Cancer and Climate Change

January 17, 2016 11:15 PM

"I’m a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer."
Ex-astronaut and NASA climate scientist Piers J. Sellers compares the long-term prognosis for Humanity and the Earth to his short-term prognosis and decides "I’m going to work tomorrow." Previously, he wrote about the passing of Neil Armstrong and was interviewed about the end of the Space Shuttle program.
posted by oneswellfoop (14 comments total)

For context -- the insidious nature of pancreatic cancers is that they're typically asymptomatic until they're very large and have metastasized, and even then, only present generalized symptoms. Typically the only way to beat them is to have something completely unrelated happen in your abdomen that just happens to lead to finding the tumor while it is still small and localized. Typical survival rates are 25% after one year, and 5% after five years. That's for all types and stages. Stage IV adenocarcinomas have vastly worse survival rates.
posted by eriko at 5:09 AM on January 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

Top readers' pick among the comments:
"I'm a 14 year old, one of the next generation. I'm just going to say - we'll figure this out. We promise. Thanks for your hope."
posted by hat_eater at 5:45 AM on January 18, 2016 [20 favorites]

It is a hopeful and beautifully written piece, but is 2015 really the death of climate change denial? It's pretty much alive and well in the GOP, isn't it?
posted by angrycat at 6:19 AM on January 18, 2016

I think climate change denial is alive and well among people who represent oil and gas companies, and the politicians that they support.

But your average person? Climate change deniers seem to be going by the wayside.
posted by HighLife at 7:04 AM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think climate change denial is alive and well among people who represent oil and gas companies

No, I'm actually very certain they strongly believe it is real. That doesn't mean they would automatically act as if it were real, because they will not act in ways they feel are detrimental to their businesses. That doesn't make them deniers, that makes them capitalists.

One of capitalism's biggest weaknesses is it's complete inability to handle external costs, like, for example, the cost of warming the planet by selling carbon based energy. That's where government solutions become a necessary check, to actually properly price the external cost -- by means of fines for exceeding emission targets or carbon taxes, to name two ways.

So: just because they act against it doesn't mean they don't believe it. They may very well encourage disbelief, but that doesn't mean they don't accept it. Witness how tobacco companies spent millions "disproving" the link between smoking and cancer, despite knowing certainly that there was a very strong link.
posted by eriko at 7:34 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

^ Oh, I agree. They have known it's real for decades. But that hasn't stopped them from marketing denial, and they're still doing that.
posted by HighLife at 7:47 AM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

eriko, I agree, but I think both things are true: companies keep marketing the ideas they think will help their bottom line, and people tend to approach one pole or the other. I live in Calgary and have several friends who work directly or indirectly for the oil & gas industry. In general, their loyalty to their employer gets in the way of any discussion of the implications of climate science. I've asked a couple of people if they sing the Encana company song each morning, and they found that offensive. But do see a change in their attitudes after they've been there for a while; a general agreement that the oil industry status quo is a good thing, and that if it wasn't for the oil industry Alberta would be a prairie backwater.
posted by sneebler at 7:59 AM on January 18, 2016

One of capitalism's biggest weaknesses is it's complete inability to handle external costs

If there is a devil at work then he rests in institutions and not in individuals. Because the beauty of institutions is that any individual can abdicate responsibility. The assumption that we're all utterly powerless, that's the devil at work." - Thom Yorke
posted by any major dude at 7:59 AM on January 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Just for those who don't know, the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide was first observed by Svante Arrhenius in 1896. Arrhenius also noted an obvious connection between the burning of fossil fuels and an increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and connected that to the greenhouse effect. This is very old news.

I read Sellers' article over the weekend, and while I admire his hope, as someone who still expects to live for another 40 years, I do not share it.
posted by hydropsyche at 8:02 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

It feels like we've reached a point where climate change adaptation discussions have become completely anthropocentric. As if saving us is the point. As if saving us is good enough.

"History is replete with examples of us humans getting out of tight spots."

Who will write the histories of the species that are lost?
posted by tummy_rub at 9:50 AM on January 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

What a beautiful way to end it.

The article, and the life.
posted by Theta States at 10:25 AM on January 18, 2016

Still, tho, fuck cancer.
posted by Cookiebastard at 2:03 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

You couldn't really ask for a more wide angle perspective.

I hope he's right about the death of denial. I could count on one hand my acquaintances who don't think the whole thing is just some boring hippy shit.
posted by lucidium at 7:07 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

My dad died last year due to pancreatic cancer. At first there was hope it could be some other kind, but in the end it was 2.5 months from diagnosis ... no: discovery ... to dead.

One of the kindest human beings I have known. He had a knack for being liked by people because he cared about them. Very smart (did some obscure as hell topology near the end, and I say that as someone who has studied applied physics ... we had awesome conversations). Fit as fuck: he played my little brother in squash and beat him soundly until three/four months before his death. And that at 72.

Yet ultimately? This has nothing to do with climate change/environmental defilement. What one person says or thinks about the subject (unless they can sway a lot of people) is just so utterly irrelevant: climate change by humans is real. It is a fact we have suspected for more than a century, have been pretty sure of since at least the fifties and have confirmed since at least the seventies/eighties.

The only thing that has happened since is that our old rough models have been proven true on the pessimistic end and our models have been perfected and refined thanks to more and more accurate data. To be honest, anyone denying it and working against any betterment is now criminally culpable and responsible for aiding and abbetting not genocide but a crime against all humanity.

Thinking about what I wrote above, I guess I'm just bitter and incredulous that we still need the words of someone who would have been an erstwhile hero to add to this conversation. It's like lead plumbing, the chemicals which contribute to acid rain, asbestos, flat earth ... we know what's going on, so why are we still debating this? Why aren't we ridiculing, marginalising or even punishing those who deny it?
posted by MacD at 5:16 PM on January 19, 2016 [2 favorites]