Tuesday, April 22, 2008
My Climate Clock Idea
For about a year now I’ve had this idea to create a single page website featuring a large clock, counting down the time we have left until some sort of catastrophic global event caused by climate change.
Basically a combination of the national debt clock, the doomsday clock and a death clock.
The goal would be show the effects of climate change in very real terms, helping build awareness of the effects climate change and hopefully urge people to take action. Since most people would prefer not to know their date of death, I figure even a rough estimation would be a powerful motivator.
The city of San Jose is planning to build a physical clock, but one problem, it would be in downtown San Jose. Not exactly the hub of cultural activity. I figure, why not have it be online for all in the world to see? After all, climate change is a burden we all have to bare.
Having put a lot of thought into the idea and having done a fair amount of research, I’ve found a number of problems in coming up with a formula. What is so disturbing to me is that the problems I’ve found are the same problems that any initiative to help increase awareness in climate change would likely face.
I don’t know how the world can come together to solve the climate change problem without better information and tools to understanding the problem and the potential effects. So today being Earth Day I figured why not share some of the problems I’ve come across in trying to build a Climate Clock.
Problem #1: Following the Numbers
Without a consistent table of data, I can’t come up with a reasonable equation.
First and foremost, the numbers of the real effects of climate change are all over the place. It is very hard to find any hard numbers that I would need to come up with a reasonable equation.
We need to come up with a standard method of reporting the effects of climate change. From what I can tell there are several indicators that climatologists follow, why not put them together in to a simple chart or report card. It may seem like a silly analogy, but it would be nice to see something like nutrition facts label for our environment. Isn’t the problem the same? We are consuming things that if done to excess will cause us harm. And at the same time, we need to consume a certain percentage of alternatives that are good for us.
Problem #2: Where is all the new data?
Without timely data numbers I can’t create an equation that would power the data for the clock.
The next problem is that I had an incredibly tough time finding any new data from the last five years. With so much emphasis on climate change, I’m surprised I can’t find data from last year!
In order to build public awareness, we need numbers that are at least updated yearly (hell, if not monthly). My goal of creating a Climate Clock would be so the average person can have perspective on the aggregate damage we are causing. But without regularly updated numbers, presented in a consistent format, I just don’t know how anyone can make that happen. Maybe these numbers are available, but to date I haven’t been able to find them.
Problem #3: Our perceptions of the threat
Without an agreed to index of the impending threat, I cannot produce a number to represent the zero hour.
One of the first questions I asked myself is should the clock count upwards, showing accumulation or down to a zero hour? I found the problem is the same either way, it just doesn’t look like we know at what point a catastrophic global event will be caused by climate change. It looks like we just don’t know how to articulate a crisis point other than to provide our opinion of accumulative data. And that seems to be exactly the problem in our perception.
Climate change is a holistic problem, it has many causes and many effects. When we think of our annihilation we tend to think of nuclear war, a pandemic viral outbreak or rocks hitting us from space. Events that happen during a relatively short period of time. Climate change will cause a catastrophic global event if unchecked, but it won’t happen in an instant, but over a prolonged period of time. If we only looked at in a causal fashion, it would be easy to completely dismiss it symptom by symptom.
So if the clock went up, we would need to define a number of shades of red. As the clock goes up, we come closer to the maximum tolerance in which our ecosystem can support life. Have the clock count up would require a system like the United States threat level, or defense condition (DEFCON) to indicate the likelihood of a threat.
But I think the consensus of the scientific community is that we are beyond the mere likelihood of threat and in the middle of a very real and finite crisis, that a clock is ticking down. Therefore we should show the time we likely have left. While coming up with a set duration is much more difficult, I believe it would also have the greatest impact on building awareness.
For example, did you know that the doomsday clock, which stands at 5 minute to midnight, is the closest it has been to zero hour since 1984?
In 1984 I was 9-years old. I didn’t think I would live to be 30 because of an impending and inevitable nuclear war. I think we should be just as freaked out now if not more so, since our choices will so greatly effect the lives of our children.
Problem #4: What is a “catastrophic global event?”
In order to determine the risk factor to the average person, I need to determine the rate in which climate change related deaths will increase around the world.
So if the clock counts down, that means that there has to be a defined point for zero hour, meaning what is a catastrophic global event caused by climate change? Which brings back how our visions of a sudden doomsday scenario influence our perspective on climate change. Zero hour won’t be sudden flooding of the eastern seaboard due a glacial icecap melting.
I think that zero hour will instead be the point where disease is so rampant, water supplies to precious and crucial food supplies so threatened that odds of dying from a climate change related event is greater than any other risk to life.
The World Health Organization is concerned about just such an event:
Human beings are already exposed to the effects of climate-sensitive diseases and these diseases today kill millions. They include malnutrition, which causes over 3.5 million deaths per year, diarrhoeal diseases, which kill over 1.8 million, and malaria, which kills almost 1 million.
So for my Climate Clock, I decided that the best way to measure and report the effects of climate change is by the body count. Unlike measuring the parts per million of greenhouse gases levels, or by the centimeters that glacier recede, the death of another human cannot be dismissed by skeptics.
People are dying by the millions right now because of the effects of climate change. And the likelihood that you or someone you know will be effected by it will increase, possibly exponentially, each year. To me that seemed like a good definition of a “catastrophic global event” one that touches each of us in very real terms.
Mortality rates are a number that I can get my hands on. Thanks to the World Health Organization, I can see what percentage of those deaths are being caused by the effects of climate change. So I can calculate what could be considered a normal level and I can calculate the effects of climate change, but I still need the scale, I need to know how quickly the devastation will spread, which takes me back to my previous problems.
Problem #5: Economic Effects
I need to know the rate at which the economic effects of climate change will degrade our standard of living.
The final big problem is understanding the economic effects, which I tend to thing of as an X-factor. People will feel the economic effects of climate change long before the it causes a risk to their lives. But how direct will the risk be? how severe will the effects be felt around the world?
For example, the current high oil prices has a lot to do with shortages in production from the climate change effected regions of Africa. But there are other factors that are also contributing to record oil costs. This is a very real example of how the effects of climate change and touching virtually every person on the planet at this very moment. But at what percent do we account for these climate change side effects?
This I don’t know. But maybe by looking at climate change more like a disease we can produce models that will help us calculate the how terminal the disease is? Isn’t the problem the same? The planet’s ecosystem is a vast biological machine. Climate change is a foreign substance that our ecosystem must fight in order to survive. It has many side effects caused by the illness. It has many acute symptoms. It can be treated by both behavioral changes and by science. But the disease has to first stop spreading before it can recede.
If we were able to find a biological disease that works in the same manner as the effects of climate change, it would produce very interesting data which we could then use to guide our decisions. And maybe even open our ideas to new ways to attack the problem.
And the idea might not be that far fetched. After all, many economists use viral models to help predict fluctuations in markets. Maybe a biological model might work for predicting and tracking the effects of climate change as well.
What frustrates me is all of the above problems are not insurmountable. They are all just numbers in an equation. Sure, we will never get the numbers exactly right. And yes, there will be a ton of skeptics, but should that prevent us from trying? Isn’t it better to produce something for the skeptics to attack? Or do we allow the fear of being wrong prevent us from making an attempt to make the world better?
And who am I? I’m just some web geek that wants to build a web-based Climate Clock. I don’t have the answers to climate change, nor am I likely to come up with them. There are much smarter men than myself working on this problem.
But I realize this is a problem that effects me and I care about the world my daughter will inherit. I want to do my part. I’m no climatologist, or economist, but god damn it, I can make websites! I can help the average person digest information better. I can help change perceptions through communication.
But in order to help solve the climate crisis, the people that are being paid to solve this problem have to throw me a few bones instead of being left to scratch my head on how I can help.
If anyone has any ideas on how I can make a Climate Clock work, please let me know.
This article was written by Brian Fling. Brian and his wife Cyndi run Fling Media, a small studio based in the garage of their Seattle home. As well as providing web and mobile design services, they are currently endeavoring to create six products in one year. If you like what you’ve just read, try working with us. (Photo by Kris Krug)