Well into the Anthropocene, we are now observing unprecedented and previously unimaginable rates of change in our natural environments, particularly our oceans. Our global science community has done an exceptional job building an understanding of historical changes and recent trends in our global climate. The IPCC and others have provided a comprehensive assessment of the causes and consequences of those changes. Importantly, they have also pointed out the limitations of our knowledge and emphasized the considerable uncertainty which constrains our ability to accurately predict rates of change and their cumulative and synergistic interactions.
Somewhat surprisingly, given what is at stake, the reaction of civil society to this scientific consensus has ranged from apathy to ambivalence to hostility. Those reactions have, in turn, had a negative impact on the motivations of many scientists and on public trust in science. Equally significantly they have also undermined the appetite for governance reforms that impact the speed of greenhouse gas emission reductions or enhance the adaptive capacity of ecosystems and communities. None of these trends augur well for an orderly transition to an intermediate range climate future or for new knowledge to be utilized effectively to help communities adapt as climate change impacts intensify.
There are a range of both near and longer-term options to better position scientific advice in global mitigation and adaptation processes. Some involve expanding the range of scientific approaches (“strokes”), such as more interdisciplinary approaches and greater public-private collaborations. Some involve bringing new forms of knowledge such as traditional ecological knowledge and new advocates for that knowledge (“folks”) from citizen scientists to technologists to the forefront of the discourse about the future of our oceans. Whatever strategy deployed, it all has to happen faster than we are currently responding; much faster.