As the climate slips further into uncharted territory, it is time climate science admitted that it is in uncharted territory itself.
Climate science is quickly becoming an art of unreliable speculation: the models, theorems, assumptions and parameters it operates upon are based on a planet that no longer exists. Just as we were beginning to understand Earth, our knowledge gap is widening because the climate is changing. Historical weather data means nothing in this new planet. It would seem that all climate science can do now is watch and observe as the climate crisis deepens.
Admitting that climate science has run into a wall will never happen of course, as this would be a gift to climate deniers. But whatever the case, climate scientists have little clue right now of where this planet is heading. All they know is that things are “worse than predicted”, which basically means that forecasts from now will at best case be merely speculative. We know we are entering hell, we just don’t know at what speed and whether there will be wi-fi and snacks there. It will probably be guns and more genocides instead, something that 10-year forecasts are forbidden from mentioning.
The reason why climate science is no longer a predictive science is that Earth is now a moving system. The energy balance of the planet (energy in vs energy out) is no longer zero. This doesn’t just mean that we are overheating. It means the planet is now much more challenging to model, analyze and predict. Even AI can do little to come up with forecasts, as its training data comes from the old planet. Weather datasets such as mean temperature, average precipitation etc are now invalid as records are broken and the planet changes colours faster than a chameleon. For any scientific discipline to thrive, it is essential that the system it studies does not change. Whether it is biology, physics or climate science, the systems they study have to remain fairly stable over time. This is not a “nice to have” but an essential condition. If one day gravity works and the next it doesn’t, you cannot postulate theories, establish observations, or make predictions. If one day chromosomes are made of DNA and the next they are made of RNA, much of your previous work, and your understanding of biology, genetics and evolution, is now full of wrong assumptions and failed conclusions.
Similarly, on a planet whose energy balance is out of control and ocean currents are being rewired as we speak, many of the observations we had relied upon to build our knowledge of the climate now belong in the trash. Understanding how Earth’s climate works during a climate crisis is like trying to learn how a car works by studying the only dishevelled example you have available, one where something new breaks every five minutes. The biggest problem climate science has on its hands right now is that it is being asked to study a planet literally as that planet changes. But an Earth system which is on the move is incredibly difficult to study because it begs the question: which system are you trying to understand exactly? The Earth of yesterday, of today, or of tomorrow? The textbook Earth that climate scientists learned about in their studies is only indicative at best. Both the experience they gained and the climate data they collected belong to a planet that no longer exists. We have new parameters, new players, as well as old ones who are behaving differently.
We are well into the age of the Great Meteorological Uncertainty. Even if we try to accelerate our understanding of this new planet, by the time we do so it will have changed again as new climate tipping points are crossed. From global ocean currents to glaciers, to the permafrost and rainforests, all moving parts of the climate sphere are changing rapidly and radically to comprise a brand-new planet that has never been studied before. This means that, although we may still be looking at familiar features e.g. hurricanes, ice sheets, atmospheric pressure systems etc, the behaviours and relative contributions of these familiar characters on the climate machine are changing. Given that many of these changes are believed to have exponential impacts (the so-called tipping points), this planet will already have changed by the time you have finished reading this article.
So why is nobody talking about the fact that climate science has run into a wall?
Because of the usual behavioural biases, cognitive malfunctions and politics. Climate scientists have collectively failed to panic in the way they should have, that is, openly and publicly, because of the prevailing culture of emotional suppression in science that looks down upon moral interpretations of data. The more climate science is suppressed from taking a social or moral stand, the more it tries to overcompensate with more charts and maps. We’ve all seen the charts, and we get the picture, literally. What we need is climate scientists who are activists, not PowerPoint warriors.
The institutional repression of freedom in science goes back hundreds if not thousands of years and has progressively worsened as science became a tool for capital rather than humanity. Academic circles are rife with censorship: notorious for morphing into toxic echo chambers where socially “safe” theories quickly ascend to stardom while inconvenient truths, outliers and critics, especially those who dare to talk about the implications of science on society, are labelled as witches and heretics. They are a threat to the system that funds “science”.
In some ways science did this to itself: many scientists today still think that they gain credibility by staying unemotional, unpoliticized, morally and socially unconscious. But by doing this, they are only surrendering the power that science has to change society, inform policy and conversation. Whether they know it or not, science by definition is a radical discipline, one that reveals new, bold truths that shape the future of humanity whether these truths are convenient or not. Instead, science has become an instrument for power and capitalism that is only brought out into the mainstream whenever it is needed to play along in a puppetry of lies. We live in the dark ages when science is still forbidden from crossing the knowledge-society barrier and articulate the implications of its findings. Climate scientists collect the evidence, but the interpretation is left to those who are wholly unqualified: politicians and PR spin doctors. The greatest failure of climate science has been the failure to panic in the most public and affirmative way, to have its own voice in the climate conversation.
There is a price we have paid for this culture of suppression: we recently saw climate data be rejected as evidence within the context of a trial of climate protestors in the UK. Science has been so siloed and isolated, it doesn’t even belong in a court of law anymore. Furthermore, scientists are only allowed to talk about their specific science, even though in a polycrisis all sciences converge. There is an unspoken gagging order to all climate scientists: stick to your charts and don’t talk about extinction, that’s for biologists. Don’t talk about civilisational collapse, that’s for sociologists. Don’t talk about capitalism driving emissions, that’s for economists. And don’t you even dare talk back to power, or we’ll cut off all your funding.
So who then, talks about the polycrisis? We do not have “polycrisis scientists”. The artificial separation between scientific and social disciplines is yet another deliberate form of censorship: to divide and silence the intellectual community. When is the last time you saw an anthropologist or historian have a viral conversation with a meteorologist? We need to unite across disciplines and conquer.
So, in the age of the Great Meteorological Uncertainty, there is a new role for climate science to play: to resist the suppression, and converge from multiple disciplines that cover not only the climate crisis, but civilisational overshoot as a whole. Anyone who is a climate scientist today is called to play the role of an activist, but too few have dared to step up. Although climate science itself is in crisis mode, we need climate scientists more than ever: not as scientists, but as advocates. The way they talk about their findings determines the future of this conversation. This is not a time for caution or choosing words carefully to please your grant sponsor. It is a time to be brave. “Extinction” and “Collapse” need to enter the daily vocabulary of climate science. Don’t call yourself a climate scientist if you’re not simultaneously an activist. Anything less is a disservice to your profession.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George Tsakraklides is an author, researcher, chemist, molecular biologist, and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter, @99blackbaloons, and enjoy his books, A New Earth: The Apocalypse Locus, The Unhappiness Machine and Other Stories about Systemic Collapse,
Beyond The Petri Dish: Human Consciousness in the Time of Collapse, Apathy, and Algorithms, and others.
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