The articles about the IPCC report were very neat to read into and certainly illustrate the climate reality we live in today as well as describe what should be considered when evaluating options for the future. Furthermore, the report mainly discusses the need to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C and something I found sparking my own thought was the statement that “International cooperation can provide an enabling environment for this to be achieved in all countries and for all people, in the context of sustainable development” (IPCC Special Report, D7). Whether we attempt to mitigate global temperatures rise with technological fixes or socio-economical or a mixture of many the effort must be made on the larger international level. Since global climate change is such a multi-system issue we must have as many voices be heard in evaluating techniques to either mitigate or adapt to the responses. I believe technology definitely has its use in helping mitigate the rise of global temperature such as the forms in which we use energy moving to more renewable sources would be beneficial. But it is not just the technology will be able to solve the problem. Diving deeper into energy use we must understand and be willing to cooperate with the groups of people who experience large inequalities in energy use, such as low efficiency or low knowledge of fossil fuel impacts.
I believe climate science being too young to be reliable is not very true for many reasons, but I can see what some people today believe science isn’t reliable enough sometimes. When looking at the past few hundred years of science in its reductionist form trying to find laws and equations to define the natural world some of these findings can be misunderstood and underappreciated by non-experts. But certainly, it is obvious people have been studying and growing understanding for how the natural world works both through natural history as well as modern science methods. I really enjoyed the mentioning of Tyndall being a mountaineer and how this gave him lots of time to observe the natural world. It seems extremely important to not forget learning doesn’t just take place in the classroom or a library but through physical interaction with what you are studying too. Mountaineers and ocean divers are two examples of the experts who may not always have a scientific degree but have spent much time in these natural landscapes and offer great insight to have these complex systems function. In conclusion it seems very ignorant to not acknowledge the length of time people have been studying and interacting with the natural systems which affect us today and will continue in the future.
Great post! I liked how you mentioned having multiple voices be heard so that the multi-system issues of the environment may be solved. It was a nice tie-in to our previous readings and is a great step to reducing the effects of unintended consequences due to what technological fixes we may employ. You brought a great point of how mountaineers and ocean divers offer great insights of their own in understanding natural landscapes which is something I tend to overlook myself. I definitely agree that it is important to acknowledge the time people have spent interacting and not overlook the insight they provide about natural systems whether it is as scientists in a lab or a mountaineer interacting directly with nature.