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July 12, 2006
GLOBAL WARMING
by Jack Lee
In 1994 when Al Gore was trying to rack up political points with global warming, climatologist, John M. Wallace tried to temper Gores rhetoric on the subject by suggesting..." in a polite way, to tell him he was coming on too strong about global warming, because the evidence was just not in yet." A lot has happened since then and the newest evidence is fairly conclusive, IF the models are correct....there's that "IF" word again, always popping up to spoil a good theory! And as for Al Gore, he's still at it, exploiting the situation for all its worth in his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" which is more about the history of Al, than global warming.
Like many of his peers, Wallace, and many other climatologist wasn't convinced greenhouse gases were altering the world's climate. However, this is not to say Wallace doesn't believe the earth is getting warmer, he does, the question is why is it warming? As an article in the Seattle Times notes, "1995 was the hottest year on record until it was eclipsed by 1997 — then 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. Melting ice has driven Alaska Natives from seal-hunting areas used for generations. Glaciers around the globe are shrinking so rapidly many could disappear before the middle of the century."
This is a compelling topic and it’s been the stuff of debates for years with a lot of exaggeration on both sides; maybe that is why we have such a huge credibility gap between science and the public? Science historian Naomi Oreskes from UC San Diego found a huge disconnect between the scientific community and people's perceptions of what may be happening to our climate. Can't blame the people really, after all 40 years ago the scientists were warning us of global cooling! That said, Ms Oreskes also found that in a review of 1000 randomly selected scientific papers on global warming, none omitted the possibility that green house gasses were causing a climate change.
More evidence: A 100-nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that began reporting on this warming phenomena for the United Nations since 1988 has evolved from hedgey conclusions to an unequivocal onel..."There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."
However, we can also point to huge changes in the earth's temperature over the past 1,000,000 years where man wasn't involved in the slightest. Naturally occurring forces often change our climate, such as volcanoes, ocean releases of carbon dioxide, mountain uplifting, continental drift, as well as occasional deviations in the planet's orbit. This is just nature at work, and the latest trend could be part of that, however none of the current models have included nature as a key factor, except for one and this is the very latest buzz, some scientists that suggest the sun is burning slightly hotter than it has in the past 1000 years... and just when we thought global warming could be completely blamed on big business and big SUV's! (cont-)
For balance, and we're all for balance here at Post Scripts, you might want to read this article by Fred Singer, known as the "the godfather of global warming denial". Singer rejects most of the hypotheses currently presented because the he feels the input data is flawed. Let me give you an example of where Singer is coming from, and keep in mind he is no quack, he is a scientist with impeccable credentials. From a recent a Mother Jones article, Q. "There is overwhelming scientific consensus that greenhouse gases emitted by human activity are causing global average temperatures to rise." Is that true? A: It’s completely unsupported by any observation, but it’s supported by computer climate models. In other words, the computer models would indicate this. The observations do not." Does that have your attention? You can read more of Singers comments if you follow this link.
If there is a bottom line here its this: We probably have about 70-100 years before we see truly serious effects of global warming, IF the models are right, this would mean we are in for some extreme weather patterns and possibly global food shortages. However, even if we accept global warming as a fact (and we all don't) we still can't do much about it, because we lack the technology to alter our environment. That is the really inconvenient truth and we likely can't alter the direction we are going for the foreseeable future...even if the USA becomes a nation of all hybrid cars, it really won't matter much, except to local air quality problem areas like the LA basin where the smog often hangs there for days and weeks.
Some suedo-invironmentalists have tried to turn this into a unilateral moral crusade, where the United States if the main party responsible for all this and therefore its incumbent upon us to fix it, but even if the United States completely stopped producing any green house gasses tomorrow the rest of the world won't! And what the rest of the world is doing is more than enough to keep global warming right on schedule, plus or minus a few degrees.
Here's what’s driving much of that future green house gas production: The worlds population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion people to 9.1 billion by 2050 and this is not coming from the United States.
Those new people hooking up with all the GLOBAL progress and their new energy demands in places like China, India and Africa, means those places will greatly contribute to the CO2 problem.
Is there reason to be alarmed..yes, but there is no reason to panic and we will just have to adapt to the changes as they come. Can we do something about global warming now and change the future? Yes, we can always improve what we do, but how much impact that will have in the final analysis is suspect and even our most drastic efforts will still not hold back the economic changes and population growth coming from emerging nations that is now behind the bulk of our future problem.
Posted by Post Scripts at July 12, 2006 06:16 PM
Comments
Great article. I read another recently by Jack Kelly at To The Point that contained the following:
On June 6, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report on climate change. It "represented a unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse, and is due to man," said CNN reporter Michelle Mitchell. "There is no wiggle room."
Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, one of the 11 scientists who prepared the report, said this wasn't true:
"We are quite confident that (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen over the past two centuries; and (3) that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth.
Professor Paul Reiter of the Institut Pasteur in Paris described the movie (Gore's movie) as "pure, mind-bending propaganda."
The ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica are growing, not melting as Gore claims, say Dr. Carter, and Dr. M.R. Morgan of the University of Exeter in Britain. (Mr. Gore mentions melting on the coasts, but ignores the much larger buildup of ice in the interior.)
The Canadian Arctic was warmer in the 1930s than it is today, said Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama at Huntsville. The polar bear population is stable or growing, not declining as Mr. Gore claims, said Dr. Mitchell Taylor of Canada's Department of the Environment.
The ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa is melting not because of global warming, as Mr. Gore claims, but because of a decline in the moisture in the atmosphere there, said the Royal Meteorological Society in a 2004 article.
Sea levels aren't rising, as Mr. Gore claims, say Dr. Chris de Freitas of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and Dr. Nils-Axel Morner of Stockholm University in Sweden.
Mr. Gore claims the planet is warmer now than it has been for 2,000 years. The National Academy of Scientists doesn't agree.
The NAS did say it is warmer now than it's been in 400 years, but that's like saying it's warmer in June than it was in February.
It was cooler 400 years ago because that was during the Little Ice Age. The Little Ice Age didn't end until around 1850, so it should be small wonder it's warmer now than it was then.
The Little Ice Age was preceded by the Medieval Warm Period (roughly 900 A.D. -- 1400 A.D.), when temperatures in Europe and North America were higher than they are today.
Things were more pleasant for people during the Medieval Warm Period than they are today. Greenland was actually green. Viking colonists grew crops and grazed livestock there.
The point in your article, Jack, is that projections are all theory and therefore best left for the scientific community to chew on...I couldn't agree more.
Posted by: Tina at July 13, 2006 11:03 PM