Estate Living Magazine Invest SA - Issue 45 September 2019 | Page 10

P R O P E R T Y
&
I N V E S T M E N T
IF YOU CAN’T
TAKE THE HEAT …
The world is facing a climate crisis. A young Swedish schoolgirl is now leading a global campaign of
defiance driven by school children. The world has just experienced the hottest July ever recorded, even
while a vocal segment of the chattering masses in leading economies like the USA believes that the
science underpinning global warming is a massive hoax perpetuated by scientists who are – somehow –
conspiring to make money.
First, let’s separate fact and fantasy
As a scientist, I embrace facts as my friends, so let me share a few. In
the recent past the USA has been hit by a series of massive hurricanes,
driven by warm waters over the Atlantic Ocean, slamming into the
islands of the Caribbean and cities along mainland America with
unprecedented ferocity. One hurricane struck California, coming
off the cold Pacific Ocean, which is something very rare, because
it entered via the back door, so to speak. Last summer saw tropical
depressions bring masses of rain onto the coast of South Africa and
Mozambique, wreaking havoc and causing significant loss of life
in KZN. The Western Cape has just narrowly avoided what would
have been a disastrous Day Zero. As you read this, the polyphagous
shot hole borer beetle is marching relentlessly across large parts
of the world, including Cape Town and Johannesburg, slowly
and relentlessly destroying vast swathes of forest tree by tree, and
primitive nematodes and ancient species of viruses and bacteria
are being released as the permafrost melts in places like Siberia and
Alaska.
All of these are facts, and they collectively speak of two things –
uncertainty, and challenges to our adaptability as a species. Let me
unpack these two elements by highlighting three implications of the
global climate crisis.
Uncertainty
The first implication is that climate change is not what you think it will
be from an impact perspective. I no longer talk of climate change,
because we are faced with global warming as a key driver. Of this
there is no doubt within credible scientific circles. But, in order to
get our heads around this, we need to understand the difference
between complexity as a concept and things that are complicated.
We are increasingly confronted with complicated things. A
passenger jet is a complicated thing consisting of hundreds of
thousands of integrated parts working together to give a predictable
outcome – safe flight. It’s complicated, but it is entirely predictable
by virtue of technical manuals and high-level training of professional