Once again the ability to predict and anticipate depends upon models created by the same species that is at the root of causing the problem. No one seems to seriously question the fallibility of our minds as long as we have our "science". Yet that very reductionist science turned nature into a machine to be manipulated by anyone capable of using the limited knowledge the scientists generated.
Now we are confronted daily, it seems, with hard evidence of how little we really know. Once again as scientists look deeper into what is happening their eyes become opened a little more.
I say this as a scientist who spent his life learning about how little we really know. Today I read this:Why This New Study On Arctic Permafrost Is So Scary
Scientists might have to change their projected timelines for when Greenland’s permafrost will completely melt due to man-made climate change, now that new research from Denmark has shown it could be thawing faster than expected.
Read on beyond the break for more.
Here's where reductionist science fails in a big way. The article says:
Published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, the research shows that tiny microbes trapped in Greenland’s permafrost are becoming active as the climate warms and the permafrost begins to thaw. As those microbes become active, they are feeding on previously-frozen organic matter, producing heat, and threatening to thaw the permafrost even further.
In other words, according to the research, permafrost thaw could be accelerating permafrost thaw to a “potentially critical” level.
I'll let you read the rest. This simply makes me want to scream.
I have been writing about systems theory and its applications to both our failed political system and to what we are learning (finally) about the Earth system that sustains us. Systems theory, as we use it in the study of complex systems, is a counter to the damage done by reductionist thinking. When it comes to the Earth system that sustains us there is no place for an epistemology that claims that the best way to understand a complex real system is to replace it by a model of its parts ignoring most of the processes and interactions that go on in it.
Systems are marvelous things to study since their very existence is the basis for understanding them. The central idea is "stability". Even in reductionist science this notion is a commanding one. A system is either stable or it changes to a new system. Eventually the change will become self limiting. That's when stability is regained.
Our present day climate scientists are marvelous people. Given the epistemological base they were given as their training they did as well as could be expected. They have yet to make the necessary leap into the frame of mind they should have already gained from their studies.
The Earth system is very complex and has myriad systems and subsystems in it. They all interact and have been relatively stable until our species and its ability to speed up change came on the scene. All stabilizing subsystems have a reaction time and we have introduced perturbations that are too fast for stable system recovery to be operative.
Unfortunately, for us, there will be a recovery of sorts, but not in a time frame beneficial to our survival needs. Meanwhile myriad consequences of instability will be manifested.
Not unexpectedly, we are learning about this in fragments. That is because the epistemology that is operative is one that is built on fragmentation. Our educational system reflects this almost totally. The exceptions that look at reality in a holistic way are treated as oddities rather than the real world.
Notice the parallels with how we handle politics. We don't deal with whole systems but focus on issues and facts and figures. It goes nowhere but that doesn't seem to register on us.
We have soiled our nest and the waste and byproducts are now our real environment. Pretending it is not so is just like forbidding discussion of Climate Change and sea level rise.
I once was reluctant to speak about problems I have no answer for. I no longer feel that way. The idea that the human mind is capable of dealing with these issues seems like arrogant hubris to me now.
Once again we do not need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.