The Quantum Vibe

What if we are thinking and talking about climate change in the wrong way? Climate change is a result of a quantum quirk and it's time to talk about the quantum vibe.

Good vibes

Everyone is talking about good vibes these days. Political vibes, Olympic vibes, football vibes, dad vibes. Vibes are everywhere.

What exactly is a vibe? It’s a person's emotional state. It’s also the atmosphere of a place, as felt by or communicated to others. As a verb, to vibe means to express or transmit a feeling or an atmosphere.

If vibes influence the atmosphere, maybe it’s time to talk about the role of vibes in climate responses.

A vibe problem

First, let’s admit that climate change has a vibe problem.

Most people don’t want to pay attention to it. Sure, we see stories every day about how bad it is. Articles describe how close we are to climate tipping points, or they remind us of the unprecedented number of heat records that have been broken around the world this year. Still, climate change is not getting the societal traction it deserves. It’s treated like an old, tired problem.

People with political power are not prioritizing it. Climate responses tend to be an afterthought, tagged on to a long list of ‘more important’ problems. We treat climate change as if it were an environmental issue, not a social issue, an economic issue, a power issue, and an existential issue. Given the urgency and scale of the climate problem, there is remarkably little evidence of an engaging and inspiring response vibe. But wait!

What if we are thinking and talking about climate change in the wrong way?

Hot molecules

Climate change is, in fact, a vibe problem. When carbon dioxide molecules are added to the atmosphere, they vibrate and produce heat. The more we add, the more they vibe. The more they vibe, the hotter it gets on our planet.

Vibrations in the atmosphere influence the biosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere (ice cover) and so on. They affect lives and livelihoods, where people can live, and basic needs like food, water, and shelter. Everything.

What does this have to do with quantum social change? Everything. Before I get to this, let’s consider in more detail how carbon dioxide heats the atmosphere. This NOVA video explains the relationship between carbon dioxide vibes and heat in a charming and nerdy way. It demonstrates exactly why the carbon dioxide that we’ve already been added to the atmosphere results in a “staggering amount of light energy being absorbed and converted to heat.” What it comes down to is that the carbon dioxide vibe is actually a quantum vibe. Seriously!

A quantum quirk

Climate change, it turns out, is the result of a quirk — a quantum quirk. In a recent scientific paper on “Fermi Resonance and the Quantum Mechanical Basis of Global Warming,” Wordsworth and colleagues explain the physical foundations of climate change, concluding that:

It is remarkable that an apparently accidental quantum resonance in an otherwise ordinary three-atom molecule has had such a large impact on our planet's climate over geologic time, and will also help determine its future warming due to human activity.

This fascinating technical paper shows that CO₂ absorbs in the infrared due to combinations of vibrational and rotational quantum transitions. It has been summarized in easier-to-understand popular science articles, including a recent one in Quanta Magazine.

Metaphors matter

Still, there is a tendency to stick to the old way of explaining climate change, which does not really explain it at all: “greenhouse gases trap heat, which leads to global warming.” Why? How?

Without talking about vibrations, resonance, and the quantum quirk, it’s easy for skeptics to trivialize climate change. In fact, many of them argue that greenhouse gases make up only about 0.04% of the atmosphere and thus cannot be important. They don’t get the vibe, so it is not surprising that climate change doesn’t resonate with them.

When it comes to social change, metaphors matter. So why are we still using the misleading metaphor of a “greenhouse effect” to describe how small amounts of certain gases influence the atmosphere? It’s more like a house party where the guests hang around and vibe for a long, long time. As in 300 to 1000 years, which is the amount of time a carbon dioxide molecule remains vibrating in the atmosphere. That’s a long party and a lot of heat.

A quantum vibe

We know that vibes can change quickly and help us to see new possibilities and potentials. A new vibe is exciting — it motivates people and leads to action. We have seen this recently in U.S. politics, where the vibe shift has been described as phenomenal.

This brings me to quantum social change. What if we activated a quantum vibe? By that, I mean talk about vibrations, resonance and entanglement as the basis for collective action and social change? What if we shifted from calculating carbon footprints to measuring carbon vibes — in other words, the frequency and magnitude of vibrations that we are responsible for and can influence. This may better capture the real impacts of fossil fuel emissions and encourage us to focus on more sustainable vibes.

Instead of emitting a staggering amount of CO₂ into the atmosphere, we have the possibility and potential to use our energy on sustainability solutions to the benefit of not just some, but all. Right now this may seem unlikely and impossible, but we have to remember that thanks to quantum quirks, our decisions and actions matter more than we think. Small changes can make a big difference — and this can happen faster than we think, if we transmit a new vibe. A quantum social vibe.

“It is through vibration, resonance, and interaction that the microworld is linked to the macroworld.”

— Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics

Image courtesy of Jonas Schmöle, Vienna Quantum Group. Appears in Marcus Aspelmeyer et al 2017, New Journal of Physics 19 050401. (Use permission granted)