Global Warming - Signed, Sealed and Delivered

[Dardedar]

Global Warming - Signed, Sealed and Delivered
By Naomi Oreskes
The Los Angeles Times

Monday 24 July 2006

Scientists agree: The Earth is warming, and human activities are the principal cause.

An Op-Ed article in the Wall Street Journal a month ago claimed that a published study affirming the existence of a scientific consensus on the reality of global warming had been refuted. This charge was repeated again last week, in a hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

I am the author of that study, which appeared two years ago in the journal Science, and I'm here to tell you that the consensus stands. The argument put forward in the Wall Street Journal was based on an Internet posting; it has not appeared in a peer-reviewed journal - the normal way to challenge an academic finding. (The Wall Street Journal didn't even get my name right!)

My study demonstrated that there is no significant disagreement within the scientific community that the Earth is warming and that human activities are the principal cause.

Papers that continue to rehash arguments that have already been addressed and questions that have already been answered will, of course, be rejected by scientific journals, and this explains my findings. Not a single paper in a large sample of peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 refuted the consensus position, summarized by the National Academy of Sciences, that "most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."

Since the 1950s, scientists have understood that greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels could have serious effects on Earth's climate. When the 1980s proved to be the hottest decade on record, and as predictions of climate models started to come true, scientists increasingly saw global warming as cause for concern.

In 1988, the World Meteorological Assn. and the United Nations Environment Program joined forces to create the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action. The panel has issued three assessments (1990, 1995, 2001), representing the combined expertise of 2,000 scientists from more than 100 countries, and a fourth report is due out shortly. Its conclusions - global warming is occurring, humans have a major role in it - have been ratified by scientists around the world in published scientific papers, in statements issued by professional scientific societies and in reports of the National Academy of Sciences, the British Royal Society and many other national and royal academies of science worldwide. Even the Bush administration accepts the fundamental findings. As President Bush's science advisor, John Marburger III, said last year in a speech: "The climate is changing; the Earth is warming."

To be sure, there are a handful of scientists, including MIT professor Richard Lindzen, the author of the Wall Street Journal editorial, who disagree with the rest of the scientific community. To a historian of science like me, this is not surprising. In any scientific community, there are always some individuals who simply refuse to accept new ideas and evidence. This is especially true when the new evidence strikes at their core beliefs and values.

Earth scientists long believed that humans were insignificant in comparison with the vastness of geological time and the power of geophysical forces. For this reason, many were reluctant to accept that humans had become a force of nature, and it took decades for the present understanding to be achieved. Those few who refuse to accept it are not ignorant, but they are stubborn. They are not unintelligent, but they are stuck on details that cloud the larger issue. Scientific communities include tortoises and hares, mavericks and mules.

A historical example will help to make the point. In the 1920s, the distinguished Cambridge geophysicist Harold Jeffreys rejected the idea of continental drift on the grounds of physical impossibility. In the 1950s, geologists and geophysicists began to accumulate overwhelming evidence of the reality of continental motion, even though the physics of it was poorly understood. By the late 1960s, the theory of plate tectonics was on the road to near-universal acceptance.

Yet Jeffreys, by then Sir Harold, stubbornly refused to accept the new evidence, repeating his old arguments about the impossibility of the thing. He was a great man, but he had become a scientific mule. For a while, journals continued to publish Jeffreys' arguments, but after a while he had nothing new to say. He died denying plate tectonics. The scientific debate was over.

So it is with climate change today. As American geologist Harry Hess said in the 1960s about plate tectonics, one can quibble about the details, but the overall picture is clear.

Yet some climate-change deniers insist that the observed changes might be natural, perhaps caused by variations in solar irradiance or other forces we don't yet understand. Perhaps there are other explanations for the receding glaciers. But "perhaps" is not evidence.

The greatest scientist of all time, Isaac Newton, warned against this tendency more than three centuries ago. Writing in "Principia Mathematica" in 1687, he noted that once scientists had successfully drawn conclusions by "general induction from phenomena," then those conclusions had to be held as "accurately or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined...."

Climate-change deniers can imagine all the hypotheses they like, but it will not change the facts nor "the general induction from the phenomena."

None of this is to say that there are no uncertainties left - there are always uncertainties in any live science. Agreeing about the reality and causes of current global warming is not the same as agreeing about what will happen in the future. There is continuing debate in the scientific community over the likely rate of future change: not "whether" but "how much" and "how soon." And this is precisely why we need to act today: because the longer we wait, the worse the problem will become, and the harder it will be to solve.

Naomi Oreskes is a history of science professor at UC San Diego.

LINK

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

America doesn't like preventing problems, or dealing with them while they are small. It's not dramatic enough.

[Hogeye]

My main objection to the article is that Naomi keeps changing what scientists allegedly agree on. First it's "The Earth is warming, and human activities are the principal cause." Then it's "most of the observed warming [is] due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations." Later, it's weakened to "The climate is changing; the Earth is warming." Finally, it's simply "climate change."

The fact is that most skeptics of global warming alarmism would agree with all of the formulations except the one about greenhouse gasses. Michael Creighton and I agree that climate change exists, that the earth's atmosphere is getting warmer, and that humans have an effect on the climate. Michael and I think that other factors, such as land use, are more significant than human-generated greenhouse gasses. To his credit, Gore admitted (in his flick) that deforestation and other land use factors were important.

Anyway, when Naomi talks about "climate-change deniers," she's creating a strawman and misleading readers. No one (that knows anything about climate) denies climate change. None of those famous skeptic scientists, Baliunas or MacIntyre or McKittrick or any of them, deny that there is climate change.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

One of the writers Creighton quoted & even bases his book on has published a letter printed in today's NYT saying he's in the "global warming" camp - that his research was taken out of context by the "not-so" crowd, including Creighton. (Peter Doran literally said, "I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who dispute global warming. I know my co-authors would as well.")

[Doug]

My main objection to the article is that Naomi keeps changing what scientists allegedly agree on. First it's "The Earth is warming, and human activities are the principal cause." Then it's "most of the observed warming [is] due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations." Later, it's weakened to "The climate is changing; the Earth is warming." Finally, it's simply "climate change."

DOUG
They agree that the Earth is getting warmer principally due to human activity.

The fact is that most skeptics of global warming alarmism would agree with all of the formulations except the one about greenhouse gasses. Michael Creighton and I agree that climate change exists, that the earth's atmosphere is getting warmer, and that humans have an effect on the climate. Michael and I think that other factors, such as land use, are more significant than human-generated greenhouse gasses. To his credit, Gore admitted (in his flick) that deforestation and other land use factors were important.

DOUG
And burning wood in deforestation does not cause greenhouse gases?

[Doug]

Coal-Burning Utilities Give Big Bucks to the Remaining Scientists Skeptical of Global Warming
07-27-2006 7:57 PM
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON -- Coal-burning utilities are passing the hat for one of the few remaining scientists skeptical of the global warming harm caused by industries that burn fossil fuels.

Pat Michaels _ Virginia's state climatologist, a University of Virginia professor and senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute _ told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists' global warming research. So last week, a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign to help him out, raising at least $150,000 in donations and pledges.


Read the rest here.

[Hogeye]

Doug, deforestation contributes to warming in a number of ways, whether it is logged or burned. E.g. A forest logged (not necessarily burned) will recycle less CO2 into oxygen (and by not allowing water seepage will contribute to drought and soil erosion.) The increased CO2 resulting from this lack of recycling can hardly be called "human generated."

Yeah, many skeptics get their money from CO2 generating firms, and many alarmists get their money from grant-generating government agencies. We should be suspicious of all of them, while avoiding poisoning the well. Let the research stand or fall on its merits, not who funded it.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Most deforestation is human in nature. At this point, with global warming having advanced to the point of being visable to laity (at least to farmers and gardeners), some deforestation is being caused by natural forces (like the bark beetles taking out western forests - even a decade ago the bark beetle larva was winterkilled). Over cultivation (human process) and melting permafrost (natural reaction to global warming) both release CO2. Like toxins concentrating as they travel up the food chain, release of CO2 is escalating from natural sources as that from human sources raises the temperatures enough to trigger the natural response. This is why those of us who are worried about global warming advocate immediate action (reduction in carbon-releasing activities) - before we pass the point of no return.

[Hogeye]

Most deforestation is human in nature.

Right. It is a good example of human-caused climate change. But it is not an example of human-caused greenhouse gasses.

...with global warming having advanced to the point of being visable to laity (at least to farmers and gardeners)

Yes, farmers and gardeners are enjoying the boon of the CO2 fertilizer effect. Enjoy!

This is why those of us who are worried about global warming advocate immediate action (reduction in carbon-releasing activities)

Then stop breathing. (My favorite quip for global warming alarmists.)

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Somehow human caused deforestation is not the cause of the greenhouse gasses released from deforestation? Interesting logic, Hogeye.

Farmers and gardeners may be enjoying the fact that they can start planting 6 weeks to 2 months earlier than they could 20 years ago, but they sure aren't enjoying the fact that everything shrivels up and dies in July and August - sometimes even with massive irrigation. Nor the fact that it's too scorching hot to plant a fall crop to make up for it. Nor do they enjoy the ongoing drought that is threatening the water sources they pull that massive irrigation from. I know farmers who've had to buy hay for the last 3 years because they're own hayfields were scorched and unproductive. Global warming is doing nothing but helping Agribiz put more small farmers out of business.

Human breathing, as well as any other animal breathing, does not cause the problem, as Hogeye is well aware. Burning or otherwise destroying the carbon sinks, whether mineral (fossil "fuels") or bio (forests/ocean algae), is what is causing the problem. It took the process laity refer to as "Mother Nature" over a billion years to get enough carbon out of the atmosphere for terrestrial animals - several billion years to get enough out for mammals. If we don't stop this process of returning carbon to the atmosphere from all the carbon sinks - don't worry, we'll end up not breathing.

[Hogeye]

Logging does not generate any significant amount of greenhouse gas - mainly just the burning of fuel from trucks and chainsaws. Burning forests do generate greenhouse gasses, but logging is the bulk of deforestation these days, not burning. When global warming alarmists say, "antropomorphic greenhouse gasses" they mean gasses generated by smokestacks and automobiles. Deforestation contributes to total greenhouse gasses mainly by eliminating a sink for CO2 (as you point out), not by generating new greenhouse gasses.

Re the boon to agriculture, here an interesting article:
For icy Greenland, global warming has a bright side

Warmer periods bring benign rather than more violent weather. Milder temperatures will induce more evaporation from oceans and thus more rainfall -- where it will fall we cannot be sure but the earth as a whole should receive greater precipitation. Meteorologists now believe that any rise in sea levels over the next century will be at most a foot or more, not twenty.[2] In addition, Mitchell flunks history: around 6,000 years ago the earth sustained temperatures that were probably more than four degrees Fahrenheit hotter than those of the twentieth century, yet mankind flourished. The Sahara desert bloomed with plants, and water loving animals such as hippopotamuses wallowed in rivers and lakes. Dense forests carpeted Europe from the Alps to Scandinavia. The Midwest of the United States was somewhat drier than it is today, similar to contemporary western Kansas or eastern Colorado; but Canada enjoyed a warmer climate and more rainfall. - GLOBAL WARMING: A Boon to Humans and Other Animals

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Katrina and Rita give the lie to the first part of that loverly piece of propaganda. Additionally, while it is true that warmer temperatures will induce more evaporation, warmer air holds more water. We won't get more rainfall, just more humidity - will all it's discomforts.

[Dardedar]

Logging does not generate any significant amount of greenhouse gas - mainly just the burning of fuel from trucks and chainsaws.

DAR
I grew up in British Columbia where logging is a major industry. I lived beside a logging road that went on for hundreds of miles and I frequently travelled with my dirt bike. I worked as a tree planter briefly and fire fighter. Logging produces massive piles of brush, stumps and mess which is usually burned and releases a large amount of stored carbon which no doubt vastly exceeds the carbon released from the gas in the trucks and chainsaws.

D.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Part of the problem with the "if global warming is real, it will be great" crowd is they (apparently) are all very urban and totally out of touch with reality. There's kudzu in Maine. The bark beetles that are taking out western pine forests used to be negligible, if there at all, due to winterkill of the larva. Armadillos have migrated to Nebraska and are heading for the Canadian border. The "breadbasket" states depended on snowpack for much of their water (both surface and aquifer recharge) and are now drawing down the aquifers to the extent that the farms are pulling saline in some areas - the ones who haven't just been burned out with drought. Humidity doesn't water the crops, just makes life more comfortable for malaria-bearing mosquitos (like those showing up in Chicago over the last 10 years). Our society is "fouling the nest" - and only the ones who are making money at it and don't give a rat's ass about future generations (why should they care, they think they'll be gone by then) think it's OK to do that. Use up what we can and destroy the rest is insane, but that's what America is doing - and I really don't know if we have time to change. (Which doesn't mean I'm not going to try.)

Oh, and those massive piles of brush and mess Darrel mentioned are frequently where and how the wildfires devestating the Western states get started.

[Hogeye]

Okay, I agree that logging also puts out greenhouse gasses from trash-burning. Luckily, so long as it's reforested, the gasses are recycled - not like fossil fuels which bring up "new" carbons.

Barbara, you make some good points about invasive species and the effects of deforestation on the watershed. There's no need to appeal to dubious theory of global warming greenhouse gas alarmism to show the seriousness of those problems.

Yes, malaria was nearly defeated until an earlier group of alarmists got DDT banned, its most effective preventative. Now malaria is rampant again in some parts of the world.

[Dardedar]

...those massive piles of brush and mess Darrel mentioned are frequently where and how the wildfires devestating the Western states get started.

DAR
I meant to go back and add that point. In 1998 in Salmon Arm, the small town I grew up in (12,000), lightening started a fire that burned hundreds (perhaps thousands) of acres. It came within a few city blocks of my dad's house. He had already had all of the contents of the house removed and they had given it up as a gonner. In the sixties they had a similar fire but it was started by loggers burning "slash."

I just heard some where that in the last 12 years we have lost six times more forest to wild fires, than in the preceeding 12 years.

D.
-------------------------
August 1998 – Salmon Arm,B.C.

The Silver Creek fire near Salmon Arm,B.C., was ignited on July 29 by lightning and eluded extensive control efforts for an entire week before high winds caused it to blow up and spread, threatening Salmon Arm. When the smoke finally cleared:
• More than 40 buildings had been destroyed.
• More than 7,000 people had been evacuated.
• Suppression costs exceeded $10 million.

Lightning started the fire on the afternoon of July 29,1998 – a hot and dry day. Forest Service air tankers immediately took action to contain the fire. Over the next seven days, the fire defied the control efforts of over 136 firefighters, 17 helicopters, 48 pieces of heavy equipment and numerous air tanker drops.

[Guest]

Hogeye, you don't get it. Malaria is carried by mosquitos that inhabit warm, humid climates. Malaria has never been as far north as Chicago since North America has been inhabited by humans - until now. Kudzu is a warm climate plant - yes, very invasive and has been strangling the Southern forests for over a century, but never north of the Mason-Dixon line - until now. Bark beetles were a southern problem, what few traveled north of central New Mexico weren't at issue, because the larvae were winterkilled - until now. The hot, humid climate that I grew up with in Houston, TX is moving north at an unnaturally rapid rate, which is doing nothing but accelerating.

Also - the lumber companies seldom burn their "trash" - they leave it for lightening to strike and start massive forest fires, putting more carbon in the atmosphere and totally trashing the watershed - that protects both water for all the major cities and water for farm irrigation. I don't know what Hogeye thinks is necessary for survival, but I start with breathing air, drinking water, and eating food - in that order.

As to DDT, which is still showing up in human tissue 2 generations after the use was banned - anything that causes birds' eggs to be so fragile they can't be incubated by the parent birds is not likely to be doing anything good in the human body.

[Hogeye]

Malaria has never been as far north as Chicago since North America has been inhabited by humans.

I don't believe that. I think that during the Medieval Warm Period there were mosquitos that far north. I think there have been mosquitos farther north than that for years; I recall being munched by mosquitos in Ontario decades ago.

Kudsu likes warmer weather and the CO2 fertilizer effect; so do grapes and watermelon and beans and wheat and tomatos and most crops known to man. During the MWP crops were grown about 200 miles further north than they are today. That essentially ended famine in Europe.

We see the trade-off for DDT: let millions of brown-skinned third world people die in order to save some birds for first-world tree-huggers.

Globally, every 30 seconds a child dies of malaria with the vast majority of deaths occurring in Africa, South of the Sahara. Infection is primarily among pregnant women and children under five years of age, accounting for around 20% of deaths and 10% of the continent's overall disease burden.

There are at least 300 million acute cases of malaria, each year globally, resulting in a million deaths. Ninety percent of these deaths occur in Africa, mostly in young children. The disease has been estimated to cost Africa more than $12 billion every year in Gross Domestic Product, even though it could be controlled at a fraction of that amount. In Uganda alone it’s estimated that the country spends up to $50 million and many of the poorest families spend one quarter of their earnings on malaria treatment each year. The country’s death figure alone in children below the age of five ranges form 70,000-110,000 every year. full article

Another article:
THE DDT BAN TURNS 30
Millions Dead of Malaria Because of Ban, More Deaths Likely

Thirty years ago, on June l4, l972, the Environmental Protection Agency's first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, rebuffed the advice of his scientific advisors and announced a ban on virtually all domestic uses of the pesticide DDT. This was done despite the fact that DDT had earlier been hailed as a "miracle" chemical that repelled and killed mosquitoes that carry malaria, a disease that can be fatal to humans.

Ruckelshaus (who later worked with the Environmental Defense Fund, the very activist organization that had urged the ban) cited health concerns in defending his decision. He reported that DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichlorethane) killed many beneficial insects, birds, and aquatic animals — not just malarial mosquitoes — and that it "presents a carcinogenic risk" to humans, based on laboratory studies showing increased cancer risk in mice fed extremely high doses. The scientific community was outspoken in opposing such a ban, noting that there was no evidence that DDT posed a hazard to human health. Yet the ban still took effect.

Now, thirty years later, it is vividly apparent that DDT was not hazardous to human health and that the banning of its domestic use led to its diminished production in the United States — and less availability of DDT for the developing world. The results were disastrous: at least 1-2 million people continue to die from malaria each year, 30-60 million or more lives needlessly lost since the ban took effect. This is especially tragic since there was hope of eradicating the disease altogether when DDT was first introduced and its potential was recognized. full article

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Hogeye - I'm well aware you don't believe anything that doesn't support your positions. Pay attention. I didn't say mosquitos weren't as far north as Chicago since North America was inhabited by humans, I said malaria wasn't as far north as Chicago since North America was inhabited by humans. Mosquitos inhabit the planet from pole to pole, but only a specific species of mosquito carries malaria, and it is a warm-climate species.

DDT was one of many "miracles" the petrochemical industry claimed that turned out to be overall bad ideas. (Sort of like heroin to relieve headaches - it was the active ingredient in Bayer aspirin in the early 20th century.) Why anyone would think a scam to sell leftover chemical weapons to the civilian population is a good idea, I will never know. Good advertising agency, I guess. In the 1930s work was being done on reducing malaria deaths - pre DDT - and it was discovered the percentage of malaria cases (that's cases - the percentage for deaths would, of course be higher) could be reduced up to 75% by the use of screens - 90% if combined with oiling standing water and behavioral changes like not going outside the screened areas at dusk (when mosquitos are at their most active).

The issue of all those "brown-skinned third world people" dying of malaria has to do with poverty, not DDT. If you don't have a house, or your house doesn't have windows, you can't very well screen them. If you're on the border of starvation, you can't stop working/looking for food just because it's dusk. Several groups working with Unicef have recently started distributing old-fashioned mosquito nets in Africa, and those areas are already showing a drop in malaria incidence.

DDT was like the highly touted "green revolution" of the 1970s that was supposed to end world hunger. It didn't because the places that had the most hunger were too impoverished to afford the high tech seed, fertilizer, and equipment industrial nations developed to increase their profit at the expense of the hungry. Ditto DDT.

As to "some birds for first-world tree-huggers" - birds, being smaller than humans, have been used for centuries, if not millenia, as an "early warning system" - if the birds are dying we'd better quit doing whatever we're doing before it gets strong enough to get us. Ditto other warning signs, like kudzu in Maine and malaria in Chicago. The incredible self-destructive stupidity of modern society in ignoring the natural early warning system can be traced to how few Americans have any kind of connection to nature (food comes from the grocery store, water from the faucet - kids won't drink "cow's milk" if they visit a farm, they want "store milk", etc) - and how many of them grew up on cartoons (explains attitudes towards fighting and wars, too).

[Hogeye]

Investigating a little ... Barbara, you don't have to worry about malaria-bearing mosquitos in Chicago. The family in Chicago who came down with malaria in 2006 had recently been traveling in Nigeria, and came down with malaria two weeks after their return.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5523a1.htm