By Grant Cooke and Woodrow W. Clark II
IN EARLY FEBRUARY, POPE BENEDICT XVI opened his bedroom windows to take a peek at Rome blanketed in snow. The freak storm forced the closure of schools and the Coliseum. It covered palm trees, Baroque churches, and ancient Roman ruins across this city, which usually has temperate climates.
Italian newspapers reported snowdrifts of 5-6 feet outside the city. Without snow plows, the Italian National Civil Protection Agency handed out 4,000 shovels so residents could help with the cleanup.
A week later, Southern California was hit by erratic weather with high winds, cold and snow in places that had never had it. The Los Angeles region has seen temperatures at freezing one moment, then soaring by 40 degrees in less than 12 hours. Flash storms hammered the highways, causing accidents.
2011 had some of the most bizarre weather the U.S has ever seen, including twisters, freak storms, waterspouts and raging wildfires. The East had earthquakes and the South and Midwest were pummeled by a quadrupling of tornadoes. One ripped through Joplin, Mo., and killed 160 residents. In June, a horrific wildfire burned 600 square miles in Arizona. Later, Hurricane Irene swept up the Eastern seaboard, making deadly landfall in North Carolina and bringing heavy rain to New York and New Jersey. The Northeast had a never-seen-before October storm that knocked out power to 2 million residents, but has seen hardly a snowflake since.
Freaky weather is becoming the new “normal” as global warming changes our climate. Throughout the world, climate scientists are becoming more and more concerned about the impact excessive amounts of greenhouse gas and subsequent climate change are having on the world’s weather. According to the 2011 Arctic Report Card, the Arctic circle, one of the world’s most sensitive environmental areas, is undergoing profound changes from global warming. Produced by a team of 121 international scientists under the auspices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the report says rapid Arctic climate change may already be influencing weather and climate patterns in the Northern hemisphere, including the snow storms in San Bernardino County.
These climate scientists say the Earth’s northern polar region is entering a new, warmer era. The report warns that this new era means warmer air and water temperatures, less summer sea ice and snow cover, and changed ocean chemistry. In 2011, the average annual air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean were 2.5 degrees greater than the 1981-2010 baseline, and that ocean acidification from the increased absorption of carbon dioxide was rising.
As Arctic sea ice declines in thickness, it alters the flow of heat between the Arctic Ocean and the air. As the sea ice declines, the corresponding dark ocean surface absorbs more incoming solar radiation. This has a dramatic influence on Arctic air temperatures, and can alter atmospheric circulation. Warmer air weakens the high-altitude winds that circle the North Pole, causing a decline in the “polar vortex.” This provides more chances for Arctic air to flow south into the U.S. and Europe, causing major changes in weather.
Scientists are just beginning to understand some of the ramifications of a rapidly warming Arctic. Computer model projections are showing a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean by 2035. The rapidly changing Arctic is having a profound impact of our weather, even to usually moderate Southern California.
As we pointed out in “Global Energy Innovation: Why America Must Lead,” the Earth is getting more crowded and hotter each day. Climate change is real and it is human-made, coming from an ever-increasing amount of dangerous gases that our carbon-intensive lifestyle generates.
The 7th billion human being was recently born, and we are on our way to 9 billion by mid-century. The world will soon be resource-constricted, particularly since the planet is running out of fossil fuels. We are entering a dangerous age — a point at which global warming and environmental degradation may become irreversible. Freaky weather patterns will be the norm, not the exception.
We need to quickly move away from a carbon-intensive lifestyle to one that has a much reduced carbon footprint. America must examine its core values and provide humanity’s future direction. We must stop mainlining fossil fuels and develop renewable energy sources, smart grids and sustainable communities. Since 2005, when Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans, climate change and global warming has been a reality for America. Now with clear evidence — even in Rome — that global warming and climate change is impacting our daily lives, the nation needs to quickly convert to renewable energy and a sustainable future.
Woodrow W. Clark II is a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Grant Cooke is a Benicia resident and pioneer businessman in California’s energy efficiency and energy renewable industries. Praeger Press recently published their book, “Global Energy Innovation: Why America Must Lead.”
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I think this statement bears repeating: “We need to quickly move away from a carbon-intensive lifestyle to one that has a much reduced carbon footprint. America must examine its core values and provide humanity’s future direction. We must stop mainlining fossil fuels and develop renewable energy sources, smart grids and sustainable communities.”
Of course, with some $700 TRILLION in oil still underground, the Billionaire Filth will not give that up until it’s all been processed and sold and the money is in THEIR bank! And there’s not a thing that can stop them from getting that money and continuing to pollute our environment!
Oh, well!
Spend the money on extracting it clean and having it burn cleaner. Seem to think it is ok to spend money on solar, electric cars and other energy so called sources. Why not spend the money on something we already have. {Try natural gas}. Think science, jobs, more taxes and now you will have the money to invest in other energy sources. I do believe we are taking a backward approach.
I love reading your articles, Grant, mainly b/c you keep us up on the facts. But i believe we, all of humankind, needs to be quite a bit more realistic than we are. I know as a Christ Follower this will go against many “christian” beliefs but, the earth has been around for MANY millions of years and during that time there has been at least one (some scientists believe there may have actually been two) ice age. And the “facts” show that we, the earth, have been, and are still, coming out of the latest one. The climate is warming and is going to continue to do so until either the next ice age, or, well the end.
BUT, i do believe humankind is, and has been, trashing the earth by using materials that are not bio-degradable, by depending on fossil fuels, and by just being selfish and lazy. Are we going to change? No. Because as long as you and I drive to work, eat processed food, turn on a light switch, or flush a toilet, nothing is going to change. AND, humans find the seashores a beautiful place to live close to, so any increase in the waters of the ocean WILL affect those living close to those waters.
Finally, does anyone really buy into the lip-service given by politicians that they really do care about what happens to the earth? If it affects their wallets, you better think again. And that goes for those co’s lining their wallets, too.
I know this may sounds dooms day’ish, but let’s face all of the facts. Unless WE really show we care (walk or ride a bike, resort to outhouses, burn candles or go to bed when it’s dark, do anyway with ALL media [meaning electronics]), there will only be too little done, too late, to make a difference.
But, if i may, there is a solution that not all buy into. See Matthew 7:25-34. Kinda makes you wonder a bit.
Thanx, again, Grant. Your words are definately a warning to us all.
<
ric,
Your knowledge of the earth’s history is pitifully “small”. The earth has been around for Billions not millions of years. There have been many, many “ice ages” in the earth’s history, both large (snow ball earth) and small. There have also been many periods of intense warming one of which almost wiped hominids out before we even got started.
Sorry, Crabby. I actually meant to say billions. Oh, and thanx for proving another point of mine, that everyone has theories about things, but they aren’t all acurate. Hope your day is a good one.
Peace
<
ric,
Touche’ for the “Crabby”.
In the spirit of “Peace”, let me make a recommendation. There is a book recently acquired by our library,
“EARTH IN 100 GROUNDBREAKING DISCOVERIES” by Douglas Palmer. It doesn’t really contradict anything you’ve said above. It’s just a really good readable (for lay persons like myself) overview of the geological and fossil history of the Earth and life on it. The book does contain theories some of them with overwhelming empirical evidence behind them, others not so much. I would think that all of them would at least be thought provoking to most people.
Hope you have a good day too.
Peace back at you
Hi Jr,
Thanx for the recommendation. Again, as a Christ Follower, i take some flak from other “christians” when i throw the “billions of years” around regarding the age of this orb. But we tend to put God in a box and i’m pretty He wouldn’t like that.
I will ck out the book, as i am always open to expand my knowledge of things, especially when the earth is heading for such dire straits.
Take care,
<
As we pointed out in “Global Energy Innovation: Why America Must Lead,” the Earth is getting more crowded and hotter each day. Climate change is real and it is human-made, coming from an ever-increasing amount of dangerous gases that our carbon-intensive lifestyle generates. ”
Please look at the following global temperature chart and note that global temperatures have been static for at least a decade. This can be verified by anyone.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif
Also note that the temperature series in the 30 year periods between 1910 and 1940 and 1970 to 2000 have similar gradients, you could switch these portions of the graph and it would look the same. The temperature changes over the last few decades are not remarkable. This can also be verified by anyone.
Carbon dioxide is a colorless, odorless trace gas and also an essential nutrient for all the earth’s flora. Without CO2 we would die. It is not a dangerous gas. This is not disputed by anyone.
This type of scaremongering may induce some people to by a Prius as their next car but it won’t lead to good policy.
I do believe both comments have value. It just depends on where your values and morals are. I do not buy the values of someone else pay for my ideals. But I do know that politically that does happen. So now we must define what a tax is and what a subsidy is. As we all know free enterprise has made problems but they have have also solved problems. So as tax payers it amounts to who do we trust. Personally I trust the elected person because we can get rid of that person. What I see here is an agenda driven by a group of folks. Now it that bad? Maybe and maybe not. Here is where I get a llittle edgy. This Enviro Greenie group { Now I do know you do not like the term} is agenda driven. That in its self is not bad except when they think they know better than you. So what do they do, baffle you with info on their side. Not bad, except there is another side. Here is where I have a problem. They will ask you, do you believe in scientific evidence? Most of us would say yes. But remeber it is there evidence. What you produce does not matter. So what does this group do? They get grants which is your tax payer money to push their agenda. Telling us all along it is for our children, grand children and the rest of the world. Sounds good. But it is only agenda driven for their agenda not yours. So if you disagree they say you do not care for the children. WHAT! Folks wake up. I do believe you are awake and this agenda is now exposed for what it is. We Know What Is Good For You. I guess we can no longer think. This is what we are up against. A Combine of folks that want to take away from you for thir agenda. Sorry Enviro Greenies you are losing big time. We Just Woke Up.
Richard Linzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT. Here is what he says about the climate debate:
“Stated briefly, I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest.”
Where are the usual local proponents of the unmitigated wonders of science and scientists on this one?
Surely, at the very least, you can muster up some character assassination.
Maybe we can follow your lead and make fun of people’s names. With proponents like you it’s easy to see why the denialists aren’t taken seriously.
And right on schedule there he is. The most small minded tedious one of all !
I’m not the one who made fun of a local pastor’s name.
Now Alan you and I know there is only one side to the climate change agenda. The statement you just posted was very good. The Enviro Greenies will come back at it, me and anyone else that is not on their agenda driven side. Keep your eyes open. It is coming. Thanks Alan.
Bob,
Grab your pitchfork and torch, we have to man the barricades and stop this madness!
As Alan says we must stop this madness. It does appear it is going to slow down for awhile. May even just go away. Now the Enviro Greenies might think that higher gas price at the pump is in their favor. Well wait a minute it might not be. The higher the price of gas at the pump or shall we say per barrell spells trouble for the EG’s. Now here is the big issue for the EG’s. The oil company’s say we will just drill for more oil and sell it outside the USA. After President Obama is defeated there will be a big change in drilling, ports and of course Keystone. All will be a big go. Oil for our own use and plenty left over to export. Ports to export our new found clean extracted oil and natural gas for export also. More jobs, much stronger economy. At the same time the government will give big oil tax breaks to invest in extracting oil in very enviro friendly clean way and also burning cleaner. Also at the same time tax breaks to make drilling for natural gas more favorable. Then here comes the big one. Tax breaks to the auto industry to start building natural gas driven autos with no government incentive to buyers. Bye, Bye electric auto. Many cities all ready are shifting trucks and buses to natural gas. Truck stops across America will very shortly be offering natural gas also. Built in infrastructure. Guess what all service stations can convert rather swiftly also. Next step will be to cut back on the over 50 miles per gallon by 2025. That will now be obsolete. So as you see cleaner burning fuel and much better preforming autos to back it up. Good bye Enviro Greenie agenda. Problem solved with free interprise and not mandates. That is what the good folks of America want and will get. .Remember you heard it here.
Bob as usual is impervious to reality. I stopped reading after “after Obama is defeated.” Bob can’t you read the writing on the wall? Mitt is a classic loser. The election is already decided. The GOP might even lose the House the way they’re going. You heard it here first Bob (apparently). Can’t wait for the election and the stumbling bumbling excuses you’re sure to blurt all over this blog.
Remember Mike anything can happen. Yes Presaident Obama could win and the Republicans lose the house. A 5/8 point lead now does not look good for the President.
I’ll take that over a 5-8 point deficit. His lead will only grow. Watch and learn.
So Mike now tell what states President Obama will win. Also how are the Democrats going to take back the house? They will need a lot more than California. We would like your actual stats not just talk. I have already stated my facts. Your turn Mike. This does seem off topic. But it is not. Without President Obama the EG’s are out scout.
We’ve been over this. I stick by all the states I said he’d win, and I’m more confident than ever. Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Virginia, NC will go for the prez and with all the gimmes that’s enough. Four more years of connie misery and whining. Can’t wait.
Sorry Mike, that is not how it will be. Florida, NC, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Nevada all go Republican. The election is now won by a Republican. Very easy to figure out. There are also other combinations if Florida or Ohio go for President Obama . Not going to happen. If will be interesting. Sticking to topic. Go NATURAL GAS.
Sticking to topic is your best bet. Go natural gas — and wind, and solar, and all the rest! Nobody who’s legitimately interested in solving this problem would think of excluding a potential solution.
Very simple spend the money on resources we already have.. Why government money to build electric cars that are not all that good. Then lets spend more government money on solar, as we see that has not worked out. .Give tax breaks not subsidies. Let the free market take us where we need to be. And while we are at it is there anymore bond holders that President Obama can shaft? This climate change stuff is all about mandates. If oil, coal and natural gas burned cleaner would that be OK? Californi is so far ahead of the rest of the nation it has hurt this state a great deal. Now is the time to get back to what will work at once. Drill for oil, natural gas and do the Keystone Project. Build ports to ship Natural Gas out of this country. Would any of this hurt? No it would help the economy get rolling at once.
All power, aside from nuclear, is solar. Why not skip the middle man?
Geothermal is questionable, as well. However, solar might well effect geothermal temperatures to some extent, as well as influencing rain and groundwater recharge.
who is the middle man? Why is all power except nuclear solar?
” All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike–and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”
–Albert Einstein
Global Warming & Climate Change Myths
Source: Skeptical Science: Getting Skeptical about Global Warming Skepticism.
Here is a summary of global warming and climate change myths, sorted by recent popularity vs what science says. Click the response for a more detailed response. You can also view them sorted by taxonomy, by popularity, in a print-friendly version, with short URLs or with fixed numbers you can use for
permanent references.
Climate Myth
vs
What the Science Says:
1.
“Climate’s changed before”
Climate reacts to whatever forces it to change at the time; humans are now the dominant forcing.
2.
“It’s the sun”
In the last 35 years of global warming, sun and climate have been going in opposite directions
3.
“It’s not bad”
Negative impacts of global warming on agriculture, health & environment far outweigh any positives.
4.
“There is no consensus”
97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming.
5.
“It’s cooling”
The last decade 2000-2009 was the hottest on record.
6
“Models are unreliable”
Models successfully reproduce temperatures since 1900 globally, by land, in the air and the ocean.
7
“Temp record is unreliable”
The warming trend is the same in rural and urban areas, measured by thermometers and satellites.
8
“Animals and plants can adapt”
Global warming will cause mass extinctions of species that cannot adapt on short time scales.
9
“It hasn’t warmed since 1998”
For global records, 2010 is the hottest year on record, tied with 2005.
10
“Antarctica is gaining ice”
Satellites measure Antarctica losing land ice at an accelerating rate.
11
“Ice age predicted in the 70s”
The vast majority of climate papers in the 1970s predicted warming.
12
“CO2 lags temperature”
CO2 didn’t initiate warming from past ice ages but it did amplify the warming.
13
“Climate sensitivity is low”
Net positive feedback is confirmed by many different lines of evidence.
14
“We’re heading into an ice age”
Worry about global warming impacts in the next 100 years, not an ice age in over 10,000 years.
15
“Ocean acidification isn’t serious”
Past history shows that when CO2 rises quickly, there was mass extinctions of coral reefs.
16
“Hockey stick is broken”
Recent studies agree that recent global temperatures are unprecedented in the last 1000 years.
17
“Hurricanes aren’t linked to global warming”
There is increasing evidence that hurricanes are getting stronger due to global warming.
18
“Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy”
A number of investigations have cleared scientists of any wrongdoing in the media-hyped email incident.
19
“Glaciers are growing”
Most glaciers are retreating, posing a serious problem for millions who rely on glaciers for water.
20
“Al Gore got it wrong”
Al Gore book is quite accurate, and far more accurate than contrarian books.
21
“It’s cosmic rays”
Cosmic rays show no trend over the last 30 years & have had little impact on recent global warming.
22
“1934 – hottest year on record”
1934 was one of the hottest years in the US, not globally.
23
“It’s freaking cold!”
A local cold day has nothing to do with the long-term trend of increasing global temperatures.
24
“Extreme weather isn’t caused by global warming”
Extreme weather events are being made more frequent and worse by global warming.
25
“Sea level rise is exaggerated”
A variety of different measurements find steadily rising sea levels over the past century.
26
“It’s Urban Heat Island effect”
Urban and rural regions show the same warming trend.
27
“Mars is warming”
Mars is not warming globally.
28
“Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle”
Thick arctic sea ice is undergoing a rapid retreat.
29
“Medieval Warm Period was warmer”
Globally averaged temperature now is higher than global temperature in medieval times.
30
“Increasing CO2 has little to no effect”
The strong CO2 effect has been observed by many different measurements.
31
“Oceans are cooling”
The most recent ocean measurements show consistent warming.
32
“It’s a 1500 year cycle”
Ancient natural cycles are irrelevant for attributing recent global warming to humans.
33
“Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions”
The natural cycle adds and removes CO2 to keep a balance; humans add extra CO2 without removing any.
34
“Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas”
Rising CO2 increases atmospheric water vapor, which makes global warming much worse.
35
“IPCC is alarmist”
The IPCC summarizes the recent research by leading scientific experts.
36
“It’s not happening”
There are many lines of evidence indicating global warming is unequivocal.
37
“Polar bear numbers are increasing”
Polar bears are in danger of extinction as well as many other species.
38
“Greenland was green”
Other parts of the earth got colder when Greenland got warmer.
39
“CO2 limits will harm the economy”
The benefits of a price on carbon outweigh the costs several times over.
40
“Greenland is gaining ice”
Greenland on the whole is losing ice, as confirmed by satellite measurement.
41
“Other planets are warming”
Mars and Jupiter are not warming, and anyway the sun has recently been cooling slightly.
42
“CO2 is not a pollutant”
Through its impacts on the climate, CO2 presents a danger to public health and welfare, and thus qualifies as an air pollutant
43
“There’s no empirical evidence”
There are multiple lines of direct observations that humans are causing global warming.
44
“Arctic sea ice has recovered”
Thick arctic sea ice is in rapid retreat.
45
“CO2 is plant food”
The effects of enhanced CO2 on terrestrial plants are variable and complex and dependent on numerous factors
46
“We’re coming out of the Little Ice Age”
Scientists have determined that the factors which caused the Little Ice Age cooling are not currently causing global warming
47
“There’s no correlation between CO2 and temperature”
There is long-term correlation between CO2 and global temperature; other effects are short-term.
48
“It cooled mid-century”
Mid-century cooling involved aerosols and is irrelevant for recent global warming.
49
“CO2 was higher in the past”
When CO2 was higher in the past, the sun was cooler.
50
“Satellites show no warming in the troposphere”
The most recent satellite data show that the earth as a whole is warming.
51
“It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low”
Early 20th century warming is due to several causes, including rising CO2.
52
“It’s aerosols”
Aerosols have been masking global warming, which would be worse otherwise.
53
“It’s El Niño”
El Nino has no trend and so is not responsible for the trend of global warming.
54
“There’s no tropospheric hot spot”
We see a clear “short-term hot spot” – there’s various evidence for a “long-term hot spot”.
55
“Mt. Kilimanjaro’s ice loss is due to land use”
Most glaciers are in rapid retreat worldwide, notwithstanding a few complicated cases.
56
“2009-2010 winter saw record cold spells”
A cold day in Chicago in winter has nothing to do with the trend of global warming.
57
“It’s a natural cycle”
No known natural forcing fits the fingerprints of observed warming except anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
58
“It’s Pacific Decadal Oscillation”
The PDO shows no trend, and therefore the PDO is not responsible for the trend of global warming.
59
“It’s not us”
Multiple sets of independent observations find a human fingerprint on climate change.
60
“Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????”
Global temperature is still rising and 2010 was the hottest recorded.
61
“Scientists can’t even predict weather”
Weather and climate are different; climate predictions do not need weather detail.
62
“IPCC were wrong about Himalayan glaciers”
Glaciers are in rapid retreat worldwide, despite 1 error in 1 paragraph in a 1000 page IPCC report.
63
“2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory”
The 2nd law of thermodynamics is consistent with the greenhouse effect which is directly observed.
64
“Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated”
Sea level rise is now increasing faster than predicted due to unexpectedly rapid ice melting.
65
“Clouds provide negative feedback”
Evidence is building that net cloud feedback is likely positive and unlikely to be strongly negative.
66
“CO2 limits will hurt the poor”
Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change.
67
“Greenhouse effect has been falsified”
The greenhouse effect is standard physics and confirmed by observations.
68
“It’s the ocean”
The oceans are warming and moreover are becoming more acidic, threatening the food chain.
69
“IPCC were wrong about Amazon rainforests”
The IPCC statement on Amazon rainforests was correct, and was incorrectly reported in some media.
70
“Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans”
Humans emit 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes.
71
“CO2 effect is saturated”
Direct measurements find that rising CO2 is trapping more heat.
72
“Greenland ice sheet won’t collapse”
When Greenland was 3 to 5 degrees C warmer than today, a large portion of the Ice Sheet melted.
73
“The science isn’t settled”
That human CO2 is causing global warming is known with high certainty & confirmed by observations.
74
“Corals are resilient to bleaching”
Globally about 1% of coral is dying out each year.
75
“It’s methane”
Methane plays a minor role in global warming but could get much worse if permafrost starts to melt.
76
“CO2 is just a trace gas”
Many substances are dangerous even in trace amounts; what really matters is the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
77
“CO2 has a short residence time”
Excess CO2 from human emissions has a long residence time of over 100 years
78
“Humidity is falling”
Multiple lines of independent evidence indicate humidity is rising and provides positive feedback.
79
“Neptune is warming”
And the sun is cooling.
80
“CO2 measurements are suspect”
CO2 levels are measured by hundreds of stations across the globe, all reporting the same trend.
81
“Springs aren’t advancing”
Hundreds of flowers across the UK are flowering earlier now than any time in 250 years.
82
“Jupiter is warming”
Jupiter is not warming, and anyway the sun is cooling.
83
“It’s land use”
Land use plays a minor role in climate change, although carbon sequestration may help to mitigate.
84
“500 scientists refute the consensus”
Around 97% of climate experts agree that humans are causing global warming.
85
“Scientists tried to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperature”
The ‘decline’ refers to a decline in northern tree-rings, not global temperature, and is openly discussed in papers and the IPCC reports.
86
“CO2 is not increasing”
CO2 is increasing rapidly, and is reaching levels not seen on the earth for millions of years.
87
“Record snowfall disproves global warming”
Warming leads to increased evaporation and precipitation, which falls as increased snow in winter.
88
“Solar Cycle Length proves its the sun”
The sun has not warmed since 1970 and so cannot be driving global warming.
89
“Pluto is warming”
And the sun has been recently cooling.
90
“CO2 is coming from the ocean”
The ocean is absorbing massive amounts of CO2, and is becoming more acidic as a result.
91
“Arctic was warmer in 1940”
The actual data show high northern latitudes are warmer today than in 1940.
92
“Southern sea ice is increasing”
Antarctic sea ice has grown in recent decades despite the Southern Ocean warming at the same time.
93
“IPCC overestimate temperature rise”
Monckton used the IPCC equation in an inappropriate manner.
94
“CO2 is not the only driver of climate”
Theory, models and direct measurement confirm CO2 is currently the main driver of climate change.
95
“Peer review process was corrupted”
An Independent Review concluded that CRU’s actions were normal and didn’t threaten the integrity of peer review.
96
“CO2 limits will make little difference”
If every nation agrees to limit CO2 emissions, we can achieve significant cuts on a global scale.
97
“It’s microsite influences”
Microsite influences on temperature changes are minimal; good and bad sites show the same trend.
98
“Renewable energy is too expensive”
When you account for all of the costs associated with burning coal and other fossil fuels, like air pollution and health effects, in reality they are significantly more expensive than most renewable energy sources.
99
“Sea level rise is decelerating”
Global sea level data shows that sea level rise has been increasing since 1880 while future sea level rise predictions are based on physics, not statistics.
100
“It’s albedo”
Albedo change in the Arctic, due to receding ice, is increasing global warming.
101
“Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960”
This is a detail that is complex, local, and irrelevant to the observed global warming trend.
102
“Dropped stations introduce warming bias”
If the dropped stations had been kept, the temperature would actually be slightly higher.
103
“Phil Jones says no global warming since 1995”
Phil Jones was misquoted.
104
“Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity”
Lindzen and Choi’s paper is viewed as unacceptably flawed by other climate scientists.
105
“It’s soot”
Soot stays in the atmosphere for days to weeks; carbon dioxide causes warming for centuries.
106
“Humans are too insignificant to affect global climate”
Humans are small but powerful, and human CO2 emissions are causing global warming.
107
“They changed the name from global warming to climate change”
‘Global warming’ and ‘climate change’ mean different things and have both been used for decades.
108
“Hansen’s 1988 prediction was wrong”
Jim Hansen had several possible scenarios; his mid-level scenario B was right.
109
“It’s too hard”
Scientific studies have determined that current technology is sufficient to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to avoid dangerous climate change.
110
“It’s not urgent”
A large amount of warming is delayed, and if we don’t act now we could pass tipping points.
111
“Roy Spencer finds negative feedback”
Spencer’s model is too simple, excluding important factors like ocean dynamics and treats cloud feedbacks as forcings.
112
“It’s global brightening”
This is a complex aerosol effect with unclear temperature significance.
113
“Arctic sea ice loss is matched by Antarctic sea ice gain”
Arctic sea ice loss is three times greater than Antarctic sea ice gain.
114
“It’s a climate regime shift”
There is no evidence that climate has chaotic “regimes” on a long-term basis.
115
“Earth hasn’t warmed as much as expected”
This argument ignores the cooling effect of aerosols and the planet’s thermal inertia.
116
“Less than half of published scientists endorse global warming”
Around 97% of climate experts agree that humans are causing global warming.
117
“Solar cycles cause global warming”
Over recent decades, the sun has been slightly cooling & is irrelevant to recent global warming.
118
“Ice isn’t melting”
Arctic sea ice has shrunk by an area equal to Western Australia, and summer or multi-year sea ice might be all gone within a decade.
119
“Over 31,000 scientists signed the OISM Petition Project”
The ‘OISM petition’ was signed by only a few climatologists.
120
“IPCC ‘disappeared’ the Medieval Warm Period”
The IPCC simply updated their temperature history graphs to show the best data available at the time.
121
“It’s ozone”
Ozone has only a small effect.
122
“Sea level is not rising”
The claim sea level isn’t rising is based on blatantly doctored graphs contradicted by observations.
123
“Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were ignored”
An independent inquiry found CRU is a small research unit with limited resources and their rigour and honesty are not in doubt.
124
“Tuvalu sea level isn’t rising”
Tuvalu sea level is rising 3 times larger than the global average.
125
“The IPCC consensus is phoney”
113 nations signed onto the 2007 IPCC report, which is simply a summary of the current body of climate science evidence
126
“Trenberth can’t account for the lack of warming”
Trenberth is talking about the details of energy flow, not whether global warming is happening.
127
“Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted”
Weather is chaotic but climate is driven by Earth’s energy imbalance, which is more predictable.
128
“Renewables can’t provide baseload power”
A number of renewable sources already do provide baseload power, and we don’t need renewables to provide a large percentage of baseload power immediately.
129
“Ice Sheet losses are overestimated”
A number of independent measurements find extensive ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland.
130
“Naomi Oreskes’ study on consensus was flawed”
Benny Peiser, the Oreskes critic, retracted his criticism.
131
“Melting ice isn’t warming the Arctic”
Melting ice leads to more sunlight being absorbed by water, thus heating the Arctic.
132
“Climate ‘Skeptics’ are like Galileo”
Modern scientists, not anti-science skeptics, follow in Galileo’s footsteps.
133
“A drop in volcanic activity caused warming”
Volcanoes have had no warming effect in recent global warming – if anything, a cooling effect.
134
“Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup”
By breathing out, we are simply returning to the air the same CO2 that was there to begin with.
135
“Satellite error inflated Great Lakes temperatures”
Temperature errors in the Great Lakes region are not used in any global temperature records.
136
“CRU tampered with temperature data”
An independent inquiry went back to primary data sources and were able to replicate CRU’s results.
137
“Soares finds lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature”
Soares looks at short-term trends which are swamped by natural variations while ignoring the long-term correlation.
138
“We’re heading into cooling”
There is no scientific basis for claims that the planet will begin to cool in the near future.
139
“Water vapor in the stratosphere stopped global warming”
This possibility just means that future global warming could be even worse.
140
“It’s waste heat”
Greenhouse warming is adding 100 times more heat to the climate than waste heat.
141
“CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration”
That humans are causing the rise in atmospheric CO2 is confirmed by multiple isotopic analyses.
142
“It warmed just as fast in 1860-1880 and 1910-1940”
The warming trend over 1970 to 2001 is greater than warming from both 1860 to 1880 and 1910 to 1940.
143
“Record high snow cover was set in winter 2008/2009”
Winter snow cover in 2008/2009 was average while the long-term trend in spring, summer, and annual snow cover is rapid decline.
144
“The sun is getting hotter”
The sun has just had the deepest solar minimum in 100 years.
145
“Mauna Loa is a volcano”
The global trend is calculated from hundreds of CO2 measuring stations and confirmed by satellites.
146
“An exponential increase in CO2 will result in a linear increase in temperature”
CO2 levels are rising so fast that unless we decrease emissions, global warming will accelerate this century.
147
“Venus doesn’t have a runaway greenhouse effect”
Venus very likely underwent a runaway or ‘moist’ greenhouse phase earlier in its history, and today is kept hot by a dense CO2 atmosphere.
148
“Murry Salby finds CO2 rise is natural”
Multiple lines of evidence make it very clear that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is due to human emissions.
149
“Antarctica is too cold to lose ice”
Glaciers are sliding faster into the ocean because ice shelves are thinning due to warming oceans.
150
“Skeptics were kept out of the IPCC?”
Official records, Editors and emails suggest CRU scientists acted in the spirit if not the letter of IPCC rules.
151
“Water levels correlate with sunspots”
This detail is irrelevant to the observation of global warming caused by humans.
152
“CO2 was higher in the late Ordovician”
The sun was much cooler during the Ordovician.
153
“It’s CFCs”
CFCs contribute at a small level.
154
“Scientists retracted claim that sea levels are rising”
The Siddall 2009 paper was retracted because its predicted sea level rise was too low.
155
“Warming causes CO2 rise”
Recent warming is due to rising CO2.
156
“Positive feedback means runaway warming”
Positive feedback won’t lead to runaway warming; diminishing returns on feedback cycles limit the amplification.
157
“Coral atolls grow as sea levels rise”
Thousands of coral atolls have “drowned” when unable to grow fast enough to survive at sea level.
158
“It’s internal variability”
Internal variability can only account for small amounts of warming and cooling over periods of decades, and scientific studies have consistently shown that it cannot account for the global warming over the past century.
159
“Greenland has only lost a tiny fraction of its ice mass”
Greenland’s ice loss is accelerating & will add metres of sea level rise in upcoming centuries.
160
“DMI show cooling Arctic”
While summer maximums have showed little trend, the annual average Arctic temperature has risen sharply in recent decades.
161
“It’s only a few degrees”
A few degrees of global warming has a huge impact on ice sheets, sea levels and other aspects of climate.
162
“CO2 limits won’t cool the planet”
CO2 limits won’t cool the planet, but they can make the difference between continued accelerating global warming to catastrophic levels vs. slowing and eventually stopping the warming at hopefully safe levels
163
“Renewable energy investment kills jobs”
Investment in renewable energy creates more jobs than investment in fossil fuel energy.
164
“CO2 increase is natural, not human-caused”
Many lines of evidence, including simple accounting, demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to human fossil fuel burning.
165
“Royal Society embraces skepticism”
The Royal Society still strongly state that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming.
166
“It’s satellite microwave transmissions”
Satellite transmissions are extremely small and irrelevant.
167
“CO2 only causes 35% of global warming”
CO2 and corresponding water vapor feedback are the biggest cause of global warming.
168
“Sea level fell in 2010”
The temporary drop in sea level in 2010 was due to intense land flooding caused by a strong La Nina.
169
“We didn’t have global warming during the Industrial Revolution”
CO2 emissions were much smaller 100 years ago.
170
“Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater”
Hansen was speculating on changes that might happen if CO2 doubled.
171
“Ljungqvist broke the hockey stick”
Ljungqvist’s temperature reconstruction is very similar to other reconstructions by Moberg and Mann.
172
“Removing all CO2 would make little difference”
Removing CO2 would cause most water in the air to rain out and cancel most of the greenhouse effect.
173
“Postma disproved the greenhouse effect”
Postma’s model contains many simple errors; in no way does Postma undermine the existence or necessity of the greenhouse effect.
Many thanks to Dr. Jan Dash, Director of the UU-UNO’s Climate Portal for writing many of the one line responses in ‘What the Science Says’, with some edits by John Cook.
It’s easy to debunk the debunkers. For example:
‘5. “It’s cooling”
The last decade 2000-2009 was the hottest on record.’
These statement are not contradictory as implied in the post. The earth has been in a 5 hundred year warming phase with cyclical ups and downs. Warming has currently been stalled for over a decade and we are in a similar phase as the post 1940’s cooling that can be seen on HADCRUT, see for yourselves:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif
Depending on how you smooth the temperature curve the last 10 to 15 years can be described as cooling or stalling, but that’s statistics for you. Best to look at the raw data as well.
You can safely ignore all the other chaff from Will’s Skeptical Science blog post because they all fall into the same category of rhetoric rather than science.
Going to Skeptical Science for climate information is like going to Monty Pythons Argument Clinic for a good argument, all you get is contradiction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdoGVgj1MtY
enjoy.
Alan,
Thank you for your non verbose rebuttal. I think quality should trump empty quantity every time.
This is one of the best articles I’ve seen on the effects of Global Warming, with all due respect to the above (2) authors. I do have one request of the authors. Two of my favorite sites on climate science related topics are: De Smog Blog: Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science: and, Real Climate: Climate Scientist from Climate Scientists. I was hoping that you might share one or more sites that you favor for the community to consider. Thanks.
How We Know Global Warming is Real
and Human Caused
by Dr. Donald R. Prothero
In mid-October 2011, NASA scientists working in Antarctica discovered a massive crack across the Pine Island Glacier, a major ice stream that drains the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Extending for 19 miles (30 kilometers), the crack was 260 feet (80 meters) wide and 195 feet (60 meters) deep. Eventually, the crack will extend all the way across the glacier, and calve a giant iceberg that will cover about 350 square miles (900 square kilometers). This image from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NAS’s Terra spacecraft was acquired Nov. 13, 2011, and covers an area of 27 by 32 miles (44 by 52 kilometers), and is located near 74.9 degrees south latitude, 101.1 degrees west longitude. (Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team)
On January 27, 2012, the Wall Street Journal ran an Opinion Editorial written by 16 people who deny the evidence of human-induced climate change. Most of the authors of the editorial were not climate scientists; one of two actual climate scientists of the group, Richard Lindzen, is a notorious global warming denier who also denies that smoking causes cancer. Predictably, the Rupert Murdoch-owned Journal refused to run a statement by 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences, although a “Letter to the Editor” by 38 of the world’s leading climate scientists1 did manage to get published there. The letter pointed out the numerous lies, mistakes, and fallacies in the editorial, along with a scathing rebuke by climate scientist Kevin Trenberth, whose remarks were quoted out of context to make them seem the opposite of what he actually said. As the Trenberth et al. letter pointed out, the 16 authors of the editorial were so far out of their depth in discussing the topic that they were the “climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology.” And as if to answer the editorial, the earth sent a resounding message in reply. On Feb. 2, 2012, an 18-mile crack appeared in Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica (see photo above and sidebar for details), a prelude to the calving off an iceberg 350 square miles in area, one of the largest icebergs ever seen.2
Converging Lines of Evidence
How do we know that global warming is real and primarily human caused? There are numerous lines of evidence that converge to this conclusion.
Figure 1
Figure 1. The Moberg et al. (2005) plot (updated from the Mann et al., 1999, plot) of the last 2000 years of earth’s average surface temperature, which shows over 800 years of relative stability followed by the rapid warming of the past two centuries, giving it the shape of a “hockey stick.” The slight warming trend of the Medieval Warm Period can also be seen (data from 900–1200 A.D.) and is nowhere near the magnitude of the warming in the past century. (Click diagrams to enlarge them.)
Carbon Dioxide Increase. Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has increased at an unprecedented rate in the past 200 years. Not one data set collected over a long enough span of time shows otherwise. Mann et al. (1999) compiled the past 900 years’ worth of temperature data from tree rings, ice cores, corals, and direct measurements of the past few centuries, and the sudden increase of temperature of the past century stands out like a sore thumb. This famous graph (see Figure 1 above) is now known as the “hockey stick” because it is long and straight through most of its length, then bends sharply upward at the end like the blade of a hockey stick. Other graphs show that climate was very stable within a narrow range of variation through the past 1000, 2000, or even 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age. There were minor warming events during the Climatic Optimum about 7000 years ago, the Medieval Warm Period, and the slight cooling of the Little Ice Age from the 1700s and 1800s. But the magnitude and rapidity of the warming represented by the last 200 years is simply unmatched in all of human history. More revealing, the timing of this warming coincides with the Industrial Revolution, when humans first began massive deforestation and released carbon dioxide by burning coal, gas, and oil.
Melting Polar Ice Caps. The polar icecaps are thinning and breaking up at an alarming rate. In 2000, my former graduate advisor Malcolm McKenna was one of the first humans to fly over the North Pole in summer time and see no ice, just open water. The Arctic ice cap has been frozen solid for at least the past 3 million years and maybe longer3, but now the entire ice sheet is breaking up so fast that by 2030 (and possibly sooner) less than half of the Arctic will be ice covered in the summer.4 As one can see from watching the news, this is an ecological disaster for everything that lives up there, from the polar bears to the seals and walruses to the animals they feed upon, to the 4 million people whose world is melting beneath their feet. The Antarctic is thawing even faster. In February–March 2002, the Larsen B ice shelf—over 3000 square km (the size of Rhode Island) and 220 m (700 feet) thick—broke up in just a few months, a story typical of nearly all the ice shelves in Antarctica. The Larsen B shelf had survived all the previous ice ages and interglacial warming episodes for the past 3 million years, and even the warmest periods of the last 10,000 years—yet it and nearly all the other thick ice sheets on the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctic are vanishing at a rate never before seen in geologic history.
Melting Glaciers. Glaciers are all retreating at the highest rates ever documented. Many of those glaciers, especially in the Himalayas, Andes, Alps, and Sierras, provide most of the freshwater that the populations below the mountains depend upon—yet this fresh water supply is vanishing. Just think about the percentage of world’s population in southern Asia (especially India) that depend on Himalayan snowmelt for their fresh water. The implications are staggering. The permafrost that once remained solidly frozen even in the summer has now thawed, damaging the Inuit villages on the Arctic coast and threatening all our pipelines to the North Slope of Alaska. This is catastrophic not only for life on the permafrost, but as it thaws, the permafrost releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases and is one of the major contributors to global warming. Not only is the ice vanishing, but we have seen record heat waves over and over again, killing thousands of people, as each year joins the list of the hottest years on record. (2010 just topped that list as the hottest year, surpassing the previous record in 2009, and we shall know about 2011 soon enough). Natural animal and plant populations are being devastated all over the globe as their environment changes.5 Many animals respond by moving their ranges to formerly cold climates, so now places that once did not have to worry about disease-bearing mosquitoes are infested as the climate warms and allows them to breed further north.
Sea Level Rise. All that melted ice eventually ends up in the ocean, causing sea level to rise, as it has many times in the geologic past. At present, sea level is rising about 3–4 mm per year, more than ten times the rate of 0.1–0.2 mm/year that has occurred over the past 3000 years. Geological data show that sea level was virtually unchanged over the past 10,000 years since the present interglacial began. A few millimeters here or there doesn’t impress people, until you consider that the rate is accelerating and that most scientists predict sea level will rise 80–130 cm in just the next century. A sea level rise of 1.3 m (almost 4 feet) would drown many of the world’s low-elevation cities, such as Venice and New Orleans, and low-lying countries such as the Netherlands or Bangladesh. A number of tiny island nations such as Vanuatu and the Maldives, which barely poke out above the ocean now, are already vanishing beneath the waves. Eventually their entire population will have to move someplace else.6 Even a small sea level rise might not drown all these areas, but they are much more vulnerable to the large waves of a storm surge (as happened with Hurricane Katrina), which could do much more damage than sea level rise alone. If sea level rose by 6 m (20 feet), most of the world’s coastal plains and low-lying areas (such as the Louisiana bayous, Florida, and most of the world’s river deltas) would be drowned.
Most of the world’s population lives in coastal cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Miami, Shanghai, and London. All of those cities would be partially or completely under water with such a sea level rise. If all the glacial ice caps melted completely (as they have several times before during past greenhouse episodes in the geologic past), sea level would rise by 65 m (215 feet)! The entire Mississippi Valley would flood, so you could dock your boat in Cairo, Illinois. Such a sea level rise would drown nearly every coastal region under hundreds of feet of water, and inundate New York City, London and Paris. All that would remain would be the tall landmarks, such as the Empire State Building, Big Ben, and the Eiffel Tower. You could tie your boats to these pinnacles, but the rest of these drowned cities would be deep under water.
Climate Deniers’ Arguments and Scientists’ Rebuttals
Despite the overwhelming evidence there are many people who remain skeptical. One reason is that they have been fed lies, distortions, and misstatements by the global warming denialists who want to cloud or confuse the issue. Let’s examine some of these claims in detail:
“It’s just natural climatic variability.” No, it is not. As I detailed in my 2009 book, Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs, geologists and paleoclimatologists know a lot about past greenhouse worlds, and the icehouse planet that has existed for the past 33 million years. We have a good understanding of how and why the Antarctic ice sheet first appeared at that time, and how the Arctic froze over about 3.5 million years ago, beginning the 24 glacial and interglacial episodes of the “Ice Ages” that have occurred since then. We know how variations in the earth’s orbit (the Milankovitch cycles) controls the amount of solar radiation the earth receives, triggering the shifts between glacial and interglacial periods. Our current warm interglacial has already lasted 10,000 years, the duration of most previous interglacials, so if it were not for global warming, we would be headed into the next glacial in the next 1000 years or so. Instead, our pumping greenhouse gases into our atmosphere after they were long trapped in the earth’s crust has pushed the planet into a “super-interglacial,” already warmer than any previous warming period. We can see the “big picture” of climate variability most clearly in the EPICA cores from Antarctica (see Figure 2 below), which show the details of the last 650,000 years of glacial-interglacial cycles. At no time during any previous interglacial did the carbon dioxide levels exceed 300 ppm, even at their very warmest. Our atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are already close to 400 ppm today. The atmosphere is headed to 600 ppm within a few decades, even if we stopped releasing greenhouse gases immediately. This is decidedly not within the normal range of “climatic variability,” but clearly unprecedented in human history. Anyone who says this is “normal variability” has never seen the huge amount of paleoclimatic data that show otherwise.
Figure 2
Figure 2. The climate record from EPICA core from Antartica. It shows the normal range of climate variability over the past 650,000 years (450,000 years shown here) and the last 6 glacial-interglacial cycles. At no point in any previous interglacial was the carbon dioxide level higher than 300 ppm, or the temperatures so high, yet we are almost to 400 ppm today. This is ironclad evidence that our present episode of warming is not “normal fluctuations.”
“It’s just another warming episode, like the Mediaeval Warm Period, or the Holocene Climatic Optimum” or the end of the Little Ice Age.” Untrue. There were numerous small fluctuations of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years of the Holocene. But in the case of the Mediaeval Warm Period (about 950–1250 A.D.), the temperatures increased by only 1°C, much less than we have seen in the current episode of global warming (see Figure 1). This episode was also only a local warming in the North Atlantic and northern Europe. Global temperatures over this interval did not warm at all, and actually cooled by more than 1°C. Likewise, the warmest period of the last 10,000 years was the Holocene Climatic Optimum (5000–9000 B.C.) when warmer and wetter conditions in Eurasia caused the rise of the first great civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China. This was largely a Northern Hemisphere-Eurasian phenomenon, with 2–3°C warming in the Arctic and northern Europe. But there was almost no warming in the tropics, and cooling or no change in the Southern Hemisphere.7 To the Eurocentric world, these warming events seemed important, but on a global scale the effect is negligible. In addition, neither of these warming episodes is related to increasing greenhouse gases. The Holocene Climatic Optimum, in fact, is predicted by the Milankovitch cycles, since at that time the axial tilt of the earth was 24°, its steepest value, meaning the Northern Hemisphere got more solar radiation than normal—but the Southern Hemisphere less, so the two balanced. By contrast, not only is the warming observed in the last 200 years much greater than during these previous episodes, but it is also global and bipolar, so it is not a purely local effect. The warming that ended the Little Ice Age (from the mid-1700s to the late 1800s) was due to increased solar radiation prior to 1940. Since 1940, however, the amount of solar radiation has been dropping, so the only candidate for the post-1940 warming has to be carbon dioxide.8
“It’s just the sun, or cosmic rays, or volcanic activity or methane.” Nope, sorry. The amount of heat that the sun provides has been decreasing since 19409, just the opposite of the denialists’ claims. There is no evidence (see Figure 3 below) of increase in cosmic radiation during the past century.10 Nor is there any clear evidence that large-scale volcanic events (such as the 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia, which changed global climate for about a year) have any long-term effect that would explain 200 years of warming and carbon dioxide increase. Volcanoes erupt only 0.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, but humans emit over 29 billion tonnes a year11, roughly 100 times as much. Clearly, we have a bigger effect. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas, but there is 200 times more carbon dioxide than methane, so carbon dioxide is still the most important agent.12 Every other alternative has been looked at, but the only clear-cut relationship is between human-caused carbon dioxide increase and global warming.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Plot of solar energy input to the earth versus temperature of the last century. The two tend to track each other until the last 30 years, at which time the earth warmed dramatically even as solar input went down.
Figure 4
Figure 4a. The plot of global mean temperature over the past century, showing the yearly data (solid black lines) and the smoothed curve using a 5-year rolling average (blue line). Clearly, the trend has been dramatically increasing, and individual data points from one year do not tell the whole story. The anomalous El Niño warm year of 1998 is one of those outliers.
Figure 4b. A detailed plot of the past 20 years of global mean temperatures, showing how anomalous 1998 was. If you cherry-pick 1998 and the two years that followed it, it appears that climate is cooling. However, if you pick any two points other than 1998–2000, or any rolling average, it is clear that climate is warming. Indeed, most of the years from 2002 and on are as warm or warmer than 1998, so any claim that “it has been cooling since 1998” is a lie. The short-term cooling of the 2008 La Niña year can also be seen.
** “The climate records since 1995 (or 1998) show cooling.” That’s a deliberate deception.** People who throw this argument out are cherry-picking the data.13 Over the short term, there was a slight cooling trend from 1998–2000 (see Figure 4 below), because 1998 was a record-breaking El Niño year, so the next few years look cooler by comparison. But since 2002, the overall long-term trend of warming is unequivocal. This statement is a clear-cut case of using out-of-context data in an attempt to deny reality. All of the 16 hottest years ever recorded on a global scale have occurred in the last 20 years. They are (in order of hottest first): 2010, 2009, 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2001, 1997, 2008, 1995, 1999, 1990, and 2000.14 In other words, every year since 2000 has been in the Top Ten hottest years list, and the rest of the list includes 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000. Only 1996 failed to make the list (because of the short-term cooling mentioned already).
“We had record snows in the winters of 2009–2010, and in 2010–2011.” So what? This is nothing more than the difference between weather (short-term seasonal changes) and climate (the long-term average of weather over decades and centuries and longer). Our local weather tells us nothing about another continent, or the global average; it is only a local effect, determined by short-term atmospheric and oceanographic conditions.15 In fact, warmer global temperatures mean more moisture in the atmosphere, which increases the intensity of normal winter snowstorms. In this particular case, the climate denialists forget that the early winter of November–December 2009 was actually very mild and warm, and then only later in January and February did it get cold and snow heavily. That warm spell in early winter helped bring more moisture into the system, so that when cold weather occurred, the snows were worse. In addition, the snows were unusually heavy only in North America; the rest of the world had different weather, and the global climate was warmer than average. And the summer of 2010 was the hottest on record, breaking the previous record set in 2009.
“Carbon dioxide is good for plants, so the world will be better off.” Who do they think they’re kidding? The people who promote this idea clearly don’t know much global geochemistry, or are trying to cynically take advantage of the fact that most people are ignorant of science. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (funded by oil and coal companies and conservative foundations16) has run a series of shockingly stupid ads concluding with the tag line “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution, we call it life.” Anyone who knows the basic science of earth’s atmosphere can spot the deceptions in this ad.17 Sure, plants take in carbon dioxide that animals exhale, as they have for millions of years. But the whole point of the global warming evidence (as shown from ice cores) is that the delicate natural balance of carbon dioxide has been thrown out of whack by our production of too much of it, way in excess of what plants or the oceans can handle. As a consequence, the oceans are warming18 and absorbing excess carbon dioxide making them more acidic. Already we are seeing a shocking decline in coral reefs (“bleaching”) and extinctions in many marine ecosystems that can’t handle too much of a good thing. Meanwhile, humans are busy cutting down huge areas of temperate and tropical forests, which not only means there are fewer plants to absorb the gas, but the slash and burn practices are releasing more carbon dioxide than plants can keep up with. There is much debate as to whether increased carbon dioxide might help agriculture in some parts of the world, but that has to be measured against the fact that other traditional “breadbasket” regions (such as the American Great Plains) are expected to get too hot to be as productive as they are today. The latest research19 actually shows that increased carbon dioxide inhibits the absorption of nitrogen into plants, so plants (at least those that we depend upon today) are not going to flourish in a greenhouse world. Anyone who tells you otherwise is ignorant of basic atmospheric science.
“I agree that climate is changing, but I’m skeptical that humans are the main cause, so we shouldn’t do anything.” This is just fence sitting. A lot of reasonable skeptics deplore the “climate denialism” of the right wing, but still want to be skeptical about the cause. If they want proof, they can examine the huge array of data that directly points to humans causing global warming.20 We can directly measure the amount of carbon dioxide humans are producing, and it tracks exactly with the amount of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Through carbon isotope analysis, we can show that this carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is coming directly from our burning of fossil fuels, not from natural sources. We can also measure oxygen levels that drop as we produce more carbon that then combines with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide. We have satellites in space that are measuring the heat released from the planet and can actually see the atmosphere get warmer. The most crucial proof emerged only in the past few years: climate models of the greenhouse effect predict that there should be cooling in the stratosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere above 10 km (6 miles) in elevation, but warming in the troposphere (the bottom layer of the atmosphere below 10 km (6 miles), and that’s exactly what our space probes have measured. Finally, we can rule out any other culprits (see above): solar heat is decreasing since 1940, not increasing, and there are no measurable increases in cosmic radiation, methane, volcanic gases, or any other potential cause. Face it—it’s our problem.
Why Do People Deny Climate Change?
Thanks to all the noise and confusion over the debate, the general public has only a vague idea of what the debate is really about, and only about half of Americans think global warming is real or that we are to blame.21 As in the debate over evolution and creationism, the scientific community is virtually unanimous on what the data demonstrate about anthropogenic global warming. This has been true for over a decade. When science historian Naomi Oreskes22 surveyed all peer-reviewed papers on climate change published between 1993 and 2003 in the world’s leading scientific journal, Science, she found that there were 980 supporting the idea of human-induced global warming and none opposing it. In 2009, Doran and Kendall Zimmerman23 surveyed all the climate scientists who were familiar with the data. They found that 95–99% agreed that global warming is real and that humans are the reason. In 2010, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study that showed that 98% of the scientists who actually do research in climate change are in agreement with anthropogenic global warming.24 Every major scientific organization in the world has endorsed the conclusion of anthropogenic climate change as well. This is a rare degree of agreement within such an independent and cantankerous group as the world’s top scientists. This is the same degree of scientific consensus that scientists have achieved over most major ideas, including gravity, evolution, and relativity. These and only a few other topics in science can claim this degree of agreement among nearly all the world’s leading scientists, especially among everyone who is close to the scientific data and knows the problem intimately. If it were not such a controversial topic politically, there would be almost no interest in debating it, since the evidence is so clear-cut.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
—Richard Feynman
If the climate science community speaks with one voice (as in the 2007 IPCC report, and every report since then), why is there still any debate at all? The answer has been revealed by a number of investigations by diligent reporters who got past the PR machinery denying global warming, and uncovered the money trail. Originally, there was no real “dissenters” to the idea of global warming by scientists who are actually involved with climate research. Instead, the forces with vested interests in denying global climate change (the energy companies, and the “free-market” advocates) followed the strategy of tobacco companies: create a smokescreen of confusion and prevent the American public from recognizing scientific consensus. As the famous memo25 from the tobacco lobbyists said “Doubt is our product.” The denialists generated an anti-science movement entirely out of thin air and PR. The evidence for this PR conspiracy has been well documented in numerous sources. For example, Oreskes and Conway revealed from memos leaked to the press that in April 1998 the right-wing Marshall Institute, SEPP (Fred Seitz’s lobby that aids tobacco companies and polluters), and ExxonMobil, met in secret at the American Petroleum Institute’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. There they planned a $20 million campaign to get “respected scientists” to cast doubt on climate change, get major PR efforts going, and lobby Congress that global warming isn’t real and is not a threat.
The right-wing institutes and the energy lobby beat the bushes to find scientists—any scientists—who might disagree with the scientific consensus. As investigative journalists and scientists have documented over and over again,26 the denialist conspiracy essentially paid for the testimony of anyone who could be useful to them. The day that the 2007 IPCC report was released (Feb. 2, 2007), the British newspaper The Guardian reported that the conservative American Enterprise Institute (funded largely by oil companies and conservative think tanks) had offered $10,000 plus travel expenses to scientists who would write negatively about the IPCC report.27
We are accustomed to the hired-gun “experts” paid by lawyers to muddy up the evidence in the case they are fighting, but this is extraordinary—buying scientists outright to act as shills for organizations trying to deny scientific reality. With this kind of money, however, you can always find a fringe scientist or crank or someone with no relevant credentials who will do what they’re paid to do.
Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs (book cover)
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The NCSE satirized this tactic of composing phony “lists of scientists” with their “Project Steve.”28 They showed that there were more scientists named “Steve” than their entire list of “scientists who dispute evolution.” It may generate lots of PR and a smokescreen to confuse the public, but it doesn’t change the fact that scientists who actually do research in climate change are unanimous in their insistence that anthropogenic global warming is a real threat. Most scientists I know and respect work very hard for little pay, yet they still cannot be paid to endorse some scientific idea they know to be false.
The climate deniers have a lot of other things in common with creationists and other anti-science movements. They too like to quote someone out of context (“quote mining”), finding a short phrase in the work of legitimate scientists that seems to support their position. But when you read the full quote in context, it is obvious that they have used the quote inappropriately. The original author meant something that does not support their goals. The “Climategate scandal” is a classic case of this. It started with a few stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. If you read the complete text of the actual emails29 and comprehend the scientific shorthand of climate scientists who are talking casually to each other, it is clear that there was no great “conspiracy” or that they were faking data. All six subsequent investigations have cleared Philip Jones and the other scientists of the University of East Anglia of any wrongdoing or conspiracy.30
Even if there had been some conspiracy on the part of these few scientists, there is no reason to believe that the entire climate science community is secretly working together to generate false information and mislead the public. If there’s one thing that is clear about science, it’s about competition and criticism, not conspiracy and collusion. Most labs are competing with each other, not conspiring together. If one lab publishes a result that is not clearly defensible, other labs will quickly correct it. As James Lawrence Powell wrote31:
Scientists….show no evidence of being more interested in politics or ideology than the average American. Does it make sense to believe that tens of thousands of scientists would be so deeply and secretly committed to bringing down capitalism and the American way of life that they would spend years beyond their undergraduate degrees working to receive master’s and Ph.D. degrees, then go to work in a government laboratory or university, plying the deep oceans, forbidding deserts, icy poles, and torrid jungles, all for far less money than they could have made in industry, all the while biding their time like a Russian sleeper agent in an old spy novel? Scientists tend to be independent and resist authority. That is why you are apt to find them in the laboratory or in the field, as far as possible from the prying eyes of a supervisor. Anyone who believes he could organize thousands of scientists into a conspiracy has never attended a single faculty meeting.
There are many more traits that the climate deniers share with the creationists and Holocaust deniers and others who distort the truth. They pick on small disagreements between different labs as if scientists can’t get their story straight, when in reality there is always a fair amount of give and take between competing labs as they try to get the answer right before the other lab can do so. The key point here is that when all these competing labs around the world have reached a consensus and get the same answer, there is no longer any reason to doubt their common conclusion. The anti-scientists of climate denialism will also point to small errors by individuals in an effort to argue that the entire enterprise cannot be trusted. It is true that scientists are human, and do make mistakes, but the great power of the scientific method is that peer review weeds these out, so that when scientists speak with consensus, there is no doubt that their data are checked carefully.
Finally, a powerful line of evidence that this is a purely political controversy, rather than a scientific debate, is that the membership lists of the creationists and the climate deniers are highly overlapping. Both anti-scientific dogmas are fed to their overlapping audiences through right-wing media such as Fox News, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. Just take a look at the “intelligent-design” creationism website for the Discovery Institute. Most of the daily news items lately have nothing to do with creationism at all, but are focused on climate denial and other right-wing causes.32
If the data about global climate change are indeed valid and robust, any qualified scientist should be able to look at them and see if the prevailing scientific interpretation holds up. Indeed, such a test took place. Starting in 2010, a group led by U.C. Berkeley physicist Richard Muller re-examined all the temperature data from the NOAA, East Anglia Hadley Climate Research Unit, and the Goddard Institute of Space Science sources (see Figure 5 below). Even though Muller started out as a skeptic of the temperature data, and was funded by the Koch brothers and other oil company sources, he carefully checked and re-checked the research himself. When the GOP leaders called him to testify before the House Science and Technology Committee in spring 2011, they were expecting him to discredit the temperature data. Instead, Muller shocked his GOP sponsors by demonstrating his scientific integrity and telling the truth: the temperature increase is real, and the scientists who have demonstrated that the climate is changing are right. In the fall of 2011, his study was published, and the conclusions were clear: global warming is real, even to a right-wing skeptical scientist. Unlike the hired-gun scientists who play political games, Muller did what a true scientist should do: if the data go against your biases and preconceptions, then do the right thing and admit it—even if you’ve been paid by sponsors who want to discredit global warming. Muller is a shining example of a scientist whose integrity and honesty came first, and did not sell out to the highest bidder.33
Figure 5
Figure 5. Plot contrasting the temperature data obtained by three original sources (NOAA, Goddard Institute of Space Sciences, and The Hadley Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia) with the data obtained by Richard Muller’s Berkeley group, which was originally attempting to deny the evidence of global warming, but found that in fact the original data were correct and the planet is getting warmer.
Science and Anti-Science
The conclusion is clear: there’s science, and then there’s the anti-science of the global warming denial. As we have seen, there is a nearly unanimous consensus among climate scientists that anthropogenic global warming is real and that we must do something about it. Yet the smokescreen, bluster and lies of the deniers has created enough doubt that only half of the American public is convinced the problem requires action. Ironically, the U.S. is almost alone in their denial of this scientific reality. International polls taken of 33,000 people in 33 nations in 2006 and 2007 show that 90% of their citizens regard climate change as a serious problem34 and 80% realize that humans are the cause of it.35 Just as in the case of creationism, the U.S. is out of step with much of the rest of the world in accepting scientific reality.
It is not just the liberals and environmentalists who are taking climate change seriously. Historically conservative institutions (big corporations such as General Electric and many others such as insurance companies and the military) are already planning on how to deal with global warming. Many of my friends high in the oil companies tell me of the efforts by those companies to get into other forms of energy, because they know that oil will be running out soon and that the effects of burning oil will make their business less popular. BP officially stands for “British Petroleum,” but in one of their ad campaigns about 5 years ago, it stood for “Beyond Petroleum.”36 Although they still spend relatively little of their total budgets on alternative forms of energy, the oil companies still can see the handwriting on the wall about the eventual exhaustion of oil—and they are acting like any company that wants to survive by getting into a new business when the old one is dying.
The Pentagon (normally not a left-wing institution) is also making contingency plans for how to fight wars in an era of global climate change, and what kinds of strategic threats might occur when climate change alters the kinds of enemies we might be fighting, and water becomes a scarce commodity. The New York Times reported37 that in December 2008, the National Defense University outlined plans for military strategy in a greenhouse world. To the Pentagon, the big issue is global chaos and the potential of even nuclear conflict. The world must “prepare for the inevitable effects of abrupt climate change—which will likely come [the only question is when] regardless of human activity.”
Insurance companies have no political axe to grind. If anything, they tend to be on the conservative side. They are simply in the business of assessing risk in a realistic fashion so they can accurately gauge their future insurance policies and what to charge for them. Yet they are all investing heavily in research on the disasters and risks posed by climatic change. In 2005, a study commissioned by the re-insurer Swiss Re said, “Climate change will significantly affect the health of humans and ecosystems and these impacts will have economic consequences.”38
Some people may still try to deny scientific reality, but big businesses like oil and insurance, and conservative institutions like the military, cannot afford to be blinded or deluded by ideology. They must plan for the real world that we will be seeing in the next few decades. They do not want to be caught unprepared and harmed by global climatic change when it threatens their survival. Neither can we as a society. END
Enviroment California tells us that air polution from cars and trucks has decreased across the state by 85 percent since the 1970’s. Los Angerles has dropped some 70 percent.The number of ozone days fell from a high of 184 in 1977 to between zero and a few days a year now. California has done a good job. Now is it really necessary to convert automobiles to hybrid or electric? Think about this we are driving nearly double the miles since 1970. So as you see driving less miles and taking autos off the road is not the answer. Our superior tech work is what is doing it. I do believe the state has done a good job on this. Guess what we are still driving gasoline powered cars. So could we say the Enviro Greenies are using scare tactics? I will let the good residence figure that out. So maybe the solution is simple. Continue what we have been doing and at the same time take a look at natural gas. Maybe making cars more efficient running on gasoline has always been the answer. We have the products. Make them burn better and at the same time make extraction cleaner. That seems to be a better solution than all this electric and hybrid stuff. It has been working for over 45 years why stop now. As we all know we have the resources to supply us with all the gasoline we will ever need. Lets take advantage of it. Use our knowledge and make it burn cleaner. Natural gas could give us all the energy we will ever need. I do believe renewables may have to take a back seat for awhile. What say you folks?