The Chronicle Review |

June 17, 2013

Against Environmental Panic By Pascal Bruckner In Jesuit schools we were urged to strengthen our faith by spending time in mona steries. We were assigned spiritual exercises to be dutifully written in little notebooks that were supposed to renew the promises made at baptism and to celebr ate the virtues of Christian love and succor for the weak. It wasn't enough just to believe; we had to testify to our adherence to the Holy Scriptures and drive Satan out of our hearts. These practices were sanctioned by daily confessions u nder the guidance of a priest. We all probed our hearts to extirpate the germs o f iniquity and to test, with a delicious thrill, the borderline separating grace from sin. We were immersed in an atmosphere of meditative reverence, and the de sire to be good gave our days a special contour. We knew that God was looking down on us indulgently: We were young, we were allo wed to stumble. In his great ledger, he wrote down each of our actions, weighing them with perfect equanimity. We engaged in refined forms of piety in order to gain favors. Regarded from an adult point of view, these childish efforts, which were close to the ancients' spiritual exercises, were not without a certain nob ility. They wavered between docility and a feeling of lofty grandeur. At least w e learned the art of knowing ourselves, of resisting the turmoil of puberty. What a surprise to witness, half a century later, the powerful return of this fr ame of mind, but this time under the aegis of science. Consider the meaning in c ontemporary jargon of the famous carbon footprint that we all leave behind us. W hat is it, after all, if not the gaseous equivalent of Original Sin, of the stai n that we inflict on our Mother Gaia by the simple fact of being present and bre athing? We can all gauge the volume of our emissions, day after day, with the in junction to curtail them, just as children saying their catechisms are supposed to curtail their sins. Ecologism, the sole truly original force of the past half-century, has challenge d the goals of progress and raised the question of its limits. It has awakened o ur sensitivity to nature, emphasized the effects of climate change, pointed out the exhaustion of fossil fuels. Onto this collective credo has been grafted a wh ole apocalyptic scenography that has already been tried out with communism, and that borrows from Gnosticism as much as from medieval forms of messianism. Catac lysm is part of the basic tool-kit of Green critical analysis, and prophets of d ecay and decomposition abound. They beat the drums of panic and call upon us to expiate our sins before it is too late. This fear of the future, of science, and of technology reflects a time when huma nity, and especially Western humanity, has taken a sudden dislike to itself. We are exasperated by our own proliferation and can no longer stand ourselves. Whet her we want to be or not, we are tangled up with seven billion other members of our species. Rejecting both capitalism and socialism, ecologism has come to powe r almost nowhere. But it has won the battle of ideas. The environment is the new secular religion that is rising, in Europe especially, from the ruins of a disb elieving world. We have to subject it to critical evaluation in turn and unmask the infantile disease that is eroding and discrediting it: catastrophism. There are at least two ecologies: one rational, the other nonsensical; one that broadens our outlook while the other narrows it; one democratic, the other total itarian. The first wants to tell us about the damage done by industrial civiliza tion; the second infers from this the human species' guilt. For the latter, natu re is only a stick to be used to beat human beings. Just as third-worldism was t

he shame of colonial history, and repentance was contrition with regard to the p resent, catastrophism constitutes the anticipated remorse of the future: The mea ning of history having evaporated, every change is a potential collapse that aug urs nothing good. What is the carbon footprint, after all, if not the gaseous equivalent of Origin al Sin, the stain we inflict on Mother Gaia? Catastrophism's favorite mode of expression is accusation: Revolutionaries wante d to erase the past and start over from zero; now the focus is on condemning pas t and present wrongs and bringing them before the tribunal of public opinion. No leniency is possible; our crime has been calculated in terms of devastated fore sts, burned-over lands, and extinct species. The prevailing anxiety is at once a recognition of real problems and a symptom o f the aging of the West, a reflection of its psychic fatigue. Our pathos is that of the end of time. And because no one ever thinks alone, because the spirit of an age is always a collective worker, it is tempting to give oneself up to this gloomy tide. Or, on the contrary, we could wake up from this nightmare and rid ourselves of it. It happened in 1989, and that seems centuries ago. The world was emerging from t he cold war; the Soviet Union, exhausted, was allowing subject peoples to escape its rule and preparing for its transition to a market economy. Euphoria reigned : Western civilization had just won by a knockout. Twice, in the course of the p ast century, it had triumphed over its worst opponents, fascism and communism, t wo illegitimate children to which it had given birth and which it was able to su ffocate. When the Soviets bowed out, enthusiasm vied with fear: An adversary is security against the future, a permanent competitor who forces us to reshape ourselves. T hough we can never be sure of the affection of those closest to us, we can alway s count on the hatred of our enemies. They are the guarantors of our existence; they allow us to know who we are. Who will claim, as communism did, to substitute another system for our values? W ho will challenge us on such a large scale? Fundamentalist Islam? Even if it is gaining ground in many countries, accompanying the growth of a secular mentality like its shadow, it is directed primarily against Muslims themselves, whom it c onsiders lukewarm and complicit with the modern world. There are useful enemies that make you fertile and sterile enemies that wear you out. Islamic terrorism i s a cancer that teaches us nothing except paranoia. Combined with the work of th e secret services and the police, sang-froid and prudence are the best responses to the bombers' barbarity. It is difficult to reconstruct a credible adversary that is dispersed to the fou r corners of the earth and that can have all sorts of faces. We have to go furth er, to the roots of the problem. And the problem is our aggressiveness, our rele ntless attack on nature. We are told by the philosopher Michel Serres, for examp le, that people stupidly fight one another without realizing that the real battl e is not where they think it is. For centuries, we have waged war on the world b y trying to dominate it; now we have to wage war on war, sign an armistice with water, trees, stones, the oceans. As Serres writes: The damage we have inflicted up to now on the world is equivalent to the ravages that a world war would have left behind it. Our peacetime economic relationship s are arriving, continuously and slowly, at the same results that a short global conflict would produce, as if war no longer belonged to soldiers alone. ... We so-called developed nations are not fighting among ourselves anymore, we are all turning against the world. This is a war that is literally a world war, and twi ce over, because everyone, in the sense of human beings, is inflicting losses on

the world, in the sense of things. How can this malaise be transformed into a justified anger? How can its target b e identified? By designating human beings as the danger par excellence. Rousseau already did so, in mile, contrary to all the optimism of the Enlightenment: "Man , seek no longer the cause of the evil; you yourself are the cause. There is no evil other than the evil you do or suffer, and both of them come from you." Numerous authors tell us that humanity as a whole has gone off-course, and that it has to be understood as an illness that must be immediately treated: "Man is a cancer on the earth, ... a throwaway species, like the civilization he invente d," writes Yves Paccalet. And Nicolas Hulot, the French environmentalist, writes : "The enemy does not come from outside, it resides within our system and our co nsciousnesses." For the past half-century we have, in fact, been witnessing a slide from one sca pegoat to another: Marxism designated capitalism as responsible for human misery . Third-worldism, upset by the bourgeoisification of the working classes, substi tuted the West for capitalism as the great criminal in history and the "inventor " of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism. With ecologism, we move up a notch: The guilty party is humanity itself, in its will to dominate the planet. Here there is a return to the fundamentals of Chris tianity: Evil is the pride of the creatures who are in revolt against their Crea tor and who exceed their prerogatives. The three scapegoats can be cumulated: Ec ologism can reject the capitalism invented by a West that preys on peoples and d estroys the earth. It is a system of Russian dolls that fit one inside the other until the final synthesis is reached. That is why so many old Bolsheviks are co nverting to ecologism in order to broaden their palette of accusations. This amo unts to recycling anticapitalist clichs as one recycles wastewater: Ecologism add s a supplementary layer of reprobation, claiming to be the culmination of all ea rlier critiques. Thus a whole segment of the South American left has seized upon this hobbyhorse to reinforce its credo: "We have two paths: either capitalism dies, or Mother Ea rth dies," said Evo Morales, president of Bolivia. The globe becomes the new pro letarian that has to be saved from exploitation, if need be by reducing the huma n population to 500 million, as some opponents of "speciesism" proclaim. Conside r the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (Vhemt), a group of individuals who ha ve decided not to reproduce themselves: Each time another one of us decides to not add another one of us to the burgeoni ng millions already squatting on this ravaged planet, another ray of hope shines through the gloom. When every human chooses to stop breeding, earth's biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory. To extend our sense of responsibility to all coming generations is to empty it o f its meaning, to put a titanic weight on our shoulders. In the 19th century, the French historian Hippolyte Taine already said, "I love my children too much to give them life." Even Jared Diamond, who has written a m agisterial study of the disappearance of societies, gives voice to a strange dre am: "If most of the world's six billion people today were in cryogenic storage a nd neither eating, breathing, nor metabolizing, that large population would caus e no environmental problems." The despondency is striking, given that our lives are still extraordinarily plea sant. Everywhere the culture of lament prevails. We have to wear grave expressio ns on our faces and wrinkle our brows: The perils are so numerous that we can ha rdly choose among them. Sounding the death knell is our viaticum. Saving the wor ld requires us to denigrate everything that has to do with the spirit of enterpr

ise and the taste for discovery, especially in the field of science. We have cea sed to admire; we know only how to denounce, decry, whine. The capacity for enth usiasm is dying out. That is because at the turn of the 21st century a paradigm change took place: Th e long list of emblematic victims Jews, blacks, slaves, proletarians, colonized pe oples was gradually replaced by the planet, which has become the paragon of all th e wretched. It is not a specific community that we are asked to identify with, b ut rather a small spaceship that carries us and groans. It is no longer a questi on of transforming the world but of preserving it. An example? Sir Martin Rees, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, p ublished a book with a resounding title Our Final Hour in which he gave humanity a 5 0 percent chance of surviving the 21st century, because of its proliferation and its wicked inventions. This sort of literature is proliferating and turning into clichs. The litany of f ailure is endless. Ecologism has become a global ideology that covers all of exi stence. In it are found all the faults of Marxism applied to the environment: th e omnipresent scientism, the appalling visions of reality, the admonishing of th ose who are guilty of not understanding those who wish them well. All the foolishness of Bolshevism, Maoism, and Trotskyism are somehow reformulat ed exponentially in the name of saving the planet. Authors, journalists, politic ians, scientists compete in announcing the abominable and lay claim to a hyperlu cidity: They alone see things correctly, whereas others vegetate in the slumber from which they will someday awaken, terrified. They alone have emerged from the cave of ignorance in which the human herd mills around, deaf and blind to the o bvious. Why do we in the West take such pleasure in predicting our own disappearance? In situations of all-out war, foreseeing the worst is proof of lucidity: "You've g ot optimists and pessimists. The first died in the gas chambers. The others have swimming pools in Beverly Hills," Billy Wilder remarked in 1945. There can be a desperate optimism and an active pessimism, a source of energy. But defeatism i s also the second home of privileged peoples, the contented sigh of big cats pur ring in comfort. A tragedy that strikes far away transforms the platitude of our everyday lives into a high-risk adventure: We are living on the edge of the aby ss! To sound the alarm is to re-enchant the routine under the sign of danger. The fear is permanent, its object is purely contingent; yesterday it was the mil lennium bug, today it is global warming and nuclear energy, tomorrow it will be something else. This alarmism is as lazy as nave optimism and no less illusory. T he adepts of the worst-case scenario are still the victims of a fantasy of omnip otence: For them, to prognosticate a hateful destiny is to ward it off. It is on e thing to teach the science of catastrophe as a science of reacting to and resi sting disproportionate misfortunes; it is another to believe that we will be abl e to cope with mistakes by forecasting them. In this rhetorical intoxication, the future becomes again, as it had once been i n Christianity and communism, a tool of blackmail. The Catholic religion asked u s to sacrifice our present joys for the sake of gaining eternal life, while Marx ism asked us to forget our bourgeois happiness and embrace instead the classless society. Ecology calls upon us to adopt a rigorous diet in the name of future g enerations. It was the German philosopher Hans Jonas who invented the concept of "anticipatory remorse." Our technological and scientific power so far outstrips our knowledge that we are forced to imagine all the wrongs that we might inflic t on our descendants by living as we do. Worrying about what does not yet exist: Is that a gesture of love or the worst k

ind of argument, an excess of scrupulous conscience? For fear of soiling our han ds, we prefer to cut them off right now. How far can responsibility go without t urning into an abstraction? To extend our sense of responsibility to all coming generations is to empty it of its meaning, to put a titanic weight on our should ers. By being accountable for everything, we are accountable for nothing. Exhausting ourselves trying to imagine the craziest scenarios for tomorrow a bacte rial infection, computer bugs, intergalactic wars, meteorological or nuclear cat aclysms, falling asteroids and sacrificing everything to the conceptual ectoplasm of "future generations" is to buy a conscience on the cheap and to close one's e yes to present scandals. To change the world, change life. To this formula inherited from Rimbaud and the communist tradition, ecologism adds a fundamental corrective: We have to change our lives in order to preserve the world. For ecologism, the domestic becomes i mmediately political, and we can permanently inflect the course of societies by turning off lights, turning down the heat, and becoming economical and if possib le vegetarian, which would reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Since our mode of production is destroying the planet's resources, the first thi ng we have to limit is our desires, and a sense of restriction must be inculcate d in everyone. The home, where we enjoy ourselves with those close to us, is the epicenter of the crime. It is there, in the warmth of the family, that the cons piracy against the earth is fomented, in a mixture of negligence, greed, and dep endency that constitutes the heart of civilized corruption. We are all potential killers who subsist only by destroying. This amounts, as we have seen, to an enormous restoration of Original Sin under the auspices of the extinction of species, the collapse of marine ecosystems, an d rising temperatures. The slightest act eating meat, turning on a radiator, letti ng the water run while you brush your teeth is heavy with unexpected consequences. The past century has, in fact, invented a phenomenon that condenses in its templ es all the ignominy of the human race: consumer society. The consumer combines t hree radical defects: He behaves like a predator by contributing to the looting of the planet's resources. He is an anthropological monstrosity, a Pavlovian bei ng, driven by rudimentary instincts of hunger and satisfaction. Worse yet, he is a kind of Sisyphus doomed to eternal dissatisfaction, repeating the process ove r and over. Prey to artificial needs that make him the slave of his own well-bei ng, he sees only his material interest, to the detriment of his freedom and of t he common concern. In short, every discourse agrees in denouncing him: Vulgar, selfish, wasteful, h e insults our ideas of justice, equality, and beauty. "[M]ass society," Theodor Adorno said, "did not first produce the trash for the customers, but the custome rs themselves." In other words, the buyer, in turn, is transformed into human ju nk. That is the terrible impact of commodification on subjectivity. It engenders robots that all desire the same objects before moving on to others, of which th ey will soon grow tired as well. Rousseau had already grasped this perverse mechanism of insatiability: [A]mong men in society, other things are involved: It is primarily a matter of p roviding for necessities and then for the superfluous; afterward come delights a nd then immense wealth and then subjects and then slaves; there is not a moment of respite: What is most singular is that the less natural and urgent the needs, the more the passions increase, and worse yet, so does the power of satisfying them. Progress is a curse: It forbids us to be content with our condition, makes us av

id for the slightest innovation, and the phenomenon is amplified in a mass socie ty in which millions of individuals are in the grip of the demon of rapacity. "T he superfluous is something very necessary," said Voltaire. But this appetite is both diabolical and mediocre; apart from the fact that it gives rise to a facti tious abundance, it arouses the desire of the masses, who aspire in vain to equa l the affluence of the most prosperous groups. Fortunately, in the depths of the abyss, redemption is possible: We can mend our arrogant ways by adopting an extremely ascetic code of behavior. Here we have to examine a rhetorical tactic that is frequently employed in envir onmentalist literature, and that was first extensively used by Christianity: Les s is more. The last on earth will be the first in heaven; the fools of this worl d will be the wise in the next; blessed are the simple-minded, for they will be golden. This way of thinking in antonyms, the notion that evil is a hidden good that will be revealed at some later point, constitutes above all a machine for l egitimating a state of affairs. Apparent iniquity masks a promise whose fulfillm ent we have to be able to wait for. This kind of reasoning was very fertile in t he works of the church fathers and of Leibniz, and also in those of the theorist s of the "invisible hand," from Mandeville to Hayek, without forgetting totalita rian regimes that made it a fearsome weapon for subjecting people. In environmentalist propaganda, this kind of logic consists in reversing values: Since wealth leads to despair, need ought to elicit a return of hope. In fact, the progress of the material standard of living in the United States has been ac companied by an undeniable decrease in real happiness among most Americans. Conc lusion: Since having more means being less, having less will mean being more. A marvelous acrobatic act: We have to voluntarily deprive ourselves in order to en rich ourselves spiritually. Subtraction as amplification! You will need to get rid of your car, take showers instead of baths (and the sho wers must be limited to four minutes; little hourglasses are sold for the purpos e), stop buying imported fruit and vegetables, practice "locavorism" (that is, e at only locally produced food), decrease or even halt your consumption of meat a nd fish, avoid the elevator and even the refrigerator. Each of us has to kill the frenetic consumer within us, for he is the scruffy wr etch who through his greed is causing the melting of the polar icecaps, the rise in sea level, tremors in the earth's crust, acid rain, and who knows what else. Are you cold in the winter? Put on a sweater, for heaven's sake, instead of turn ing up the heat, and go to bed early. Yves Cochet, a member of the European Parl iament, tells us: "We have to manage to live with 50 percent less electricity. . .. We have to take maximum advantage of daylight." And our friend of humanity fu rther suggests a surtax on those who make excessive use of electricity and heati ng systems. Are we going to set up police brigades that are responsible for swit ching off electricity and enforcing a curfew? What is worrisome about ecologism is that it energetically insinuates itself int o the most intimate aspects of our lives our eating habits and our clothing the bett er to control them. The project here is authoritarian. On reading its recommenda tions, we can almost hear the heavy door of a dungeon closing behind us. Either the lugubrious prophets are right that we are rushing toward the abyss, a nd the only avenue left is the human race's voluntary or involuntary self-extinc tion, or there is still room for maneuver, and we should explore it fearlessly. The ecology of disaster is primarily a disaster for ecology: it employs such an outrageous rhetoric that it discourages the best of wills. It tries so hard to a void our ruin that it will hasten it if we follow its recommendations and wrap t he planet in cellophane like a Christo sculpture. (In the Swiss and Austrian Alp

s, some ski resorts have covered glaciers with isothermic blankets to keep them from melting.) Either ecology persists in imprecations and sterile gestures, or it returns in a lucid way to the great idea of humanity's moral progress, learni ng from its earlier mistakes. A race has begun between the forces of despair and those of human ingenuity. In other words, the remedy is found in the disease, in the despised industrial civi lization, the frightening science, the endless crisis, the globalization that ex ceeds our grasp: Only an increase in research, an explosion of creativity, or an unprecedented technological advance will be able to save us. We have to try to push back the boundaries of the possible by encouraging the most fantastic initi atives, the most mind-boggling ideas. We have to transform the increasing scarci ty of resources into a wealth of inventions. Every new invention must strike the heart of human desire, elicit astonishment, and allow people to embark upon an unprecedented voyage. It is a narrow door (Lu ke 13:24), but it is the door to salvation. We have to count on the genius of th e human race, which is capable of overcoming its fears in order to improvise new solutions. If a generous defense of the environment is to develop in the course of the next century, it will exist only as the servant of humans and nature in their mutual interaction and not as an advocate speaking through an entity called "the plane t." The friends of the earth have for too long been enemies of humanity; it is time for an ecology of admiration to replace an ecology of accusation. Save the world, we hear everywhere: Save it from capitalism, from science, from consumerism, from materialism. Above all, we have to save the world from its sel f-proclaimed saviors, who brandish the threat of great chaos in order to impose their lethal impulses. Behind their clamor we must hear the will to demoralize u s the better to enslave us. What is at stake is the pleasure of living together on this planet that will survive us, whatever we do to it. We need trailblazers and stimulators, not killjoys disguised as prophets. Pascal Bruckner is the author of many books, including The Paradox of Love (Prin ceton University Press, 2011) and The Tyranny of Guilt (Princeton, 2010). This e ssay is adapted from his new book, The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse, published b y Polity Press. paulroden What will it take to wake up the public at large to the tyranny of dictatorial g overnments, multinational corporations, the centralized electrical utility compa nies, fossil and nucelar fuel industries that are destroying the planet and ensl aving us all? We need to transition to a more democratic and sustainable econom y that thinks globally but acts locally. We need a financial system that is dem ocratically regulated by main street not Wall Street. It is only through democr atic and nonviolent engagement that we will change the world for a more sustaina ble future. Marshal_Law The author's point is that discussions regarding the environment have degenerate d into talk of catastrophe and apocalypse. To refute him, you cite "fossil and n ucelar (sic) fuel industries that are destroying the planet and enslaving us all

" Have you no sense of irony? mbaker1973 The fossil fuel companies aren't destroying the planet. What is being destroyed is humanity in the name of "helping people in need". This Agenda 21 stuff from the UN is TYRANNICAL and it is DESTRUCTIVE OF PEACE. iburke Yikes: "Ecologism"? And "two ecologies"? At least in academic circles, let's use the word appropriately. Ecology is not a point of view; it is a discipline. It is the study of how organisms interact w ith the environment. We are losing the word, I realize. But what this article focuses on is NOT "Ecol ogy" and oh dear God, let's not invent "ecologism". This article is about "envir onmentalism", a point of view that advances the state of the environment over th e state of the economy. Gopher63 Casting environmental concerns as pseudo-religious ("ecologism") falls into the same trap of extremism as he accuses many "enviro-prophets" of promoting. Equat ing it with a religion is just as disingenuous as the conservative epithet of ev olution as "Darwinism". Then again, he was apparently trained under conservati ve Jesuits. My non-Catholic concept of "Original Sin" is not the expulsion from The Garden but for just being human (but not to the secular extremes Bruckner d oes. He should be aware that the "dominion'" cited in Genesis actually meant (a nd means) stewardship (and we've been doing a pretty lousy job of that throughou t history). He terms ecologism asbeing lazy but also lumps those who would imp rove the situation into the same boat. Yes, extremism, bred out of an unrealist ic demand for certainty, is rampant on both sides of this issue (as with many), including his. As usual, the answers are somewhere in the middle. Then again, extremism obviously sells ideas and books, including his. Follow the money. mbaker1973 Extremism is a result of the idea that, "the ends justifies the means". There a re professors in college that will read this response who are Reconstruction or Progressive education theorists, and they will pretend that they're not doing wh at they intend to do, because they are treated by the ruling class favorably. T hey don't care about the students' futures at all. They want to be part of the upper class, ie. at the top of the social order. Susan Jonas The worst use of a anemic thinking. Theory that uses great eloquence to obscure reality and necessity. How very sad that my alma mater publishes this nonsense. As literary theory it has validity, but as science, social science, ethics, poli cy TrevorSG

You'd think from reading this article that anyone who talks about climate change as something more than an opportunity for the entrepreneurial spirit is a "kill joy." Its political analysis is that we need more technology, not different powe r arrangements. The fact that corporations profit from pollution, and pass the c onsequences off to others as "externalities," is completely ignored, so capitali sm itself remains uninterrogated as a social system. Calling for hope in dark ti mes is one thing. But this is really courting naivete. sciencelibrarian Despite all the author's wild analogizing and fantasizing, and his seeming downp laying of the genuine seriousness of the global environmental situation and his castigation of those who call attention to it, I have to say that I agree with w hat apparently is a main conclusion of this piece: "We have to count on the gen ius of the human race, which is capable of overcoming its fears in order to impr ovise new solutions." Reythia Agreed. What I find ironic is that, without the scientific and pro-environment mindset that the author so despises, we wouldn't even know the problem is out th ere to "fear", much less be able to find a "solution" to it! mbaker1973 There are a lot of things that environmentalists do ignore. For example, people jump to the conclusion that there have been more tornadoes and such but it can' t possibly be because of the fact that there are more people, homes, and busines ses in the areas where they happen. Additionally, over the past 2 to 3 decades, there are literally thousands of more weather spotters and weather enthusiasts who are spotters that weren't doing it 20 or 30 years ago. There were quite a f ew events that went reported as being something different, such as tornado damag e being determined to be "straight line winds", just because nobody ever saw the tornado. There is also a misconception on what a tornado is, and just last wee k the media tried to sensationalize a "Derecho" as if it's the first one this ye ar. Additionally, it doesn't take heat to create tornadoes. On the days that those tornadoes in Oklahoma occurred, it was in the mid 80s, not the record heat durin g the drought in the previous two years. This year, it's been hot here but not as hot as the past two years and as a result we've had more rain here. The wate r isn't evaporating nearly as rapidly as it was during the drought of 2011 and f irst half of 2012. There have not been the major wild fires in Texas this year like what occurred in the Hot, Dry air during 2011. The conditions that led to the tornadoes had to do with a variety of meteorologi cal conditions. There was dry line, a low pressure system, and a cold front. T here was wind shear present. This means that there winds at the lower level of the atmosphere coming from the se, then northerly winds near the cold front, and westerly or southwesterly winds near the dry line. Each of these occur at diff erent levels of the atmosphere so when the warmer moist air collided with the co oler, drier air it began to rise. Due to the different direction in winds, it b egan to spin as it rose to the cooler parts of the atmosphere, thus creating sup er cells. That isn't all there is to it, but these are the basic conditions req uired for those big tornadoes.

Reythia Huh? I don't deny any of what you've said. Nor do MOST scientists. At best, p eople will say that greater variability in precipitation MAY occur as the climat e warms, for two reasons: 1.) because more water is released into the water cycle as the polar ice caps m elt (so there's more available to use as rain) 2.) because more heat in the atmosphere means more energy, and that energy is w hat can power storms (so there's a chance of more storms) But I'm not really sure why you're so excited about tornados. Most of us climat e change scientists don't have anything to do with them and have no particular o pinion on how they're being impacted by climate change. It's hardly our fault t hat the media gets excited about every storm being "caused by global warming!!!! !". WE don't claim that, as a glance through technical papers will clearly show . megginson We might want to watch the straw men here. Are *some* environmentalists extremis ts with an agenda that takes advantage of what we're doing to climate? Of course . (And some of them would like to toss me overboard for my firm belief that we h ave to explore carbon-free nuclear energy as a way out of the climate mess we're creating for ourselves.) But that first sentence tosses all into the same bucke t, and it is not fair or accurate to do so. And concerning that statement that "it doesn't take heat to create tornadoes." O f course it does. The first law of thermodynamics says the energy in a tornado h as to come from somewhere, and heat energy is ultimately the only energy availab le to a storm event such as a tornado. What it doesn't take is *temperature*, an d that is a different thing, so the argument about it being only in the 80s when those tornadoes were spawned is irrelevant. Any climate scientist (or any physi cist, for that matter) can explain the difference. It is in good part the confus ion between temperature and heat that led climate scientist Wally Broecker to st ate publicly and repeatedly his great regret at having coined the term "global w arming" to describe anthropogenic climate disruption--it contributes greatly to the confusion. What is undeniable (verified many different ways, including by direct satellite observation of energy input and output for the earth system) is that we're addin g heat energy to the earth system, which ultimately provides more energy for tor nadoes and other extreme weather events. But no climate scientist worth her or h is salt is going to claim any certainty about whether that led to those tornadoe s (and don't confuse climate scientists with the media), even if the great major ity of those scientists believe it likely that we're going to see more of them a nd/or more powerful ones. Again, straw men aren't helpful. EllenHunt The problem is, that if he had any idea about the science of it, he would know t hat it was misguided environmentalism (anti-nuclear activists) who for all pract ical purposes created global warming. (And no, we would not be significantly mor e radioactive than we are if we were nuclear.) So instead of nuclear power, whi ch is carbon free, we have global warming. David Robinson

According (even) to the UK Met office the world has not been warming for 17 year s? What problem? Why do we need hysteria for something that is not happening? Ju st askin' The author has a point! Reythia Friend, I'm not a tree-hugger, I don't think we should all give up our cars, I'v e got no problem with nuclear power, and I've no interest in going "back to natu re". What I AM is an aerospace engineer working as an oceanographer who has per sonally computed the sea level rise and polar ice melt over the past 10-20 years . And I've got friends who do paleoclimate work (who believe the same things I do, from the first sentence) who can compare what we're seeing now with what's happened before. We're NOT environmental activists, most of us. We're responsible scientists. W e can't help it if some vocal minority has used our data to further their cause. But we get REALLY offended when you claim that we're lying or making up result s to further a cause which we don't even agree with! Climate change IS happening. It's got nothing to do with anti-nuclear activists or tree-huggers. It's basic science and it's such a big signal that a respecta ble, neutral scientist literally CANNOT ignore it in her climate-related data. Sorry, but you're simply wrong here. (And by the way, there are plenty of anti-climate-change people who are terrifie d of nuclear power, too, for reasons I don't completely understand.) Reythia Don't worry, be happy? Well, if ignorance is bliss, I suppose that's true. However, most of us ACTUAL scientists (the vast, vast majority of whom do NOT es pouse the extremist beliefs/policies described here) do not particularly find ig norance blissful. As such, we get curious about things. And some of those stud ies tell us fascinating things, like that Greenland is melting about 215 Gt/yr f or at least the past 10 years. And then, being curious (but not particularly de pressed or pessimistic), we start to wonder why that is. And then we start to w onder what will happen in the future. And at that point, we start to wonder if that's really the future we want. You see, most scientists are actually DREAMERS, not "killjoys". But we're an od d type of dreamer, one that believes that we have the ability to change ourselve s and the world around us, if we all act together in concert. We believe that w e ARE the "trailblazers and stimulators" recommended here, but that you can't bl aze a trail until you know where you are now, where you've been, and where you w ant to go. Otherwise, you'll just find yourself wandering aimlessly in circles. I'd be very interested in seeing this site post an article on this subject from the perspective of an ACTUAL scientist who studies the environment, and not one of the rare far-lefters that the media so loves to quote, either. Most of us wh o study things like climate change are not pessimists and killjoys, but are actu ally guardedly optimistic dreamers: we believe that we can make rational, limite d, and affordable changes which will make life better in the future. More, we k now it's possible on a large scale, since we've done it in the past (see: ozone hole, acid rain). We see no reason we should choose to blind ourselves to wellknown facts, simply because they are troubling and might require work to resolve .

Cees de Valk Too much dreaming, not enough thinking and not thinking deep and wide enough, de ar Reythia. That is what holds back many employed as scientists today. Research and the saving of planets do not go well together. Too many people have entered the game for reasons other than curiosity and fascination. It inevitably leads b ack to a Medieval culture of science. Reading about the lives of the people who actually made great discoveries can teach you a lot about this. Reythia ....If that's ecause D gain you say so. As an aerospace engineer who works with science satellites, generally not what I'VE seen. Most of us went into engineering/science b of our childhood dreams and have never really stopped dreaming, but we DI the needed tools to work toward those dreams along the way.

What's your experience in the area, precisely? Because this line, in particular , interests me: "Too many people have entered the game for reasons other than cu riosity and fascination." I know of very, very few people who choose to go thro ugh some of the hardest college programs if they aren't curious or interested in some way in their field. Why would you, when the money isn't as good as some p rograms where require easier classes? mbaker1973 So, since you're a scientist, what happens to ice when you mix it with salt wate r? The water doesn't freeze at 32 degrees F when it gets more salt mixed in it does it? If you're curious, that is a pretty easy question to ask. No, salt wa ter doesn't freeze at 32 degrees F. It has to get colder in order to freeze. Reythia Huh? I mean, yeah, it's true that mixing in salt lowers the freezing point of w ater. That's a matter of equilibrium, whereby mixing in ANY foreign ingredient will lower the freezing point of a liquid. That's why we salt (or sand) our roa ds in the winter and also why margaritas stay liquidy even though they're below freezing. Basically, the salt ions interfere with the freezing process. When f reezing DOES happen (at a lower temp), the water that freezes is actually freshw ater, with the salt precipitating out. This is important when it comes to the f reezing of salt water into icebergs at the poles, for the record, and is why the polar deep water is more saline (and thus denser) than water elsewhere. But... I really don't understand why you're asking this. It's totally unrelated to anything I posted. What are you trying to get at???? Marshal_Law Nicely done, Mr. Bruckner. But you are in a temple of True Believers at The Chro nicle. The comments are already nasty, expect many more. Nathaniel M. Campbell For all of his feints of being "in-the-know" because of his Jesuit education, Br uckner is remarkably ignorant of the history of western civilization, especially

in its Christian variants. It was Augustine who coined the term mundus senescens f the world some sixteen hundred years ago -- a world ling to its final end. There is no need to think that w invented this paradigm from whole cloth in the last to describe the last age o grown old and tired, dwind western society has someho decade or two.

And the visionary theology of Hildegard of Bingen in the twelfth century is repl ete with the notion that, as humanity contains and reflects as a microcosm the m acrocosm of the world, so the ravages of human sin are reflected in the degradat ion of the environment, while holiness restores and renews the health of the ear th: evil begets aridity, while grace enlivens viridity. As with so many extremist writers of the post-religious world, Bruckner sees onl y apocalypticism's "fanatacism" and evil: he neglects to uncover its equally ric h history of producing optimistic activism (see, for example, the aforementioned Hildegard of Bingen's visions of the future: a mixture of both dark pessimism a nd radical optimism). While it is true that the fear of catastrophe can paralyze , it is equally true that it can provoke us to act positively for change. Elizabeth Sodapopoulo Beautiful, beautiful essay. It was very exciting and refreshing to read someone else out there notices what many of us have been noticing. dpcowboy "Sittin' on a fence" best describes this essay, although he may be right. I find the Blutos spouting the disparagement of Global Warming to be unfit. I find the killjoys who want me to walk everywhere barefoot equally odd. Making up new wor ds (ecologism"???) and tripping psychedelically into these thoughts and theories must be an amusing distraction, but really, is anyone out there moved by this e xercise of pen to paper? fisherman No one should be moved. As a technically trained sales engineer my company sen t me to school to write understandable letters for and to buyers ---most of them college educated. The curriculum used 5th-8th grade reading level as our guide . How large will his readership be in todays world. AGFoster Brilliant writing. One only waits for his mindless detractors to take the likes of Jim Hansen to task at least as far as the IPCC does. But one suspects his d etractors don't read newspapers, much less IPCC reports. --AGF yandoodan Ellen, if you had read the accompanying essay, "The Gallic Gadfly", you'd have l earned that Bruckner stated elsewhere "...that the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accide nt 'merely confirms a concern that preceded it and was looking for something to justify itself,'" as the essayist puts it. The essayist then commented, "That se ntiment registers dangerously close to denialism." Bruckner was, clearly, stati ng that environmentalists had long been concerned that nuclear power plants were

inherently dangerous, and that this concern had experienced a drought of 60 yea rs with no non-Soviet confirmatory instances -- until Fukushima. This, far from being close to anything dangerous or extreme, is astoundingly obvious. It is als o pro-nuclear. By the way, you fail to make any specific points against any of B ruckner's arguments. You might want to watch that in the Chronicles of Higher Ed ucation. haygoody I appreciate the comparison between what Bruckner calls "ecologism" and religiou s fundamentalism, though to be fair his is neither the first nor the most rigoro us analysis of the religious overtones of Western environmentalism. I also appre ciate the warning against panic, and I suspect it's really this particular emoti onal reaction to the phenomenon of climate change that he is deconstructing here , calling our attention to, rather than addressing the phenomenon of climate cha nge itself, which he does not seem to think particularly worthy of comment. As m uch as I want to agree with the former point--there is a note of panic in imagin ing that a strict regulation of one's activities and consumption can make any di fference in a problem of this scale, and we may need to imagine some more produc tive ways of coping with this enormous problem and its mitigation--I don't think the kind of formalist insouciance displayed here is any more productive. The re ason so many environmentalists are panicking is not just because of our latent d esire to punish ourselves and our species; it's because, drought, species loss, superstorms, and other impacts now linked to climate change notwithstanding, the y've seen very little willingness from political and environmental leaders to ad dress these issues seriously. How much of this so-called panic is actually frust ration?

http://chronicle.com/article/Against-Environmental-Panic/139733/