It's Getting Hot in Herre (15 Apr - Part 1)

Don't Worry, Be Happy

I've been remiss in my IGHIH duties of late, but it's been a busy, busy week around Cracks Centraal with lotsa work and a number of evening engagements (including a delightful seder at AdRov and J-Co's and a celebration of Mrs. F's and my first date, marked by a dinner atop the Space Needle--sounds a little cheesy, but the view is glorious even on a slightly overcast evening and it's amazing to see how much Seattle's changed in the years we've been here). So buckle in, this is gonna be a long one (hopefully not too rambling). I'm actually going to split this current post into two, with this one focused on the debate over the existence of Global Warming and the next a wrap-up of interesting tidbits.

Thus, we lead off with an op-ed piece from the London Telegraph from last weekend that's got some good news: Global Warming has stopped!!!!!

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

[...]

There are other reasons, too, why the public hears so little in detail from those scientists who approach climate change issues rationally, the so-called climate sceptics. Most are to do with intimidation against speaking out, which operates intensely on several parallel fronts.

First, most government scientists are gagged from making public comment on contentious issues, their employing organisations instead making use of public relations experts to craft carefully tailored, frisbee-science press releases. Second, scientists are under intense pressure to conform with the prevailing paradigm of climate alarmism if they wish to receive funding for their research. Third, members of the Establishment have spoken declamatory words on the issue, and the kingdom's subjects are expected to listen.

I hadn't seen much about this posted in my quick perusals this week of my usual climate change news stops. But it's certainly been picked up by loads of blogs, from regular folks who ran across the article to full-blown climate skeptics and active members of the RWNM (Right Wing Noise Machine). Here's a sampling of some of the commentary I've run across:

Wonder why this didn't make the mainstream media? Why wasn't Time magazine crowing about this? Problem is, they can't seem ti fit it in amidst all their global warming hysteria. As we like to say, hate to ruin a good buzz.....
[from the National Association of Manufacturers blog]

Whatever the evidence, whatever the temperature, they ["environmental alarmists"] always offer the same cure: We must stop building, creating, producing so much damn wealth and civilization and comfort for human beings. The disease and diagnosis is ever-changeable, but the recommended treatment never changes. This is not science. It is Marxist Rousseauian "natural state of man" utopianism, and a cult of the worship of Earth as "Gaia." The earth is here for the benefit of human beings, not vice versa.
[from Ace of Spades HQ]

While there is little doubt that the earth's temperature is subject to slow change over long periods of time, the question is whether human emissions at current levels are already altering the overall global climate. The evidence that man-made emissions have already caused global warming is extremely thin and conjectural in nature, especially since there has been no detectable change between 1998 and 2005. Evidence-gathering is hampered by the fact that accurate worldwide temperature measurement is a relatively new phenomenon.
[From Gina Cobb]

Skeptipundit offers a good rebuttal to Carter's sampling:

Focusing only on the eight years since 1998 (the hottest year on record), Carter points out that there has been zero net increase in that time. Lets see how these data look in a slightly larger time scale (the scale actually used in the study he references):


Note the year 2000 on the x-axis. Look up to the temperature data and see the 1998 high point just to the left. Focus only on the time going forward from that point. Nothing to worry about, right?

[Responding to Carter's viewing of a larger trend graph covering 6 million years...]

The past six million years is an irrelevant time span. Global climate concerns are not focused on the possibility that we might soon see the hottest temperatures in the history of Earth. The concern is that we will see human-caused (and thus potentially avoidable) warming of a magnitude that will be devastating to the ecosystem as it exists today, and to the infrastructure and social organization of human civilization as it has developed these past few thousand years.

And by focusing on only the past eight years we necessarily encounter the short-term noise around the trend lines that are so evident on the graph, and that Carter himself seems to acknowledge with his reference to "rapid episodic shifts".

The appropriate time scale would be one that plots the changes that have occurred since humans have had the power to affect the atmosphere in dramatic fashion - the industrial age. The graph above comes close to approximating that scale. Comparing these trends to historical changes, over similar scales, can indicate whether the magnitude of current changes is normal or not. But focusing only on the very short, or the very long time scale does nothing but avoid the real issues.

You can also learn a bit more background on Carter's (and his writings for the ExxonMobil-funded Tech Central Station) at the Global Warming Watch blog (you can also do your own search at ExxonSecrets.org). Now, I'm not saying that Dr. Bob is a quack. And this is not an attempt to intimidate dissenting opinion regarding climate change (as also discussed in widely blogged-about op-ed from the Wall Street Journal this week, posted online at Birdblog). But it is helpful to have some context on where this very contrary opinion comes out of. For instance, here's another tidbit of Carter's from a Tech Central Station article from 2004:

[C]ontrary to strong public belief, the effects of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are generally beneficial. Enhanced plant growth has many obvious benefits, amongst them increased natural vegetation growth in general, and increased agricultural production in particular. And to maintain or slightly increase planetary temperature is also very much a global good if -- as Ruddiman and other scientists assert -- the human production of greenhouse gases is helping to hold our planetary environment in its historic, benignly warm, interglacial mode.

So Global Warming--it's all good. And I shouldn't be the least worried when I read things like 2005 being the warmest year on record.

Flying in the face of Dr. Bob's view is Professor Sir David King, the UK government's chief scientist (a man whom Dr. Bob calls an alarmist), who this week warned, in an interview with the BBC in an interview that the Earth is likely to experience a temperature rise of at least 3C and that this will happen because world governments were failing to agree on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. And he said even if a global agreement could be reached on limiting emissions, climate change was inevitable.

A recent report called Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, produced by the Hadley Centre, one of the top world centres for projecting future climate, modelled the likely effects of a 3C rise.

It warned the situation could wreck half the world's wildlife reserves, destroy major forest systems, and put 400 million more people at risk of hunger.
[...]
The Hadley forecasts hinge on stabilising the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) at a level of 550 parts per million in the atmosphere. Professor King said this was the figure Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted world leaders to agree on.
[...]
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has criticised Professor King for accepting global temperatures could rise above 2C.

And Friends of the Earth director, Tony Juniper, said: "It is technologically possible to significantly reduce our emissions and deliver 2C - Professor King should be pressing for government polices to deliver on this rather than accepting the current lack of political will and talking of three degrees as an inevitability."

And while many point to evidence ranging from stronger hurricanes to 70-degree heat waves in New York City in January to melting glaciers in Greenland as proof that Global Warming is indeed real, the real canaries in this coalmine will be the thousands of tiny changes that will go unnoticed until it's too late. Here's a recent post over at Sightline.org's Daily Score blog, commenting on a recent Oregonian story about another aspect of rising CO2 affecting ocean waters:

It's an interesting bit of scientific detective work. Some types of ocean plankton are apparently very sensitive to pH: their shells can't form when the water grows too acidic. The oceans have been absorbing a lot of the CO2 that's been emitted by fossil fuel burning, and higher levels of dissolved CO2 have raised the ocean's acidity by 30 percent in the last century or so. The result: the plankton are getting squeezed out, especially from the cool northern Pacific waters that absorb the most CO2. Scientists predict that if CO2 levels continue to rise, the higher acidity could eliminate these plankton, along with shelled sea creatures such as the sea urchin, from polar waters sometime in the next century.

This sort of thing is as fascinating as it is disturbing -- and it should serve as a reminder that, in subtle and often unpredictable ways, our fossil fuel consumption may wind up fraying the earth's ecosystems over the coming century just as much as pollution and habitat loss did in the previous one.

I'm all for discussion that's inclusive of multiple viewpoints. But from what I've been reading and seeing with my own eyes these last couple of years, I just cannot discount the assertion (some, including myself, might lean to saying "fact") that the CO2 that we humans pump into the atmosphere is adversely affecting the world we live.