Global Warming Comes Home
Climate Change Hits The American West
No longer dismissed as an invention of Chicken Littles, climate change is upon us and Americans are addressing it head on. Consider this possible view of the West in the year 2056.
By Todd Wilkinson, 6-13-06
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| In the future, climatologists see most areas of the West becoming hotter, drier, smokier. In 50 years, portions of the high plains could experience summers kindred to those currently experienced in Las Vegas. Forests, too, will burn and likely not be replaced with the usual complement of sub-alpine species. East of the Rockies, for every rise in temperature Celsius, experts say that agriculture will need a 25 percent increase in moisture. Photo by Todd Wilkinson. | |
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Our destination was Glacier National Park in northern Montana. I will never forget the gleaming white, almost metallic, reflection of the snow-crested Rockies visible hundreds of miles away through the windshield as we crossed the Hi-Line and arrived for the night in Browning.
My brother and I scrambled across the Sperry and Grinnell glaciers where we found grizzly bear tracks. Back in Lake Wobegon, I coveted my "Go Hike A Glacier" t-shirt, a treasure brought home from my first personal encounter with primordial post-Pleistocene ice.
Our vacation 30 years ago cemented a lifelong love affair with our national parks but it also imprinted in my mind glaciers as symbolic natural landmarks. Back then, few people could fathom that the essential emblems of Glacier could possibly be gone in 100 years. It turns out, in a rapidly accelerating age of climate change punctuated by rising global temperatures, that these massive sheets of frozen, compressed ancient water could disappear long before that.
In 2000, Al Gore the presidential candidate who did not fair well at the polls in Montana, stood in front of the rapidly disappearing Grinnell in the same spot where I had trekked as a teen. He used the thawing backdrop to talk about the effects of humans pumping greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through our burning of fossil fuels.
Gore did not win the White House, though his supporters said he would have been the best environmental president ever. The victors, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, promptly dismissed climate change as a serious concern. Their administration rejected the Kyoto Protocol and resisted for much of its first term acknowledgment that humans were any more of a catalyst for global warming than normal fluctuations in nature. Melting ice, they said, happens.
Even if Homo sapiens were the primary cause, they argued, it would cost too much for America if government mandated a shift quickly away from an economy built on fossil fuels.
In Montana, we have heard from commentators at two Bozeman-based free-market think tanks, whose views are respected in the White House, that the best course of action is simply to learn to live with any climatic change and adapt down the road if we need to.
Ordering automakers to produce smaller, hybrid cars with better mileage for consumers, rather than continuing to churn out gas guzzling SUVs, is a strike against personal liberty, profits, and freedom, they say. Subsidizing ethanol production is a waste of tax dollars. "Climate change is global in scale and we're already committed to future warming, for carbon dioxide is a long-lived atmospheric resident," writes Pete Geddes of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE). "It's clear: whether anthropogenic or natural, climate change is inevitable. Our challenge is to deal with it responsibly".
Some argue that Montana and the rest of the West with rich deposits of oil, natural gas, and coal beneath them should be entitled to exploit those fuels as a way of stimulating economic growth and helping to wean America off its dependence on Middle Eastern crude.
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| Low water years in reservoirs across the West could become the norm, not the anomaly. If true, it will not bode well for millions living in thirsty desert cities downstream. One expert from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts that armed conflicts and climate-related refugees could erupt from battles over water. Photo by Todd Wilkinson. | |
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Receiving funding from organizations linked to the energy industry, the climate change downplayers and the free-market thinktankers have positioned themselves at the forefront of a small crowd of skeptics who, in the face of irrefutable scientific evidence, deny that we should worry much about climate change.
With deep stacks of scientific research papers and studies surrounding me at the moment I write these words, I hope they are right, but are they?
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Time Magazine put the following headline on its April 3, 2006 cover issue: "Be Worried. Be VERY Worried. Climate change isn't some vague future problem -- it's already damaging the planet at an alarming pace."
Climate experts say the glaciers of Montana are not merely touchstones. They are crystal balls foretelling our future. Between 1850 and today, the vast majority of glaciers in the Rockies, from Colorado to Canada, have lost at least 70 percent of their icy mass. "The best estimate, though it's not a Biblical truth, is that most of those ice fields will be completely gone by 2030 or shortly thereafter," says Greg Pederson, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey.
A large percentage of Earth's 160,000 glaciers are also winnowing away. Last February, a dozen conservation groups from the U.S. and Canada asked the World Heritage Committee to place Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park on the list of endangered protected areas because of the impacts caused by climate change. Of the 150 glaciers that covered Glacier in modern times, only 27 still remain.
"The effects of climate change are well-documented and clearly visible in Glacier National Park," asserted Erica Thorson, a professor at the Lewis & Clark Law School, "and yet the U.S. has not taken action to protect the world heritage of the park by reducing its greenhouse gas emissions pursuant to its obligations under the World Heritage Convention."
In a small office on the campus of Montana State University in Bozeman, Lisa Graumlich, a globally- renowned climate ecologist, sits beneath a set of shellacked tree rings on the wall. Cut from the trunks of centuries-old whitebark pine trees, they, like ice cores harvested from the glaciers of Alaska, Antarctica and Greenland, reveal a story and confirm that change is human-caused.
As executive director of the Big Sky Institute, Graumlich is in constant communication with other climate gurus around the world. Her quarters at MSU serve as a local clearinghouse for research that has been accumulating since the 1970s and she works with colleagues to extrapolate the implications for Montana. I ask Graumlich and Pederson to fast forward half a century.
What will Montana and other Western states be like in the year 2056?
"By then, we may be well on our way to experiencing dramatic changes in the landscape and we will likely lose the kind of stability we have known in Montana throughout the 20th century," Graumlich says. "Because of climate, it will be a lot different around here."
The operative word is "stability" which has given civilization in the West its foundation for predicting weather, building economies, assessing nature, and deciding how we spend our leisure time.
Graumlich and Pederson say that Americans, no matter where they live, need to differentiate between what qualifies as "weather" and the long-term trend line of "climate". A deep legendary snow year at the Big Sky Resort in 2005-2006 is WEATHER; decades of documented diminishing snowpack is CLIMATE. A single scorching summer is weather; seven years of drought in farm and ranch country, set among decadal records showing higher average summer temperatures, is climate.
"Hypothetically, imagine the Dust Bowl years," Graumlich says, "but with the strong possibility that the so-called regular normal climate didn't come back." To some, such description is fear mongering but experts say Montanans need to ponder the trajectory.
There's an old saw in the Rockies (repeated in every region of the country): "The only thing we can count on besides death and taxes is dramatically changing weather." So why, then, does there appear to be so much resistance to accepting the preponderant evidence that imminent change in climate, borne out of changes occurring high in the sky, is actually happening?
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Let's put some things in perspective. A few days before I met with Graumlich, I was 1,500 miles away from Montana, sitting inside an auditorium at Georgia State University waiting to watch the premiere of "Too Hot Not To Handle," an HBO television documentary now airing about climate change. It's a hard-hitting piece assembled by executive producer Laurie David, who is a mother of two daughters, activist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, former talent coordinator for the Late Night With David Letterman Show, and wife of comedian Larry David, best-known for creating the TV sitcom, Seinfeld.
This was no pow-wow of radical greenies and there's nothing funny going on. David, who is architect of a national dialogue called the "Virtual March On Washington", says that many scientists are convinced we are approaching a tipping point with climate. The upshot is that the American public thanks to Hurricane Katrina, David suggests, is also at a critical tipping point of awareness that could result in political action.
Assembled together for a panel discussion along with David were Mike Finley, former superintendent of Yellowstone and presently president of the Atlanta-based Turner Foundation; Dr. Michael McGeehin, director of the division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects for the much-respected federal Centers for Disease Control & Prevention; and Dr. Peter Webster, a professor at George Tech who, like MSU's Graumlich, is a veteran of climate change research.
Webster says that despite what the denialists suggest, there is no longer any debate about the cause of climate change. 2005 went down in the books tied with 1998 as the hottest on record. The next three hottest years in U.S. history were 2002, 2003, and 2004. The rest of the top 10 have been notched since 1995.
Webster says the intensity of hurricanes has increased by 50 percent over the last few decades. The $100 billion in damage to the U.S. caused during last year's Atlantic hurricane season might seem an anomaly today, but big powerful events like Katrina and Rita will be common in the years ahead. At the same time those storms were pounding the Gulf Coast, six Midwestern states were reeling from a drought that cost more than $1 billion in failed corn and soybean crops.
Extreme weather events, Webster says, are an expression of what's happening in the atmosphere and in the West's future he sees clouds of smoke. One of the experts featured in Too Hot Not To Handle is Michael Oppenheimer, a professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, prominent thinker on climate, and advisor to the group Environmental Defense. He and several prominent scientists assembled a paper titled "Setting the Record Straight on Climate Change."
Professor Oppenheimer has a special fondness for the Northern Rockies. In the western U.S., 75 percent of the water we use comes from melting snowpack. "Our civilization is dependent upon having water when we want it, how we want it and when we need it," Oppenheimer says. "But everything we set our clocks by is changing."
Yes, he says, warmer climate will mean a longer growing season for carrots and pumpkins in the backyard garden. It will mean an expanded hiking season. It means fewer frozen pipes. It may mean lower winter heating costs, at least in the short term, until we need to more often switch the air conditioner on.
Some places, he says, might be statistically wetter at certain times of the year with climate change than they are now but in regions like the West the precipitation deposited during winter and spring will dry out and evaporate earlier due to withering summer heat. There's a very real chance that much of mountainous Montana will lose not only its glaciers but its regular snowpack, which fuels the ski industry and serves as a natural reservoir for dryland farming worth more than $1 billion to the state, will be fundamentally challenged.
Montana is connected to climatic change that is being registered around the world. In Holland, the once-normal and predictable staging of long-distance skating competitions along that nation's canal system has become rare as the waterways seldom freeze over long enough in winter.
Across the high plains, if you ask farmers, they can tell you that their kids aren't able to skate on ponds in the Back 40 nearly as often as they did when they grew up in the 1950s. This latter observation, Graumlich notes, is where changes in the weather adds up more than anecdotally to the presently almost imperceptible changes in climate. What is actually being observed by us just scratches the surface of what's likely to be in store.
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Every year, Colorado College produces a report called State of the Rockies that focuses on issues central to the eight Rocky Mountain states. Climate was highlighted in 2006.
The State of the Rockies 2006 Report Card made headlines because its modeling strongly shows that with more greenhouse gases, linked to the burning of fossil fuels, pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, precipitation patterns and temperatures will dramatically change. The Northern Plains of Montana is expected to experience the most extreme rise in average annual temperature between 1976 and the year 2085, climbing about 6.5 degrees CELSIUS. Only the shortgrass prairie ecoregion of eastern Colorado and the Great Basin will warm an equal or greater amount.
"From the middle of this century and beyond, parts of lower elevation Montana during the summer could feel more like the present weather around Las Vegas," she says. "That's pretty hot." Pederson adds something that should make every farmer perk up: For every rise in degree Celsius, experts say agriculture will need a 25 percent increase in snowpack or rainfall to make up for drying.
"Certainly the viability of dryland farming will be greatly challenged by the fact that we're seeing warmer temperatures increasing the water stress in soil and plants. Even if snowpack remains the same, the timing of the meltoff is progresively moving earlier, earlier, earlier," adds Graumlich. "The result is a longer period of evapotranspiration and drying out of the soils. On top of that, there will be less water available for irrigation. As a Montanan, I see huge problems for agriculture in a state which is normal dry times is already marginal in giving people an ability to make a living."
Graumlich notes that the number of 90 degree days in Montana already has increased from a handful every summer a couple of generations ago to nearly 30--or equal to a full months' worth--today. At the same time, meteorologists have witnessed a reduction in the number of days where the temperature falls below 0 degrees F.
The number of severe heat waves across the U.S. lasting four days or longer has tripled in the last 50 years, experts say. At the climate discussion in Atlanta, Dr. McGeehin of CDC says heat is a subtle killer. Hundreds died in Chicago in a recent heat event; tens of thousands perished in Europe. McGeehin says human health effects caused by global warming have been treated as secondary issues but he believes they will be brought to the forefront.
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| As sea levels rise from melting glaciers and ice caps, millions living along low-lying coastal areas will be forced to flee inland, abandoning their former way of life. Civilization as we know it is going to change, Lisa Graumlich says. Photo by Todd Wilkinson. | |
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If it seems like the lilacs and crocus are blooming earlier every spring, they are. Tepid temperatures have thrown nature into flux. It is affecting hibernating animals, including yellow-bellied marmots emerging from their dens 23 days earlier than they did 30 years ago. Because ecosystem components are inter-dependent upon one another, the rapid shift of one species, with the corresponding shift of species it depends on, can lead to a breakdown of ecosystem function," the State of the Rockies Report explains, citing the ripple effect of plants flowering ahead of schedule.
"While a small change in bloom timing may not be disastrous for ecosystems, shifts of several days or week scan impair ecoregional health. If flowers begin blooming earlier and pollinators do not adjust to climate change in a similar manner, then both species become imperiled. Furthermore, changes in bloom and pollination timing can be detrimental not only to the survival of plants and insects, but also up the food-ladder to birds and mammals."
The survival of some species is plant specific and some plants may not be able to survive rising temperatures. Others, such as weeds, are going to proliferate. "As the natural world goes into a state of flux, other things will be getting synchronized which are destructive to the things we value," Graumlich says. Exotic plants are outcompeting native species and crops grown to benefit people, wildlife and livestock; exotic flowers that bloom send adrift pollen that is threatening the health of asthmatics; beetles that kill our native forests set the stage for massive wildfires; outbreaks of West Nile virus, carried by mosquitoes, could intensify.
Ecologists say that one-fourth of all plant and animal species could face extinction in the coming century. Not to mention, warming can throw a monkeywrench into the economy. Never mind the big "charismatic" species that people swarm to wildlands and zoos to see. How important are just a few species of insects?
Bees pollinate alfalfa, fruit trees and gardens. California alone depends upon bees to pollinate billions of dollars worth of crops. If their timing is off just a little bit in reaching plants, they won't produce fruit and reproduce.
As pollinators of commerce, tourists, too, have come to rely on elements of timing. Within decades, ski areas could be reduced to a narrow window of snow on the mountains. "As industries go, the ski industry in the West has been among the most forward thinking," the USGS's Pederson says. "It has embraced the science and tried to incorporate the information into their business plans to maintain profitability in the future. "
Places like the Moonlight Basin Resort in the Madison mountains of Montana no longer adhere to the classic model of starting the lifts when the snow flies and stopping them when it begins melting. Moonlight is looking at the big picture, making investments in conservation easements and real estate and cultural resources. Rather than one day being left high and dry with the old ski industry paradigm, it is transitioning into a more viable recreation model where a potentially changing landscape remains an asset that will be in demand with society down the road.
In Wyoming, the state just spent $250,000 on a hydrology analysis looking at the impacts on downstream water users when the legendary glaciers in the Wind River Mountains eventually disappear. The Wind Rivers hold 36 square kilometers of glacial ice that could be gone.
Desert states that are part of the Colorado River Compact Agreement are fearful with tens of millions of people downstream dependent upon the amount white stuff that is deposited in the mountains hundreds of miles away. McGeehin of CDC said he anticipates that armed conflicts will be spurred in the future by lack of access to freshwater in a climate-changed world.
In Montana, seventy percent of the water used goes to crops and lawns. On the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, tribal officials already are examining the landscape, planning ahead for ways to catch and retain more rainwater in the absence of snow.
Anglers, as an anchor to Montana's nature-based tourism industry, need to ponder the prospect of drastically reduced fishing seasons. Nationwide, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency commissioned a study that predicted a 4.5 degree spike in temperature—computer models actually anticipate a higher rise—would negatively harm as much as a third of the fishes' habitat in the U.S.
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Only a decade ago when climatologists began preparing computer models designed to help forecast the future, differing scenarios were presented ranging from minor effects to severe ones. Skeptics loved to paint the severe models as examples of Chicken Littles attempting to scare people. Implying that climate change is akin to the much ado about nothing made by the Y2K computer scare.
Even novelist Michael Crichton bought into this theory and created a fictional plot based on the premise. To show how bizarre the politics of climate change during the present Congress are, U.S. Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma (where the economy is driven by energy production), called Crichton to testify as "an expert witness" before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that rejected calls to address climate change. Famously, Inhofe declared on the Senate floor: "With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is THE greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people? It sure sounds like it."
In a grandstanding 2003 speech, Inhofe said that any federal policy foremost should "rely on the most objective science." Were Inhofe to follow the objective conclusion reached by the vast majority of credible scientists who have subjected their findings to rigorous peer review, he would know that the computer models forecasting severe consequences from climate change have been embraced as likely possibilities.
"We would fall into the category of being somewhat skeptical because the dangers seem to be exaggerated and they lead to regulatory controls that may not be appropriate," says Jane Shaw, a public policy specialist with PERC—The Center For Free Market Environmentalism, a think tank, in Bozeman. "It's not a matter of whether the science is irrefutable. It's the degree to which climate change is actually a problem. There are a lot of problems worse than global warming and we should be looking at those. Frankly, these disaster scenarios seem really questionable. It isn't just enough to say the temperature in 100 years will be four, five or six degrees higher. We suddenly have all of these predictions of sea levels rising. We are skeptical and we do understand how incentives work. Scientists have an incentive to drum up fear."
The dig against PERC and FREE is that their free-market, anti-regulation posture reflects the self-interested industries that fund the foundations supporting them and have spent large sums of money attempting to discredit climate change scientists.
This summer, former Vice President and presidential candidate Gore is featured in a documentary entitled "An Inconvenient Truth" that is being shown in cinemas across the country. In a movie review that appeared in The Washington Post, Richard Cohen writes: "You cannot see this film and not think of George W. Bush, the man who beat Gore in 2000. The contrast is stark. Gore -- more at ease in the lecture hall than he ever was on the stump -- summons science to tell a harrowing story and offers science as the antidote. No feat of imagination could have Bush do something similar -- even the sentences are beyond him."
Cohen adds: "But it is the thought that matters -- the application of intellect to an intellectual problem. Bush has been studiously anti-science, a man of applied ignorance who has undernourished his mind with the empty calories of comfy dogma."
I have Inhofe's warning about so-called "phony science" and Shaw's skepticism in mind as I meet with Greg Pederson of the U.S. Geological Survey at MSU. I ask Pederson if he has an incentive to make people afraid. He grins and calls the assertion ridiculous.
Since John Wesley Powell helped found the USGS in the 19th century, this legendary federal agency has developed a well-deserved reputation for generating "science in the public interest." During the petroleum age, USGS also has been closely allied as a service provider to the oil and gas industry, helping engineers know where and how much energy resources lie in the ground. On that front, its science and the people working for the agency have been acclaimed.
In recent years, USGS and a sister agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also have lead the way in studying climate change from the perspective of the atmosphere and expressions on the ground. Pederson is among a prestigious team of USGS experts working on glaciers.
Three forces shape our regional climate: the El Nino Southern Oscillation (related to warming seas off the coast of South America); the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (also related to ocean temperature); and the North Atlantic Oscillation. Such oceanic phenomena also shape the conveyor belt that delivers storms through the Jet Stream around cells of high atmospheric pressure.
The combination of warming surface temperatures in the ocean and more fresh water caused by melting ice are likely to disrupt ocean currents and the way weather is manifested in the Rockies. "There's a scenario widely discussed in the scientific community and not far fetched that truly does wake me up in a cold sweat at night," Graumlich says. "Based upon the acceleration of warming and possible feedback loops that speed it up more than we anticipate, there is a very real prospect that we could see a melting out of the Arctic Ice Sheet."
Ice reflects the sun back into space and acts as an air conditioner for the planet. As it melts it gives way to exposed rock and earth that absorbs warming light. Once the process of melting begins, it can accelerate. Ninety-nine percent of the glaciers in Alaska are melting, some at dramatic rates. Were all of them to liquefy, it could raise sea levels by up to a foot. If the ice in Greenland melted it could raise sea levels by several feet, threatening millions of coastal dwellers in the U.S.
"We can imagine that by 2056 we will have climate refugees that are not just inhabitants of low-lying Pacific Islands," Graumlich says. If Montanans and others blanch at the thought of Californians pouring into the state as second homeowners, imagine how society might react with thousands of uprooted refugees fleeing into the Rocky Mountain region like the displacement that occurred in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina?
During the last decade, travelers heading west on Interstate 90 up and over Homestake Pass have noticed a rapid shift in arboreal color as they crest the Pass and drop down into Butte, which is surrounded by national forests. Today, in nearly ever direction that one looks outward from the Mining City, the vast carpet of evergreens has taken on a reddish patina, the result of spruce beetles boring into the trunks and killing the trees, leaving the needles dry and limp.
Fire experts and silviculturists know what is coming. Short of felling all the spruce and pine in what would represent the Mother of All Logging Operations in the Butte and Anaconda areas, little can be done. The dead trees have primed the national forest for huge wildfires. It's not a matter of if, but when.
How and why did this happen? Insect infestations are part of the natural cycle of life. They may be perceived as a loss of revenue opportunity for timber towns, but they serve an ecological function in nature.
Bug outbreaks have been documented well into prehistoric times by core rings in trees. And beetle killed trees were observed back in the twilight of the 20th century. Typically, they've been halted by weather AND climate. Beetles thrive and advance in years of warm dry summers and mild winters. They are beaten back when there are consecutive years of cooler rainy weather in spring, summer, and fall and then weeks of below zero in winter.
Their current advance, experts say, should serve as a wake up call. According to entomologists, what's disturbing is that rising average temperatures have enabled beetle outbreaks not only to persist longer, but since the 1990s the lack of cold winters, like those remembered by the pioneers, has allowed beetles to complete an entire life cycle (adults eating trees, laying eggs that hatch, and turn produce more adults) in a single year that traditionally took two years.
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| In 2056, elements of national parks like Yellowstone will still exist but John Varley, the park's former chief scientist, says that humankind's way of relating to the natural world could be dramatically altered and with it, the focus of global conservation and what we call today "tourism." Photo by Todd Wilkinson. | |
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Outbreaks of beetles killing forests are only the first scene in the story of landscape alteration. After native forests die and are burned by fire, the successional regime of trees replacing them will be different. Arboreal varieties that have typically replaced them—lodgepole pine, spruce, and fir—thrived in cooler, moister times. Instead of forests rising up, the best guess of silvilcurists is that the slopes will be covered by brushy species that climb to the tops of ridgelines and through the river drainages currently populated in places by trees with big ancient trunks. "Old growth trees in Montana are going to become increasingly rare," Graumlich says. "The kind of 'forests' that our grandparents grew and that we've shared with them will be remembered in history books by our grandkids and great grandkids, but the massive kinds of trees we've known and associated with our experiences in the backcountry will be few and far between."
Which brings us to another point, Graumlich notes. Where does conservation fit into the equation? The entire preservation movement has been based on an aesthetic and biological premise that KINDS of landscapes can be spared if they are put off limits to development. But by and large, climate change transcends the artificial boundary lines of national parks, protected business lands and personal property.
Graumlich says the aesthetic foundation that our generation holds in its mind, as an idea handed down from John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt, of glaciers, and grizzly bears prowling the dark moist shadows of forest canopies, and the image of anglers casting artificial flies on trout waters in July, will be altered.
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Climate change has the net effect of making places in higher latitudes feel like places now in lower latitudes. "Montanans know how it feels," John D. Varley says. "For those of us who remember the 1970s and the heavy snows and frigid temperatures, who the hell would have ever wanted to move here? The answer is that not many people did. We're the equivalent today of a more southern place and that's one the reasons why we're more attractive."
Varley retired to Bozeman in 2006 after spending 43 years in government service as a biologist. Thirty-three of those years were in Yellowstone and much of them as the chief park scientist overseeing research. Varley is internationally regarded as one of the modern pioneers of applied "ecosystem management". During his tenure in the park, the forest fires of 1988 occurred, grizzly bears rebounded, wolves were reintroduced, his office unleashed the largest ongoing effort of field research of any public land in the U.S., and microbes in the park's geothermal waters were identified and used in groundbreaking biotechnology projects.
During those years, Varley says, he and his colleagues witnessed a steady and dramatic yet subtle change in the physical environment that largely escaped the watchful eye of millions of visitors.
"I try to puzzle through what climate change means for a place like Yellowstone and it's really complicated. Will it be warmer and drier or warmer and wetter?" he asks. "I think those are the most commonly held views."
Is there overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that big changes will occur in Yellowstone? "Big changes have ALREADY happened," he notes.
Consider: A warmer and drier climate means a continuation of trends that started in the 1970s. "Everybody can identify with the loss of glaciers but in Yellowstone the decrease in lakes and ponds and wetlands has been astounding," Varley says. "What were considered permanent bodies of water, meaning reference was given to them in the 1850s, '60s and '70s, and bestowed with a name as a lake, are now gone. Some wetlands that were considered permanent ponds are no longer there. Some lakes have become ephemeral."
Warmer and drier translates into a loss of biological diversity in the park. It also signals the elimination of whitebark pine trees which produce seeds that are a major source of sustenance for grizzly bears.
A benefit of a warmer and wetter scenario is that a richer array of succulent plants will be available for bears and game animals to eat, and that the number of wetlands COULD actually increase, meaning more biodiversity. For example, warmer and wetter might bring an expansion of Yellowstone's Northern Range, today often compared to Africa's Serengeti Plain for the variety and number of large mammals that range across it.
But the sobering reality is that warmer, whether accompanied by increased moisture or dryness, also means the arrival of diseases and organisms that were repelled from finding a home in the northern Rockies by colder temperatures. He points to hookworm parasites that are fatal to canids -- wolves, coyotes, foxes, and yes, domestic dogs. During the past few decades, the presence of hookworms had steadily been moving up in elevation out of lower valleys. To land in the wolf population could have devastating consequences.
"The greatest challenges will not be created by the presence or absence of things we already know about," Varley explains. "They will probably come from things more insidious and harder to predict. It could mean warmer waterways creating hospitable conditions for a mudsnail that turns a trajectory of what is known to an outcome that is not known. It will affect that proportion of animals present in a place that will be different than what we now experience."
Pausing, Varley says the notion of predictability, upon which civilization has been built (and, by extension, tourist economies, farm towns, recreational pursuits, ways of life) will need to be restructured.
"Preservation as we have known it for over 100 years has been associated with protection of a given piece of land. The way you provide protection is you use your police powers and that got the job done. I think for present-day managers, that approach is still needed against evildoers, but with climate change there's going to be an increasing level of helplessness when the problems they face are not caused by poachers but by auto or factory emissions originating in the Peoples' Republic of China. You can't protect the boundaries of special places any more. It's out of your hands."
The Holy Grail for conservationists has been the vision of pristinity as expressed by native species, native ecosystems, Varley says. "But like ecosystems everywhere, even those without a huge presence of humankind, our ecosystems are now on a new trajectory. It's like somebody pulled the rug out from under us. Baring a volcanic explosion, Yellowstone will always be there in some form that is recognizable. But it won't be the same place that we worked so hard to protect the last 135 years."
Climate change, although created by human hands, challenges the conventional mindset of land managers who were taught to believe they could achieve precise preferred outcomes based upon the application of certain management prescriptions. All of this goes out the window and along with it, possibly, the human hubris of believing that nature can be controlled.
Wishful thinking, vehement denial, kicking and screaming, trying to paint it as a partisan conspiracy, praying for a miracle; these acts may serve a cathartic function but they do not erase the significant and growing body of science that makes the certainty of dramatic climate change in our lifetime irrefutable.
"What allows me to get back to sleep after I wake up in a cold sweat is that there's promise in a re-organized global world," Graumlich says. "There is the potential to harness the business community on the same scale in which IT [information technology) has been harnessed and used as a tool to transform. It can become an engine for prosperity. The pressing need to confront climate change will force a huge unprecedented reaction, even if the outcomes are for the better."
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It's true: Undeniably, there's a lot that scientists still don't know. But that absence of a clear distillation of the future does not mean there is an abscence of consensus that we are in store for dramatic changes which will push humanity beyond the cocoon of a comfort zone it has enjoyed and grown accustomed to. Scientists, after all, are an ilk of bright minded skeptics who devote their lives to the pursuit of disproving and debunking things before they are embraced as fact.
Author Tim Flannery, who wrote the recent critically acclaimed book about climate change, titled The Weather Makers, echoes the belief of many scientists that humans have roughly a decade, give or take a few years, to confront carbon dioxide emissions in a meaningful way. Such action could blunt the worst effects of warming down the road when all of us adults reading these words are no longer living. Along with Flannery, two others have written excellent eminently-readable books on the subject: New Yorker Magazine staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes From A Catastrophe; and Eugene Linden's The Winds of Change.
Is it still possible for politicians to think and act and create policies that are balanced between the rational self—read economic—interests of constituents living in the here and now and the best interests of citizens who are not yet born?
Just as society can no longer ignore the truth of evidence relating to climate change, so, too, must it recognize that wallowing in despair is equivalent to taking no action.
So here is the good news.
As fate would have it, the Rockies and western plains, where I reside and where the glaciers are vanishing and the temperatures heating up, also sit at one of the ground zeros for a possible American revolution in alternative energy. A key player is businessman, conservationist, and bison rancher Ted Turner who is fast gaining an international profile for his environmental and humanitarian work.
Devoting his autumn years and contributing millions upon millions of dollars to ending nuclear proliferation and addressing climate change, Turner believes the linchpin solution is segueing the fossil fuel economy into alternative energy. He believes vast new fortunes can be made by those who re-tool their business strategies and embrace innovation that is geared to sustainable energy sources. Turner is planning to put wind turbines on some of his ranches in the southern Rockies and he's looking at ways that the companies he runs can serve as an example of doing more with less. Many of the brightest minds have joined Turner and former Yellowstone superintendent Finley (head of the Turner Foundation) at Turner's Flying D Ranch outside of Bozeman to think about how to engage corporate America in solutions.
Together, Turner and Finley have played crucial roles in establishing the Energy Future Coalition that is making huge inroads with the business community, labor leaders and environmentalists to bring about change in U.S. energy policy. Six working groups with prominent politicians and business executives were formed around the topics of transportation, bioenergy, agriculture, the future of coal, end-use energy, and safeguarding the power grid as a national security issue. A pilot project of EFC is 25 X 25, which aims to have agricultural products produce 25 percent of the total energy consumed in the U.S. by the year 2025.
"CEOs in business are starting to get it," Finley says. "From the executives at Wal-Mart to the senior partners at Goldman Sachs, they recognize the huge business opportunities."
If carried out, analysts say investments in biofuels, conservation, and energy efficiency as suggested by 25 X 25 would in a fairly short amount of time reduce U.S. oil consumption by three million barrels A DAY or about 15 percent of current consumption annually. It would create 1 million new jobs by 2015, add another 500,000 jobs in the staggered U.S. auto industry, spawn more than 500,000 jobs in clean-coal technology (where Montana could position itself as a leader), and perhaps most importantly it would help households save money on their monthly power and gas bills and enable the U.S. to reduce emissions of carbon by 180 tons per year or about 10 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2001. Montana and other western states could be at the head of the pack.
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| Stunning mountain ranges like the Snowcrest peaks along the Continental Divide in western Montana may cease to have snowpacks which could have severe consequences for agriculture, tourism, the survival of wildlife, and ultimately, the amount water that reaches the tap. Photo by Todd Wilkinson. | |
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In announcing his candidacy, Phillips was the first state candidate in the West to throw his support behind 25 X 25. The initiative has won enthusiasm not only from Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who was the first western governor to endorse the program, but it received heavyweight backing in the form of the American Farm Bureau, one of the most powerful lobbying entities in Congress. Schweitzer also empanelled a special task force on climate change.
Like Turner, the governor supports the notion of the federal government initiating a massive R & D effort with alternative fuels modeled after the Apollo space program that would function as a partnership between the state and federal government and the business community.
In 2005, Montana Senate Majority Leader John Tester, a candidate for U.S. senator, introduced a bill which became law, mandating that by 2015 at least 15 percent of all energy in the state be produced through renewable resources. Tester's opponent, incumbent U.S. Senator Conrad Burns says that he, too, is committed to investing federal dollars in ethanol production.
Next to solar, Montana's most abundant sustainable resource is wind. In part because of the incentives offered in the legislation, wind farms began springing up almost immediately in the state, most noticeably in the Judith Gap. New construction of propellered-windmills catapulted Montana from ranking 50th in the nation of wind energy to 15th.
The chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality recently told a reporter that the Bush Administration is spending $10 billion annually on climate change research. That's one-tenth the amount spent to fund a year's worth of the war in Iraq. Society will spend billions more to rebuild New Orleans and billions more after that to try and keep the city from being inundated again by hurricanes and rising seas.
Are scientists incentivized to fear monger, as PERC's Shaw claims? "As a society we have some really hard questions to face. Status quo won't work any more," government scientist Pederson says. "Scare tactics only turn people off. We prefer to re-frame the Time Magazine cover another way. Instead of 'Be Worried. Be VERY Worried,' people should 'Think Hard. Think VERY Hard about the decisions they are making, where and how they are living, what they are buying, and who they are voting for. The personal actions we take are the investment we make."
I think back to the sense of patriotism that was infused in me as a teenager as I watched the fireworks show on America's 200th birthday and helped my parents pack the family station wagon for our trip the next morning to Glacier Park. In the New York Times, Pulitizer Prize-winning columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that being green is the new red, white and blue.
That might be hard for some westerners who subscribe to the cowboy myth of maverick independence and geographic isolation to swallow. We are separate from the rest of the world. We are where the world wants to come and relax. But potentially we can also position ourselves at the center of the world.
"Sorry, but being green, focusing the nation on greater energy efficiency and conservation, is not some girlie-man issue," Friedman writes. "It is actually the most tough-minded, geostrategic, pro-growth and patriotic thing we can do. Living green is not for sissies. Sticking with oil, and basically saying that a country that can double the speed of microchips every 18 months is somehow incapable of innovating its way to energy independence - that is for sissies, defeatists and people who are ready to see American values eroded at home and abroad."
Across America, hundreds of thousands of citizens—Republicans, Democrats independents, business people, grandparents, school teachers, NASCAR and Indy drivers, religious leaders, country- western and rock musicians, and young people have signed on to the Virtual March on Washington, D.C. at www.stopglobalwarming.org. One of the signees is Republican John McCain.
Nearly 250 mayors of large and mid-sized cities also have come together to form a unified front in tackling climate change, part of it prompted by inaction on the federal level from Washington, D.C. The city of Portland, Oregon, for example, is leading the way in trying to get both government and private business to lower CO2 emissions by adopting energy conservation measures and opportunities for carbon sequestration.
"If we have the brainpower in this country to put a man on the moon and remove someone's heart and replace it with a new one, then I believe establishing a new paradigm for how we create our energy is definitely doable," says Phillips. "It's the states and the individual businesses that get out ahead that will be best positioned to enjoy the rewards of the change that has to occur."
Climate change is the greatest challenge to modern civilization, Ted Turner tells me. Addressing it with courage and conviction and an entrepreneurial spirit can yield unprecedented opportunity. "This is the only thing that has left me thinking like an optimist," he adds. "Otherwise, if you care about the future your kid's grandkids are going to inherit, you realize how dire it could be. It is our only chance to literally make a difference in shaping a world worth saving."
EDITOR'S NOTE: Todd Wilkinson, based in Bozeman, is currently writing a book about Ted Turner's work as a global environmentalist and his ownership of two million acres of private land in the U.S. A shorter version of the story appears this summer in the journal Montana Quarterly, currently on news stands. Color photos by Todd Wilkinson
[End of article]
Tood, outstanding article! I have always enjoyed the hikes in and around Many Glaciers and the walk from the top of Logan Pass to the Many Glaciers Hotel.
Regarding global warming, I caution against straight line projections of futurescapes based on conditions today. In my opinion, the better view is to recognize the cyclical nature of warming periods versus ice sheets and the impact of volcanic eruptions of creating mini iceages. There is a Russian scientist actually predicting an extended cooling period about to occur based on his study of sunspot activity. My own guess is that it has to do with the ever changing ocean salinity and currents. More fresh water laying on top of the cold salt water eventually overcoming the thermal barrier and forcing the cold salt water to the surface and thereby spawning a new chillier trend to the cycle. I guess we'll see if we live long enough.
You mentioned being helpless against factories in the People's Republic of China. Yet we, as Americans, consume vast amounts of the goods those factories produce. We are not helpless, rather we are so blinded by our creature comforts we don't recoginize our own culpability in foriegn pollution.
Think hard. Think very hard.
Todd correctly asks where conservation fits in with a changing climate. Indeed, what can the conservation community do?
About some things, the correct answer is nothing at all. Some genies are out of the bottle.
Even if the whole world had quit burning fossil fuels and liquidating forests yesterday, the planet is going to be under a new climate with higher temperatures for at least one century. And climate scientists I trust say that warm temperatures are in the pipeline for the next "few" centuries.
None of which means that conservationists have no options One major option is increasingly clear, even mandatory, and the following three excerpts set out the broad outlines of what has become the conservation community's imperative.
Imperative is the keyword here. Whether we operate in the Rockies, or anywhere else in the world, the passage below set out policies that are no longer optional.
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1 - Glacier National Park Biodiversity Paper #7
"Each 1 degree C of global warming will shift temperature zones by about 160 km (100 miles). In the northern hemisphere this means that if the climate warms 3°C species may have to shift northward as much as 500 km (300 miles) in order to find suitable habitat under the new climatic regime. They may also have to shift more than 500 m (over 1600 ft) upward in elevation (when you go up 500 m in elevation, you experience the same 3°C cooling as you would by moving 250 km towards the poles)."
"Global warming may make a mockery of our attempts in all nature reserves, including Glacier National Park, to preserve natural communities and rare, threatened, and endangered native species."
"Perhaps many of Glacier's species will be able to survive farther north, in the Banff-Jasper area. Protection of corridors linking the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, and parks in the Canadian Rockies may provide critical avenues for species dispersal."
See the full Glacier Park report at:
http://www.nps.gov/glac/resources/bio7.htm
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2 - In its "Managing Mountain Parks," the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization says:
" The major challenges for the twenty-first century are:
"To link together the isolated existing mountain protected areas by conservation corridors along the mountain ranges. This not only increases effective size, but provides migration corridors for gene flow and species movement. As the climate changes, poleward migration corridors in north-south ranges (e.g. the Andes) will better accommodate temperature change, and migration along the east-west
ranges (e.g. the Western Tien Shan) will be a response to rainfall changes.
full FAO report at:
http://www.fao.org/documents/show_cdr.asp?url_file=/docrep/x0963E/x0963e06.htm
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3 - Repeating the same basic theme, the United Nations Environment Programme recently said:
"Forest management responses to climate change should focus on maintaining species diversity on national or continental scales through facilitating the processes of species migration, rather than by solely preserving specific reserves. Refugia and migration corridors may be best maintained by reducing habitat fragmentation and locating reserves near north-south running mountain ranges (boreal and temperate regions) or along precipitation gradients (tropical regions)."
full UN report at:
http://www.unep-wcmc.org/forest/flux/executive_summary.htm
Lance Olsen has been writing about the atmosphere and following atmospheric research since 1981. He is project director of the Missoula-based Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers. He can be reached at .
I agree that the mantra shouldn't be "Be Afraid," but should be "Think Hard."
The implications of global warming are staggering, as ecosystems move up in elevation and northward. That means the Sonoran Desert (or vestiges of it) will move into Colorado and Kansas. Instead of a Buffalo Commmons on the plains, we may have desert antelope -- certainly, groundwater-based irrigation will vanish, as will the towns based on that economy.
The great mountain forests of lodgepole and spruce will give way to juniper and scrub oak.
Since we'll lose our snow-pack reservoirs, we'll engage in a futile spate of dam construction, only to realize that evaporation from reservoirs swamps our efforts to store water. (Recharging deep aquifers might be worth exploring, however.)
Conservationists will have to see whether we can transplant entire ecosystem webs, intact, hundreds of miles north, not trusting that plants, insects and animals will be able to find their way without a complete unraveling.
Factor in Peak Oil scenarios and regions will have to figure out how to feed themselves locally, because Imperial Valley vegetables and Florida oranges will become faint memories to those of us in the Northern Rockies.
By all means, think hard, think very hard.
The Russians seem to have a different point of view to the general consensus. http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=3420
Comment By Marion, 6-10-06I have asked this question on other environmentalist type forums.
Are you willing to cut your driving to that absolutley necessary, foregoing vacations, just a spin around town, etc?
Are you willing to drive 55mph to cut your fuel consumption? Are you willing to switch to one of the little cars like the Focus or Aveo?
If not do you REALLY believe in global warming?
How many barrels of oil do you think went into the making of Al Gore's movie? And how many into promoting it? And how many in going to see it? Don't all of these things have an impact?
Thumbs Up Todd!! Yes it is reality the global warming and when the oceans rise they will realize that it indeed a revelation in our changing world. The heat will bring many new comers from the south to the Treasure State to live..Just like the Trail Drives..go north young man there opportunity in them Northern Lights!!
:)
Todd
This is a masterful account of what is facing us. I am looking forward to your book on Ted Turner.
My own travels around the world as an Army officer, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, and my own life and experiences here in the West since leaving military service fifteen years ago, have proven to me without a shadow of a doubt that the changes we human beings are now facing are unprecedented in human experience since the end of the Pleistocene approximately 10,000 years ago and the subsequent rise of civilization with agriculture and its descendants, industrialism and what I call binomial reality.
My only caution is to avoid falling into the civilzed fallacy of thought that humans are captains of their fate and masters of the earth's future. They are not. The fundamental fallacious assumption of civilization is that not only can nature be controlled, it should be controlled, for our sole benefit.
This is the great folly, the absurd ideology of civilization. It is the idea that has led to untold disasters of war, commerce, and society over the last several millennia.
How many civilzations have fallen over the last several millennia, and how many have survived? The least familiarity with human history will indicate that the number of the former is in the tens, and the latter number is zero.
Let me repeat, Zero.
What is unprecedented is that in the past, the rise and fall of civilizations has been regional and continental. Now, what we are facing is global in nature, and I think the collapse of the present civilzation will be global in scope, just as the changes that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene were global in scope. Except this time, the global change is due to the activity of one species out of billions--us.
My conclusion after the last thirty years of adult life, and what I am working on and thinking deeply about now, is to face these coming changes with another assumption in mind--not that our culture of technology and unjustified faith in the progress of civilzation will pull us through, but that our evolutionary history and our biology will pull us through. To take this approach is to adopt a completely different mindset from that which both conservatives and progressives share--that we are not human beings without civilization. I disagree with that assumption and our evolutionary history bears me out.
The mindset I advocate begins with the notion that first and foremost we are natural beings, and that culture reflects, not opposes, that fact.
The first thing we have to do is learn to think differently so that we can learn to act differently.
We have to learn to become uncivilzed.
Best,
Robert
Robert writes, "...the changes we human beings are now facing are unprecedented in human experience since the end of the Pleistocene approximately 10,000 years ago..." Back in the Middle-Ages there was the Medieval Warm Period which occured from about the 10th century to about the 14th century. This was followed by the Little Ice Age which lasted up to the 19th century. Khabibulo Absudamatov, a scientist with the Russian Sciences Academy Observatory, has studied the correlation of sunspot activity with the earth's warming and cooling periods. He predicts that a cooling period may begin in 2012 and followed by a much colder conditions beginning in 2035.
There may be debate as to what peoples constitute a continuing civilization, but aboriginal people in Australia have been around for several thousand years and continue today.
Can those of you who believe in man caused global warming explain how we went from global freezing (according to scientists at the time) to global warrming in a mere 30 years? Did the environmentalists who were calling for changes to head it off cause it?
If folks truly believed in global warming, they would be changing their lifestyles, not just wring long articles, producing movies, etc. So far I have seen no indication that those screaming the loudest actually intend giving up something themselves. They want to force others to do what they themselves are unwilling to do. When I see global warming advocates cutting their consumption of fossil fuels, then I will begin to be impressed.
By the way some parts of the world had record breaking cold winters this year, with many freezing to death in those places. How do you explain that?
Critics of human-caused global warming often argue that if environmentalists haven't personally renounced automobiles, electricity, central heating, etc., then they're just a bunch of hypocrites.
In reality, people rarely fit within such narrow, either-or dimensions. People are changing their lifestyles, either because of sticker-shock at the pump, or more mindfully, because they want to contribute, however incrementally, to a solution.
For example, I recently purchased a lawn-mower -- not a Lazy-Boy on wheels, but an old-fashioned rotary mower, where the motive power is me, myself and I.
If I have an errand downtown or a short shopping trip, I might hop on my bicycle--good exercise for me and I'm saving both money and energy. This morning, I drove my car to the grocery store for two reasons -- it was getting hot and I needed to bring home a 50-lb. sack of dog food. Does that make me a hypocrite? I don't think so--I simply made a choice.
Re: the global freezing controvery a few decades ago--that didn't have anywhere near the solid concensus of science behind it that human-caused global warming has today. It was simply a hypothesis based on limited data, and over time, it was discredited by data pointing to human-caused global warming. There's no conspiracy here -- just science at work.
I would also point out to Marion the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what you experience day-to-day and it is widely variable, ranging from record-setting heat to record-setting cold. Climate is what happens over a longer term, as air and water warms up consistently over time. (During ice ages, it has done the reverse.) Climate change does NOT prevent such variability as Marion mentioned -- indeed, weather can be regarded as an energy machine that is constantly seeking equilibrium. As more energy is trapped inside the world's atmosphere and oceans, that energy machine is going to act more, not less, energetically, so we can expect more variability, not less.
Forty-six years ago, Michigan State researcher Milton Rokeach wrote in "The Open and Closed Mind," that people face two tasks: (1) they seek to learn more about the world, and (2) they wish to protect themselves from the world -- especially from information that might prove unsettling.
Marion seems to have a belief system wherein it is difficult, indeed frightening, for her to distinguish between various camps within the environmental movement, or even among the scientists themselves. It is far more comfortable to label those with whom she disagrees as an extremeist or "environmental whacko" than to examine the issue of global warming with an open mind. The issue, the scientists, the environmentalists, the oil companies, are a very complicated and multi-faceted story and deserve better than either-or allegations that defeat objective analysis, but contribute only to extreme positions.
Brodie, there is more of a disagreement than a consensus of opinion on global warming. According to Dr. S. Fred Singer, former director of the National Weather Satellite Center and atmospheric scientist from George Mason University, there were something like 17000 scientists that signed a petition opposing the Kyoto Protocol while about 2000 scientists worked on the UN global warming report. Of course real science is not about democracy and the greater number of votes, it's about facts. You can read his interview on the subject here: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=19633
Dennis T. Avery, previously a senior analyst for the Department of State and a a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., is highly skeptical of Al Gore's claims and points to the work of P.J. Polissar of the University of Massachusetts and the study of Andean glaciers. See his opinion piece here: http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=21733&catcode=13
I would like to update the information provided by the references cited by Craig Moore, particularly the one that cites an interview of Fred Singer. This argument of the troposphere not getting warmer but cooler, thus refuting the surface temperature rises that have been observed, has been used by every skeptical group trying to refute global warming. Climate modeling indicates that there should be a correlation. Unfortunately, the satellite data of John Christy’s group at Alabama (this is the data skeptics use) had to be corrected because satellite drift was not taken into account. Christy himself now agrees that the troposphere has warmed. The amount of warming has a large degree of uncertainty so that there might now be a good correlation of surface temperatures with troposphere temperatures. For up-to-date references see http://www.uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=4253; Nature, 436, 896 (2005)
Comment By Lance Olsen, 6-11-06Craig Moore cites Fred Singer as an authority, so I suppose it's only fair to cite Singer's own words:
"The injection of large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the past few decades has been extremely sudden in relation to important natural time scales....Precise measurements by Charles D. Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have established that
the carbon dioxide content increased by six parts per million between 1958 and 1968."
"The most widely discussed matter related to these increases is the possibility that they will lead to a worldwide increase in temperature. The molecule of carbon dioxide has strong absorption bonds, particularly in the infrared region of the spectrum at wavelengths of from 12 to 18 microns.
This is the spectral region where most of the thermal energy radiating from earth to space is concentrated. By increasing the absorption of this radiation ... the carbon dioxide reduces the amount of heat energy lost by earth to outer space."
"In 1956 Gilbert N. Plass calculated that a doubling of the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere would result in a rise of 6.5 degrees Fahrenheit at the earth's surface. In 1963 Fritz Moller calculated that a 25 percent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide would would increase the average temperature by one to 7 degrees F..."
Singer concluded that "it would be incautious" to assume that "the heat being put into the atmosphere as a result of human energy consumption can be neglected."
Source. Singer, Fred S. "Human Energy Production as a process in the biosphere," Scientific American, September 1970.
There are two very interesting things about Singer's excellent 1970 analysis. First, it is now the consensus within the climate science community. Second, Singer himself has rejected it, and it is all but impossible to find sound scientific reason for his rejection of what he once seemed to understand so well.
S. Fred Singer is a member of the following organizations:
Editorial Advisory Board
The Cato Institute
Adjunct Scholar
National Center for Policy Analysis
Adjunct Fellow
Frontiers of Freedom
Advisory Board Member (2002)
American Council on Science and Health
Now pay attention to where those organizations get funding:
The Cato Institute received $55,000 from ExxonMobil in 2002-2003.
The National Center for Policy Analysis received $105,000 from ExxonMobil in 2002-2003.
The Frontiers of Freedom organizations received $282,000 from ExxonMobil in 2002-2003.
The American Council on Science and Health received $35,000 from ExxonMobil in 2002-2003.
So is Mr. Singer an honest scientist, or is he a paid shill?
To borrow a phrase from Fox News:
We Report. You Decide.
Regarding Singer read his interview and you decide. His knowledge in 2000 based on satellite findings is 30 years later than his 1970 work. Science does advance based on better data gathering techniques. Attacking him personally rather than responding to his research and findings is a drive-by smear. His research found that atmospheric temperature has only increased over population centers and not the whole of the planet. If you dispute his findings cite your source. By the way here is a fellow from Harvard who seems to be unconvinced about global warming as well. Read his work and the following comments especially about the contribution of CO2 by man. http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/09/quantifying-climate-uncertainty.html
Comment By Todd in Bozeman, 6-11-06Regarding assertions that climate change is not human induced, I would direct readers to a story which appeared May 3, 2006, in the Washington Post written by Juliet Eilperin.
It is titled: "Study Reconciles Data In Measuring Climate Change" and is Eilperin's coverage of a report that made headlines around the world. Here's the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/02/AR2006050201677.html
Eilperin's opening paragraph states: "A government study released yesterday undermines one of the key arguments of climate change skeptics, concluding there is no statistically significant conflict between measures of global warming on the earth's surface and in the atmosphere."
In addition, the fourth paragraph of the story reads: "The report also concluded that humans are driving the warming trend through greenhouse gas emissions, noting in the official news release, 'the observed patterns of change over the past 50 years cannot be explained by natural processes alone, nor by the effects of short-lived atmospheric constituents such as aerosols and tropospheric ozone alone.'
Except for a relatively small handful of scientists, some of whom have very close professional relationships with the energy industry and/or free-market think tanks, the science of climate change is clear: Most of the planet is warming. Carbon dioxide emissions have been a catalyst. Some regions may actually cool, but the consensus and expert opinion of most peer-reviewed scientists who far outnumber the Fred Singers (et. few), is that Earth is getting hotter, glaciers (which serve as barometers) are melting, and the phenomena can't be explained away simply by saying it's due to increased solar activity.
First I don't recall any name calling of wackos of any kind.
I just have trouble getting real excited about a "climate change" that has taken such a dramatic turn around in less than 30 years. the biggest mistake the freezer had was putting a time on it that most would live to see. The warmers aren't making that mistake they are predicting all of the dire consequences in about a hundred years. Does anyone really know when this switch occurred or have any explanation for it? On top of that is a few years actually adequate to determine a "climate cahnge" one way or another?
As for credentials are all scientists associated with environmental organizations to be dismissed also? I would think a scientists studies are more important than theri affiliation....or does that only apply to those one disagrees with?
Todd, in terms of the consensus of opinion this article from the Daily Telegraph tends to point to an "agenda" keeping out dissent from the consensus. See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/01/wglob01.xml
Notice the resignation of Dr Chris Landsea at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change over the perceived pro-warming bias.
In my opinion, we are at that moment of awareness where unk unks come to play. We now know we know nothing about things we don't know--yet!
Craig, thank you for that excellent article. I am amazed at the number of people who swallow the story that "every" scientist believes the man caused global warming theory. That seems to be a point that was made by Al Gores film, and folks think it is true.
It is really too bad that we cannot even trust scientific journals to print facts instead of only those that support their theories.
Marion, Dr. William M. Gray the often touted ultimate guru of hurricane forecasting is another skeptic. To some degree (pun intended) the debate may be media enhanced as it has had alternating bouts of freeze versus melting predictions for over a 100 years. Man may quicken or retard the earth's natural cycles, but I doubt seriously that it can change them. To me the debate is akin to the Miller Lite beer commercial, "tastes great, less filling." To argue one versus the other gets us to the same beer. Dino fuel has its limits and its drawbacks. Syntheic fuels and biofuels seem the logical replacement. The synbios have less polluting aromatics and tend to be renewable. Whether the "greens" and the skeptics march down the same path while singing a different song, they will arrive at the same place and the world will benefit. In that regard see the recent study by the Worldwatch Institute. http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=2773
Meanwhile Mother Earth will dance to her own beat and on her own time.
Craig correctly recognizes Dr. William M. Gray as a recognized guru of hurricane forecasting. And he scores another bull's-eye when pointing out that Gray is a skeptic about global warming as a factor behind hurricane frequency and intensity.
Gray has devoted a career to understanding the natural variability of hurricanes. And I've seen no serious science disputing that natural variability is a player.
Trouble is, there's more than one kid on this block. While natural variablity is a shoo-in, and in many more ways than a driver climatic fluctuation, it's not alone.
Global warming has come to join it, specifically in the form of warming sea surface temperatures.
So, while Gray is on undisputed ground when pointing to natural fluctuations, he's been running into some stormy waters when peristing in attributing hurricane variability to natural cycles alone.
Like other skeptics, (e.g., Christy, Lindzen) Gray has (inadvertently?) done a service to the science of global warming by forcing his colleagues back to their drawing boards. The net effect has been a strengthened body of evidence that 1- sea surface temperatures are on the way up and that 2- they too play a role in hurricane formation and intensity.
The tricky part of this is that science does not get to pick and choose between natural variablity and greenhouse-forcing. Instead, what's been happening is increasingly sophisticated calculations of how big a role each of them is playing. And the greenhouse-forcing signals are coming through loud and clear for the majority of scientists who have been sorting out the pieces of the puzzle.
I don't know why Gray persists in insisting that it's all a matter of natural variation. But the trend of evidence is lining up against that interpretation.
Regarding Dr. Gray I found this article from the BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/climate_change/1023334.stm
Dr. Gray is reported to have said:
"As a boy, I remember seeing articles about the large global warming that had taken place between 1900 and 1945. No one understood or knew if this warming would continue. Then the warming abated and I heard little about such warming through the late 1940s and into the 1970s.
In fact, surface measurements showed a small global cooling between the mid-1940s and the early 1970s. During the 1970s, there was speculation concerning an increase in this cooling. Some speculated that a new ice age may not be far off.
Then in the 1980s, it all changed again. The current global warming bandwagon that US-European governments have been alarming us with is still in full swing.
Not our fault
Are we, the fossil-fuel-burning public, partially responsible for this recent warming trend? Almost assuredly not.
These small global temperature increases of the last 25 years and over the last century are likely natural changes that the globe has seen many times in the past.
Human kind has little or nothing to do with the recent temperature changes
This small warming is likely a result of the natural alterations in global ocean currents which are driven by ocean salinity variations. Ocean circulation variations are as yet little understood.
Human kind has little or nothing to do with the recent temperature changes. We are not that influential.
There is a negative or complementary nature to human-induced greenhouse gas increases in comparison with the dominant natural greenhouse gas of water vapour and its cloud derivatives.
It has been assumed by the human-induced global warming advocates that as anthropogenic greenhouse gases increase that water vapour and upper-level cloudiness will also rise and lead to accelerated warming - a positive feedback loop.
It is not the human-induced greenhouse gases themselves which cause significant warming but the assumed extra water vapour and cloudiness that some scientists hypothesise.
Negative feedback
The global general circulation models which simulate significant amounts of human-induced warming are incorrectly structured to give this positive feedback loop.
Their internal model assumptions are thus not realistic.
As human-induced greenhouse gases rise, global-averaged upper-level atmospheric water vapour and thin cirrus should be expected to decrease not increase.
Water vapour and cirrus cloudiness should be thought of as a negative rather than a positive feedback to human-induced - or anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases.
No significant human-induced greenhouse gas warming can occur with such a negative feedback loop.
Climate debate has 'life of its own'
Our global climate's temperature has always fluctuated back and forth and it will continue to do so, irrespective of how much or how little greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere.
Although initially generated by honest scientific questions of how human-produced greenhouse gases might affect global climate, this topic has now taken on a life of its own.
It has been extended and grossly exaggerated and misused by those wishing to make gain from the exploitation of ignorance on this subject.
This includes the governments of developed countries, the media and scientists who are willing to bend their objectivity to obtain government grants for research on this topic.
I have closely followed the carbon dioxide warming arguments. From what I have learned of how the atmosphere ticks over 40 years of study, I have been unable to convince myself that a doubling of human-induced greenhouse gases can lead to anything but quite small and insignificant amounts of global warming."
I think Dr. Gray nailed it when he mentioned the grants for research, there seems to be big money to be obtained from these grants. Money seems to drive a lot of this stuff.
Environmental groups make money filing lawsuits trying to force others to do this or that to save the ecosystem.
Marion, back in Feb. 2005 The Guardian newspaper out of London ran an article entitled "Hotter world may freeze Britain " about a climate conference that had an interesting twist. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1403798,00.html
That article said in part:
'The chance of the Gulf Stream, which brings warm waters around the British Isles, being halted, sending temperatures plummeting by more than 5C, is now more than 50%, a scientific conference on climate change was told yesterday.
The conference, called by Tony Blair to inform world leaders about the urgency of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, was told of a series of new research findings which showed that climate change was speeding up and would be worse than hitherto expected.
Only five years ago the scientists on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were confident that Antarctica was a "slumbering giant" and its vast ice sheets so cold that they would not begin to melt for centuries, even if the climate changed elsewhere.
This conference was told "the giant is awakening", and areas of the ice-bound continent melting, causing faster sea-level rise than expected.
Whatever politicians and scientists do, temperatures will rise another 0.6C in the next 30 years, on top of 0.7C in the past century, pushing a number of vulnerable species, such as polar bears and penguins, to extinction.
The 30-year time lag between man putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the Earth responding by becoming warmer meant that we were already committed to further climate change.
Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, said "My understanding is that this level of temperature rise is already built in for the next 20 to 30 years from the climate change we have already instigated, so a significant impact is already inevitable.
"It will have a different impact in different parts of the world, but we will all have to adapt."
For western Europe and North America the most worrying finding revealed at the conference was the potential collapse of the sea current known popularly as the Gulf Stream and to oceanographers as the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (THC).
The melting of Greenland and Arctic ice and additional fresh water from rainfall is threatening to shut down the current completely.
Mike Schlesinger, from the Climate Research Group at the University of Illinois, said a 3C rise in temperature this century, which is well within current predictions, would lead to a 45% chance of the Gulf Stream halting by the end of this century and a 70% chance by 2200.
But he said that some sophisticated climate models showed the current halting with as little as 2 to 2.5C rise in temperatures - "and that is what you could call dangerous climate change".
The current, which carries one million billion watts of heat - a "petawatt" - from the tropics past Scotland and northwards to the Arctic is known to be weakening by about 10%, but the chance of it being switched off completely by climate change was previously considered remote.
Professor Schlesinger said that even if politicians imposed stringent carbon taxes to reduce emissions there was still a greater than one in four chance of the current being turned off.
"Waiting 30 years to act increases the odds to more than one in three," he said.
Figures from the Hadley Centre for Climate Change given at the meeting showed that in some places in the North Atlantic the temperature might drop as much as 10C, and over the UK Atlantic coast it would be around 5C, causing a winter freeze up.
Dr Richard Wood produced a map showing what would happen in Britain if the THC shut down in 2049. The cooling effect would be far greater than than the general effect of global warming.
"The resulting climate in the UK for example would be substantially colder than that experienced during the 'Little Ice Age' of the 17th and 18th centuries."
This was a period when ice fairs were held in winter on the frozen Thames.'
Given this concern we can look at Todd's original request to envision the West in 2056 and see an entirely opposite reality occurring.
Gray can say, as Craig quotes him, that he sees no importance in a doubling of the atmosphere's greenhouse gas content. But I've never seen Gray or other skeptics wrestle with the question of what happens to infrared radiation when it runs into these gasses in its way back to space. No amount of quibbling can evade the physics.
But a lot of this quibbling isn't really based in science from the get-go. Not long ago, I composed a little piece for New West about politics and its role as a battler against science and related reporting.
The stakes are high when evidence of science or the economy is shoved aside. And that shoving can come straight out of political struggles over the budget. Or so say I, at this URL:
http://www.newwest.net/index.php/main/article/science_politics_and_the_budget/
Lance writes, "The stakes are high when evidence of science or the economy is shoved aside."
I guess that's the main knock on Al Gore's film.
This is what is being said in Canada:
http://www.dobmagazine.nickles.com/columns/pulse.asp?
article=magazine/columns/060612/MAG_COL2006_UC0000.html
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=3
'Carleton University Professor Tim Patterson (Paleoclimatologist) explains the crucial importance of properly evaluating the merit of Canada's climate change plans: “It is no exaggeration to say that in the eight years since the Kyoto Protocol was introduced there has been a revolution in climate science. If, back in the mid-nineties, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would not exist because we would have concluded it was not necessary.”
Contrary to claims that the science of climate change has been settled, the causes of the past century’s modest warming is highly contested in the climate science community. The climate experts presenting in the video demonstrate that science is quickly diverging away from the hypothesis that the human release of greenhouse gases, specifically carbon dioxide, is having a significant impact on global climate. “There is absolutely no convincing scientific evidence that human-produced greenhouse gases are driving global climate change”, stated climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball. He added that the Canadian government’s plan to designate carbon dioxide as a “toxic” under CEPA is irresponsible and without scientific merit. “Carbon dioxide is a staff of life, plain and simple. It makes up less than 4% of greenhouse gases and it is not a toxic.”
IPCC assertions about the unprecedented nature of the past century's warming, or the widespread beliefs that we are experiencing an increase in extreme weather, accelerated sea level rise and unusual warming in polar regions are also shown in the video to be wholly without merit.
The idea for the video was initiated by the Friends of Science Society, a registered not-for-profit group of geologists, environmental scientists and concerned citizens, “in an effort to make the science of climate change available and understandable to the general public”, stated Dr. Doug Leahey, President of Friends of Science Society. Commenting on his decision to get involved with the video project, University of Calgary’s Professor Barry Cooper stated, “Universities are in the education business. In a democracy like Canada, education and informed discussion of public policy are tightly linked. The public, media and government would benefit by hearing from all sides on this important issue in order to make as informed a decision as is possible.”'
In my opinion, what this demonstrate is that there is anything but consensus in the scientific community. As Dr. Gray has suggested, the argument about consensus is not about science, it's about politics. That also seems to be the point of this editorial from the San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/13/EDGDOILMDO1.DTL
'THERE IS A CONCEIT among the American Left that the American Right cleaves to bad science out of deference to religion, while the left is all-science all-the-time. Former Veep Al Gore's new movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," however, shows how unscientific -- and downright faith-based -- the left has become.'
It never ceases to amaze me that those who believe in evolution instead of creation are absolutley determined that they are the ones to say when, where, how much, and even if evolution takes place.
Comment By Kimberly James, 6-14-06Regardless . . . what's the harm in living our lives in a manner that is more harmonious with nature? And shouldn't we be weaning off of Middle East oil stores in the "name" of national security? Gov. S gave a brilliant speech at UM's graduation this year. Wish I could find it on-line for you to read. We should take his advice and become more energy independent.
Comment By Robert Hoskins, 6-14-06As I read throught these comments, what strikes me most is how generally illiterate the majority of people are regarding not only the issues under discussion, but the nature of science itself. We hear that science is not democratic, but about "facts." We hear that facts are true, but theories are "political." Neither of these claims is true. It's clear that people don't know what science is, nor how it works.
There are no facts without the explanatory context of theory, and science is the most democratic of human institutions.
What we know today as science, from the Latin word scienta, or knowledge, began as an epistemological and moral rebellion against the hidebound theology of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, which relegated human knowledge to revelation from God brokered or mediated by priests. At the end of the medieval period, and at the beginning of the Renaissance, modern science made a different claim: that human beings could discover the truth for themselves through experimentation: getting one's hands dirty with the world, as it were. It was a direct challenge to the authority of the Church.
The scientific method began as an empiricist philosophy of the early Renaissance--that what we know comes through the senses, interpreted through the intellect (the wellspring of theory). None of the early scientists (e.g. Galileo) would have eschewed the role of theory; they might as well have denied the existence of their intellects. Indeed, they developed the first scientific theories to explain what they learned from their senses--that, for example, the earth orbits the sun. They created astronomy--a body of theory about celestial mechanics.
We put people in space on the basis not of fact, but of theory.
When we hear that theory is theory and fact is fact, and never the twain shall meet, we hear that the intellect has no place in science; we hear that ignorance is supreme.
Interestingly, Protestantism and modern science came from the same wellspring of rebellion against the Church, with the essence of early Protestantism being that human beings don't need priests to know God. More interestingly, many early scientists were members of the developing and secretive anti-Catholic Masonic order as well as scientific experimenters. Dan Brown uses this historical fact in The Da Vinci Code, which itself has come under ideological fire from churches Catholic and Protestant, which are determined to squelch any debate about the historical nature of Jesus.
As for the claim that democracy is irrelevant to science, it is a claim that is ignorant of how science works. The scientific method--examination of the world by experiment--is democratic to its core. It is a joint process of testing and mutual discussion, argument, and debate among scientists. It's a constant back and forth, in journals and conferences, in classrooms and laboratories, as facts are discovered, hypotheses designed to explain the facts tested and accepted or rejected. Hypotheses that stand the test of experiment and debate become theories. They are not pulled out of the air. They are formed in a crucible of experimentation AND democratic debate.
Theories are explanations of how things work that have met the requirements of rigorous testing AND debate among scientists until a consensus about their validity has been reached. A hypothesis becomes a theory only by a rigorous process of democratic debate, a conflict of intellects.
This is not a pretty process, nor a perfect process, but then no democratic process is. Following Winston Churchill, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
One thing we can be sure of: when science is allowed to work, we get knowledge, not ignorance. Those who prefer ignorance attack science, or attempt to undermine it (e.g., "intelligent design").
The debate over anthropogenic climate change has to be understood as a debate of global scale among thousands upon thousands of scientists. The debate has fired and winnowed fact upon fact, theory upon theory, from a myriad scientific disciplines, many of which have no direct relationship with each other, over the decades.
As a result of that process, we have reached the point where our best human understanding of the matter has reached two conclusions:
1)What we are seeing and experiencing as climate change is primarily of anthropogenic origin, and
2)The consequences of this climate change will be devastating to the human species, not to mention many other species that share this planet as home.
As Todd says at the beginning of this fine article, this isn't chicken little claiming that the sky is falling because some raven poop fell on his head. This is a conclusion that has come about from an unprecedented human effort to understand our world and what's going on.
It's a perfect marriage of theory and fact.
Because science is fundamentally democratic, one has to be alarmed when attempts are made to dictate where science goes, how it is conducted, and what conclusions it makes. The entire climate change debate has been marred by the determination of authoritarian governments and various industries, and their supporting sycophant think tanks--what we might call the modern politico-economic Church--to squelch or falsely spin what has become a tentative but still powerful consensus about anthropogenic climate change.
Among other things, one outcome of the climate change debate is that democracy itself is under attack by those for whom ignorance is a political weapon.
But where there is censorship, you can be sure there is truth.
Kimberly, I agree with you completely, we shoudlall be tring to save fuel. I don't believe flying all over the nation and other countries giving speaches is helping anything, especially when Mr. Gore flies in a private jet. I don;'t believe making a movie to try to make folks believe one's own point of view does much good again when tens of thousands of gallons of fuel are used to produce and promote it.
There are folks who fly and drive into Wyoming to protest the drilling of a well.....and guess what they use to get here. That makes absolutely no sense.
If you could insist that any environmental group that you support spend their money on research, not lawsuits we would reach the goal of alternative fuels much sooner, IMO. I do not know of a single one that is supporting research, do you?
In my opinion, Galileo's finger points the way towards true science, challenging the conventional, consensus wisdom. Always pointing to the "yeah buts" of inconvenient facts that undermine the agenda driven arguments of consensus claimed by the orthodoxy of true believers. Science is apolitical. Democracy describes a political process and political institutions by humankind to make decisions, which may be grounded on valid or faulty science. I believe we have a choice to make as to how we spend our public funds regarding climate. Either develop plans and build infrastructure that works in harmony with Mother Earth's cycles or throw it away in the fruitless attempt to challenge or alter the cyclical pattern of cooling and warming. In my opinion an example of such waste is the rebuilding of New Orleans. All of the flood gates and walls will not hold back rising sea levels when disaster strikes again. We should adapt and work in harmony with our changing environment.
Comment By Robert Hoskins, 6-14-06While I would agree that our actions should be in accordance with underlying natural processes, it is simply incorrect to claim science does not function through democratic process. For example, what is peer review if not a process of debate among equals?
Like it or not, science is a human institution not isolated from society. When we call for science to be "apolitical," what we want is for science to proceed according to the scientific method without censorship of its research or results by the powers that be--the powers that represent conventional wisdom because they have a vested interest, political and economic, in the status quo. Science, at its best, is a challenge to the status quo. That is precisely why the Inquisition went after Galileo. We know that church intellectuals actually agreed with Galileo. But he was a threat to Church authority and he had to be forced to recant for the "good" of the Church.
Through the Inquisition, the Church did tremendous damage to itself, yet, through its intransigence, it helped to create the Renaissance and the Reformation.
Science is not a-social; that is an ideology that deliberately isolates science from society. Science is a human institution. What it adds to society however is that it is self-correcting much more rapidly and accurately than society at large is. It welcomes and functions best through dissent and debate. Science has much to teach politics--something with which Thomas Jefferson would have agreed wholeheartedly.
I would strongly advise studying Thomas Kuhn's book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), which may be the most important book of the 20th century about the nature of science and how it works.
Let's not forget that in the beginning, there was no consensus about climate change and there was much disagreement; we have arrived where we are as a consequence of a long process of experimentation, thought, and intense debate. Scientific consensus--scientific theory--about climate change is not the same as conventional wisdom, which functions in the social realm to allow people to avoid thinking. Scientific consensus reflects the best of human understanding of a problem, and is anything but conventional.
At a much less controversial level, we saw the same problems with the theory of plate techtonics, which had considerable opposition in the beginning. Now it is an accepted theory of geology. It most certainly is NOT conventional wisdom, however.
At a more controversial level, evolution, nearly 150 years after Darwin published The Origin of Species, is still under attack from the modern Inquisition, which is determined to label it as "merely" theory. Actually,it's a damn good theory.
Much of the process of understanding how science works depends upon paying attention to how it actually works rather than to the fundmantalist ideology of those of libertarian or positivist slant, that somehow Science has replaced the Church as the repository of Truth and that Scientists are the Priests of Science, an ideology that was popular throughout most of the 20th century and did much damage. That ideology has has been adopted by government and industry, who have proclaimed themselves as the Church to which modern priests of science must swear allegiance, for which they are paid pretty well. It's dangerous now, as it was 500 years ago, to speak the truth.
Such an ideology would have been anathema to Galileo, who was concerned as much with human freedom as he was with knowledge.
That is what we are ultimately talking about when we talk about science--freedom. That's why government and industry with vested interests in the status quo are determined to deny what science has learned about climate change. They prefer that we live in ignornace, and therefore slavery, no matter the consequences.
Might I remind Mr. Hoskins that no matter how good he thinks Darwin's theory is, it is still a theory and much of it has to be taken on faith. Faith that the "missing links" will be found, faith that carbon testing is accurate, etc.
Back to global warming, what are you willing to do to stop it, you yourself?
One thing I'm doing is actually thinking about it. I highly recommend it to you.
Comment By Craig Moore, 6-14-06Robert, well agrued and "on point" response to my previous post without the personal rebukes that I found objectionable in your "what is science" reply. Scientific institutions function like any other human created institution. In my opinion, peer review debate is largely my whole point in the discussion. The debate continues by a variety of learned people who believe in global warming projections, who don't accept that global warming is upon us, who believe we are headed towards a deep freeze, who believe that Mother Earth is self-correcting (concerned over the falling flow rate of the Gulf Stream), and who believe we don't have suffient data to say what will happen either way in the next 50 years. Back in the 70's the media and scientific journals were forecasting "the iceman cometh." For over a 100 years there has been reported vacilation over whether the earth was headed towards the greenhouse or the next iceage. Like you I have a problem with tenets of faith being used as trump cards. In that regard neo-Druidic environmentalism has its own mantras and creed that are sung in reverent monotones. I also have a problem with Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvienent Truth," that refuses to discuss inconvenient truths that undermine his premise. I also have a problem with disregarding the carbon buildup in our oceans that create acid and kill the plankton. The later problem is not part of Mother Earth's cycles but seem to be largely man-made and needs attention to keep the food chain from winking out. Refering back to my Miller Lite analogy perhaps we can continue to argue the semantics while we travel the same path towards a common goal. I look forward to reading Todd's book and see whether he dons the Druid cloak and predictable chants, or the glasses, pocket protector, and lab coat of the scientist.
Take care.
As an admirer of Science Under Siege, which describes the kinds of events known to me personally, I have no doubt that Todd's book will be accurate, well-researched, closely-reasoned, and judicious in its conclusions. It would be so even if Todd adopted what you call environmental "druidism" as his context.
Druidism is little more than a throwback to what, as best as we can discover through enthnographic research, the original human hunter-gatherer stance toward the world--that the entire world is alive. James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis could be considered druidic. Is it still druidic when we speak instead in terms of supposing that the earth is a metasystem of a myriad functioning sub-systems sustained by negative feedback processes but distorted by positive feedback systems?
I'm providing a link to another article that expains the difference between scientists who disagree with the global warming scenario. They are generally scientists who study the climate on an ongoing basis, The global warming folks genrally study what is going to happen if such and such a scenario occurs.
It is very interesting.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm
Marion, you should be ashamed of yourself knocking down another stone slab at the Stonehenge chapel. ;)
Comment By Todd in Bozeman, 6-14-06I hate to interrupt the rhetorical lovefest going on between Craig and Marion, but let's invoke a little reality, shall we? As a note of caution, I would also be very careful, Craig, with how I throw around the word "conceit".
Certainly, skepticism about anything stated to be the gospel truth is healthy. That, after all, is the essence of empirical scientific inquiry. As a journalist, I, too, approached the idea of climate change with initial skepticism when I first began writing about it in the 1990s.
However, to demean the integrity of the many scientists who at first approached the possibility of climate change with suspicion, only to embrace its validity based upon the accumulated evidence, is to impugn the brightest scientific minds in the world who have never been accused of making their conclusions fit personal agendas.
If Craig and Marion have evidence to support their insinuations that climate change is a delusional invention, let us see it.
Craig seems to imply that there is a see-saw balance in the scientific community between those who believe climate change is real and human-caused, and those who hold an opposite view.
Bring together the number of reputable scientists who take climate change seriously and it would fill an auditorium. But gather the credible skeptics and the number could fit inside a small room.
As I was reminded this morning in a chat with a respected politically-conservative scientist who helped coordinate one of the independent regional overviews of likely effects from climate change, the debunkers are few in number and often carry forward hidden political, economic, and religious agendas. Either that, or they're afraid to face reality because it scares them.
William M. Gray is among a small number of skeptics and he has done nothing to debunk the large, multi-tiered preponderant body of evidence, subjected to stringent peer review, that points to climate change as being caused by human-generated carbon dioxide emissions.
To suggest that over 2,000 scientists who disagree with Gray are somehow part of a conspiracy to foist a myth on the world in order to pad their own research budgets is preposterous. As the scientist told me this morning, Exxon Mobil and other energy companies have created several dozen organizations that front as concerned advocacy entities but whose primary mission is to distort and confuse the science.
For those who choose to obfuscate the seriousness (and/or existence) of climate change, they can always cite someone like Dr. Gray to bolster their agnosticism. Just as one can find virtually anything on the internet, Googling a skeptic on climate change isn't hard either.
What's uncanny is the parallel which exists between the current scientific "debate" over climate change and the protracted scientific tragedy which played out over several decades involving tobacco and the health effects (and high economic costs to society) associated with using those products.
Many people died needlessly because an industry—and it's paid executives AND SCIENTISTS WHO FRAMED PUBLIC POLICY— refused to state things as they actually were.
Watching with a moral and ethical callousness as millions of Americans developed lung cancer, the skeptics based their arguments against causality on the supposed abscence of a direct link that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that breathing in burning tobacco and other chemicals in cigarettes was making people sick.
They would march out the rare 90 year olds who smoked two packs a day as proof that smoking wasn't harmful, without mentioning the zillions of others who agonized through horrible, premature deaths.
The last holdouts were those working for the cigarette manufacturers. One wonders: Would those "objective" scientists, knowing what they did in their heart of hearts, have allowed their own children to take up smoking? Would they also have sent their loved ones into the dusty asbestos and coal mines without respirators?
Fred Palmer, president of the Western Fuels Association, has asserted that carbon dioxide is benign and insists (falsely) that there's no proof to say whether greater releases of carbon dioxide are "good" or "bad" for the atmosphere. "Good" or "bad" is subjective. Saying—and proving— that increased levels of carbon dioxide can alter the compositional structure of our atmosphere and affect the systems which sustain life on this planet is not subjective.
Mr. Palmer, of course, wants nothing to stand in the way of developing and burning of more coal. He is, after all, on the payroll and he's paid to be an advocate for his product.
With climate change, as the arguments of skeptics are one by one being picked apart and whittled away, the holdout position now is to deliberately distort the flow of information in order to try and leave the public confused.
Indeed, England and Scandinavia may cool—because of ocean currents that go out of whack— at the same time the U.S. West heats up. But having cooler places does not mean that much of the rest of the Earth, on average, will not be warmer so as to trigger a number of serious consequences— economic, social, and ecological— for humanity.
The most important discussion that should take place is deciding what to do about it.
Here's a passage from Tim Flannery's book, The Weather Makers (page 244) that addresses the acolytes of Fred Singer, Fred Palmer, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma and the special interest groups who insist that global warming is a hoax: "Such gobbledygook is frequently employed to bewilder the general reader, though at times these groups will push it much further. The Leipzig Declaration is a particularly interesting case in point. This document appeared in 1995, penned by Fred Singer, and purported to have the signatures of seventy-nine scientists from leading universities who subscribe to the view that climate change is not a threat.
"On investigation, however, the majority of the signatories were found not to be scientists or had not signed the declaration," Flannery notes. "Skepticism is an indispensable element in scientific inquiry, but when the intention is to mislead rather than clarify, we have not skepticism but deceit."
Flannery adds: "Some industries that oppose action on climate change use tactics reminiscent of those of asbestos and tobacco companies, who by constantly challenging and clouding the outcomes of research into the link between their products and cancer, succeeded in buying themselves a few more decades of fat profits. Asbestos and cigarettes can kill individuals, but CO 2 emissions threaten our planet."
Here's an undisputed fact: There is more, and ever growing peer-reviewed published evidence, to support the conclusion that climate change is happening than there was showing that smoking tobacco is harmful to your health. Craig speaks of "Liberal conceit"?
From Republican Sen. John McCain to a large massing of evangelical Christians, from business people to scholars, and including Righties, Lefties, and inbetweens, the public consensus about climate change is informed by the irrefutable scientific consensus. If one wants to find evidence of conceit, it resides in the claims of those who ignore this compelling reality.
Todd, use of the word "conceit" came from the author of the San Francisco Chronicle article. Here it is again as I previously quoted it: the San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/13/EDGDOILMDO1.DTL
'THERE IS A CONCEIT among the American Left that the American Right cleaves to bad science out of deference to religion, while the left is all-science all-the-time. Former Veep Al Gore's new movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," however, shows how unscientific -- and downright faith-based -- the left has become.'
I myself did not use that term. The text that I quoted from the article was my attempt to link it to Dr. Gray and his objection to the pursuit of politics over science. Marion's link to the Canadian article also makes the point that Gore's movie is junk science.
My remark to Marion, was meant for levity, nothing more. That's why I put a ;) on the end. I fail to see where that constitutes a "lovefest" as you put it.
Perhaps at that this juncture a few deep breaths are in order. I look forward to your book.
Craig, for the record: The "article" to which Marion provided a link appeared in a right-wing Canadian newspaper and was actually an op-ed piece written by a paid staffer for a PR/public policy consulting firm whose clients have included energy industry companies, including those that want to develop more coal and the oil sands of Alberta.
Comment By Marion, 6-14-06Does it really matter if the article was in a "right wing" publication and he was paid. Does it denigrate your work to be paid and/or to have it in a "left wing" paper? He presented facts that I found credible. Was you problem with it A)He got paid to write it, B) It was in what you call a right wing paper, C) He interpretted the facts differently than you did?
You really undermine your credibility when you refer to folks who see things differently than you as having a "lovefest".
It would be a mistake on anyone's part to assume that the Bush administration gives any more than just enough lip service to the Christian right to gain political support to keep the "right" people, as it were, in office. That's Karl Rove's strategy. The Bush administration, following on previous administrations, including the Clinton administration, is committed rather to furthering the policies of multinational corporations in the name of "free-trade" and other imperial policies. The Christian right seems incapable of perceiving this fact and is being sold a bill of goods, except for the preachers on the payroll who are cashing in, as preachers and priests always have, on public gullibility.
The appropriate response to the Bush administration is one I heard from fellow officers during my military service who left the service when I did nearly a decade and a half ago after the Gulf War: "I'm willing to die for my country, but I'll be damned if I'll spend my life for Texaco."
I and far too many of my colleages in conservation have invested considerable intellectual effort to understand how the world works simply to rest our efforts on "faith," whatever that might be. Faith in what? I have no idea what "faith-based" environmentalism is, because the term as used by the right describes nothing in my experience. I do know what science-based environmentalism is. It is neither left nor right. It's a cold-eyed if angry view of what the world has become as a consequence of human action. It goes back to regional ecological devastation by the early civilizations through agriculture and war, the consequences of which in the Middle East and Africa I have seen with my own eyes, to pollution, to desertification (you have to experience the Sahara to know it), to the destruction of myriad species, to disease, to deforestation, to overpopulation, to climate change at the global scale. That these things have been and are occurring is indisputable, even if you have faith in "progress," whatever that is. It is pure obstinence to refuse to acknowledge it.
I can see it here as the glaciers of the Wind River Range slink to the Gulf of Mexico and as the pollution from gasfield development of the Pinedale anticline slips over the Continental Divide; I can see it in the Arctic as the polar ice disappears for the first time in a long time; I can see it as industrial development penetrates the sub-Arctic boreal forest to poison the last wild country of North America.
The question is not whether it is happening; it most certainly is. This has been the process of civilized progress on Earth for the last six or seven thousand years. The question is, can we do anything about it? The answer is, I fear, no. Knowledge does not not necessarily translate to power, and governments and industries, and those committed to their welfare, have too much at stake to take action that would undermine that power. But as Jarrod Diamond comments in his book Collapse regarding the collapse of the immigrant society in Greenland, the only benefit to being rich is that the rich are the last to starve.
The rich (e.g., North American society) are gambling that the poor will starve quickly to leave enough behind so the rich may survive. That seems a risky policy.
For what it's worth, Edmonton Oilers just won the 5th game of the Stanley Cup 4-3 in overtime. Series moves to Edmonton for game 6.
Comment By pete geddes, 6-15-06Science is systematically reducing uncertainties regarding the causes and consequences of climate change. This is critical, for it helps us identify the tradeoffs we must make. It is irresponsible and naive to pretend they don’t exist or won’t be difficult.
Crafting effective solutions begins with considering two questions. First, should we care about a warming climate? If the answer is yes (and I believe it is), logic leads us to the second: What sacrifices are we willing to accept in order to do something about it?
Pete, I think there is a third question. Is there anything we can do that actually will make a difference to the problem identfied? We could spend a trillion dollars worldwide to build a teacup to take one scoop from Flathead Lake. The result is that we did lower the lake level, but the gain is hardly worth the pain. Asia is building more and more factories while continuing to devour growing quantities of coal and dino fuel. Trying to revert to 1990 carbon emmission levels is not only not going to happen, that rate won't even begin to drain the carbon pond.
Comment By Marion, 6-15-06Can anyone tell me what year we switched from global cooling to global warming? And is that enough time to determine a problem and not just a variation?
Comment By Robert Hoskins, 6-15-06Answers to the three questions:
1) Yes, there is a serious problem.
2) No, very few people are willing to make sacrifices to deal with the problem, and no, incentives won't make a bit of difference because incentives are bribes, and bribery is notoriously useless in inducing people to do the right thing.
3) Solutions/consequences of climate change will be forced on people in ways that will make them very unhappy. Aber, so geht's das Leben.
Todd, I just wanted to start by saying great article. To the rest, I have been enjoying the discussion.
Originally I had a different response prepared, but most of the comments I was going to contribute to the discussion have already been made. So I figured that perhaps the most valuable issue I could comment on is this ridiculous idea that climate change scientists (including the entire international field of climate science) are working to pull some grand fear based hoax on the rest of the world.
Before stating my point, it is important to remember (as Todd stated) that these accusations grew out of a fictional novel, and the personal agendas of high government officials with vested interests in the petroleum industry and constituencies who for what ever reason appear to disregard science. The unfortunate result of Inhofe’s accusations (and other congressional members who were allied with his point of view), was the harassment via congressional investigation of several of the most visible members of the climate change research community. The tie in here is all this was concurrent with Inhofe’s vehement “hoax” speech that was based upon what amounts to a Star Wars novel. Within the science community (and its organizations) this was viewed as intimidation of individual scientists by high-level elected government officials. Intimidation and science do not mix, and this action made a lot of people here and abroad start questioning the future of science in this country. Not a good thought to wake up to every morning since science is the foundation upon which this countries wealth and power is based.
So the argument of the accusers is that science perpetuates this “grand hoax” of human-induced climate change for ulterior motives. Those motives as stated by the accusers are 1) personal gain (I assume they mean monetary), and 2) Maintaining federal funding for their research programs. The reasons these arguments are so far fetched are rather simple. First, let’s imagine that none of us had ever heard of human-induced climate change. Would there be any reason to study weather and climate? The easy answer is YES; simply because who here doesn’t benefit from the most obvious results of this basic and applied research. Products generated from climate/weather research include weather forecasts, predictions of hurricanes trajectories and intensities, estimates of long-term drought conditions, and a greater understanding of the inherent variability of our water resources. The list of benefits goes on and on, to see for yourself just visit a NOAA, NASA, or USGS website.
The more we learn about the physical drivers of our climate system, the better our predictions and forecasts become. So do you actually believe the scientists who are engaged in climate change research would be out of a job if there was no theory of, or evidence for, anthropogenic climate change? The obvious answer here is NO; they would be onto the next most interesting and relevant questions to research, and would be federally funded to do that work too. Climate research in its essence is the study of a global system that we all depend upon, and as we all know this system can be both extremely beneficial and destructive to human societies.
There is no agenda. There is no logical or monetary reason to for scientists deceive. There is just the objective to provide useful information to society upon which society can make decisions.
On a seperate but related note, we should and do thank the climate change “skeptics” who provide valuable critiques of the science, as well as alternate theories to consider. This is part and parcel of the way science works. However, they are still considered “skeptics” because the data is not supportive of their theories when tested. Besides, every scientist is essentially a skeptic; it’s in the nature of what they do. Scientists are constantly questioning their methods, their data, and their results. That’s why error estimates and uncertainty play such a large role in scientific publications and discussions.
To the casual climate change skeptics, understand that climate change research is not a belief system. All inquiries and results reported on the topic are data based. On occasion there are problems with that data leading to incorrect conclusions as the example of the satellite data on troposphere temperatures demonstrated. Through the process of science, theories and data are tested and retested, and in doing so any errors or data problems are ultimately detected and reported on. That’s what led to the revision of our knowledge on what seemed to be a decoupling between surface and troposphere temperatures.
To Marion and others interested in the history of science and how we know what we know about climate change I have several suggestions. First the answers to your questions lie in the fields of paleoclimatology, climatology, geology, and glaciology. Start your search there. Many fantastic text books exist on the science, and the history of the science, and they provide a good starting point for understanding the science. If the answers provided are still not satisfactory the fantastic thing about science is the paper trail it leaves. In any university library, and even online, you can find copies of all the primary research papers that led the science to the accepted theories of today. These books and primary research articles are a good place to start, and this is where writers like Todd do the majority of their primary research. This allows anyone to read the same articles as Todd and form their own information/data based conclusions. There are other valuable online resources, but I hesitate to suggest these, because there are many professional looking websites that provide biased or intentionally deceptive accounts of the science.
Happy reading
Thank you Greg, but if you can find just when the switch occured, I can't. More than trying to perpetuate a hoax, I think a lot of the two sides depends on interpretation of facts.
A case in point: The polar bears eating each other, global warming believers are sure that is the cause, ESA propnents are sure that means the polar bear needs to be listed as endangered asap. I believe it needs to be looked at, a good count of the bears take place, to me it sounds like there is an overpopulation of polar bears and they are competing for food and space.
Marion, sometimes locating the exact moment a tipping point is reached in intellectual/scientific persuits is difficult. And honestly, I don't know off the top of my head when that point was reached. The scientific discussion on the competing theories you are interested in can be tracked through the journal publications. Two major journals which will highlight the best of this arguement would be Science and Nature. They have a complete archive of the journal accessible on-line.
Regarding the polar bear arguement. Much of what you mention are current best guesses by people and organizations interested (or uninterested) in the survival of the species. Some of those arguements levied by interest groups may be biased or untrue, and any arguements coming from the scientific community would be based on the the best available data. Also, some of those theories, like your own, are not based on data but rather gut feeling. This doesn't make those theories less valuable, it just points towards what you yourself concluded. That is, the best thing we can do right now is task scientists with the job of researching the question further.
This of course is exactly what happened 20-30 years ago with the issue of global climate change. The country invested in researching the question because it was viewed to be important. Ultimately the original research questions were answered, but as with all good reasearch many more interesting and valuable questions have grown out of the original research.
So then what do we do when scientists debate the complexity of the problem (via data based research), and dominant relationships emerge even if some the underlying mechanisms remain unclear? Do we throw the baby out with the bath water, and say because we don't know everything by default that means we must know nothing? What if the conclusions run counter to what people in different interest groups would like to hear? Do we trash the scientists and the research? Or, do we try to create policies and management strategies based on the best available science? Political institutions could imbed the entire approach within an adaptive management framework so as we learn more we could refine our approach. Anyway, there are many parallels here between the two discussions.
Let me remind you that scientists identified the causes and problems associated with a growing Ozone hole. Recomendations were made, international policies and bans were generated, industries adjusted, AND the thinning of the ozone not only slowed but will ultimately rebound.
Really though, you are obviously interested in the science, and you have questions you want answered. So skip any potential for deception and bias and go straight to the scientific source. Read it, look at the data presented and the conclusions made by the researching scientists and form own opnion. I can't change your mind.
One final thought, couldn't your theory that polar bears are in an overpopulation chrises and competing for food and space arise from maintaing a steady population number but reducing the available habitat (i.e. melt the arctic sea ice)? Sattelites have detected a major decline in arctic sea ice. This sea ice is critical habitat upon which the bears hunt their most critical food source. You may be onto something there.
Science, especially science like this, is not ever 100% sure. Gravity, like evolution, is a theory. To call something a theory in the scientific world is one of the greatest compliments you can give. It means people have tried countless times to disprove it, but have never been able to. Thus, it's taken as more or less fact.
The science dealing with climate change rests on probabilities. It's looking at past trends, atmospheric composition and changes, etc and trying to predict the future. Many (not all - but it almost never is) scientists believe that there is an extremely significant probability that climate change/global warming is occuring and is caused by man.
HOWEVER: even if you don't buy into the scientific evidence for it, aren't the possible consequences serious enough to at least merit serious thought?? Have we really become so lazy and dependant on cars that we are so repulsed at the thought of walking or riding a bike instead of driving? Is it that horrible to do little things that add up like turning off lights, using less heat/air conditioning, etc? And (for Marion) yes, I do ride a bike instead of a car. I avoid driving whenever possible. I know not everyone is willing to ride a bike all the time, but how about just part of the time, say one out of every 5 times? In a nation that is growing increasingly fatter, a little exercise wouldn't hurt...
This story from CBC North about US shipping companies exploring the possibility of using a soon to be open Northwest Passage through the Artic itself serves as a kind of comment on the discussion at hand:
Arctic shipping coming soon, U.S. expert says
Last updated Jun 15 2006 01:13 PM MDT
CBC News
U.S. shipping companies are showing such a keen interest in global warming that a White House adviser says Canada should develop a policy with the U.S. on shipping through the Northwest Passage.
Commercial companies are itching to use the Northwest Passage as a preferred route between the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and Asia, George Newton, chairman of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, told a conference on Arctic waters on Thursday.
The route would save two weeks in travelling time, an incentive for shipping companies, which have invested $4.5 billion in tankers capable of going through ice. As well, the Polar Research Board in Washington is expected to recommend that the U.S. government buy more icebreakers.
But Newton warned in Ottawa that a lot more work needs to be done before Arctic shipping becomes commonplace.
Canada and the United States need to study the Arctic waters, to demystify them and work out how to safely navigate the treacherous waters. Canada needs an extensive infrastructure to support shipping, and consult with aboriginals and other stakeholders.
"We need search and rescue that fall on those ports," Newton said. "We need voyage repairs, we need the ability to manage traffic in an effective fashion and we need ice breakers."
And Canada's northern people need to be consulted, said John Amagoalik, known as the Father of Nunavut.
"We have to make sure that whatever happens is manageable," Amagoalik said. "We can't allow just anybody to do whatever they want up there. There has to be some sort of management regime."
http://www.cbc.ca/north/story/passage-expert.html
Robert wrote, "The Bush administration, following on previous administrations, including the Clinton administration, is committed rather to furthering the policies of multinational corporations in the name of "free-trade" and other imperial policies."
The other day President Bush must have slipped his multi-national corporate leash because he designated an area in Hawaii the size of California as a national marine reserve. Commercial and sports fishing will be phased out, removal of animals and minerals is prohibited, and any divers will have to be permitted.
;) ;) ;)
It struck me that the clergy of the neo-modernistic Druidic environmental movement lack a tangible, visible symbol of their commitment to alter global warming. How about a mitre? This new headdress would not be pointed but flat and covered in reflective foil. It's wearing would not be restricted to the leadership but made mandatory for all true believers. However, the symbol needs a slogan. I thought of two. "Save the polar, return the solar." "It's right to reflect the light." I suspect that the first one would have greater acceptance since it doesn't contain the "right" word. The alternative to the mitre would be for people to shave their heads, but the reflective quality is not as great and may require waxing and buffing. Wearing of the tinfoil hats would make a dramatic statement of the truly committed soothsayers like Al Gore.
;) ;) ;) It's Friday.
Tim thanks for the follow-up with the additional science comments. Adding to Roberts comments on the NW Passage and the Arctic region I'd like to point out that the NY Times had a fantastic multi-article spread on the social and economic implications of the thinning arctic ice. Countries have been solidifying boundries and gearing up to begin oil exploration in regions that were previously too harsh and too dangerous to work in. I no longer have the link to those articles, otherwise I'd pass them along.
Craig, I enjoy your humor, I could picture it now. I love the slogan, hats, bald heads and all. So to be "fair and balanced" what should the tangible, visible symbol be for the "hydrocarbon based, maintaining the status quo, troglodytes" be?
I suppose we can debate the reality of global warming, and who/what is to blame until the cows come home, but my guess is we will never all agree, and I wonder if it matters?
Perhaps the more pertinent discussion should focus on questions like:
Is it wrong to recycle?
Is it smart to think about alternative energy sources?
Is any resource infinite?
Should I feel guilty about driving a hybrid?
Despite the tongue in cheek tone, I often wonder if some of our intellecual muscle couldnt be applied in a more practical way; Creating easier ways to recycle, marketing "Green" in a way that is more palatable to the masses.
I think most of us would agree that it makes sense not to "poop" in your own nest, but lets be honest, if it is easier to throw it over the side most of us are going to toss.
Karen, you make a great deal of sense. I do not believe there is any proof of man caused global warming, I think we will all be dead and gone long before there is any definitive evidence one way of the other. The 30 years since the global freezing is a moment of time and not really enough to determine anything.
I do however drive a little car, sneeringly called a little tin can by many, and get about 33 mpg avg by driving 55. I can't afford the extra for a hybrid, so that is my solution, plus driving less. I recycle everything I can.
Then you have the true believers who insist that they are not going to feel guilty because they want a "safe" vehicle, as in larger, they are entitled to vacations of thousands of miles, and besides one person doesn't make any difference.
They insist the president must cause some alternative fuel they approve of to appear, and it better be cheap....and safe. But they themselves do not need to do anything.
There is a lot that can be done without laws and without giving environmentalists any more control over the lives of the rest of us.
Gosh, Mr. Wilkinson, you really brought 'em out of the woodwork with this one. I thought it was a good article and I liked the book you did. You really do a good job with these "how good science gets perverted" kinds of topics, which is why they come out of the woodwork to try so hard to confuse and smother your message. If you weren't any good at it, they wouldn't feel the need to bother. I was raised in a culture that teaches that a man can be judged by the virulence of his enemies. You should be proud.
Comment By Craig Moore, 6-17-06Greg, the symbol would be the shirt pocket portable air conditioner, a fan. The slogan would be "Being a little 'Kronky' is cool" or "Shut your yap, give it a flap."
Comment By Craig Moore, 6-17-06The debate is over!!!! The people have spoken. The 'bread and butter' RACs (republicans and conservatives) are more resilient than DILs (democrats, independents, and liberals to pickle disasters. Read it here: http://pos.org/latestnumbers/scifi.doc
Then again over in Europe attention is turning to the revival of Irish pigeon races from France to Ulster. There is growing suspicion by both the Irish and French that the Brits may try to shoot them down before they cross Dover. Historic animosities continue to cause a flap with the appearance of Bird Flu in France.
Marion wrote on June 10th that those talking and writing about global warming are hypocrites unless they take action. While words on confrontation aren't typically constructive, all should know that every little bit can help: using a bike or walking for that short trip to the market, at least once a week; using a bus once a week, consuming fewer imported plastic goods; turning off the light, even if you coming back to the room in ten minutes. It all counts. Don't refrain from taking steps just because you feel as though you can't have an impact. You can. You will.
Comment By Kathleene Parker, 7-07-06While I have only skimmed what appears to be an excellent article and need to re-read it in studied detail, I will comment that there seems to be a lack of discussion on all fronts of a critical component of the global warming problem, especially as pertains to the United States as one of two leading contributors of greenhouse gas emissions (The United States and China), and that is POPULATION GROWTH. The United States today grows at rates that, if not slowed soon mean we will, in the 21st century, exactly match India's growth in the 20th century, to become A BILLION AMERICANS by late century. However, there is one qualifier. If the Senate's version of immigration "reform" (hardly) is passed, it will actually increase that all ready high growth rate of growth astronomically, to the point that we may achieve the one billion mark by mid-century or before! (In contrast most industrialized nations have stable populations or lose population (Spain, Ireland, Italy). There are two factors as pertains to environmental issues: population and standard of living or consumption. I say without qualification that Earth may not be able to endure the burden of China's industrialization and increased standard of living, and it most certainly cannot endure the burden of the United States becoming one-billion high-consuming (or even moderate-consuming) Americans. We must allow discussion of population on the table.
Comment By Todd in Bozeman, 7-07-06Kathleene. You've hit the bull's eye. Population as THE driver of natural resource consumption/depletion and corresponding use of fossil fuels will, if unaddressed, remain the Sisyphean factor in any attempt to slow carbon dioxide emissions. In this country, it is the big elephant in the living room that no one wants to talk about.
Comment By Marion, 7-07-06And what is driving the US population up? Immigration, both legal and illegal. Do you have a solution to offer? Or even suggest? If you take away fossil fuel, who are you going to prevent using it?
Comment By Craig Moore, 7-08-06Regarding carbon levels and population Newsweek just published this piece.
http://www.newwest.net/index.php/main/article/9136/C396/L396
>>>
The Real Inconvenient Truth
Thanks to population growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions will likely double by 2050. Are we powerless to stop global warming?
By Robert J. Samuelson
Updated: 3:06 p.m. PT July 5, 2006
July 5, 2006 - "Global warming may or may not be the great environmental crisis of the next century, but—regardless of whether it is or isn't—we won't do much about it. We will (I am sure) argue ferociously over it and may even, as a nation, make some fairly solemn-sounding commitments to avoid it. But the more dramatic and meaningful these commitments seem, the less likely they are to be observed. Little will be done.... Global warming promises to become a gushing source of national hypocrisy.''
—This column, July 1997
Well, so it has. In three decades of columns, I've never quoted myself at length, but here it's necessary. Al Gore calls global warming an "inconvenient truth," as if merely recognizing it could put us on a path to a solution. That's an illusion. The real truth is that we don't know enough to relieve global warming, and—barring major technological breakthroughs—we can't do much about it. This was obvious nine years ago; it's still obvious. Let me explain.
From 2003 to 2050, the world's population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion people to 9.1 billion, a 42 percent increase. If energy use per person and technology remain the same, total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (mainly, carbon dioxide) will be 42 percent higher in 2050. But that's too low, because societies that grow richer use more energy. Unless we condemn the world's poor to their present poverty—and freeze everyone else's living standards—we need economic growth. With modest growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions more than double by 2050.
Just keeping annual greenhouse gas emissions constant means that the world must somehow offset these huge increases. There are two ways: Improve energy efficiency, or shift to energy sources with lower (or no) greenhouse emissions. Intuitively, you sense this is tough. China, for example, builds about one coal-fired power plant a week. Now a new report from the International Energy Agency in Paris shows all the difficulties (the population, economic growth and energy projections cited above come from the report).
The IEA report assumes that existing technologies are rapidly improved and deployed. Vehicle fuel efficiency increases by 40 percent. In electricity generation, the share for coal (the fuel with the most greenhouse gases) shrinks from about 40 percent to about 25 percent—and much carbon dioxide is captured before going into the atmosphere. Little is captured today. Nuclear energy increases. So do "renewables" (wind, solar, biomass, geothermal); their share of global electricity output rises from 2 percent now to about 15 percent.
Some of these changes seem heroic. They would require tough government regulation, continued technological gains and public acceptance of higher fuel prices. Never mind. Having postulated a crash energy diet, the IEA simulates five scenarios with differing rates of technological change. In each, greenhouse emissions in 2050 are higher than today. The increases vary from 6 percent to 27 percent.
Since 1800 there's been modest global warming. I'm unqualified to judge between those scientists (the majority) who blame man-made greenhouse gases and those (a small minority) who finger natural variations in the global weather system. But if the majority are correct, the IEA report indicates we're now powerless. We can't end annual greenhouse emissions, and once in the atmosphere, the gases seem to linger for decades. So concentration levels rise. They're the villains; they presumably trap the world's heat. They're already about 36 percent higher than in 1800. Even with its program, the IEA says another 45 percent rise may be unavoidable. How much warming this might create is uncertain; so are the consequences.
I draw two conclusions—one political, one practical.
No government will adopt the draconian restrictions on economic growth and personal freedom (limits on electricity usage, driving and travel) that might curb global warming. Still, politicians want to show they're "doing something." The result is grandstanding. Consider the Kyoto Protocol. It allowed countries that joined to castigate those that didn't. But it hasn't reduced carbon dioxide emissions (up about 25 percent since 1990), and many signatories didn't adopt tough enough policies to hit their 2008-2012 targets. By some estimates, Europe may overshoot by 15 percent and Japan by 25 percent.
Ambitious U.S. politicians also practice this self-serving hypocrisy. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a global warming program. Gore counts 221 cities that have "ratified" Kyoto. Some pledge to curb their greenhouse emissions. None of these programs will reduce global warming. They're public relations exercises and—if they impose costs—are undesirable. (Note: on national security grounds, I favor taxing oil, but the global warming effect would be trivial.) The practical conclusion is that if global warming is a potential calamity, the only salvation is new technology. I once received an e-mail from an engineer. Thorium, he said. I had never heard of thorium. It is, he argued, a nuclear fuel that is more plentiful and safer than uranium without waste disposal problems. It's an exit from the global warming trap. After reading many articles, I gave up trying to decide whether he is correct. But his larger point is correct: Only an aggressive research and development program might find ways of breaking our dependence on fossil fuels or dealing with it. Perhaps some system could purge the atmosphere of surplus greenhouse gases?
The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it's really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless.
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Craig, you once said that "optimism is contagious." You said you couldn't share my pessimism about human actions. Was that all a lie? And in my opinion, it is both a moral and an engineering problem. The 'collateral damage' of our actions is far too great to simply dismiss.
Comment By Craig Moore, 7-08-06Any pessimism in the article that I quoted is that of the author's, not mine. On our parallel discussion on the other thread I mentioned the population driver there. I also mentioned the 1500 year climate cycle that doesn't give a wit about humankind and its carbon emissions. That is my optimism about the Earth's self-correcting mechanisms. Possibly there should be a conference like Kyoto about population and what Mother Earth can safely handle.
We concentrate on limiting CO2, which as the writer suggests is a non-starter in both a political and engineering sense. The other way to go is to ask what sort of CO2 'sponges' can we created to remove the buildup? Genetically engineered plantlife, seaweed and kelp?? What can we do to reflect the solar radiation that diminishing ice and snow no longer can do? Require every vehicle and building rooftop to be painted white? Embed some sort of charcoal filtration in road surfaces to absorb vehicle CO2? A much greater concern on my radar is the growing acidity from absorbed CO2 in our seas that is killing the coral which begins the food chain for all animals.
Agreed - population increase (we seem to be multiplying with no limit and some scientists say we have already bypassed the truly sustainable limit) is the underlying cause of a lot of our problems. Welcome to neo-malthusianism. That conference has been proposed, but (for obvious reasons) rejected by most.
Shouldn't we also focus on limiting our CO2 output? Shouldn't that be even more important since the population is going to increase so much? If we only try to sequester it, we'll need more and more and more ways to do it. That growing need will be lessened (but not eliminated) if we decrease CO2 output. Why try to heal the symptoms but not affect the cause? Any such attempts, because the sources are not affected, will ultimately fail.
As for the increasingly acidic oceans, wouldn't it make the most sense to BOTH limit CO2 output as well as attempting to sequester it? Also, increasing ocean temperatures play a part in the coral deaths.
Since you brought up Earth's mechanisms, here's a BBC article about James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia hypothesis. His points and opinions seem relevent.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5150816.stm
This article was on the WSJ Opinion page this morning. We would all do good to look at it, it kind of puts things into perspective.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008626
Professor Lovelock, although well intentioned, strikes me as someone who is very comfortable of spending other peoples' money on hopeless causes. He recognized the very point that the carbon genie will not go back into the bottle given political considerations which are driven by economics and population. Notice that he doesn't touch upon the carbon magnet approach but rather only insists on nuclear power to replace carbon fuel which is a non-starter in the US because of the environmental lobby. Greens have to learn to prioritize and make choices or accept the fanciful Lovelock speculation of woulda, coulda, shoulda, maybe, mightbe of magic wand waves.
Comment By Tim, 7-09-06"Greens" are not all unified under one organization or one opinion. There may be a common goal, but the reasons, emphasis, and action plans are not all the same. Carbon sequestration would be such an incredibly large project, it seems (though who knows) to be nearly impossible. Check out Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers for detailed reasons why. The amount that would have to be taken out of the atmosphere is an amount beyond my personal comprehension. On a side note, have you changed your opinion about climate change, Craig?
Comment By Craig Moore, 7-11-06Tim my opinion on climage change is pretty well summed up by professor L.M. Cathles at Cornell University. See: http://www.theithacajournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060711/OPINION02/607110308/1014
He writes:
>>>>There is also little dispute regarding natural climate change. Climate has never been static. Over the last few million years the climate has changed particularly dramatically and rapidly. Ice caps have developed in North America and Europe, melted, and then grown again 15 to 20 times. The ice takes about 90,000 years to grow, and 5,000 years or so to melt. The warm periods between glaciations last about 10,000 years. Ours has already lasted for this long. If the natural cycles of the past prevail, the climate should soon quite suddenly cool (over a few years or decades, although the climate switch may initially flicker). The North American ice cap will then expand to cover Canada, and reach Ithaca in about 50,000 years. Less dramatic cycles (the Holocene climate optimum, the little ice age, and the current warming) have affected humanity within our interglacial period. Natural climate change is real, rapid, and significant.
What we don't know is the relative magnitude of natural and human-induced climate change. The academy presidents of 11 countries quoted in the “Global warming is real” (Guest column, June 14) do not take a stand on this issue, saying only “It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activity,” which leaves open the possibility that natural cycles could control climate change despite human inputs. The situation is complex. Ice ages may start when warming melts ice in the Arctic and Greenland, and the meltwater turns off the haline convection that helps keep Europe warm. Global warming may thus cause global cooling, and human greenhouse gases may hasten the arrival of the next ice age. The sun, ocean circulation, and a host of “tipping points” make the future difficult to predict, and here there is no consensus at all...
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Speaking of "human-induced climate change" I saw the following: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/national/story.html?id=a00a4398-522a-4e0f-9f85-13f987ba2bfb
>>>>>According to Lambda-Omega-Lambda (LOL), a simultaneous jump by 600 million people in the Western Hemisphere would cause a shock great enough to alter the Earth's orbit around the sun. The new orbit, the group claims on its website (http://www.worldjumpday.org), would result in a reversal of global warming by a full centigrade degree by the year 2020, at which point the Earth's climate would stabilize.<<<<<
;)
I thought folks would enjoy reading how hard Mr. Gore is working to eliminate his use of fossil fuels, and help the envirnoment.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-09-gore-green_x.htm
With all these comment I just want to put one of the Hippie Power Generators here and read the book of Hebrews...Out with the old weather and in with the new...O them Hybred cars are like cloning..You just dont get what you asked for..You gotta love a cowboy!! Where my Blogger?...Gittup..:)
Comment By Svetlana, 1-26-07Hi, good morning to all of you... Nice Guestbook ;-) !!!r
Comment By ro215ck, 6-11-07m187k
Comment By gene, 3-14-08al gore writes a book of doom about the enviroment and he's handed the nobel prize for doing nothing more then what?,while it takes many years of tiring efforts by a few well educated people to recieve this honor for doing somthing worth while!i find this kind of pandering most disturbing at the highest level of stupidity ever combined!do you think if some person wrote a good blog he or she could recieve the nobel prize for the same thing,doing nothing to earn it!
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