Letters to the Editor
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Global warming/climate change from scientific and risk assessment perspectives
Just so everyone knows where the following comments are coming from, let me explain my background. I'm a professional biologist who teaches and does research in evolutionary biology and with a background in both ecology and evolution. I have many colleagues (some of whom are also good friends) who work on global warming issues. One in particular was one of the authors on the previous IPCC report, although not on the most recent one released in the last month.
As a scientist, over the last 12 years or so, I've watched as the evidence for anthropogenically driven global warming has accumulated. I remember well conversations with colleagues in the mid-90s when the evidence was tending strongly toward confirming that global warming was underway and that human activities were a significant driver of the change. At that time, most of my colleagues felt there was some solid evidence but would not rule out the possibility that they could be wrong. Models were still being developed and refined; the computational tools needed for simulations were good but much more limited than what can be done today; and certain types of data still needed to be filled in.
As the years passed, the evidence kept getting stronger, so that by the year 2000 or so, almost no one I knew doubted that warming was taking place or that human activity was at least partially responsible. At the turn of the century, the big questions for most scientists in the field were, "What proportion of the warming is due to human activity?," and "What is the rate at which the warming is occurring?" The evidence has only grown stronger since then.
Sure, there is a small handful of skeptics even to this day (just as there is a small number of researchers that still think that HIV is not the causative agent for AIDS), but they are a very small minority, some of which are suspect given their ties with industry. (Would you believe scientific results from the Tobacco Institute?) Could the scientific community nonetheless be wrong about global warming? Sure. But the probability of that has gotten fairly small.
Personally, I tend to look at the issue and how to respond in a cost/benefit way and because of that prefer a risk-averse approach to the problem.
Assume global warming is taking place and that the concerns voiced by the scientific community are for the most part correct. Taking strong steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would literally prevent major social and political upheavals associated with sea levels rising, tropical diseases extending their ranges into temperate areas, species going extinct as their habitats are lost, food supplies being disrupted as rainfall patterns change, etc.
Consider the alternative, global warming is not taking place/is not anthropogenically driven. If we put in place the laws, technology, etc. we think will avert global warming when it is not necessary, the worst case scenario is that once we figure out it isn't really happening, we can remove the constraints on fossil fuel burning, etc. and go about our business. Standards of living, may or may not be negatively affected by our pointless efforts to curb greenhouse gases. (To take one small personal example, I bicycle to work, in part to lower fossil fuel consumption, but I don't see that it reduces my standard of living.) Some efforts to curb CO2 emissions might be standard-of-living neutral or even beneficial, e.g., reducing our dependence on foreign oil.
In any case, since the risk of doing nothing is potentially so catastrophic and the evidence for warming is quite strong, it makes much more sense to me to do what we can now even if we later decide we erred to much on the side of caution.
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Does Camille read any of this?
If she does then I'd like to tell her that even ideas that have longed been accepted by the scientific community at large still have doubters and dissenters, who keep doubting and dissenting after they've been proven wrong.
For example, it would be wrong to claim that cience is unaninmous on quantum mechanics. Einstein was against it, and there are still physicists today who insist the world is deterministic.
But look at how much modern technology now depends on quantum theory. The computer I'm posting this on for example.
Even though quantum mechanics is now a standard part of the physics curriculum, even though quantum mechanics is essential to the design of most new technology that enters the marketplace, there still exist a few holdouts who don't like the idea of relinquishing determinism. They refuse to let it go, so they keep the door open for alternatives.
The rest of the world is not sitting quietly and waiting for those last few quantum mechanics holdouts to finally prove their case.
Think of how much progress in technology would have been delayed if everyone in physics and engineering had waited for those few last holdouts against quantum mechanics to come around before they started making lasers and solid state transistors.
The world should not sit quietly and wait for those last few global warming holdouts to come around either.
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The Real Inconvenient Truth
Let’s cut to the chase, friends. The Left has co-opted natural climate change and using it as a tool to dismantle Western Industrial Capitalism. This is part of a calculated strategy in their relentless quest to establish their vision of a Global Socialist Utopian Society.
The real cause of global warming has been a slow but steady output of solar energy, this documented by solar astronomers since the mid 1950’s.
Over several decades orbiting Mars observatories have recorded the steady reduction in the size of the Martian polar ice caps made of (guess what?) – FROZEN CARBON DIOXIDE. The rate of reduction is proportional to the retreat of high mountain ice and the retreat of artic and sub artic ocean ice fields.
I can assure you that no one on Mars is operating coal fired power plants or driving gas guzzling SUV’s.
The sun is causing a small increase in climate temperature and there is absolutely nothing that you or anybody or anything can do about it. It does so in cycles that astronomical scientists are only just now beginning to fathom. It does this again and again over thousands of years. Period.
By the way, MajorAJam is a MajorAHole – pompous, overblown, technologically and scientifically illiterate. In other words – a typical Lefty.
And one more thing – my username is way cooler than his.