| HELL AND HIGH WATER Global Warming—the Solution and the Politics—and What We Should Do Joseph J. Romm New York: William Morrow, 2007 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN 0-06-117212-X | 292pp. | HC/GSI | $24.95 | |
As Dr. Romm points out in his book, the decade-long debate over the reality of global warming has been orchestrated by a small group of political and industry operatives who, for various reasons, have a stake in maintaining the status quo.
The widespread confusion about our climate crisis is no accident. For more than a decade, those who deny that climate change is an urgent problem have sought to delay action on global warming by running a brilliant rhetorical campaign and spreading multiple myths that misinform debate. As a result, many people still believe global warming is nothing more than a natural climate cycle that humans cannot influence, or that it might even have positive benefits for this nation. Neither is true. The science is crystal clear: We humans are the primary cause of global warming, and we face a bleak future if we fail to act quickly. – Page 2 |
Chapters 5-10 of the book identify some of the key players and discuss their methods in detail. Dr. Romm does a good job of debunking their arguments. In addition, there is a host of Web sites devoted to demolishing these specious arguments in detail, as soon they are presented. I list a few at the end of this rant.
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Here, I want to look at the big picture.
To my mind, this protracted argument over who is presenting dishonest scientific arguments should have been over long ago.
It's been well documented that the funding for "think tanks" attempting to debunk global warming has come chiefly from companies like ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil producer. Ostensibly independent and unbiased, these really acted as covert marketing firms for the fossil fuel industry. I have yet to hear of any comparable "think tanks" funded by wind-power or solar-cell interests. And it was that industry which, with Vice President Cheney's cooperation, wrote most of the latest revision to our nation's energy policy. The results were predictable: Billions in subsidies and tax breaks for coal, oil and nuclear power; a relative pittance for alternative energy; nothing for conservation (Cheney's "private virtue.")
The Congress too has its Denyers. Foremost among them is Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), who calls global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." He points to papers from dissenting scientists to allege there is no true consensus among climatologists (implying that the ones warning us about global warming have all agreed, with a nudge and a wink, to gloss over the flaws in their reasoning.) If there is no scientific consensus, any legislation would of course be premature. His latest trick is to cite a paper on albedo changes at Neptune to claim the Sun is getting brighter and this is the cause of global warming. (The paper itself doesn't claim that; and thirty years of satellite observations have found no such increase in solar output.)
This perfectly epitomizes the Denyers' rhetorical tactics. They will point to any scientific paper that seems to cast doubt on the mainstream view of global warming. When you examine the cited paper, you find its method is in error, or its conclusions are not strong enough to support the Delayer's argument, or it's simply irrelevant. If you raise these objections, the Denyers will throw out any inconsistency in the global warming argument as a counter. The so-called "hockey-stick graph," showing a sharp rise of temperature in the 20th century, is a prime example. The method that produced it was questioned, examined, found to be correct; but the Denyers are still calling it a fabrication.
Meanwhile there's always another contrarian paper for the Denyers to hold up, another inconsistency in the mainstream arguments. Improving forecasts are a favorite. If last year's prediction was for 5° to 8° rise by 2100, but this year the prediction is only 3.5°, the Denyers claim the change proves climate science cannot make valid predictions. So the debate moves on. Such arguments have blocked any effective action for over a decade.
As far as I can tell, it is the fossil-fuel industry who is blowing smoke on this issue, while the climatologists and the alternative-energy folks are telling it mostly straight. Hence my metaphorical title: Smudge pots are a "quick & dirty" solution used by Florida orange growers to keep their crop from freezing during cold snaps. They burn waste oil and are smoky as hell. The alcohol lamp, while not entirely soot-free, burns relatively clean and is typically used in science labs.
Disputations of the scientific consensus that global warming is happening and that humans are causing it fall into two general categories: Challenging the validity of the science, and challenging the need for mitigation.
Challenges to the validity of the science, characteristically, do not address the actual scientific evidence and the reasoning built upon it. Instead, they assert that the conclusions must be wrong because not every scientist endorses them. This is not a scientific argument; it is a political tactic. No scientific consensus is invalidated just because J. Random Scientist publishes a dissenting paper. To change the consensus, the paper must have some substance, some heft to it, before it can overturn the orthodox view. The several dissenting papers I am aware of do not, and it is a reasonable inference that none as yet has. That is precisely why the scientific consensus exists.
Neither do imprecise or evolving predictions render a theory meaningless. True science is imprecise, as it should be. This is what the error bars on graphs are all about. It is impossible to precisely predict the long-term behavior of Earth's climate system, and anyone who says they can is suspect. But the Denyers hold up this very proper uncertainty as proof that the theory is utterly wrong. They are mistaken. And they are hypocritical — for, when they say the Earth's average temperature is not undergoing long-term change, they themselves are making a very precise long-term prediction.
The Denyers' alternative to claiming that the world's climatologists are incompetent at climate science is to accuse them of widespread collusion.
I want to point out here what the general implications of these arguments are — that is, what accepting them in toto as valid requires us to believe.
To accept that the scientific basis for the widespread consensus on global warming is incorrect or trumped up, we must believe that the vast majority of the world's scientists are either incompetent or corrupt. Note that I say "scientists": not climatologists, or meteorologists, or geologists. This dilemma transcends any particular scientific field. If the conclusion that the globe is warming due to human activities is wrong, science itself becomes disreputable. This is because the basis for that conclusion is not hard to understand, and so flaws in that basis don't require a PhD. in climatology to detect. Therefore, if most of the world's scientists endorse a basically flawed conclusion, then most of the world's scientists are either incompetent or corrupt. I say this is preposterous on its face.
And yet, the Denyers are still making that argument. Their motivation is clear: It allows them to claim the existence of a vast conspiracy. They assert, based on the work of a few dissenting scientists, that global warming is in fact not happening (or at least is not caused by human activities), and that these few scientists are being ruthlessly suppressed by an establishment determined to impose on an already overburdened population the exorbitant costs of fighting global warming — a fight that, depending on who you talk to, will prove to be either unnecessary or unavailing.
These conspiracy theorists ignore two obvious (and, I dare say, inconvenient) truths. The first is that there is no firm evidence that the measures proposed in order to curtail CO2 emissions will destroy the economy, as the Denyers assert. The second is that, even if the economy did collapse because the world chose to fight global warming, the so-called conspirators would not magically be immune to that collapse. They too have to live in the world. So in the final analysis, then, the alleged motivations for this vast conspiracy vanish like dew in the morning. The short-term gain would be followed closely by disaster. Either their warnings would prove false, costing them their grants and their reputations, or things they predict would come to pass and they'd wind up in hell and high water along with the rest of us.
As for the alleged suppression, I notice two things about this. The first thing is that it's amazingly ineffective: Many dissenting scientists are giving lectures, organizing groups, publishing papers. No one, to my knowledge, has made a credible claim that such dissent endangered their career.1 Indeed, in the U.S., a far better case for suppression has been made by the other side.2 The second is that, while it doesn't take a climatologist — or even a Ph.D. — to poke holes in the climate science consensus, it does require that the hole-poker be able to demonstrate that he's right. So far, none of the counter-arguments I've seen has met that standard. To this, the Denyers make the standard rebuttal: the Establishment just refuses to hear the truth. Right — just as it "refuses" to listen to those who say they're UFO abductees, or claim to have invented anti-gravity.
Don't get me wrong. I'd be delighted to hear about for-real anti-gravity; it would mean I had a reasonable chance of being able to tour the solar system and see wonders like the rings of Saturn first-hand. I'd like to know for sure that there are intelligent civilizations on other planets. And I'd like to forget about global warming. I would happily see that money spent on other things (as, I'm sure, would the rest of the world.)
But, in my lifetime, I've seen bird species decimated by over-use of DDT. I've seen other species made extinct by deforestation and urbanization. I've seen the air over New York City so smoggy it burned my eyes when I drove in across the George Washington Bridge. I've seen the ozone layer weakened by over-use of chlorofluorocarbon chemicals. I've seen lakes, rivers and even the vast oceans fouled by plastic trash and polluted by toxic wastes. Now I'm seeing many types of seafood being fished out of existence. And I've seen much of this damage to the environment stopped and even reversed by sustained national or international action. Guess what: none of this remedial action came close to bringing the economy to its knees.
So those who say that we puny humans can't possibly affect the Earth so powerfully as to cause global warming are, in my opinion, talking nonsense. And those who admit (finally) that we may indeed be contributing to the warming of our planet but that doing anything about it would plunge the nation or the world into abject poverty are spouting claptrap and feldercarb, most likely for venal motives.
When the question of what to do about global climate change comes up, it is often pointed out that our planet's climate is always changing: As it was in the beginning, so it is now and ever shall be, Amen. We are reminded that humankind survived the Medieval Warm Period (and the Little Ice Age that followed) just fine. And all of this is perfectly true.
But it is also true that we are the first "humankind" that can be defined as a technological civilization of more than 6 billion souls who are busily altering the planet's environment for their comfort. The largest and arguably the most important cities of America are seaports, and hence lie on her coasts — as do many smaller cities and towns. The same is true for many great cities of our present-day world — Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, Calcutta, Glasgow, Istanbul, London, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo. Many vital facilities such as oil platforms, shipping terminals, military bases are on or near the sea. If the level of the sea rises by even a few feet, many of these places will become uninhabitable. At the least, such a rise would bring drastic and expensive changes, whether for defense or adaptation. Even the 23-inch rise predicted by the IPCC for the year 2100 would have substantial economic impact.3 That is why I cannot accept the Denyers' argument that doing nothing about global warming is the safest course.
The changes needed to prevent global warming (or to avoid its worst effects, which today seems the best we can hope for) will also be drastic and expensive. The technological challenge will be immense and unprecedented. But it does not follow that acting to mitigate global warming will destroy the world's economy, or that the massive investment will end up accomplishing nothing, as the Denyers claim. Dr. Romm is right: We need to start fighting global warming.
The global warming problem is no longer primarily a scientific matter. Science has told us what we need to know about how life on this planet will be ruined if we stay on our current greenhouse gas emissions path. Global warming is also not a technological problem. We have the technologies to avoid the disasters that await us if we keep doing nothing. – Page 99 |
The choice, in my view, is simple. Either we begin serious efforts to conserve energy and fund serious research into carbon-free energy sources, or we stay on our present path and continue ramping up the greenhouse-gas concentrations in our atmosphere. The former course will certainly not be painless, but neither will it cripple our economies.4 The latter course will very probably lead to disaster for our children, or theirs.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.