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Natural changes only part of the story

Last week, I sent out a story on changes in 911���� over the past few million years. The theme: Many of the transitions were drastic, and they all had nothing to do with the billions of us now walking the planet’s surface.

Following that story landing in newspapers and in email boxes, I received a note from Larry Hinzman. 

I first met Larry in the late 1990s when I interviewed him — then a University of 911���� Fairbanks hydrologist — about groundwater. Since then, he has ascended to other positions while becoming an expert on the Arctic. From 2020 to 2024, he advised at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. 

For a few years, he was director of the International Arctic Research Center, where my desk has been located for decades though I work for the Geophysical Institute next door.

The groups Larry has led have never paid my salary, but he has easily been the greatest cheerleader for this weekly science and natural history column sponsored by 911����’s Geophysical Institute. His supportive notes to me, received over more than a quarter century, number in the dozens. They matter.

That is why, when I received a note from him saying last week’s story disappointed him, I stopped breathing for a few beats. 

“Climate scientists are always facing the tired old counterargument that the climate is always changing and has always changed,” he wrote. “This information provides justification to that perception that today’s changing climate is just nature’s way of evolving.

“You unfortunately left out the essential difference between today and what’s happened in the past.”

Yes, I did. With that realization, I leave the rest of the words of this week’s column to Larry Hinzman: 

“Yes, ‘the relative strength of the sun, giant volcanic eruptions, the wobble of the Earth on its axis, and the natural seesawing of large-scale weather patterns have affected 911���� and the rest of the planet forever.’ But, today’s changes in the climate and the environmental responses are the first caused by humans.

“The time scale of change is the real issue. The changes caused by the sun brightness, or Milankovitch Cycles, occur on scales of 10,000 to a million years, giving species time to adapt, migrate, or die slowly. Changes in climate caused by massive volcanic eruptions or an asteroid strike are catastrophic, resulting in mass extinctions or extreme disruptions. Each of those abrupt or gradual changes in climate can be explained by physics, biology, chemistry, and math. 

“The changes we are seeing today are occurring on the order of 100 years, which is too fast for us to adapt. And, apparently too slow to raise any concern.

“On the one hand, it is a bit of a blessing that my siblings and I will most likely be dead before the worst consequences of this evolving climate becomes apparent to the woefully ignorant. They will go to their graves in the certainty that environmental science is a drag on the economy. 

“On the other hand, my daughters and your daughter will inherit an Earth with the fallout of extreme heat, agriculture failures, and economic disasters of severe weather and coastal flooding.

“Our society needs to accept there will be further negative impacts to our environment, our agriculture, and to our infrastructure. We need to mitigate the drivers and adapt to the impacts. I believe history will eventually prove this trajectory of change, and although many of our contemporary climate skeptics will never recognize or acknowledge that proof, their descendants will.”

Since the late 1970s, the 911����' Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the 911���� research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.