Unfriendly Climate

气候不友好

气候不友好 · 官方页 · 存档源

O ne clear day last spring, Katharine Hayhoe walked into the limestone chambers of the Austin City Council to brief the members during a special meeting on how prepared the city was to deal with disasters and extreme weather.

去年春天的一个晴朗日子，凯瑟琳·海霍走进奥斯汀市议会的石灰岩会议厅，在一次特别会议上向议员们介绍该市应对灾害和极端天气的准备情况。

A respected atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, the 43-year-old had been invited to discuss climate change, and she breezed through her PowerPoint slides, delivering stark news in an upbeat manner: unless carbon emissions were swiftly curbed, in the coming decades Texas would see stronger heat waves, harsher summers, and torrential rainfall separated by longer periods of drought.

这位 43 岁的得克萨斯理工大学受人尊敬的大气科学家受邀讨论气候变化，她轻松地浏览了 PowerPoint 幻灯片，以乐观的方式传达了严峻的消息：除非迅速遏制碳排放，否则在未来几十年里，得克萨斯州将出现更强烈的热浪、更严酷的夏季和伴随着更长时间干旱的暴雨。

“Why do we care about all of this stuff?” Hayhoe asked.

“为什么我们关心所有这些东西？”海霍问道。

“Because it has huge financial impacts.” The number of billion-dollar weather disasters in the United States had ballooned from one or two per year in the eighties to eight to twelve today, Hayhoe explained as she pulled up a slide with a map of the country.

“因为它具有巨大的财务影响。”海霍一边拉出一张载有美国地图的幻灯片，一边解释道，美国造成损失数十亿美元的天气灾害数量已从八十年代的每年一两次激增至如今的八到十二次。

“Texas is in the crosshairs of those events, because we get it all, don’t we?

“德克萨斯州是这些事件的焦点，因为我们已经得到了一切，不是吗？

We get the floods and the droughts, the hailstorms and the ice storms, and even the snow and the extreme heat.

我们会遇到洪水和干旱，冰雹和冰暴，甚至下雪和酷热。

And we get the tornadoes, the hurricanes, and the sea-level rise.

我们还遇到了龙卷风、飓风和海平面上升。

There isn’t much that we don’t get.”

没有什么是我们得不到的。”

Soon afterward, Don Zimmerman, a conservative councilman who, before being elected, regularly sued the city over tax increases, declared from his seat on the dais that climate change was a “nebulous” and “foolish” field of study.

不久之后，保守派议员唐·齐默尔曼(Don Zimmerman)在当选前经常就增税问题起诉该市，他在讲台上宣称气候变化是一个“模糊”和“愚蠢”的研究领域。

Zimmerman, wearing a banker’s collar and projecting an officious air into the room, continued, “We have maybe thirty years of satellite data, and the world is maybe millions of years old.

齐默尔曼戴着银行家的领子，在房间里表现出一种多管闲事的气氛，他继续说道：“我们可能拥有三十年的卫星数据，而世界可能已有数百万年的历史。

I have a really visceral reaction against the climate-change argument, for the simple reason that when you look back in time, there have been dramatic climate changes before humanity ever existed.

我对气候变化的争论有一种发自内心的反应，原因很简单，当你回顾过去时，你会发现在人类存在之前就已经发生了剧烈的气候变化。

“The worst thing that can be done to humanity is put government bureaucrats in charge of carbon dioxide emissions,” he said as Hayhoe listened politely.

“对人类来说最糟糕的事情就是让政府官僚负责二氧化碳排放，”海霍礼貌地听着，他说道。

“You don’t have to be as smart as a fifth grader to know that what causes the climate is the sun.

“你不必像五年级学生一样聪明，也知道造成气候的原因是太阳。

I have people tell me, ‘Carbon dioxide warms the earth.’ No, it doesn’t.

有人告诉我，“二氧化碳使地球变暖。”不，事实并非如此。

The sun warms the earth, and there is more energy in our sun than humanity can comprehend.” Zimmerman then insisted that the sun didn’t need “a permit from the EPA” to emit solar flares.

太阳温暖了地球，而太阳中的能量比人类所能理解的还要多。”齐默尔曼随后坚称太阳不需要“美国环保局的许可”来发射太阳耀斑。

An uncomfortable silence settled over the chamber for a moment before Hayhoe joked, “I think if the EPA could be in charge of the sun, that could create bigger problems than we have today.” She then proceeded to gut Zimmerman’s arguments.

会议室内陷入了一阵令人不安的沉默，然后海霍开玩笑说：“我认为如果美国环保局能够负责太阳，那可能会造成比我们今天更大的问题。”然后她开始反驳齐默尔曼的论点。

“A thermometer is not Democrat or Republican, and when we look around this world, it’s not about trusting what our thirty-year-old satellites say.

“温度计不是民主党或共和党的，当我们环顾这个世界时，这并不是要相信我们三十年前的卫星所说的。

It’s about looking at 26,500 indicators of a warming planet, many of them we can see in our own backyards,” she said.

这是关于观察地球变暖的 26,500 个指标，其中许多我们可以在自家后院看到，”她说。

The climate was not changing because of orbital cycles, which bring about ice ages, Hayhoe maintained.

海霍坚持认为，气候并没有因为轨道周期而发生变化，轨道周期会带来冰河时代。

“The Earth’s temperature peaked eight thousand years ago and was in a long, slow slide into the next ice age until the Industrial Revolution,” she said.

“地球温度在八千年前达到顶峰，并在漫长而缓慢的时期滑入下一个冰河时代，直到工业革命，”她说。

Instead of being in this cooling period, the planet had seen its average temperature steadily rise.

地球的平均温度并未处于冷却期，而是稳步上升。

The sun was also not the culprit: “If the climate were changing because of the sun, we’d be getting cooler, because energy from the sun has been going down over the last forty years,” she said.

太阳也不是罪魁祸首：“如果气候因为太阳而变化，我们就会变得更冷，因为过去四十年来来自太阳的能量一直在减少，”她说。

But Zimmerman, it seemed, had no use for facts, and after the meeting he continued to harangue Hayhoe.

但齐默尔曼似乎对事实毫无用处，会后他继续对海霍进行长篇大论。

The encounter, however, came as no surprise.

然而，这次相遇并不令人意外。

In fact, it was depressingly familiar to Hayhoe, who has auburn hair, hazel eyes, and a calm, affable nature that is reminiscent of an excellent physician’s bedside manner.

事实上，这对海霍来说是令人沮丧的熟悉，他有着赤褐色的头发、淡褐色的眼睛，以及平静、和蔼可亲的性格，让人想起一位优秀医生在床边的态度。

And she often likens herself to a doctor, but her patient is the planet.

她经常把自己比作医生，但她的病人却是地球。

After taking its temperature, she feels compelled to report her diagnosis: because of man-made carbon emissions, the earth is running a fever.

量完体温后，她觉得有必要报告自己的诊断结果：由于人为碳排放，地球正在发烧。

She knows that this message doesn’t always find a receptive audience.

她知道这条信息并不总能找到听众。

Over the past fifteen years, climate change has emerged as one of the most polarizing issues in the country, ahead of guns, the death penalty, and abortion.

在过去的十五年里，气候变化已经成为这个国家最两极分化的问题之一，排在枪支、死刑和堕胎之前。

And there is no group that is more unconvinced of climate change’s reality than evangelical Christians, who primarily identify as conservative Republicans.

没有哪个群体比福音派基督徒更不相信气候变化的现实，他们主要被认为是保守的共和党人。

As Brian Webb, the founder of the faith-based Climate Caretakers, recently told Religion News Service: “The United States is the only industrialized country in the world where denial of climate change has become inextricably linked to a dominant political party.”

正如以信仰为基础的气候看护者组织的创始人布莱恩·韦伯最近告诉宗教新闻社的那样：“美国是世界上唯一一个否认气候变化与一个占主导地位的政党有着千丝万缕联系的工业化国家。”

All of which puts Hayhoe in a unique position.

所有这些都使海霍处于独特的地位。

A co-author of the last two National Climate Assessments and a reviewer on the Nobel Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Hayhoe—the daughter of missionaries and the wife of a pastor—is herself an evangelical Christian.

海霍是最近两次国家气候评估的合著者，也是获得诺贝尔奖的政府间气候变化专门委员会的审稿人，她是传教士的女儿和牧师的妻子，她自己也是一名福音派基督徒。

In her talks, she uses the Bible to explain to Christians why they should care about climate change and how it affects other people, from a poor family on the island nation of Kiribati who will be displaced by rising sea levels to an elderly couple in Beaumont who can’t afford to pay for air-conditioning in Texas’s increasingly sweltering summers.

在演讲中，她用圣经向基督徒解释为什么他们应该关心气候变化，以及它如何影响其他人，从岛国基里巴斯的一个贫困家庭，他们将因海平面上升而流离失所，到博蒙特的一对老年夫妇，他们在德克萨斯州越来越闷热的夏天买不起空调。

As she puts it, “The poor, the disenfranchised, those already living on the edge, and those who contributed least to this problem are also those at greatest risk to be harmed by it.

正如她所说，“穷人、被剥夺权利的人、已经生活在边缘的人，以及那些对这一问题贡献最小的人，也是最有可能受到该问题伤害的人。

That’s not a scientific issue; that’s a moral issue.”

这不是一个科学问题；而是一个问题。这是一个道德问题。”

Hayhoe maintains a dizzying schedule.

海霍的日程安排令人眼花缭乱。

In the past year, she has attended the historic United Nations climate summit in Paris, traveled to the edge of Hudson Bay, in Canada, to witness the annual polar bear migration, curated a special Good Housekeeping issue on climate change, and appeared onstage in New York with Gloria Steinem at a talk at the Rubin Museum of Art.

去年，她参加了在巴黎举行的历史性联合国气候峰会，前往加拿大哈德逊湾边缘目睹了一年一度的北极熊迁徙，策划了有关气候变化的“好管家”特刊，并与格洛丽亚·斯泰纳姆一起出现在纽约鲁宾艺术博物馆的演讲中。

That’s in addition to teaching her graduate-level seminars, serving as a co-director of Texas Tech’s Climate Science Center, and publishing seventeen scientific papers.

除此之外，她还教授研究生水平的研讨会、担任德克萨斯理工大学气候科学中心的联合主任，并发表了十七篇科学论文。

(Travel is essential for Hayhoe’s job but to do her part—and perhaps head off criticism about her carbon footprint—Hayhoe buys carbon offsets to reduce the impact of her trips.) One warm afternoon in October, on a day spent in Lubbock between visits to Colorado and Houston, Hayhoe spoke at a Phi Beta Kappa ice cream social inside Texas Tech’s Hall of Nations, a room draped with the flags of 190 countries and featuring a glossy terrazzo map of the world on the floor.

（旅行对于 Hayhoe 的工作来说至关重要，但为了尽自己的一份力量，也许还可以避免对她的碳足迹的批评，Hayhoe 购买了碳补偿，以减少她旅行的影响。）10 月的一个温暖的下午，在科罗拉多州和休斯顿之间的拉伯克度过的一天，Hayhoe 在得克萨斯理工大学国家大厅内的 Phi Beta Kappa 冰淇淋社交活动上发表了讲话，房间里挂满了 190 个国家的国旗，并以光滑的水磨石地图为特色。地板上的世界。

The crowd, mostly professors from across the university’s departments and a smattering of students, dug into Styrofoam bowls of vanilla and cookies and cream as Hayhoe, who was wearing a red top and flowing linen pants, began her speech.

当海霍穿着红色上衣和飘逸的亚麻裤开始演讲时，人群中大部分是来自大学各院系的教授和少数学生，他们把碗里的香草、饼干和奶油吃进聚苯乙烯泡沫塑料碗里。

“I’m a professor here at Tech, and what I’m going to talk about today is not my research.

“我是科技学院的教授，今天我要谈论的不是我的研究。

I’m going to talk about the experience that I have talking about my research.

我将谈谈我在研究方面的经历。

Now, most of you are not going to have the same experience I do.

现在，你们中的大多数人不会有和我一样的经历。

If you study literature, you don’t have to spend a lot of time convincing people that books are real.

如果你学习文学，你就不必花很多时间让人们相信书是真实的。

If you study engineering, most people will agree that engineering is real and it’s an important part of our society.

如果你学习工程学，大多数人都会同意工程学是真实的，并且它是我们社会的重要组成部分。

But I study something that about half of the country and much more than half of Texas thinks is a complete hoax,” she said.

但我研究的一些东西，大约一半的国家和超过一半的德克萨斯州人都认为这完全是一个骗局，”她说。

“Many people view having climate science at Texas Tech as similar to having a Department of Astrology.

“许多人认为德克萨斯理工大学的气候科学与占星学系类似。

But we don’t use crystal balls, we use supercomputers; we rely on physics, not brain waves.”

但我们不使用水晶球，我们使用超级计算机；我们依靠的是物理学，而不是脑电波。”

The study of climate science dates to 1824, when French physicist Joseph Fourier discovered what would become known as the greenhouse effect, in which gases trapped in the atmosphere absorb heat and raise the temperature of the planet.

气候科学研究可以追溯到 1824 年，当时法国物理学家约瑟夫·傅里叶发现了后来被称为温室效应的现象，即大气中的气体吸收热量并升高地球的温度。

It took 35 more years for John Tyndall, an Irish chemist, to pinpoint carbon dioxide as one of the heat-trapping gases in the earth’s atmosphere.

爱尔兰化学家约翰·廷德尔 (John Tyndall) 又花了 35 年时间才确定二氧化碳是地球大气中的吸热气体之一。

And in 1896, a Swedish chemist named Svante Arrhenius declared that burning coal contributed to the greenhouse effect, after spending almost 2 years calculating (by hand!) how increasing carbon dioxide concentrations raised the earth’s temperature.

1896 年，一位名叫斯万特·阿伦尼乌斯 (Svante Arrhenius) 的瑞典化学家在花了近两年时间（手工计算！）计算二氧化碳浓度如何升高地球温度后，宣布燃烧煤炭会导致温室效应。

So the basic science, as Hayhoe often points out, has been settled since before the start of the twentieth century.

因此，正如海霍经常指出的那样，基础科学在二十世纪初就已经解决了。

Today, there is robust scientific consensus that global warming is “real, caused by humans, and dangerous”; a study found that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that anthropogenic climate change is happening, and many scientific organizations have issued statements that it is a threat.

如今，科学界已达成强有力的共识，即全球变暖是“真实的，由人类造成的，而且是危险的”；一项研究发现，97% 的气候科学家同意人为气候变化正在发生，许多科学组织已发表声明称这是一种威胁。

* The Department of Defense calls climate change a “threat multiplier,” because it exacerbates existing problems.

* 国防部称气候变化为“威胁倍增器”，因为它加剧了现有问题。

And the year 2015 was the warmest on record, breaking the previous mark, which was set in 2014.

2015 年是有记录以来最热的一年，打破了 2014 年创下的纪录。

So why is climate science greeted with so much skepticism?

那么，为什么气候科学受到如此多的怀疑呢？

Part of the reason can be attributed to the way the topic is often handled in the media.

部分原因可归因于媒体处理该话题的方式。

On cable news, two people from opposite sides of the debate are typically paired to argue about the subject, but that can lead to a false equivalency between scientists on the one hand and paid spokesmen on the other.

在有线电视新闻中，来自辩论对立双方的两个人通常会配对来争论这个话题，但这可能会导致一方面是科学家，另一方面是付费发言人之间的错误等同。

As historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M.

正如历史学家 Naomi Oreskes 和 Erik M.

Conway chronicled in the book Merchants of Doubt, some of the most prominent climate-change skeptics are the same politically conservative scientists who were previously funded by Big Tobacco to spread falsehoods about cigarettes.

康威在《怀疑商人》一书中记载，一些最著名的气候变化怀疑论者是政治上保守的科学家，他们之前受到大烟草公司的资助，散布有关香烟的谎言。

Their employer this time around?

这次他们的雇主是？

The fossil-fuel industry.

化石燃料工业。

And part of the reason is the suspicions that conservatives have of government intervention.

部分原因是保守派对政府干预的怀疑。

Hayhoe has found that some people don’t reject the reality of climate change because they disagree with the science but because they fear that the solutions will upend their lives.

海霍发现，有些人拒绝气候变化的现实并不是因为他们不同意科学，而是因为他们担心解决方案会颠覆他们的生活。

This seems to be the case for U.S. senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, who once told journalist Rachel Maddow, “I thought it must be true until I found out what it would cost.” That day at Tech, Hayhoe recounted an anecdote about an experience she’d had speaking to a group of water managers for the Brazos River a few months back.

来自俄克拉荷马州的共和党参议员詹姆斯·英霍夫(James Inhofe)似乎就是这种情况，他曾对记者雷切尔·玛多(Rachel Maddow)说，“我认为这一定是真的，直到我弄清楚这会花费多少钱。”那天在 Tech 上，海霍讲述了几个月前她与布拉索斯河的一群水管理人员交谈的经历的轶事。

At the end of that talk, an older man stood up and said, “Everything you said makes sense, but I don’t want the government telling me where to set my thermostat.”

演讲结束时，一位年长的男子站起来说：“你说的一切都有道理，但我不希望政府告诉我在哪里设置恒温器。”

Some critics feel so threatened that they resort to ad hominem attacks on climate scientists.

一些批评者感到受到了如此大的威胁，以至于他们对气候科学家进行人身攻击。

Hayhoe receives a steady stream of hate mail, which she files away in a special folder.

海霍收到源源不断的仇恨邮件，她将这些邮件归档在一个特殊的文件夹中。

When I asked her when this started, she replied, “The first time I was ever quoted in a newspaper article.” The ugliness reached its height in 2012, during the presidential race.

当我问她这是什么时候开始的时候，她回答说：“这是我第一次在报纸文章中被引用。”这种丑陋现象在2012年总统竞选期间达到了顶峰。

At the time, Hayhoe was writing a chapter on global warming for a book Republican hopeful Newt Gingrich was co-authoring about the environment.

当时，海霍正在为共和党候选人纽特·金里奇（Newt Gingrich）合着的一本有关环境的书撰写有关全球变暖的章节。

Rush Limbaugh mentioned it on his radio program, dismissively referring to Hayhoe as a “climate babe.” A few days later, an Iowa voter buttonholed Gingrich on camera to ask him about it, and Gingrich swiftly replied, “That’s not going to be in the book.

拉什·林堡在他的广播节目中提到了这一点，并轻蔑地称海霍为“气候宝贝”。几天后，一位爱荷华州选民在镜头前扣住金里奇询问此事，金里奇迅速回答说：“这不会出现在书中。

We didn’t know that they were doing that—we told them to kill it.” Hayhoe took to Twitter to respond: “What an ungracious way to find out, eh?

我们不知道他们在这么做——我们告诉他们要杀了它。”海霍在推特上回应道：“这是一种多么不礼貌的方式来找出答案，嗯？

Nice to hear that Gingrich is tossing my #climate chapter in the trash.

很高兴听到金里奇将我的#climate 章节扔进垃圾桶。

100+ unpaid hrs I cd’ve spent playing w my baby.”

我花了 100 多个无薪时间陪我的孩子玩耍。”

Most of the time, she laughs these incidents off.

大多数时候，她对这些事件一笑置之。

“I got one today that was exceptional,” she told me in late September, as we sat inside the Climate Science Center.

“我今天得到了一个非常特别的东西，”九月下旬，当我们坐在气候科学中心内时，她告诉我。

“Most of the stuff is rambling, but this one was not.

“大部分内容都是漫无目的的，但这个却不是。

Someone wrote on Facebook, ‘She is a lying lunatic, and probably a witch.’ That was very concise,” she said with a grin.

有人在脸书上写道，‘她是一个撒谎的疯子，而且很可能是个女巫。’这句话非常简洁。”她笑着说道。

But sometimes the comments veer into violent territory.

但有时评论会转向暴力领域。

Hayhoe recalls one email that prompted her to call authorities.

海霍回忆起一封促使她打电话给当局的电子邮件。

“You are a mass murderer and will be convicted at the Reality TV Grand Jury in Nuremberg, Pennsylvania,” the email began.

电子邮件开头写道：“你是一名大规模杀人犯，将在宾夕法尼亚州纽伦堡的真人秀电视大陪审团被定罪。”

“After the Grand Jury indicts you, I would like to see you convicted and beheaded by guillotine in the public square, to show women that if they are going to take a man’s job, they have to take the heat for mass murder.” But most of the time, Hayhoe doesn’t let such vitriol drive her to despair, though dealing with it can be exhausting.

“在大陪审团起诉你之后，我希望看到你被定罪并在公共广场被断头台斩首，以向女性表明，如果她们要取代男人的工作，就必须承受大规模谋杀的压力。”但大多数时候，海霍不会让这样的尖酸刻薄让她感到绝望，尽管处理它可能会让人筋疲力尽。

“What frustrates me the most, and what I find difficult not to take personally, is how much of the hate mail comes from so-called Christians.”

“最让我沮丧的是，有多少仇恨邮件来自所谓的基督徒，这让我很难不把自己当成是针对自己的。”

That bile is something Hayhoe never anticipated when she was applying to graduate school 22 years ago.

这种愤怒是海霍 22 年前申请研究生院时从未预料到的。

A native of Toronto, she had double-majored in physics and astronomy at the University of Toronto and spent every clear night one summer gazing through the telescopes on top of the physics building.

她是多伦多人，在多伦多大学攻读物理和天文学双学位，夏天的每一个晴朗的夜晚，她都通过物理楼顶的望远镜进行观察。

She found that the astronomer’s life appealed to her and planned to study that in graduate school.

她发现天文学家的生活对她很有吸引力，并计划在研究生院学习这一专业。

Then she took a climatology class her junior year.

然后她在大三时参加了气候学课程。

“Until I took that course, I did not realize that climate change is affecting everything, from poverty to biodiversity to health, and so you can’t fix any one of them if you leave climate change out of the picture,” she told me.

“在我学习这门课程之前，我没有意识到气候变化正在影响一切，从贫困到生物多样性再到健康，所以如果你不考虑气候变化，你就无法解决其中任何一个问题，”她告诉我。

She also realized that her background in physics had perfectly positioned her to study climate modeling.

她还意识到，她的物理学背景非常适合她研究气候建模。

If she was going to leave astronomy behind, Hayhoe wanted to do policy-relevant climate science.

如果海霍打算放弃天文学，她想从事与政策相关的气候科学。

When she was considering graduate programs, she was thrilled to learn that Don Wuebbles, who had been instrumental in addressing the chlorofluorocarbon problem in the eighties, was the new head of the department of atmospheric science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

当她考虑研究生课程时，她很高兴得知唐·乌布尔斯 (Don Wuebbles) 是伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校大气科学系的新任系主任，他在八十年代为解决氯氟碳问题做出了重要贡献。

He would serve as her adviser for both her master’s degree and her doctorate.

他将担任她的硕士和博士学位的导师。

Under Wuebbles’s guidance, Hayhoe eventually began focusing on statistical downscaling, which was still a relatively new field when she started graduate school, in 1995.

在 Wuebbles 的指导下，Hayhoe 最终开始专注于统计降尺度，当她 1995 年开始读研究生时，这仍然是一个相对较新的领域。

“There was very little of this being done at the time,” Wuebbles recalled recently, “and the methods were not capturing the full extent of the science, so she set about to develop a new technique and very successfully did so.

“当时在这方面做得很少，”乌布尔斯最近回忆道，“而且这些方法并没有涵盖科学的全部内容，所以她开始开发一种新技术，并且非常成功。

She’s brilliant.”

她很聪明。”

Statistical downscaling involves combining historical weather observations with global-climate models to better predict what the future could look like in a particular place.

统计降尺度涉及将历史天气观测与全球气候模型相结合，以更好地预测特定地点的未来情况。

“The local environment, whether it’s hilly or flat, with crops or forest, urban or rural, modifies the weather patterns we get,” she said.

“当地的环境，无论是丘陵还是平坦，农作物还是森林，城市还是乡村，都会改变我们的天气模式，”她说。

“So, for example, if we had identical high-pressure systems over Lubbock and Houston, it would mean something different for the temperature, for the humidity, for the rainfall patterns.” Hayhoe also tries to see if the global models reflect real-world conditions on the ground.

“因此，举例来说，如果拉伯克和休斯顿上空有相同的高压系统，那么温度、湿度和降雨模式就会有所不同。”海霍还试图了解全球模型是否反映了现实世界的情况。

“When we get an El Niño, we see a very wet winter from here in Lubbock all the way across to Florida.

“当我们遇到厄尔尼诺现象时，我们会看到从拉伯克一直到佛罗里达州都会经历一个非常潮湿的冬天。

Do the models pick that up or not?

模特们是否注意到了这一点？

We need to know,” she explained.

我们需要知道，”她解释道。

Hayhoe runs simulations on a supercomputer, then she combs through the data to interpret the output.

海霍在超级计算机上运行模拟，然后梳理数据以解释输出。

On a practical level, this means Hayhoe exists in a world of numbers, thousands upon thousands of lines of them.

在实际层面上，这意味着 Hayhoe 存在于一个数字世界中，其中有成千上万行。

A single file dealing with one variable—say, temperature across the country over the next hundred years—can be almost five gigabytes in size.

处理一个变量（例如，未来百年全国的温度）的单个文件的大小可能接近 5 GB。

And she runs these simulations for multiple variables and scenarios on multiple climate models.

她对多个气候模型的多个变量和场景进行了模拟。

(Some 42 global-climate models exist today, run by labs around the world.) These reams of data are shapeless until she translates them by writing code.

（目前存在大约 42 个全球气候模型，由世界各地的实验室运行。）这些大量数据在她通过编写代码进行翻译之前是无形的。

“What a lot of people don’t realize is that the most important skill any climate scientist has is programming,” she told me over pizza in Lubbock one afternoon last fall.

“很多人没有意识到，气候科学家所拥有的最重要的技能就是编程，”去年秋天的一个下午，她在拉伯克吃披萨时告诉我。

Hayhoe has used downscaling in her consulting work for the cities of Washington, D.C.; Boulder; and Chicago, as well as federal entities, including the Department of Defense and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

海霍在华盛顿特区城市的咨询工作中采用了缩小规模的方法；博尔德；和芝加哥，以及联邦实体，包括国防部和美国鱼类和野生动物管理局。

She helps analyze problem areas, such as sewer overflow during heavy rain or warped train rails during heat waves, and tries to pinpoint how often those things will be a problem in the future, based on changing climate patterns.

她帮助分析问题区域，例如大雨期间下水道溢出或热浪期间火车铁轨变形，并试图根据不断变化的气候模式确定这些问题在未来出现问题的频率。

In 2004 Hayhoe was an author on a paper that examined California’s future from different angles, from water supply to agriculture to tourism.

2004 年，海霍作为作者发表了一篇论文，从供水、农业到旅游业等不同角度审视了加州的未来。

She was heartened when, a few months later, that research prompted Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign an executive order limiting greenhouse-gas emissions.

几个月后，当这项研究促使州长阿诺·施瓦辛格签署一项限制温室气体排放的行政命令时，她感到很振奋。

He was the first governor to do so.

他是第一位这样做的州长。

“When Schwarzenegger signed that bill, he had the authors from California standing in a semicircle behind him.

“当施瓦辛格签署该法案时，他让来自加利福尼亚州的作者在他身后站成半圆。

The reason why I left astrophysics is to do policy-relevant research, and when I saw that picture, I thought to myself, ‘I did it.

我离开天体物理学的原因是去做政策相关的研究，当我看到那张照片时，我心想，‘我做到了。

This works.’ ”

这行得通。’”

Hayhoe’s scientific credentials are impeccable, but what has made her an international star are her skills as a communicator.

海霍的科学资历无可挑剔，但让她成为国际明星的是她的沟通技巧。

John Abraham, an associate professor of thermal sciences at the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, has called her “one of the best climate communicators in the world.” Abraham told me, “She is extraordinary at relaying very complex topics into language that other people can understand, without speaking down to them.

明尼苏达州圣托马斯大学热科学副教授约翰·亚伯拉罕称她为“世界上最好的气候传播者之一”。亚伯拉罕告诉我，“她非常擅长将非常复杂的话题转述成其他人可以理解的语言，而无需居高临下地对他们说话。

The other thing she’s good at is hearing questions.

她擅长的另一件事是听问题。

We all listen, but she has this innate ability to understand the perspective of the person making the inquiry,” he said.

我们都在倾听，但她有一种天生的能力，能够理解提问者的观点，”他说。

“She has this knack for honestly presenting the science but doing it in a disarming way for people who are often anti-science.”

“她有一种诚实地展示科学的本领，但同时又以一种让那些经常反科学的人解除戒备的方式进行。”

One mild Friday in early October, I flew to Houston with Hayhoe and her eight-year-old son, who spent the short flight absorbed in the game Minecraft on his iPad while Hayhoe tapped away on her laptop.

10 月初的一个天气温和的星期五，我和 Hayhoe 以及她 8 岁的儿子一起飞往休斯敦，在短暂的飞行途中，Hayhoe 的儿子全神贯注地玩着 iPad 上的《我的世界》游戏，而 Hayhoe 则在笔记本电脑上敲击着。

She was to give a keynote speech at Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church, a collection of limestone buildings nestled between pine trees in one of Houston’s most affluent neighborhoods.

她将在纪念大道长老会教堂发表主题演讲，该教堂是休斯顿最富裕社区之一的松树丛中的石灰岩建筑群。

The weekend symposium was called “Faithful Alternatives to Fossil Fuel Divestment.” Hayhoe arrived with some tough talk for her audience.

周末研讨会被称为“化石燃料撤资的忠实替代方案”。海霍带着一些强硬的言论来到了她的听众面前。

“There’s no way to sugarcoat this, and I wish I could, because I know I’m in Houston, but the way that we get our energy does matter.

“没有办法粉饰这一点，我希望我可以，因为我知道我在休斯顿，但我们获取能量的方式确实很重要。

If we continue to rely only on fossil fuels, we’re going to end up on a very different pathway than if we gradually and sensibly transition to clean and renewable energy that we can grow here in Texas—and that many of our energy companies are already investing in very heavily.”

如果我们继续仅依赖化石燃料，那么我们最终将走上一条截然不同的道路，而如果我们逐渐明智地转向清洁和可再生能源，我们可以在德克萨斯州种植这种能源，而且我们的许多能源公司已经在这方面进行了大量投资。”

The conference was organized in response to the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s proposal to divest church resources from fossil fuels, a move the Houston chapter had rejected as a symbolic one that unfairly vilified the people who work in the fossil-fuel industry.

这次会议是为了响应长老会（美国）从化石燃料中剥离教会资源的提议而组织的，休斯顿分会拒绝了这一举措，认为这是一种象征性的举措，不公平地诽谤了化石燃料行业的从业人员。

The group instead proposed that the national organization take steps to reduce its carbon footprint and advocate for a carbon tax.

相反，该组织建议国家组织采取措施减少碳足迹并倡导征收碳税。

Hayhoe, too, is a proponent of putting a price on carbon and letting the markets sort it out.

海霍也支持对碳定价并让市场来解决。

She thinks that a reasonable tax on gasoline would be around 6 cents a gallon.

她认为合理的汽油税约为每加仑 6 美分。

“Regulations just get more and more complicated, and you have to hire new people to deal with them,” she explained.

“法规变得越来越复杂，你必须雇用新人来处理这些问题，”她解释道。

“It gets expensive and difficult to plot your strategy, but any business–from the ma-and-pa shop around the corner to the biggest multinational in the world–knows what to do with a simple price change.

“制定战略的成本高昂且困难，但任何企业——从街角的夫妻店到世界上最大的跨国公司——都知道如何应对简单的价格变化。

Business is all about maximizing profit and minimizing costs.

商业的本质就是利润最大化和成本最小化。

So in a sense, putting a price on carbon just frees up business to do what it does best.”

因此，从某种意义上说，为碳定价只是让企业能够自由地做自己最擅长的事情。”

But the most revealing part of her talk centered on why Christians should care about climate change.

但她演讲中最具启发性的部分集中在为什么基督徒应该关心气候变化。

To lead into this subject, Hayhoe flipped to a slide with a quote from John Holdren, President Obama’s science adviser: “We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation, or suffering.

为了引导这个主题，海霍翻到了一张幻灯片，引用了奥巴马总统的科学顾问约翰·霍尔德伦的话：“我们基本上有三个选择：缓解、适应或痛苦。

We’re going to do some of each.

我们将分别做一些。

The question is what the mix is going to be.

问题是混合将会是什么。

The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be.” Suffering, Hayhoe said, is not a word often deployed by scientists.

我们采取的缓解措施越多，所需的适应就越少，痛苦也就越少。”海霍说，科学家们并不经常使用“痛苦”这个词。

“As scientists we don’t know a lot about suffering, but as Christians we do.

“作为科学家，我们对苦难了解不多，但作为基督徒，我们了解很多。

And we know that part of the reason we’re here in this world is to help people who are suffering.” And that suffering will not be meted out proportionally: if global warming continues unchecked, the poor—whether they’re in Houston’s Fifth Ward or in low-lying areas of Bangladesh—who have contributed least to carbon emissions will feel the most pain, from enduring more-intense heat waves to paying the higher food prices that will accompany failed crops.

我们知道，我们来到这个世界上的部分原因是为了帮助那些遭受苦难的人们。”而且这种痛苦不会按比例得到补偿：如果全球变暖继续不受控制，那些对碳排放贡献最少的穷人——无论是在休斯敦第五区还是在孟加拉国的低洼地区——将感受到最大的痛苦，从忍受更强烈的热浪到支付伴随农作物歉收而上涨的粮食价格。

Throughout the Bible, God charges Christians to serve others, Hayhoe said, from Genesis, where God makes man in his image so that he can be responsible for every living creature on earth, to 1 Peter 4:10: “ ‘Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.’

海霍说，在整本圣经中，神都要求基督徒为他人服务，从《创世记》到《彼得前书》4:10，上帝按照自己的形象创造了人，以便他能够对地球上的每一个生物负责。

“We’ve been given this commandment to love others as Christ loved us,” Hayhoe said as a slide quoting John 13:34–35 flashed on the screen: “ ‘Let me give you a new command: love one another.

海霍说：“我们被赋予了这条诫命，要像基督爱我们一样去爱别人。”屏幕上闪现出一张引用约翰福音 13 章 34-35 节的幻灯片：“‘让我给你一条新命令：彼此相爱。

In the same way I loved you, you love one another.

就像我爱你一样，你们也彼此相爱。

This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.’ ” She continued: “You can see, you just go through the Bible for verse after verse.

这就是当每个人看到你们对彼此的爱时，他们就会认识到你们是我的门徒。”她继续说：“你可以看到，你只需逐节地阅读圣经即可。

They’re not verses about climate change; they’re not verses about the environment.

它们不是关于气候变化的诗句；而是关于气候变化的诗句。它们不是关于环境的诗句。

They’re verses about our attitudes and perspectives to other people on the planet.

它们是关于我们对地球上其他人的态度和观点的诗句。

We are to be recognized for our love for other people.” The members of the crowd nodded along in agreement as she spoke.

我们应该因为对他人的爱而得到认可。”当她说话时，人群纷纷点头表示同意。

The year 2015 was a good one to be proclaiming this message: in June, Pope Francis sent out his 192-page papal encyclical imploring the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to care about climate change, and in October, the National Association of Evangelicals issued a similar call to action.

2015 年是宣扬这一信息的好一年：6 月，方济各教皇发出了 192 页的教皇通谕，恳求世界上 12 亿天主教徒关心气候变化，10 月，全国福音派协会也发出了类似的行动呼吁。

Hayhoe can speak honestly about suffering because of a lesson she learned when her parents became missionaries and moved the family to Colombia when she was nine.

海霍可以诚实地谈论苦难，因为她在九岁时父母成为传教士并举家搬到哥伦比亚时学到了教训。

There, she witnessed true poverty.

在那里，她目睹了真正的贫困。

Her father would travel to remote villages to speak at tiny churches, and she remembers hearing stories of landslides washing away homes after heavy rains.

她的父亲会前往偏远的村庄在小教堂演讲，她记得听到过大雨后山体滑坡冲毁房屋的故事。

She now recognizes that these early memories of poverty and vulnerability have informed her work.

她现在认识到，这些关于贫困和脆弱的早期记忆影响了她的工作。

Hayhoe was raised as a member of the Plymouth Brethren, a conservative, evangelical offshoot of the Anglican Church that emphasizes reading the Bible and interpreting it for oneself.

海霍是普利茅斯兄弟会的成员之一，该兄弟会是英国圣公会的一个保守的福音派分支，强调阅读圣经并为自己解释圣经。

This lent itself well to science, Hayhoe told me.

海霍告诉我，这非常适合科学。

“My dad was very much of the perspective that the Bible is God’s first book and nature—creation—is God’s second book.”

“我父亲非常认同《圣经》是上帝的第一本书，而自然——创造——是上帝的第二本书。”

Though Hayhoe has always been serious about her faith, connecting with groups of fellow Christians about climate change was not something she did before moving to Texas.

尽管海霍一直认真对待自己的信仰，但在搬到德克萨斯州之前，她并没有与基督徒同伴就气候变化问题进行交流。

In 2006 she and her husband, Andrew Farley, relocated from South Bend, Indiana, to Lubbock, one of the most conservative cities in the country, so that they could both take jobs at Texas Tech, he as a linguistics professor, she as a researcher.

2006 年，她和丈夫安德鲁·法利 (Andrew Farley) 从印第安纳州南本德搬到了美国最保守的城市之一拉伯克，这样他们就可以在德克萨斯理工大学找到工作，他担任语言学教授，她担任研究员。

He also became the pastor at a small nondenominational church on the southwest side of town, now called Church Without Religion.

他还成为城镇西南侧一座小型非宗派教堂的牧师，该教堂现在被称为“无宗教教堂”。

People were surprised when they learned what the pastor’s wife did, and Farley started getting lots of questions about it.

当人们得知牧师妻子的所作所为时，他们感到很惊讶，法利开始收到很多关于这件事的问题。

And at Texas Tech, the invitations for Hayhoe to speak about climate change started rolling in.

在德克萨斯理工大学，海霍谈论气候变化的邀请开始纷至沓来。

The volume of these questions and the lack of resources to point people to spurred her and Farley to write a book together, A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions.

这些问题的数量之多，以及缺乏资源来引导人们，促使她和法利一起写了一本书，《气候变化：基于信仰的决策的全球变暖事实》。

The questions they tackle in the book were familiar territory for the couple, who had met through a Christian organization while in graduate school.

他们在书中解决的问题对这对夫妇来说是熟悉的领域，他们是在研究生院时通过一个基督教组织认识的。

A few months into their marriage, Hayhoe realized that Farley, who had grown up in a conservative household in Virginia, did not think climate change was real, and they began vigorously debating the topic.

结婚几个月后，海霍意识到在弗吉尼亚州一个保守家庭长大的法利并不认为气候变化是真实的，于是他们开始就这个话题进行激烈的辩论。

“It took about two years, but now we’re on the same side,” she said.

“这花了大约两年的时间，但现在我们站在同一边，”她说。

But beyond just speaking to Christian groups, Hayhoe prides herself on being able to talk to anyone with an open mind about the reality of climate change.

但除了与基督教团体交谈之外，海霍还为自己能够与任何持开放态度的人谈论气候变化的现实而感到自豪。

She bemoans the fact that global warming has come to be viewed as a niche environmental issue.

她对全球变暖已被视为一个小众环境问题的事实感到遗憾。

“To care about climate change, all you have to be, pretty much, is a human living on planet Earth.

“要关心气候变化，你必须是一个生活在地球上的人。

You can be exactly who you are with exactly the values you have, and I can show you how those values connect to climate change,” Hayhoe told me.

你可以凭借你所拥有的价值观成为你自己，我可以向你展示这些价值观如何与气候变化联系起来，”海霍告诉我。

Hayhoe’s first step is always to “genuinely bond over a shared value,” with an emphasis on that shared value’s being genuine.

海霍的第一步始终是“在共同价值观上真正建立联系”，并强调共同价值观是真实的。

“The key is not to pretend; we can all smell someone who is not genuine a mile away,” she said.

“If I’m talking to farmers or ranchers or water managers, I start off by talking about what we all care about, which is making sure we have water.

“如果我与农民、牧场主或水资源管理者交谈，我首先会谈论我们都关心的事情，那就是确保我们有水。

And that, for many Texans, is almost as strong of a value as whatever it says in the Bible.” Her next step is to connect that issue to climate change.

对于许多德克萨斯人来说，这几乎和圣经中所说的一样具有重要的价值。”她的下一步是将这个问题与气候变化联系起来。

So when talking about water, she describes how climate change is changing rainfall patterns.

因此，在谈论水时，她描述了气候变化如何改变降雨模式。

“We’re getting these heavy downpours, and then we’re getting longer dry periods in between, and our droughts are getting stronger because the warmer it is, the more water evaporates out of our lakes and rivers and our soil,” she said.

她说：“我们遭遇了倾盆大雨，然后干旱期变得越来越长，干旱也越来越严重，因为天气越暖和，我们的湖泊、河流和土壤中蒸发的水就越多。”

She tries to end her talks with solutions that inspire people, ranging from the personal (measuring your carbon footprint and installing energy-efficient light bulbs) to the large-scale (putting a tax on carbon).

她试图以激励人们的解决方案来结束她的演讲，这些解决方案从个人（测量碳足迹和安装节能灯泡）到大规模（对碳征税）。

Hayhoe herself is most excited by the efforts of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and founder of SpaceX.

海霍本人对特斯拉汽车公司首席执行官兼 SpaceX 创始人埃隆·马斯克的努力最为兴奋。

“If I had to pick one person to save the world—and I don’t think any one person will but if I had to pick one—it would be him.” She is excited about the battery packs that Tesla is developing, declaring energy storage the “single technology that will make the most difference.”

“如果我必须选择一个人来拯救世界——我认为没有人会这样做，但如果我必须选择一个人——那就是他。”她对特斯拉正在开发的电池组感到兴奋，并宣称储能是“将带来最大改变的单一技术”。

Ultimately, she does not care whether people agree with the science, so long as they take action.

最终，她并不关心人们是否同意科学，只要他们采取行动即可。

She compares this to a battle waged in the mid-1800’s, before the germ theory of disease gained widespread acceptance, when a Hungarian physician urged other doctors to wash their hands and instruments before delivering babies.

她将这与 1800 年代中期发生的一场战斗进行了比较，当时疾病的细菌理论还没有得到广泛接受，当时一位匈牙利医生敦促其他医生在接生婴儿之前洗手和清洗器械。

As doctors changed their habits, fewer and fewer women died from “childbed fever.” “I don’t care if they thought germs are imaginary, so long as they washed their hands,” she said.

随着医生改变习惯，死于“产床热”的妇女越来越少。 “我不在乎他们是否认为细菌是虚构的，只要他们洗手，”她说。

The same is true for climate change, in Hayhoe’s mind.

在海霍看来，气候变化也是如此。

If people start using more-efficient light bulbs or driving more-fuel-friendly cars, it doesn’t matter what they think about the science.

如果人们开始使用更高效的灯泡或驾驶更省油的汽车，他们对科学的看法并不重要。

Hayhoe is coy about her own personal politics, and this air of mystery is useful to her.

海霍对自己的个人政治态度讳莫如深，这种神秘的气氛对她很有用。

When I asked her about another Canadian-born Texan, climate-change skeptic and senator Ted Cruz, she demurred.

She’s a U.S. permanent resident but not a citizen, so she can’t vote in the presidential election, and she seems to enjoy the level of remove this gives her from American politics.

她是美国永久居民，但不是公民，所以她不能在总统选举中投票，而且她似乎很享受这给她带来的美国政坛的疏离感。

“It helps me not to pick sides, because people always ask if you’re Democrat or Republican, and I’m neither.

“这帮助我不选边站，因为人们总是问你是民主党还是共和党，而我两者都不是。

I can’t be,” she told me.

我不能，”她告诉我。

“I appreciate the solutions that some Republicans are starting to advance, and I appreciate the fact that Democrats accept the science.

“我很欣赏一些共和党人开始提出的解决方案，也很欣赏民主党人接受科学这一事实。

But it’s become so polarized that the good people on both sides are being marginalized.” Whoever the next president is, Hayhoe hopes he or she will honor the commitments made at the climate summit in Paris last year and also put a price on carbon.

但它已经变得如此两极分化，双方的好人都被边缘化了。”无论下一任总统是谁，海霍都希望他或她能够兑现去年巴黎气候峰会上做出的承诺，并对碳定价。

Hayhoe’s religious background led NOVA’s Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers to dub her a “climate change evangelist” in 2011, and the label has stuck, though she is lukewarm on it.

海霍的宗教背景使得 NOVA 的《科学家和工程师的秘密生活》在 2011 年称她为“气候变化传播者”，这个标签一直沿袭下来，尽管她对此并不冷淡。

“An evangelist is someone who spreads good news, and I feel like I’m not really evangelizing.

“传道者是传播好消息的人，但我觉得我并没有真正在传福音。

I feel more like a Cassandra, or an Old Testament prophet spreading bad news, saying, ‘If thou dost not change from thy wicked ways and repent, thou shalt reap the harvest of thy deeds.’ ” But when Hayhoe talks, she doesn’t sound so pessimistic.

我感觉自己更像是一位卡桑德拉，或者一位散布坏消息的《旧约》先知，说：“如果你不改变你的邪恶行为并悔改，你就会自食恶果。”但当海霍说话时，她听起来并不那么悲观。

That’s a strategic choice, as she realizes that doom and despair won’t motivate others to act.

这是一个战略选择，因为她意识到厄运和绝望不会激励其他人采取行动。

For that, you need hope.

为此，你需要希望。

“You have to offer people a vision of what the world could look like if we could wean ourselves off fossil fuels, if we could have a clean-energy economy,” she said.

“你必须向人们展示如果我们能够摆脱对化石燃料的依赖，如果我们能够拥有清洁能源经济，世界会是什么样子，”她说。

“We would all want to live in that world.”

“我们都想生活在那个世界里。”

Lyndon Baines Johnson was at his ranch outside Johnson City recuperating from gallbladder surgery on November 5, 1965, when his science advisers published a 317-page report warning about the dangers of air pollution.

1965 年 11 月 5 日，林登·贝恩斯·约翰逊 (Lyndon Baines Johnson) 正在约翰逊城外的牧场里进行胆囊手术康复，当时他的科学顾问发表了一份长达 317 页的报告，警告空气污染的危险。

Tucked away in an appendix were 23 pages about atmospheric carbon dioxide.

附录里藏着 23 页关于大气二氧化碳的内容。

“Through his worldwide industrial civilization, Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment,” the report states.

报告指出：“通过世界范围的工业文明，人类正在不知不觉中进行大规模的地球物理实验。”

“Within a few generations he is burning the fossil fuels that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years.” This additional carbon in the atmosphere would, over time, raise the earth’s temperature, slowly melt the antarctic ice cap, and lead to increased ocean acidity, the report proclaimed.

“在几代人的时间里，他正在燃烧过去五亿年来在地球上慢慢积累的化石燃料。”报告称，随着时间的推移，大气中额外的碳将提高地球温度，缓慢融化南极冰盖，并导致海洋酸度增加。

“The climate changes that may be produced by the increased CO2 content could be deleterious from the point of human beings,” the report concluded.

报告总结道：“从人类的角度来看，二氧化碳含量增加可能造成的气候变化可能是有害的。”

Fifty years later, Hayhoe gave the capstone presentation at a daylong symposium in Washington commemorating the first time a president was warned about the danger of climate change.

五十年后，海霍在华盛顿举行的为期一天的研讨会上发表了总结演讲，纪念首次向总统发出有关气候变化危险的警告。

“As several have already said today, we are conducting an experiment with our planet on a scale that has never before been attempted,” she said, echoing the words of the report.

“正如今天一些人已经说过的那样，我们正在对我们的星球进行一项前所未有的规模的实验，”她说，呼应了报告的内容。

The climate models that scientists now use churn out petabytes of data—which is something like, in Hayhoe’s words, “twenty million four-drawer filing cabinets full of text”—that then need to be analyzed to see how these changes will manifest in particular locales.

科学家现在使用的气候模型会产生数拍字节的数据（用 Hayhoe 的话说，这就像“两千万个装满文本的四抽屉文件柜”），然后需要对这些数据进行分析，以了解这些变化在特定地点将如何体现。

“What’s the point of doing all of that modeling and all of that analysis if we don’t understand how it’s going to affect the system right here that we care about?”

“如果我们不明白它将如何影响我们关心的系统，那么进行所有建模和分析有何意义？”

Would LBJ even recognize the future Texas predicted by these models?

In the past fifty years, temperatures in Texas have risen half a degree per decade and are set to rise at least 3.5 degrees by mid-century if global emissions aren’t slashed.

在过去 50 年中，德克萨斯州的气温每十年上升 0.5 度，如果不削减全球排放量，到本世纪中叶将至少上升 3.5 度。

“Our average summer could look like 2011 within my lifetime if we continue on our current pathway,” Hayhoe told an audience in October, referencing that scorching summer when much of Texas saw more than one hundred 100-degree days.

海霍在 10 月份对观众说：“如果我们继续走目前的道路，在我有生之年，我们的平均夏季可能会像 2011 年一样。”他指的是那个炎热的夏季，当时德克萨斯州的大部分地区出现了一百多个 100 华氏度的日子。

Austin could feel more like Scottsdale, Arizona.

奥斯汀可能感觉更像亚利桑那州的斯科茨代尔。

Rainfall patterns are shifting, so the state will face longer dry spells punctuated by more bouts of heavy rain.

降雨模式正在发生变化，因此该州将面临更长的干旱期，并伴有更多的暴雨。

In West Texas, farming and ranching communities have thrived in the semiarid environment by pulling water from aquifers.

在德克萨斯州西部，农业和牧场社区通过从含水层抽取水，在半干旱环境中蓬勃发展。

But as the aquifers dry up, these communities are relying more on rainfall, just as that rainfall is becoming less likely and droughts are getting more intense, Hayhoe said.

但海霍说，随着含水层干涸，这些社区越来越依赖降雨，而降雨的可能性越来越小，干旱也越来越严重。

In LBJ’s beloved Hill Country, this means increased risk of fire.

Humans are the ones igniting the fires, but climate change is making them worse by providing the ideal dry conditions they need to spread.

On the Gulf Coast, where a quarter of the state’s 27 million people live, sea levels are already eight inches higher than they were a hundred years ago and are set to rise an additional one to four feet by the end of the century.

该州 2700 万人口中有四分之一居住在墨西哥湾沿岸，海平面已经比一百年前高出 8 英寸，并且到本世纪末还将再上升 1 到 4 英尺。

And then there’s the danger from stronger hurricanes fueled by record-breaking ocean temperatures.

Texas leaders, however, seem unwilling to tackle the problem or even admit that it exists.

Governor Greg Abbott has long voiced skepticism about the science of climate change, telling the editorial board of the San Antonio Express-News during his gubernatorial campaign that the climate has always changed over time and further study was needed.

州长格雷格·阿博特长期以来一直对气候变化的科学性表示怀疑，他在州长竞选期间告诉《圣安东尼奥快报》编辑委员会，气候总是随着时间的推移而变化，需要进一步研究。

“We must be good guardians of our earth, but we must base our decisions on peer-reviewed scientific inquiry, free from political demagogues using climate change as an excuse to remake the American economy,” he told the newspaper.

他对该报表示：“我们必须成为地球的好守护者，但我们的决定必须基于经过同行评审的科学调查，而不是利用气候变化作为重塑美国经济的政治煽动者。”

As attorney general, Abbott made a habit of suing the Obama administration, oftentimes over regulatory issues relating to climate change.

His successor, Ken Paxton, is continuing that tradition, joining a lawsuit in October over the administration’s Clean Power Plan, which calls on states to curb emissions by phasing out coal plants and shifting to natural gas and renewables.

他的继任者肯·帕克斯顿（Ken Paxton）延续了这一传统，于 10 月份加入了针对政府清洁能源计划的诉讼，该计划呼吁各州通过逐步淘汰燃煤电厂并转向天然气和可再生能源来控制排放。

The plan would require Texas to decrease its coal power capacity by 4,000 megawatts, or 25 percent, and Paxton has likened this to the EPA’s mounting a “war on coal and fossil fuels.”

该计划将要求德克萨斯州将其煤电容量减少 4,000 兆瓦，即 25%，帕克斯顿将其比作美国环保署发起的“煤炭和化石燃料战争”。

In such a milieu, efforts to incorporate climate change into planning at the state level have fallen flat, and bills that attempt to address it have gone nowhere in recent years in the Legislature.

在这样的环境下，将气候变化纳入州一级规划的努力已经失败，近年来试图解决这一问题的法案在立法机关也毫无进展。

“At the state level, in some circles, climate change is still a taboo subject,” John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist, told me.

This leaves cities to do their own resilience planning.

Meanwhile, entities such as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the operator of the state’s electric grid, are not taking climate change into account when developing their projections for load growth, which could lead to problems as the mercury creeps upward.

与此同时，德克萨斯州电力可靠性委员会（该州电网运营商）等实体在制定负荷增长预测时没有考虑气候变化，这可能会导致随着水银上升而出现问题。

In Congress, Texans are some of the most vocal climate-change skeptics.

在国会中，德克萨斯人是最直言不讳的气候变化怀疑论者之一。

Congressman Lamar Smith, a Republican from San Antonio, has used his chairmanship of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee to tussle with federal agencies over their climate-change research, going so far as to subpoena the scientists who conducted a study with a conclusion he disagreed with and demand their emails.

来自圣安东尼奥的共和党国会议员拉马尔·史密斯利用众议院科学、空间和技术委员会主席的身份，与联邦机构就气候变化研究展开争执，甚至传唤了那些进行了他不同意的研究的科学家，并要求他们提供电子邮件。

(Smith, it is worth noting, has received more than $600,000 in campaign donations from the fossil-fuel industry over his 29 years in Congress.) And then there’s Cruz, who in December held a three-hour Senate hearing titled “Data or Dogma?

（值得注意的是，史密斯在国会任职 29 年期间，从化石燃料行业获得了超过 60 万美元的竞选捐款。）然后是克鲁兹，他于 12 月举行了一场为期三小时的参议院听证会，题为“数据还是教条？

Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate Over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Earth’s Climate,” at which he claimed that there was a lack of scientific consensus on global warming.

促进关于人类对地球气候影响程度的辩论的公开调查”，他在会上声称，关于全球变暖缺乏科学共识。

Hayhoe is hopeful that as green energy gets cheaper, more people will begin using it.

“Texas is unique, in that it is one of the states that have the most to lose economically from climate-change impacts, but Texas also has the most to gain by transitioning to a clean-energy economy,” Hayhoe told me one day in her office on campus, a cluttered, windowless space.

“德克萨斯州是独一无二的，因为它是因气候变化影响而遭受最大经济损失的州之一，但德克萨斯州通过向清洁能源经济转型也获得了最大收益，”海霍有一天在她位于校园的办公室里告诉我，那是一间杂乱无窗的空间。

The room’s sole decorative flair, a papier-mâché arctic fox that was a Christmas present from her young son, sat perched on a shelf.

If Texas were its own country, it would be the seventh-most-prolific emitter of carbon dioxide in the world.

如果德克萨斯州是自己的国家，它将成为世界第七大二氧化碳排放国。

As it stands, Texas is the number one emitter in the U.S.; it released some 641 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2013, almost double that of California.

As it stands, Texas is the number one emitter in the U.S.; 2013年，它向大气中排放了大约6.41亿吨二氧化碳，几乎是加利福尼亚州的两倍。

But the state also has a seemingly boundless potential for green energy.

但该州在绿色能源方面也拥有看似无限的潜力。

Texas leads the nation in wind generation; turbines produced a full 10 percent of the state’s power in 2015.

德克萨斯州在风力发电方面处于全国领先地位； turbines produced a full 10 percent of the state’s power in 2015.

By 2030, that number is forecast to jump to 37 percent.

One night last September, supply of wind power was so plentiful and demand was so low that the spot price of electricity went negative for a few hours.

去年9月的一个晚上，风电供应充足而需求低迷，导致现货电价连续几个小时出现负值。

Solar installation has lagged behind, but when it ramps up, there’s enough capacity just in the area a hundred miles square ** between Plainview and Amarillo to light the entire United States, as Hayhoe likes to point out.

太阳能安装已经落后，但当它增加时，正如海霍喜欢指出的那样，在普莱恩维尤和阿马里洛之间一百英里平方**的地区就有足够的容量来照亮整个美国。

In Pecos County alone, companies have plans to invest $1 billion in large-scale solar energy farms.

仅在佩科斯县，就有企业计划投资 10 亿美元建设大型太阳能发电场。

“Texas understands energy.

“德克萨斯州了解能源。

Energy is a Texas thing,” Hayhoe told me.

能源是德克萨斯州的事情，”海霍告诉我。

“We have the land we need to do this, as well as the technology and entrepreneurial spirit.

“我们拥有做到这一点所需的土地，以及技术和创业精神。

I wish that the whole state could see that this is an opportunity for a better future.”

我希望整个州都能看到这是一个创造更美好未来的机会。”

*Clarification: This sentence has been edited to clarify the conclusions of the study and include the fact that a number of scientific organizations have issued statements about global warming being a threat.

*澄清：这句话经过编辑，以澄清研究的结论，并包括许多科学组织已发表有关全球变暖构成威胁的声明这一事实。

**Correction: An earlier version of this sentence incorrectly referred to this area a hundred square miles.

We regret the error.

我们对这个错误感到遗憾。

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