INDUSTRY OVERVIEW
. . .
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.
If you can’t
take the
HEAT…
FIRST, LET’S SEPARATE FACT AND
and Johannesburg, slowly and relentlessly in order to get our heads around this, we
destroying vast swathes of forest tree by need to understand the difference between
As a scientist, I embrace facts as my friends, tree, and primitive nematodes and ancient complexity as a concept and things that are
so let me share a few. In the recent past the species of viruses and bacteria are being complicated. We are increasingly confronted
USA has been hit by a series of massive released as the permafrost melts in places with complicated things. A passenger jet is
hurricanes, driven by warm waters over the like Siberia and Alaska. a complicated thing consisting of hundreds
FANTASY
of thousands of integrated parts working
Atlantic Ocean, slamming into the islands
of the Caribbean and cities along mainland All of these are facts, and they collectively together to give a predictable outcome –
America with unprecedented ferocity. One speak of two things – uncertainty, and safe flight. It’s complicated, but it is entirely
hurricane struck California, coming off the cold challenges to our adaptability as a species. predictable by virtue of technical manuals
Pacific Ocean, which is something very rare, Let me unpack these two elements by and high-level training of professional crew.
because it entered via the back door, so to highlighting three implications of the global This is fundamentally different from complex
speak. Last summer saw tropical depressions climate crisis. systems such as the global climate.
Africa and Mozambique, wreaking havoc and UNCERTAINTY Complex systems have multiple variables,
causing significant loss of life in KZN. The The first implication is that climate change is each of which is linked in ways that are almost
Western Cape has just narrowly avoided what not what you think it will be from an impact impossible to predict.
would have been a disastrous Day Zero. As perspective. you read this, the polyphagous shot hole change, because we are faced with global This is the so-called butterfly effect, in which
borer beetle is marching relentlessly across warming as a key driver. Of this there is no the flapping of a butterfly wing in a tropical
large parts of the world, including Cape Town doubt within credible scientific circles. But, rainforest will set up minute wind patterns that
bring masses of rain onto the coast of South
I
no
longer
talk
12
INDUSTRY JOURNAL
of
climate