day for breakfast!
[4:30 GM] And yes, I have been surveilled according to documents I have received. I've been surveilled by The Deep State we’ll call it since at least 1996, I had an NSA contractor in my classroom in 2005, I only discovered this interestingly in June of 2015. So many years after this was going on I finally woke up and realised that it was going on.
[5:05 Host] So this conversation is probably being recorded elsewhere as well, not just for our purposes I guess! I'm probably on government watch list right now!
[5:17 GM] I have no doubt! What most people fail to understand is that Apple and Microsoft both capitulated to the United States Government, to the CIA, many years ago. Certainly by the year 2000 every keystroke that we ever type into any Microsoft product goes straight to the CIA, straight into the deep state, so even if you if you backspace, too late they already got it, so you changed your mind about saying something that doesn't matter, they know that you changed your mind. Most people prefer to remain ignorant and so they turn away from this sort of information and assail people with the label conspiracy theorist if they actually point out the evidence, as I'm doing.
[6:04 Host] I think is it 5-Eyes? The government surveillance that was a conspiracy that was the US and the UK and three other countries, and apparently that was something that didn’t happen until it was confirmed that it was and now it's too late.
[6:28 GM] Right! Now it's a classic example of no that can't be happening, no that can't be, you must be a conspiracy theorist, you're crazy, and then it becomes common knowledge and everybody goes, well of course that's been happening all the time we don't need you to tell us that!
[6:45 Host] I mentioned in the opening that your conclusion is of abrupt climate change and it's quite different from the standard climate change model that's being propagated at the moment, so what do you exactly mean when you say “abrupt climate change”?
[7:11 GM] Well, abrupt climate change means an exponential increase in global average temperature of the planet. Consider for example, according to a paper in the Proceedings National Academy of Sciences, questioned by some work and then responded to by the original author, so that [inaudible] of the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Paper, this is in about 2013, and they concluded, based on sediment records global average rise in temperature of 5 degree Celsius in a span of 13 years, so there is this paleo climatological evidence indicating that climate sensitivity is actually quite high with respect to the Planet. We have additional evidence that has been accumulated on climate sensitivity and it all points towards the climate of being far more sensitive than people who study climate science believed, as little as 10 or 15 years ago.
[8;15 GM] Consider for example, one minor example, 9/11, three days later US planes were grounded. So on September 14th 2001 a researcher went out to determine if there has been a change in the global temperature signature of the planet, only three days after US planes were grounded; coal fired power plants were still going, other aspects of civilization were still going strong, planes were flying in other countries and yet there is a significant, easily detected change in Global average signature, three days! [Source]
[8:48 GM] Three days after a few plans stop flying around the planet, a tremendously rapid change, indicative of a very high sensitivity of the climate.
[09:03 Host] And that's just over US Airspace as well I take it, a significant impact is quite shocking really.
[GM] That's right and you know it was US planes and a few others obviously that stopped flying, but the impact was felt globally in a very short period of time.
[09:25 Host] This actually brings me on to my next point which is that I've heard you describe civilization as being a “heat engine” what do you exactly mean by that?
[09:38 GM] This is based on Tim Garrett's work, Tim Garrett is an atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah, he wrote that first paper in 2007, submitted it to 10 different journals, got rejected by them all! Finally the paper was accepted by a very courageous man named Steven Schneider who is the editor for the prestigious Journal Climatic Change, the work was really good, as soon it was published online in November 2009 it was attacked by several other groups of scientists because it pointed out that civilization itself is a heat engine! Really regardless of how we run it, based on thermodynamics, based on the laws of thermodynamics, no matter how we prop up this thing, this set of living arrangements, whether it’s with solar panels or wind turbines or whatever, it’s still a heat engine, and so it came under attack. Interestingly the paper was pulled by Climatic Change until two research groups could respond to it then it formally published in February 2011 but only with the responses of two research group and Garrett was not allowed to comment on those responses, neither of which seriously question the notion of civilization is a heat engine and so that, that idea remains intact with evidence Garrett has published at least two papers after that original paper so I think the evidence is clear at this point, based on thermodynamics this civilization itself is a heat engine. [Journal Article here; others available here (under ‘Publications’)].
[11:17 Host] It seems quite unreal, I understand the need for peer review but to not release something until you already have two counter arguments is a bit, suspicious, shall I say!
[11:33 GM] Yes I couldn't agree more, I think it showed remarkable bravery on the part of Steven Schneider to even publish the paper, much less with the responses, and I think he did that because he knew he was dying, and he died not long after the paper was published.
[11:51 Host] To surmise, it's literally everything we do will create heat and warm the earth.
[Post interview note: this isn’t entirely correct, see Prof. Garretts website or following interview on the Environmental Professionals Postulating Podcast for clarification.]
[GM] That’s right, every time we put a plough in the ground we kick up carbon dioxide and a little bit of methane, every time we grow an animal for our own consumption that contributes more methane. It was anthropogenic, or human in origin for the first many many years maybe 250 years and then at some point 20 years ago maybe more, “natural processes” kicked in, and the whole thing with respect to climate change was taken out of human hands.
It doesn't really matter what we do at this point, I think we're locked in to, at least a 8.5 degrees Celsius rise in temperature over the course of the next nine and a half years or so, no matter what we do! So whether we turn off the heat engine known as civilization or whether we keep it going, we’ve triggered all these self-reinforcing feedback loops, which are called positive feedbacks, although they really aren’t that positive from the perspective of our favourite species!
[12:58 Host] I have to say one of the feedback loops that interests me, and I think it’s been a little bit ignored until kind of lately, which is methane, I was surprised to find out recently that according to Leonardo DiCaprio in his latest film called Cowspiracy which if you look past the name its actually not bad, he stated that methane contributes up to 51% of the effect of climate change caused by greenhouse gases, [source] because as you know it's far more potent than CO2, do you have any thoughts on that?
[13:38 GM] I think we already crossed numerous tipping points and foremost among those is CH4, we know it as natural gas, we use it to heat our homes and heat our water. Methane has been bubbling out of the relatively shallow Arctic ocean off the shallow sea floor for years now and clearly has gone exponential in the atmosphere, [Fact check here] so we're looking now at nearly 2,000 parts per billion Methane in the atmosphere, as opposed to before 1750, at the 1750 industrial civilization baseline it was about 750 parts per billion, so it’s now 200% or more higher than it was at the beginning of the Industrial revolution, and it keeps bubbling out! [Current CH4 levels]
[14:30 GM] The NASA Carve project identified methane plumes using direct observations, using satellites looking right down to the Arctic Ocean. Methane plumes more than a hundred kilometres across. I think it was 2013 or 2014, bubbling out of the Arctic Ocean! That’s a tremendous amount of methane release and it keeps coming out of there, and Antarctica, and all around the ring of fire off the Northeast Coast of the United States, off of all of those industrial agriculture projects, especially the controlled animal feeding facilities and on and on the list goes. There is little question that methane has begun playing a huge role environmentally, in terms of its greenhouse gases activity.
[15:28 Host] On the same note, the melting of the Arctic Ice is I think releasing more methane that was stored, I think in Russia, the permafrost, I saw on the news not too many months ago, some guys having a great laugh, in Siberia I think it was, poking holes in the ground and watching the exploding methane coming out of it.
[15:52] Right, and there's two primary sources that you're mentioning right there, there's the methane that comes out of the relatively shallow seabed most notably in the Arctic Ocean, coming out faster and faster, and there's also terrestrial permafrost, we got to come up with a different name for that because it's not permafrost obviously, it’s “permamelt” at this point! As the permafrost degrades it breaks into methane and carbon dioxide and water vapour, all of which are major greenhouse gases! So we have methane coming out all over the place, and then you touched another important point.
As the Arctic Ice goes away the Albedo effect or the reflectance from that ice is reduced, you can't replace white with blue, deep blue, and not have significant impacts on the energy budget of the planet. Peter Wadhams has been studying that for many many years, cost him his position at Cambridge.
[Post interview note: appears to be incorrect, Prof. Wadhams still holds a Professorship at the University of Cambridge.]
[16:53 Host] You mentioned water vapour there as well which I remember from my University days is something that you get told, “don't worry, it is the most potent greenhouse gas, but there's nothing you can do about it and it doesn't affect anything so just go ahead and ignore that”, is that still the case?
[17:11 GM] Its true there’s very little if anything we can do about water vapour, water vapour is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere comprising more than 90% by volume of all greenhouse gases. It’s primarily found in the troposphere, most notably the upper troposphere where it serves as a very fast feedback, a very rapid self-reinforcing feedback loop. Such that the hotter the planet gets the more water evaporates so we get more water vapour. Most of it is stored in the upper troposphere where it serves as a lens and further traps heat held close to the planet, so the more water evaporates the more water vapour gets stuck in the upper troposphere, therefore the faster the Heating continues so the equilibrium is reached within a matter of days in fact between global average temperature, and moistening the upper troposphere.
There's relatively little we can do about it especially now. There's no known way to slow down the heating that is underway and also no known way to extract the water vapour from the upper troposphere. So it appears to me that we’re stuck with it up there and therefore with the heating that has already occurred and that is certain to occur within the next few years.
[18:48 Host] We can't directly influence it but it’s our indirect things such as putting more Carbon and methane in the atmosphere that’s warming the Earth, that indirectly is bringing more moisture into the atmosphere which is again, heating the atmosphere and making things worse, acting as a lens, and it’s all cumulative on each other I suppose?
[19:05 GM] That’s right, and that’s an important point, for every one degree rise in global average temperature we can attribute to burning fossil fuels, we get a subsequent one degree rise, from moistening the upper troposphere, so it's one to one. So every ounce, every pound, every gigatonne of fossil fuels that we burn contributes a basically identical temperature rise for the planet in the upper troposphere. so it's really one for one. So the approximately 1.6 degrees Celsius we are above the 1750 Baseline now, half of that is contributed by burning fossil fuels, the other half about 0.8 degrees, is contributed by moistening the upper troposphere. [More here]
[19:44 host] That’s quite surprising to find that out after being told you know, ‘don’t worry about it, there's nothing you can do’, to find out that the affect is doubling, it’s quite scary really!
[20:04 GM] Well yeah Steven, but you have to admit there's a lot of things we’re told we shouldn't worry about when we were in school that turns out they are really big problems!
[Host] That’s true, don’t worry about taxes!
[20:18 Host] You mention there in your answer that we’re 1 degree, or 2 degrees away from the 1750 baseline, is that an average?
[20:33 GM] Conservatively the global average temperature is 1.6 degrees Celsius above the 1750 baseline. Some says it’s a little higher than that but I tend to take the most conservative approach every place I can so we’re about 1.6 degrees Celsius it might be a little bit higher than that, it might be as high as 1.9. In any event it’s well beyond the scientific target established by the United Nations Advisory Group on greenhouse gases in October 1990, when they pointed out that 1 degree Celsius above the 1750 Baseline was the absolute upper limit we could not cross without triggering a bunch of self-reinforcing feedbacks, so you know we're there, we’ve triggered at least 5 dozen of them that I know about, and it looks like there's no stopping us at this point.
[21:28 Host] How high can it go, for habitat to be able to sustain human life?
[GM] We haven’t had humans on the planet above 15 and a half degrees Celsius global average temperature, approximately 2 degrees Celsius above the 1750 Baseline. That’s according to James Hansen in a legal brief filed in summer of 2015. This is the grandfather of climate science indicating that we might not have habitat for humans at 2 C and above. So to think that two degrees is some sort of scientific target is ridiculous and yet it keeps being pushed out there by folks like Michael Mann, and more recently the latest incarnation of the United Nations that originally said 1 C, and is turning to 2 C everywhere we look, because it keeps getting worse. I don't know, we don't know at what global average temperature habitat will run out and every human will die, but we do have some good evidence that about two degrees C above baseline, meaning about 15 and a half degrees Celsius global average temperature, we've never had humans before. We know that the Great Dying something like 252 million years ago was characterized by loss of essentially all complex life on the planet.
[22:58 GM] More than 90% of the species on the planet went extinct somewhere between 880 and about 19,000 years. That's how long it took to go from Ice Age, from 12 degrees C, to 23 degrees C, the highest temperature the planet has experienced in the last two billion years, and we're headed at near, or at that temperature within the next 10 years. So, it is difficult for me to imagine we'll have a human on the planet, sometime before that 10 year period.
[23:30 Host] All the words you’re using are scary, about not having a human here in 10 years’ time…
[GM] I want to point out that I'm not promoting this idea as I'm often accused of doing. I'm connecting a few dots based on a long journey along the path of conservation biology. It’s not like I want this to happen, I'm not going around with my sign boards saying we all need to die, what my sign board is saying is that the end is being completely ignored and I think that's what's happening.
[24:18 Host] There seems to me to be a constant stream of news coming out now, I've got just three here that I picked up, it took me about 5 Seconds to find them. The first one here is from the 25th of February 2017 from Artic News. The Headline is in 2016 CO2 levels in the atmosphere grew by 3.36 parts per million, a new record since 1959 and much higher than the previous record set just the year before in 2015.
[24:52 GM] I’d like to point out that that 3.36 blew away previous levels, it says since 1959 but that's only because we've been keeping those kinds of records since 1959. That's despite the fact that anthropogenic emissions for industrial civilization have actually flat-lined or declined. So further evidence that the situation has spun beyond human control. It's out of our hands at this point.
[25:26 Host] The next one I have is from The Washington Post two days later; 27th of February 2017 - Scientists just measured a rapid growth in acidity in the Arctic Ocean, Links to climate change. Have any comment on that one?
[25:36 GM] Absolutely, an acidified soup for an ocean is no way for us to proceed. We get half our air, half our oxygen, half our food from the ocean, an acidified toxic soup of an ocean, never mind Fukushima, is no prescription for our continued persistence on the planet.
[26:00 Host] I think of their importance being recently highlighted, the destroying of the coral for example in the South China Sea due to certain activities by a certain Government, dredging up and building things that should or should not be there, so it is good to know but like you say maybe it's too late now?
[26:25 GM] Well yeah, and you have to remember were we came from. You know we didn't just show up here on terrestrial planet earth. We have our roots in the ocean. Without an ocean, without a living, vibrant, productive ocean, never mind humans, there’s not going to be any animal life without a vibrant ocean too, not for long.
[26:49 Host] The next article, the 3rd and final one, is also from the 27th of February and this one's the BBC, highlighting the Chili floods - Millions without water in the capital.
Another extreme weather event, how many more of these are we going to see before people start accepting what we've done to the planet you know?
[27:10 GM] I think the last human being on the planet will probably still deny that any of this was our fault.
[Host] It's possible, they could be tweeting it.
[27:22 GM] You have to Tweet for nobody to hear it. In fact I suspect we have [inaudible]
[Host] Maybe it’ll be President Trump, but maybe someone else by then, fingers crossed at least anyway. You did touch on it there that humans have survived ice ages before, people including myself like to think we're quite and resilient and intelligent and adaptable, is it possible that there will be a few pockets of people around the planet that figure out how to survive, in a superheated Earth?
[28:08 GM] It’s possible, it would surprise me very much because we as a species, we as individuals depend upon so many other species for our persistence but, I’m a huge fan, I wonder though, then what?
The previous mass extinction events on the planet took millions of years before the planet came back, before the living planet came back and was replete with complex life again. We're on track for something similar to The Great Dying from 250 million years ago but proceeding much more rapidly than occurred that time. So what if we come out the other side and there’s a few bands of people here and there that persist beyond the next 10 years, and it would very very much surprise me if they did, although I’d like to think they did.
[28:56 GM] But then what? We’re on Mars basically, we’re not going Venus we're going Mars. This based on a forthcoming report from the Jason group in the Pentagon, these actually are the smartest guys in the room. Their report which is not out yet but I've seen snippets of it, indicated that within approximately 37 years from now by my estimates that makes about 2054, we don't have an atmosphere at all, it’s all stripped away, we have left a planet depleted of essentially all life. There might be a few microbes, a few methane eating bacteria, a few methane eating fungi still around in 2054.
[29:42 GM] But for how long? We’re talking about millions of years for the recovery period in paleo historical events, to imagine that complex organisms such as humans which depend on so many other organisms for our own lives, to think that we’re the ones who are going to make it? I think that’s very arrogant hubris.
[30:04 Host] So if it's human civilization that's doing this to the planet, if there was a big button that would end all human civilization, would that be enough to avoid this catastrophe or is it too late?
[30:18] interestingly enough I think it’s too late on two fronts. First of all there’s something called Global Dimming, there was a BBC Documentary about it, must be about a dozen years ago now, that you can find online. It’s also called the aerosol Mass Gain affect, as it turns out we're doing two things at once with industrial civilization. We're putting up greenhouse gases that trap heat close to the planet, close to the surface and at the same time we're putting up particulates, most notably sulphates, that go up a little higher into the atmosphere and reflect incoming solar radiation. We're actually putting up an umbrella that cools us at the same time we're putting on blankets that warm us. If we get rid of industrial civilization then within a very short period of time thereafter, as indicated by [inaudible] much much research now on climate sensitivity we're headed for at least a three degrees Celsius Global average temperature rise, in a very short period of time, that takes us to 4.5-5 degrees C above baseline, in a matter of a week or in a very short period of time, and already [inaudible].
[31:44 GM] I think it’s too late and the faster we go, in terms of shutting down civilization, the more rapidly we run out of habitat for our own species. We’re truly in this damned if you do and damned if you don't situation, unfortunately.
[32:02 Host] You don't think it would be possible then I take, it to use technology as the cure, some sort of geoengineering, we couldn’t for example Scorch the skies like in The Matrix film and block out all the sun, perhaps launch some kind of massive solar shade in orbit to stop the solar radiation coming. It's happening and it's too late is it?
[GM] It's happening, we’ve triggered these self-reinforcing feedback loops that make it too late. Could we come up with some sort of fantasy technology, some sort of Snowpiercer, - have you seen that movie? - Snowpiercer geoengineering project that will save the day at the last second? Well maybe, would it save the day for the other species on the planet? Because that's what's important. We depend upon this complex Web of Life. It's not all about us, much as we like to think it is, I’m open to any miracle, trust me, as a scientist I don’t think we’ve experienced a miracle on this planet so far.
[33:05 GM] But I'm open to one, or maybe the two hundred it’ll take to allow for continued persistence, if that happens or not, my message remains the same. My message is; to remain calm, nothing is under control.
[33:18 GM] My message of the pursuit of excellence in a culture of mediocrity is still a worthy pursuit because it enables one to look at themselves in the mirror at the end of the day. And third, perhaps most importantly, the pursuit of love. In a culture where we don't even talk about emotions like that, it’s a worthy pursuit, and that's manifested in several levels from loving what you're doing, to loving the ones you're with. Living as if love actually matters. Even if we have a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years based on technology that hasn't been developed and nobody knows exists, I still think that those are worthy pursuits. Maybe I'm crazy, it wouldn't surprise me.
[34:04 Host] You know all we can do is all we can do. Like you say we’re kind of out of control, we face little decisions in the grand scheme of things every day, if we make the right little decisions for us personally that’s the main thing. I've heard you say before that, that's a good judge of character of someone. Trying to do the best with what you can, living in the now, that's more important than and just saying ‘this is a hopeless let's do whatever we want’!
[34:43 GM] I'm often accused of promoting inaction which to my knowledge I've never actually done. I don't see much point in pursuing that notion, that said, I am hope free just like I'm fear free, in that I'm not attached to the outcome. I think it's dire, I think it’s horrible what we've done and what we continue to do. I like to think that we can turn it around and I think even if we do we're still going to die as individuals and as a species.
[35:23 Host] The only fact of life is death, or perhaps two, death and taxes!
[GM] At some point the taxes will go away and not long after that so will all the people!
[35:33 Host] That’s the bright side. We’ve covered an awful lot there Guy, is there anything you want to go back and expand upon, or mention in addition?
[35:50 GM] I’ve had many conversations similar to this one over the course of the last five years or so.
[Host] I think I've listened to about 90% of them!
[GM] Thank you for doing your homework! So it’s hard to keep track of what I said or didn't say I think it was Edward Abbey who wrote “what am I trying to say… same as before, everything, nothing more than that”.
[36:24 Host] So if [readers] would like to follow your research and I think you have a tour coming up later in the year as well, how can they find you?
[GM] Everything’s at GuyMcPherson.com - one of the tabs there is called coming events and it includes speaking tours in the San Francisco Bay area of California in late April early May, then transitioning to Missouri on that speaking tour, then to Western Europe to a few places and ultimately in November, Eastern Canada and the Northeast United States. A few speaking tours coming up, you can find my books at one of the other tabs there,
called my writings or something like that, I have a little over a dozen books out. The most
recent that is relevant in the arena of nonfiction is called Extinction Dialogues, co-authored with Carolyn Baker. The latest version of it came out I think in 2015, all this stuff is updated pretty frequently at my blog GuyMcPherson.com.
[37:35 Host / GM] Closing remarks and thanks
[39:44] Music.
Tags
#guymcpherson #environment #climatechange #globalwarming #extinction
2017, Steven Spencer
Environmental Professionals Postulating
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