Seattle Times: "The truth about global warming"

Excerpts from an article:

Publish Date: 9/19/2006

Colorado State professor disputes global warming is human-caused
Views ‘out of step’ with others are good for science, academic says

By Kate Martin
The Daily Reporter-Herald

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It's interesting that press coverage tends to be disproportional in favor of the odd scientist or Exxon employee who still believes (or promotes that) humans aren't having a substantial effect on climate. Really, all one has to do is fly in an airplane or climb a mountain and note how much air pollution obscures views in the lowlands - then realize that the western US is not even heavily populated. Try flying from Delhi to Kathmandu. The pollution the last time I was in Nepal reached nearly to 20000'. If, as in this example, the pollution is in the atmosphere to such an extent surrounding population centers, and there are as many densely populated areas as there are...well, it's not hard to see that the impact could be substantial...not surprising at all.

What is more complex is the impacts that such effects may have on climate...such as an ongoing El Nino like state along the west coast of North America. That's where computer modeling comes in. Observations can provide proof...if over a sufficiently long period of time, but here is the big butt...by the time we have the proof it would be too late to do anything about it except bemoan what we've done.

Of interest to me is whether or not we all understand the basic mechanisms that create a hospitable climate on this planet. That is, regardless of fluctuations, do we understand what makes the average temperature relatively benign, compared to Moon? The fluctuations between the night and day side of the Moon are extreme. Why is this? Do we understand what makes the surface of Venus extraordinarily and uniformly hot, and Mars very cold? Do we know why the name "greenhouse effect" is a misnomer? Do we understand the basic feedbacks associated with climate systems and how those have played out in history and on the other terrestrial planets?

I have noticed that many of the "anti" climate change proponents haven't made this a priority. Am I incorrect?

Contrary views are indeed good for science - that's undisputable. At minimum, they help test thinking and assumptions, and sometimes they actually come up with "new truths."

Gary is right, though, that the media tends to go out of its way to provide "balanced coverage" by giving an undue amount of ink to the few scientists in the "I'm OK, you're OK" (and "funded by Exxon") crowd (crowd?). There are some good, easy-to-find essays on this issue of "balanced coverage" that one can find out there - I'll leave the finding as an exercise to the motivated reader (as a break from all the intriguing news pasted in here). It's an interesting phenomenon that runs a little counter to the "we all get the narrowcast news that caters to us and reinforces all our own beliefs" notion (which is also an interesting and scary phenomenon - one that Rando's varied links counter nicely).

I also find that Gary's "common sense" test is compelling to me - that things like an aerial view of pollution, or the quite obvious and well-documented warming effect of large paved/built areas show we can have a local impact, and that it's therefore not at all farfetched to believe what climate models are pointing to (pithy "little ice age" and "gloom and doom" sound bites notwithstanding).

Of interest to me is whether or not we all understand the basic mechanisms that create a hospitable climate on this planet.  That is, regardless of fluctuations, do we understand what makes the average temperature relatively benign, compared to Moon?  The fluctuations between the night and day side of the Moon are extreme.  Why is this?  Do we understand what makes the surface of Venus extraordinarily and uniformly hot, and Mars very cold?  Do we know why the name "greenhouse effect" is a misnomer?  Do we understand the basic feedbacks associated with climate systems and how those have played out in history and on the other terrestrial planets?

Exactly, I think we can safely say that the earth's temperature would be rangebound somewhere between conditions on Mars and conditions on Venus, with allowances for the law of inverse squares for the differences in solar radiation between Venus, Earth, and Mars. But life would not be feasible - at least many of the more complex forms of life we know - outside a much narrower range. For instance body temperature maintenance, for humans probably 98 to 104 or 105 degrees, and then there is water, and ice. The fact that ice even exists on earth is something of a miracle because ice allows for the storage and release of water during the summer, and summer is a good thing because much of our plant life finds summer necessary so that it can grow. Sure things can adapt, but the question is how quickly?

The op-ed article below illustrates what I feel is also one of the most important aspects of the GW discussion. That is, how does the strict environmental mandate affect others, especially those with less money or fewer opportunities. My views, my intent,  have not been opposed to a cleaner environment. We could do better, GW or not.  But I would caution about drastic measures, costly measures, especially when such actions cause inequitable harm across the socioeconomic spectrum.

www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/speak_out...3970_5014862,00.html

Speakout: Environmentalists are new foes of some of the world's poorest

By Phelim Mcaleer
September 23, 2006

(excerpts of the above title)

...


However in my more recent journalism, I have discovered there is a new threat to miners, their families and their wider communities.

This threat is not from cigar-sucking, champagne-swilling robber barons. Mining is now one of the most regulated businesses in the world. Banks will not lend to, insurance companies will not cover and governments will not give licenses to companies that want to open unsafe or polluting mines.

Instead I have discovered that the biggest threat to miners and their families comes from upper-class Western environmentalists.

The discovery has been particularly shocking because at heart I have always been an environmentalist. I want to protect the planet for future generations. I want to ensure that industry cleans up its messes and does more good than harm.

My admiration for environmentalists started to decline when I was lucky enough to be posted to Romania as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times. There I covered a campaign by Western environmentalists against a proposed mine at Rosia Montana in the Transylvania region of the country.

It was the usual story. The environmentalists told how Gabriel Resources, a Canadian mining company, was going to pollute the environment and forcibly resettle locals before destroying a pristine wilderness.

But when I went to see the village for myself I found that almost everything the environmentalists were saying about the project was misleading, exaggerated or quite simply false.

Rosia Montana was already a heavily polluted village because of the 2,000 years of mining in the area. The mining company actually planned to clean up the existing mess.

And the locals, rather than being forcibly resettled as the environmentalists claimed, were queuing up to sell their decrepit houses to the company which was paying well over the market rate.

It was surprising that environmentalists would lie, but the most shocking part was yet to come. As I spoke to the Western environmentalists it quickly emerged that they wanted to stop the mine because they felt that development and prosperity will ruin the rural "idyllic" lifestyle of these happy peasants.

This "lifestyle" includes 70 percent unemployment, two-thirds of the people having no running water and using an outhouse in winters where the temperature can plummet to 20 degrees below zero centigrade.

One environmentalist (foreign of course) tried to persuade me that villagers actually preferred riding a horse and cart to driving a car.

Of course the Rosia Montana villagers wanted a modern life - just like the rest of us. They wanted indoor bathrooms and the good schools and medical care that the large investment would bring.

...

I gathered up extra funding and the documentary Mine Your Own Business premieres Tuesday at the Denver Gold Forum at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Denver. The film will shock and upset those who, like myself, unquestioningly believed environmentalists were a force for good in the world.

For Mine your Own Business I started looking beyond Romania and found a similar pattern in very different villages in Africa and South America.

It is sad that my fellow left-wingers and environmentalists who often come from the most developed countries are now so opposed to development.

However, it is not sad but tragic that the real losers in this clash of cultures are some of the poorest people on the planet.

Phelim McAleer is an Irish-born journalist and documentary filmmaker. Contact him at www.mineyourownbusiness.org . See the trailer for his new film at www.you tube.com/watch?v=j2U39butIUs.

More interesting reading, comparing and contrasting viewpoints:


www.denverpost.com/portlet/article/html/....jsp?article=4387552


Article Last Updated: 9/23/2006 10:33 PM
denver & the west
Global warming?
By Mark Jaffe
Denver Post Staff Writer
DenverPost.com

The words "global warming" provoke a sharp retort from Colorado State University meteorology professor emeritus William Gray: "It's a big scam."

And the name of climate researcher Kevin Trenberth elicits a sputtered "opportunist."

At the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where Trenberth works, Gray's name prompts dismay. "Bill Gray is completely unreasonable," Trenberth says. "He has a mind block on this."

...


Now the battle is over global warming, or more accurately over myriad details - like temperature readings and the thickness of sea ice - upon which the larger idea is based.

...

While science is comfortable with uncertainty, policymakers are not, and that is what has turned this scientific debate into front-page headlines.

"I think there is a debate about whether it's caused by mankind or whether it's caused naturally," President Bush said in a July interview.

To be sure, Gray and Pielke are in a scientific minority. Still, their challenges remain part of the fractious scientific process.

"Science needs skeptics," said NCAR researcher Warren Washington.

Still, a broad scientific consensus has emerged that human activity is contributing to climate change.

Findings by panels created by the National Academy of Science to resolve disputes - such as conflicting satellite and ground temperature records - have supported the trends in global climate change.

And things that the NCAR models predict - such as thinning sea ice and melting glaciers - are coming to pass, although scientists say more data are needed to verify those trends.

After more than two decades of research, scientists, even most skeptics, agree that:

Since 1750, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuels, has risen to about 380 parts per million from 286 parts per million.

It doesn't appear carbon dioxide levels have been that high in the past 650,000 years.

Carbon dioxide is continuing to build in the atmosphere by about 1.5 parts per million a year, and as a so-called greenhouse gas, it traps the sun's heat.

The Earth's average temperature has warmed about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1880 and is now warmer than it has been in the past 400 years.

Average global temperatures are likely to rise - this is where the debate begins - somewhere between 2 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.

The heat will cause global ocean levels to rise 3 to 39 inches this century.

In the film "An Inconvenient Truth," former Vice President Al Gore tends to fix on the upper end of the projections, while skeptics point out that the lower end may be as likely and less catastrophic.

But even small changes may have big effects. When the average temperature dropped by a little less than 1 degree Fahrenheit in about 1400, it ushered a period called the "Little Ice Age."

It was a time when advancing Swiss Alp glaciers crushed villages, England's Thames River froze and short growing seasons led to famines.

Most scientists also agree extreme weather events like Hurricane Katrina or Los Angeles' July record 119-degree Fahrenheit temperature cannot be directly attributed to global warming.

On this much there is some scientific consensus.

What the impact of rising temperatures or higher seas will be is more open to debate, according to skeptics such as Pielke, because most of the calculations are global averages.

"This tells you nothing about what's going to happen in any region," Pielke said.

While Pielke agrees carbon dioxide is forcing changes in the climate, he says, "It is not the only forcing."

Man-made changes to the land, in addition to about 30 other greenhouse gases - some man-made, some natural - may play an even a bigger role, he said.

"The public likes simple answers," Pielke said. "But there isn't any simple answer here."

Simplicity is hard to come by because Earth is a giant, complex heat-moving machine.

The sun's rays strike full force at Earth's middle and glance off the ends - making the equator hotter than the poles.

Ocean currents, winds, the jet stream and hurricanes are forces trying to balance out the Earth's heat.

Efforts to calculate what is going on in the oceans, the land and the atmosphere are an unparalleled exercise.

The task falls to mathematical models run by supercomputers like the one in NCAR's basement. These "general circulation models" attempt to keep track of a multitude of variables around the globe - such as ocean currents, air and sea temperatures, rainfall and the composition of the atmosphere.

"This is a unique exercise in science and a very difficult one," said Christopher Essex, a mathematician at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

The models are trying to project a future world, Essex said, without a complete theoretical base on how climate works and the risk of small errors being amplified.

Another problem, Essex said, is in the inability to do controlled experiments - one of science's key tools.

"There's only one atmosphere, so you can't hold everything steady and change just one variable to see what happens," he said.

Essex offered his critique of the models at a Los Alamos National Laboratory climate conference in Santa Fe in July.

At the end of the presentation, CSU's Gray jumped up and demanded: "Should we base national policy on these models?"

"I'm not touching that," Essex replied.

And then Essex added: "At every stage of the history of science, there has been some element that was impossible, and we've found a way around it. I am sure we will here."

This did not assuage Bill Gray.

Gray is among the most strident critics, quick to use words like "fraud" or "gang" to describe the modelers.

Instead of model projections, Gray looks at the history and patterns of weather to find trends.

And befitting his 76 years, Gray has a long view. His first report on climate - on the return of the dust bowl - was in the early 1940s when he was in junior high school.

"We'd gone through a warming trend in the '40s, and everybody was saying we were going to win World War II but face terrible droughts," Gray said.

Soon after, temperatures went into a cooling trend and by 1975, Gray points out, there was talk of a coming ice age.

The Earth does have natural cycles of cooling and warming - during the past 740,000 years there have been eight cycles with four ice ages.

The cycles appear to be tied to slight variations in the tilt of the Earth toward the sun.

During the last ice age - which ended about 10,000 years ago - Earth was on average about 4 degrees Fahrenheit cooler, and what is now Manhattan was buried under ice.

At some point the Earth will wobble on its axis again, setting the stage for an ice age.

There are other phenomena affecting global temperatures over time, such as El Niño, a Pacific Ocean warm-water mass that appears in roughly five-year cycles and changes world weather patterns.

And there is the Atlantic thermohaline current, a conveyor belt moving heat north on the surface and then dropping it to the ocean floor and heading back to the equator - a 1,200-year trip.

Changes in the current lead to changes in temperature. Somehow the models have to account for these natural variations too.

Gray believes that the warmer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are linked to a natural slowing in the thermohaline current, not the carbon dioxide.

Some of the models also show the current is slowing and that, along with warming oceans, adds to hurricane risks.

This has sparked one of the biggest scientific disputes of the moment.

It is a debate in which NCAR's Trenberth and CSU's Gray are, of course, on opposite sides.

...

Trenberth concedes that the changes being measured are small, but he adds, "They are all going in one direction."

Gray argues that heat by itself isn't enough - that there are other variables: The air has to be cooler than the ocean, the winds have to be agreeable.

The dispute led Landsea, who is a former Gray student, to quit as a member of a working group of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

Trenberth, 61, is the lead author for that working group, whose report is due next year.

The IPCC was created to assess - through a set of working groups - scientific, technical and socioeconomic information on climate change. It does not, however, do research.

Landsea, in an open letter to the science community, said the science working group was being "motivated by pre- conceived agendas" and was "scientifically unsound."

Even with that, Landsea says: "I am concerned about the trend in global warming. It is a problem."

The IPCC science working group - with more than 100 members - has been trying to forge a consensus on the best science, Trenberth said.

"But it is a struggle to accommodate every viewpoint," he said. "I don't know why Chris Landsea acted that way."

Landsea isn't the panel's only critic.

"The IPCC has become an inbred process," Pielke said. "All the scientists I know are doing legitimate work and believe in what they are doing. ... Still, it's a narrow view."

Pielke, 59, says his doubts about the climate record began during his stint as Colorado's climatologist when he realized how inaccurate the state's thermometer network was.

Placing a thermometer close to a building or near an air- condition vent can compromise readings, Pielke said.

When the winds blow from Denver, a Front Range thermometer is influenced by urban effects, Pielke said, and by agricultural activities when it blows from the north.

Multiply that by tens of thousands of thermometers around the world and the temperature record is suspect, he contends.

The modeling groups say that what is important is the warming trend.

NCAR's Washington, 70, a pioneer in climate modeling, said that 30 years ago the climate models kept track of just the atmosphere and oceans. Today they include more than 10 measurements, including sea ice, clouds and forest growth.


The models still have problems, Trenberth and the other modelers concede - particularly assessing regional impacts.

...




"We've shown that the climate change is a true thing," he said. "We've done that with global averages, since that was easiest.