{"id":421,"date":"2009-05-05T17:22:51","date_gmt":"2009-05-05T21:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/?p=421"},"modified":"2009-05-15T16:11:59","modified_gmt":"2009-05-15T20:11:59","slug":"scientists-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/2009\/05\/scientists-needed\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists needed"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m going to SciBarCamp<\/a> this Saturday. The theme is open science<\/em>, although we’re free to interpret that as broadly as possible. So here’s my pitch for a session:<\/p>\n

Climate Change is the biggest challenge ever faced by humanity<\/a>. In the last two years, it has become clear that climate change is accelerating<\/a>, outpacing the IPCC’s 2007 assessment<\/a>. The\u00a0paleontological\u00a0record shows that the planet is “twitchy<\/a>“, with a number of tipping points<\/a> at which feedback effects<\/a> kick in, to take the the planet to a dramatically different climate, which would have\u00a0disastrous impacts<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0on the human population. Some climate scientists think we’ve already hit some of these tipping points. However, the best available data suggests that if we can stop the growth of carbon emissions within the next five years<\/a>, and then then\u00a0aggressively\u00a0reduce them to zero<\/a> over the next few decades, we stand a good chance of averting the worst effects of runaway warming.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s now clear that we can’t tackle this through volunteerism. Asking people to change their lightbulbs and turn off\u00a0unnecessary\u00a0appliances is nothing but a distraction: it conceals the real scale of the problem<\/a>. We need a systematic rethinking of how energy is produced and used throughout society. We need urgent government action on emissions regulation and energy pricing. We need a massive\u00a0investment in R&D on zero emissions technology (but through an open science initiative, rather than a closed, centralized Manhattan Project style effort<\/a>). We need a massive R&D effort into how to adapt to those climate changes that we cannot\u00a0\u00a0now\u00a0avoid: on a warmer planet, we will need to completely rethink food production, water management, disease control, population migration, urban planning, etc. And we will need to understand the potential impacts of the large scale geo-engineering projects<\/a> that might buy us more time. We need an “all of the above<\/a>” solution.<\/p>\n

Put simply, we’ll need all the brainpower that the planet has to offer to figure out how to meet this challenge. We’ll need scientists and engineers from every discipline to come to the table, and figure out where their particular skills and experience can be most useful. We’ll need to break out of our disciplinary straightjackets, and engage in new interdisciplinary and problem-oriented research programs, to help us understand this new world, and how we might survive in it.<\/p>\n

Governments are beginning to\u00a0recognize\u00a0the scale of the problem, and are starting to devote research funding to address it. It’s too little, and too late, but it’s a start. This funding is likely to grow substantially over the next few years, depending on how quickly politicians grasp the scale and urgency of the problem. But, as scientists, we shouldn’t wait for governments to get it. We need to get together now, to help explain the science to policymakers and to the public, and to start the new research programmes that will fill the gaps in our current knowledge.<\/p>\n

So, here’s what I would like to discuss:<\/p>\n