{"id":757009,"date":"2026-06-24T00:52:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T00:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/757009\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T00:52:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T00:52:17","slug":"climate-change-is-forcing-us-to-adapt-to-uncertainty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/757009\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate change is forcing us to adapt to uncertainty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listen to this article<\/p>\n

Recorded by Matt Simmons<\/p>\n

Around 13,000 years ago, our blue planet got a lot whiter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Temperatures in the northern hemisphere dropped precipitously and in a relatively short time \u2014 decades, not centuries \u2014 big ice sheets spread down from the mountains, freezing out once-teeming habitats populated densely by flora and fauna.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Humans, and our non-human relatives, had been flourishing for some 10,000 years in the warm afterglow that followed the previous deep freeze. Abundance had bloomed in the glacial melt and from the sediment left on the land. Life stretched out in the absence of ice. But then the ice came back.<\/p>\n

The ensuing thousand-year period is called the Younger Dryas<\/a>, named for a little Arctic flower called Dryas octopetala. In some places, like Greenland, the freeze took mere months. Other parts of the northern world succumbed more slowly, but the overall process, in geological time, was like the heartbeat of a hummingbird. And then it was quiet.<\/p>\n

\"\"Dryas octopetala, an Arctic wildflower also known as mountain avens, gave the Younger Dryas its name. Photo: Steinsplitter \/ Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n

The onset of the Younger Dryas may have been abrupt, but it wasn\u2019t catastrophic. Humans adapted. Clinging to refugia \u2014 pockets of the landscape where conditions were favourable enough to support plants and animals despite the pervasive cold \u2014 we endured. Ultimately, we thrived. When the period ended, as abruptly as it had arrived, so began the Holocene.<\/p>\n

Like the humans who watched the world change so quickly to white and like their descendants who felt the rapid return of the sun, we are living through a period of dramatic and accelerating changes to our environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But ours is a different time, one characterized not by ice, but by fire.<\/p>\n

Last fall, while walking down an alleyway in my northern British Columbia town, I ran into an acquaintance. We traded the usual pleasantries and then talk turned, as it so often does, to the weather. It was hot and dry and the skies were choked with the haze from a spate of wildfires that had flared up after the season appeared to be mostly over.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t normal,\u201d my friend insisted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unlike me, he grew up in the area. As an avid outdoors enthusiast and former mountain guide, he was well-positioned to say what\u2019s normal and what\u2019s not. He seemed unsettled, agitated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never seen a September like this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

We are living in the Anthropocene, a term many geologists have adopted to characterize the era where humans are the primary agents of change on the planet. Our actions over the past few centuries have led to the increasingly erratic and unstable climatic systems wreaking havoc across the globe. As we grapple with the impacts of our collective past, we also need to grapple with ourselves as we come to terms with how we process the changes we are experiencing. We are reckoning with a restless world.<\/p>\n

Dive deeper on this topic<\/p>\n

Those same wildfires that suffused my little mountain town with the smell of campfire blanketed the city of Vancouver with thick smoke. For a few days, the air quality there plummeted to rank as the worst in the world. It all felt surprising somehow, even as we collectively chided ourselves for being surprised.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Humans are incredibly adaptable \u2014 but we crave certainty. We intuitively cling to patterns we\u2019ve seen before to guide our expectations about what a day, month or year might bring. We plan around those expectations: picnics and road trips, soccer games and barbeques.<\/p>\n

As the world around us continues to change, we begrudgingly change with it. We plan now for wildfire season \u2014 unheard of in my childhood. We slather our kids in sunblock and pack asthma inhalers. We don\u2019t roast marshmallows on crackling fires anymore when we camp out in the woods in the summer because of months-long fire bans. But change is a painful and iterative process and we keep setting a new normal to anchor ourselves to, again and again and again.<\/p>\n

\"Wildfire\"Wildfires increasingly shape the structure of our lives, from how and when we interact with the natural world to choices we make about exposing ourselves and our families to smoke. Photo: Mike Graeme \/ The Narwhal<\/p>\n

Our preference for certainty can have profound impacts on mental health. Very little quantitative research has been done but there is a growing consensus that climate impacts \u2014 including the anticipation of those we have not yet experienced \u2014 are leading to a mental health crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate change has been associated with numerous mental health conditions including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, grief, substance use disorders and suicidal ideation among many others,\u201d Elizabeth Wiley, a physician, wrote<\/a> in the BC Medical Journal in 2019.<\/p>\n

We do plan further ahead, peeking into possible futures with predictive climate models to design and build infrastructure we hope will protect our communities from fires and floods and more. But our world is changing as fast as that flickering hummingbird heartbeat and we act as if each pulse will last forever. There\u2019s only so far we can see.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In our temporal myopia, we need to get more comfortable with not knowing \u2014 and embrace uncertainty as an essential part of our existence.<\/p>\n

Our ancestors found refugia to withstand an icy world that became increasingly hostile to life. Now, as we speed inexorably into a hotter future, we are confronted with a growing list of urgent problems we need to prepare for, and adapt our existence to meet. We need to build our refugia.<\/p>\n

David Stainforth, a physicist and climate scientist from Oxford, England, says policy makers and scientists need to pay closer attention to uncertainty \u2014 and build for unpredictable outcomes. He told me climate modelling has an important role to play in adaptation, but relying too heavily on a particular set of predictions, however sophisticated the models may be, can inadvertently fall prey to the human tendency to seek certainty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will kind of spuriously get rid of the uncertainty, meaning you can now build your flood defences \u2014 but you\u2019re building the flood defences to protect yourself against the future in the model,\u201d he said on a video call last year. \u201cAnd the future in reality could be very, very different from that. There\u2019s a danger you might misdirect society.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his 2023 book, Predicting Our Climate Future, Stainforth makes a case for embracing the uncertainties in climate models as a guiding principle for building resiliency at a community level. As he wrote in an essay for Aeon<\/a>, uncertainties compound over decades until \u201calmost everything can influence almost everything else.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cChanges in Arctic sea ice could influence the Indian summer monsoon,\u201d he wrote. \u201cChanges in rainfall in the North Atlantic could influence temperature patterns in central Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

In essence, Stainforth argues we risk catastrophe if we are too reliant on the predictions of complex climate models \u2014 which can do many things but not all things \u2014 for the decisions we make about how to survive the inevitable changes that are coming. But by embracing uncertainty, he says, we can build refugia capable of withstanding impacts we haven\u2019t yet imagined.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Michele Koppes, a professor in the department of geography at the University of British Columbia, says accepting uncertainty can also provide a path through climate-related grief and anxiety. Koppes studies the effects of climate change on mountains and glaciers and works with communities living with the impacts, which include \u201cdwindling water resources and increases in landslides and natural hazards like outburst floods.\u201d That work began with a focus on the physical changes to the landscape, but has shifted to focus on the human side.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWho are the people that are living in the closest proximity to these impacts and what are their stories?\u201d she said. \u201cHow are they perceiving this and what do they need in order to be resilient and to feel like they can continue their livelihoods and their lives in the face of all this change?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Illustration: Melanie Garcia \/ The Narwhal. Photo: Matt Simmons \/ The Narwhal <\/p>\n

She said asking these questions helped her process the loss and helplessness she was feeling as she watched the places she loved melt away. Reframing how we think about climate change asks us to accept uncertainty as a core principle \u2014 and while that can be deeply uncomfortable it also offers a truer understanding of the world around us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe notion of certainty is a fallacy,\u201d Koppes said. \u201cOr maybe I\u2019ll be more specific: the notion of control is a fallacy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more I spend time on this earth, the more I recognize how we are just one small part of a complex system,\u201d she explained. \u201cAnd complex systems are the process of emergent phenomena \u2014 you never quite know where it\u2019s going to go. The more we think that we understand or we have control, or we\u2019re certain about one aspect, the further we are from truly knowing everything is a web of relations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faced with the onset of the Younger Dryas, our ancestors probably didn\u2019t sit around arguing about how to stop the ice from advancing. It\u2019s far more likely they took stock of their surroundings and found ways to act quickly to protect the things they cared about most.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people will care about the decreasing glaciers and certain types of wildlife, whether that\u2019s butterflies or polar bears, or whatever,\u201d Stainforth said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think most people do. Their cares are smaller; their cares are more personal. I think the number one thing that we care about with respect to climate change is protecting our societies and our cultures. It\u2019s the world that we have, the world we\u2019ve grown up in, our support structure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stainforth said grounding conversations in how climate change affects what we care about is essential to spurring action \u2014 and hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be places where the train track needs rebuilding because of landslides, because of flooding or because of drought, or because of changes in the grasses that are growing there,\u201d he said. \u201cThese things are going to happen, and they\u2019re going to happen more and more frequently, because that\u2019s what climate change is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Responding to impacts will be a steady drain on government resources, he said, which in turn means \u201cwe won\u2019t have resources for other things \u2014 and that can be culture, it can be transport, it can be sports facilities or it could be health or education.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a threat to everything,\u201d Stainforth said. In response, we have to decide what to save. \u201cIt\u2019s about building a future that we want,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"AFaced with the existential threat posed by the rapidly changing climate, we have to decide what we want to save, climate scientist David Stainforth says. Photo: Matt Simmons \/ The Narwhal<\/p>\n

When American author and activist Rebecca Solnit wrote about hope, she emphasized the value of uncertainty.<\/p>\n

\u201cHope locates itself in the premises that we don\u2019t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act,\u201d she wrote in her 2004 book Hope in the Dark. \u201cWhen you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes \u2014 you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others.\u201d<\/p>\n

If we believe too firmly in a predictable future, Solnit writes, we risk setting ourselves on a path of apathy. Therein lies grief and anxiety and ruin. But if we accept uncertainty as a fundamental part of change, we can act accordingly.<\/p>\n

Koppes believes we can see this belief at work in the next generation. Her students have loosened their grip on certainty, she says, but not in an apathetic way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no longer any expectation that one can take a snapshot of time or a memory of place and that we can either get back to that time or that place \u2014 or that the environment and the climate was ever in a form of stasis,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re grasping at those components of their environments that are still bringing them joy, knowing that they might not exist for their lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, her students are accepting and embodying an existential truth: that everything is always in a state of change. And while we can\u2019t be certain about the risks of the future, we also can\u2019t predict how beautiful or resilient it might be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One day we might name this period for Chamaenerion angustifolium, the fireweed. Or maybe we\u2019ll go for Delonix regia, sometimes called the Phoenix tree. Like our distant relatives, not just enduring but thriving, we\u2019ll rise from the ashes into a world we co-created that protects all that we hold dear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Recorded by Matt Simmons Around 13,000 years ago, our blue planet got a lot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-757009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}