J.C. Moore Online

Current events from a science perspective.

When we were kids, we used to spin ’round and ’round until, when we stopped, the horizon would appear to keep spinning. That is how I felt after I read George Will’s article “Blinded by science on climate change” (1). He thinks scientists are bad guys, selling cars is more important than clean air, polluters are good guys, and global warming is a religion. The Washington Post once had an ombudsman to handle complaints from scientists about George Will’s cherry-picking, misconstruance of data, spinning of facts, and ignorance of science. The opinion of most scientists is that George Will is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.

Mr. Will does not get quotes right. He claims that Phil Jones, in his BBC interview, admits there has been no statistically significant global warming in the last 15 years. However, what Jones said was “I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level.” Jones also presented data to show that from 1975-2009 ( the last 15 years) the Earth warmed by a statistically significant +0.16 0C per decade and said “most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity. “(2) Mr. Will apparently misquoted Jones in an attempt to back up one of his mistaken and much criticized claims. He keeps saying that there has been no global warming since 1998 even though a number of scientists, the author included, have written him to tell him he is misconstruing the data. (3)

Mr. Will started his good guys are bad guys diatribe by criticizing Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the International Panel on Climate Change, for denouncing those who deny the effects of climate change on the planet. Dr. Pachauri earns very substantial consulting fees by advising governments on environmental issues but he takes only a $49,000 salary and donates the rest to those less fortunate. Does he sound like a bad guy? For his work, Dr. Pachauri shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, a great honor- except to George Will who, by comparison, has been nominated for a Newsvine Environmental Hall of Shame award. Mr. Will also criticizes California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger for participating in the Western Climate Initiative and “trying to fix the planet on his own”. The WCI is made up of seven Western states and four Canadian provinces and their goal is to curb greenhouse gas emissions by 2012.

Not to be inconsistent, Mr. Will then praises Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer for suspending participation in the WCI agreement because “she is afraid that strict emission rules may raise the cost of new cars”. It apparently is more important to sell cars than it is to have clean air and water. He also thinks it’s great that the Utah State Legislature, who wishes to exempt Utah from Federal emission standards, is considering a similar action. Mr. Will also praises BP America, Conoco/Phillips, and Caterpillar for withdrawing from the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of companies and environmental groups. Mr. Will claims they withdrew because the cap-and-trade legislation is stalled and they are no longer worried about restrictions. Oops, wrong again. Those companies helped draw up the blueprint for Congresses’ cap-and-trade legislation and they still support the original cap-and-trade legislation. They withdrew because they felt the amendments added to the bill would unfairly penalize the petroleum industry. (4) Perhaps they object to the huge financial incentives added to the bill for the coal industry to develop the oxymoronic “clean coal”.

Mr. Will also ignores qualifiers. According to him, Phil Jones said that the Medieval Warm Period (circa 800 to 1300 A.D.) “may” have been warmer than today. Mr. Will apparently ignored the word “may” in Jones’ response as he went on that the MWP “complicates the task of indicting contemporary civilization for today’s supposedly unprecedented temperatures”. Jones said “may” as there is anecdotal evidence of a MWP in Europe but there is little evidence in the proxy data that it was worldwide. It is recorded that the Nile froze over in 1010 A.D., right in the middle of the MWP.(5) Mr. Will wants to save the MWP as he thinks he has a potent argument, but even if the MWP existed, his argument is mostly irrelevant to the documented environmental changes that have occurred in the last century.

Finally, Mr. Will claims (half seriously, he says) that Tom Stern, America’s Special Envoy on Climate Change, has violated the First Amendment which forbids the government from undertaking the establishment of religion. Mr. Will can say that because he claims, “a religion is what the faith in catastrophic man-made global warming has become.” Perhaps Mr. Will is unaware that there is a Christian environmental movement, sponsored by the National Council of Churches and made up of practicing Protestants and Catholics, that promotes good stewardship and respect for the Earth.

(1)http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/article.aspx?no=subj&articleid=20100220_61_A14_WASHIN740456
(2) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm
(3) http://que2646.newsvine.com/_news/2009/10/11/3372180-george-wills-climate-deception
(4) http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/politics/stories/oil-firms-drop-out-of-group-lobbying-for-us-climate-bill

(5) Lamb, H. H. (1977) Climate: Present, Past and Future: Climatic History and the Future. Vol 2, Methuen and Co. Ltd

It is easy to calculate the approximate doubling time for compound interest, credit card debt, or population growth. A simple rule of thumb to get doubling time is to divide the growth rate into 70. For example, an investment at 7% compound interest would double in 70/7 = 10 years. After 10 years, a $100 investment would double to $200, in another 10 years it would double again to $400, and in 10 more years to $800. Not bad. This will also work for credit card debt. If your interest rate is 20% and you only make the minimum payment, your debt will double after 70/20 = 3½ years. You might think again about buying an expensive item on your credit card if you realize that a $1000 purchase, unless paid off, will cost you $2000 after 3 ½ years and $4000 after 7 seven years. Everyone with a credit card should know this simple rule of thumb.

The rule also works for population growth. The world now has about 6 ½ billion people and the rate of growth is about 2%. That means that the Earth’s population will double in about 70/2 = 35 years to 13 billion people. It will then double again in 35 more years to 26 billion people. If you think the roads are crowded now, just wait until 2080. Unlimited growth is considered good for business as the number of consumers just keeps going up. However, we should realize that the current growth rate is unsustainable, as at some point we will begin to run out of resources. Economists say the law of supply and demand insures we will never actually run out of resources. As the supply decreases, the resources will just become increasingly expensive. Nevertheless, those who have little money will soon run out of resources. Then what, wars over resources? Also, our contribution to air and water pollution increases with our population growth. Studies of populations in nature show that when a population exhausts its resources or strangles in its pollution, the population doesn’t just reach equilibrium and stop. There is a massive die off.

In the past, population growth was considered a good thing. More people meant more workers, more soldiers, and more offspring to carry on our values and our genetics. Times have changed, but the old thinking remains. Some countries that have reduced their population’s growth have been criticized as being “weak”. Other countries have claimed efforts to help them with population control are an attempt at “genocide”. Many religions have prohibitions against certain birth control practices. And, many businesses see an increasing number of consumers as more profit. Nevertheless, the path we are on is unsustainable and we must control our population growth. How to do that is the problem.

Certainly, it must be done through education. We firmly believe in our right to choose how many children we have and our right to act in ways consistent with our religious beliefs. Perhaps if people realized that we are on an unsustainable path, they would make personal decisions to help ensure the survival of their descendants. Perhaps people would not bring more children into the world than they can feed and care for if they had the knowledge and methods to avoid doing so. There is a method of birth control acceptable to most every religious belief and the world’s religious organizations must help to educate people in those practices and the necessity of using them wisely. Finally, those who profit from increasing population growth should realize that developing a sustainable economy is in their best interest. What is the point of amassing wealth for your descendants if they cannot live comfortably on the Earth?

Supposedly, 31,000 outraged scientists have signed the Oregon Petition, which says that a reduction in carbon dioxide “would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind”. (1) That is an impressive sounding number of scientists, but considering there are 23 million scientists and engineers in the U.S., that is 0.13% of them – a mere drop in the bucket. Moreover, many of those who signed were misled and many were not scientists at all.

Who circulated the petition? The Petition Project was sponsored by the little known Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM), founded by Arthur B. Robinson. Dr. Robinson was the author the infamous 1997 Wall Street Journal article headlined “Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth” The article turned out to be a hoax. (2) Dr. Robinson was aided by Dr. Frederick Seitz, a former president of the National Academy of Science. However in the 70’s , Dr Seitz became a consultant to the tobacco industry and in spite of 45 million dollars of tobacco funded research, couldn’t seem to find any link between smoking and cancer. When asked about the moral implication of taking money and shilling for big tobacco, Seitz stated, any money was good ” …as long as it’s green. I’m not quite clear about this moralistic issue.” (3)

Were all the signers scientists? In 1998, the Petition and a packet of materials was sent to thousands of Bachelor of Science students in Universities across the U.S. The packet included a copy of “Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth”, a letter from Dr. Seitz urging action, and a supposedly “peer reviewed scientific article” claiming “increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have no deleterious effects upon global climate”. The mailing collected 17,000 signatures. However, many of the “scientists” who signed were undergraduate students in Bachelor of Science (BS) programs. As well the sciences, one may get a BS degree in fields such as journalism, sociology, education, philosophy …. (4)

Were the material misleading? Dr. Seitz identified himself in his letter as the past president of the NAS but did not mention his stint with the tobacco industry. The “peer reviewed scientific article” had been published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, a journal that often publishes articles in conflict with mainstream medical opinion and certainly not a place where one would publish climatology articles. The paper had been “peer reviewed” by a board at the OISM, not by a legitimate science organization. The paper was formatted to look as if it was from the National Academy of Sciences Proceedings, which it was not. The NAS quickly responded saying the article did not come from the NAS, it had not been peer reviewed, and that “the petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy.”

What about the other signatures? After the initial mailing, the Petition gained an additional 14,000 or so signature over the next ten years. The petition was on the OISM website for a time and could be signed without any form of verification. After numerous complaints about the authenticity of signatures, the OISM took the Petition off its website and is now sending the materials and a copy of the petition upon request. The site lists 35 of the signers as climatologists. However, a recent survey of scientists found: ” The strongest consensus on the causes of global warming came from climatologists who are active in climate research, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role.” (5)

(1) http://www.oism.org
(2) http://que2646.newsvine.com/_news/2009/09/30/3334579-the-global-warming-is-a-myth-hoax
(3) http://selections.rockefeller.edu/cms/science-and-society/frederick-seitz.html
(4) http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/climate-skeptic-response.html
(5) http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/01/19/eco.globalwarmingsurvey/index.html

It is fashionable of late for some columnist and bloggers to call real scientists “alarmists” and to challenge them to a debate. George Will did so in his column, ”Generating heat over global warming” where he blasts “Anonymous scientists’ unspecified claims about the column’s supposedly myriad inaccuracies”. I do know of two scientists who had sent him e-mails pointing out some of his myriad inaccuracies but he keeps saying them. Maybe a debate is needed.

Cal Thomas, in “John McCain has joined the global warming cult”, claims McCain – and most of the world’s scientists – have been brainwashed by the charismatic Al Gore. Al must be good at it as he also mesmerized the Noble Prize Committee. Cal then issued a challenge for Al Gore and his global warming alarmists to debate Cal’s group of dissident scientists.

But, who are those dissident scientists? Years ago, the Wall Street Journal proclaimed “Science has spoken, global warming is a myth”. Wondering who spoke for science, I tracked the authors to a “think tank” where their job was to manufacture “scientific doubt”. The group was a little short on scientific credentials but they probably didn’t have much time for research, anyway. Most of them spent their time moonlighting for energy companies. However, I was amazed to find that they had discovered a number of “little known facts of science” using Lucy’s method:

Lucy: Charlie Brown, do you want to hear some little known facts of science?

Charlie Brown, looking puzzled: Wait a minute, if they are so little known, how do you know them?

Lucy: Because I’m the one who made them up.

Now that we’ve laid the groundwork for the debate, here are the top 10 reasons it won’t happen. Admittedly, some of the fault lies with the real scientists.

10. Real scientist do not want their cult exposed. They have a secret ritual called “research” which they are trying to keep from dissident scientists and columnists.

9. Real scientists don’t like to be labeled as “alarmists”. They are certainly alarmed but they just don’t like the columnists’ tone. They should remember that Paul Revere was an “alarmist”.

8. Real scientists feel outnumbered. Supposedly, 31,000 outraged scientists signed a petition denouncing global warming. The data was collected by a power company lobbyist and was analyzed using Lucy’s method. Many of the ” scientists” were undergraduate students in Bachelor of Science (BS) programs. One may get a BS degree in fields such as journalism, sociology, education, philosophy …. Still, no real scientist wants to debate an outraged philosophy major.

7. Real scientists are miffed. They have to work for years to discover nature’s secrets while think tank scientists can discover “little known facts of science” in minutes by using Lucy’s method.

6. Real scientists are really miffed. Think tank scientists, with their moonlight pay, earn waaay more than real scientists.

5. Dissident scientists won’t share their microphone. A debate almost occurred at a public forum on climate change sponsored by Prosperous Americans for Prosperity for their favorite Congressional candidate. A number of dissident scientists attended but, when a real scientist was discovered there, the moderator took the microphone to the other side of the room and ignored the scientist standing on his chair and waving.

4. Dissident scientists are not punctual The real debate took place in the 1980’s but the dissident scientists are just now showing up.

3. Dissident scientists don’t want real scientists to criticize their ideas. When 60 climate skeptics sent a letter to the Prime Minister of Canada denouncing global warming alarmists, Canada’s top climatologist pointed out: “by and large the skeptics are not climatologists, they do not come to our meetings, and they do not submit their studies to be peer reviewed”.

2. Dissident scientists won’t follow the normal rules of logic. A Senate hearing by Senator Jim Inhofe, using testimony from dissident scientists, found that the media was biased in reporting climate change. Therefore, it was concluded, global warming was a hoax. Hmmm?

And, number 1. Dissident scientists really want to debate just Al Gore. Al has refused, as he doesn’t think it’s fair to have a battle of facts with a group of unarmed men.

Many of our Legislators have  expressed the idea that cap-and-trade is a tax that would be expensive and hurt the economy, particularly farming.  That isn’t necessarily so. The “true cost”  of a resource includes not only the price but also the cost of cleaning up the environment and disposing of the waste. Cap-and-trade is a way of seeing  that those who  use or profit from a resource pay the “true cost”.  It would require those who increase pollution to buy credits to do so while those who find ways to decrease pollution would receive credits. That encourages entrepreneurship and provides incentives for using our resources wisely. Structured properly, cap-and-trade would actually be good for many sectors of the economy.

 There have been many esimates of the cost of a cap-and-trade bill.  There is one false claim that it would cost each U.S. household $3,100 a year. That number was arrived at by doing some creative math on a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study. However, John Reilly, the MIT economist who authored  the study, says that  number is wrong and is a misinterpretation of his work. More recent EPA estimates are that it would cost an average of about $140 per household anually.  Then, there is also the claim that the cost of doing nothing would be much higher in the long run because of resource scarcity and environmental damage. Its hard to put a monetary value on that. Either way, paying the “true cost” of energy use is fair and would create incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Claims that cap-and-trade will not work are also in doubt as it has worked successfully in the past. It was used to reduce the U.S. sulfur dioxide emissions that produced acid rain in Canada - and it turned out to be much less expensive than either the industry or the government predicted. Also, after much criticism and a slow start, the European Union may meet or even exceed its Kyoto emission goals by 2012.¹ In Oklahoma, Western Farmer’s Electric Co-op has voluntarily used cap-and-trade to offset its carbon emissions by encouraging farming practices that reduced emission. Under cap-and-trade, those practices would not only save money on energy usage but would earn credits that would add to farm profits.

(1)  http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-vine/europe-really-track-meet-its-kyoto-goals

Petroleum geologist John Brock asks, “Can we really stop climate change?” (1) and concludes we can’t. I agree with him that using geo- engineering to reduce global warming is a bad idea but I strongly disagree with the idea that we can’t do anything about it. The Tulsa World article, “Turn up the Savings.”(2) lists a number of things you can do to cut global warming and also reduce your energy bill.

 Geo-engineering would  have unintended consequences, and it would not address the underlying problem.  Burning fossil fuels puts 30 billion tons of CO2 into the air annually along with mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and radioactive isotopes. Much of those end up in the environment and in the food chain. Like carbonated water, the oceans are now 20% more acidic than a century ago (3) and the mercury level in tuna has gone up 30% since 1990 (4).

 NASA’s data shows that the past decade has been the hottest on record and that the Earth is now 1.2° warmer than it was a century ago. Global warming, like a fever of 99.8, is only a sign that something is wrong. The warming has not been caused by volcanoes, sunspots, changes in solar output, or cosmic rays from the stars, and it is not part of the natural cycle of nature. It’s caused by us and it is up to us to do something about it. 

(1)   http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/article.aspx?subjectid=65&articleid=20091107_65_A17_Tebgni286922

(2)   http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20091109_15_A1_TlaWrd833051&archive=yes

(3)   http://observationsofanerd.blogspot.com/2009/10/climate-change-whats-worse-than-heat.html

(4)   http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2009/08/

Those who do not believe the Earth is warming have promoted the “Global Cooling” and the “Coming Ice Age” stories to discredit the scientific evidence. George Will in “Can Bears Survive Ice Age and Global Warming?” ¹ champions these stories but his article has a number of flaws- besides the awkward title. How can you trust science, he asks, when in the 1970s the scientists were predicting the coming of a new Ice Age  but now scientists claim that the Earth is warming. To prove his point, George will quoted an article in the February 1973 Science Digest that said “the world’s climatologists are agreed” that we must “prepare for the next ice age”. Case closed. 

 Well, perhaps not.  The Science Digest published excerpts of articles from other sources. Like in the game of “Gossip”, George Will quotes Science Digest who quotes the Christian Science Monitor who quotes ….   Clearly, the world’s climatologists had not agreed  as there is an article in the same issue that quotes  Dr. Cesare Emiliani, a noted American geologist who warned, “If the present climate balance is not maintained, we may soon be confronted by runaway glaciation or runaway deglaciation.”  Why would Mr. Will quote one article and ignore the other?

Mr. Will’s story is “Not true.” also says climatologist Thomas C. Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C..  To prove it, he and his colleagues surveyed all major journal papers on climatology published between 1965 and 1979.   They report that in that time period “only seven articles predicted that the global average temperature would continue to cool, 44 journal papers indicated that the average temperature would rise and 20 were neutral or made no climate predictions.” ² Mr. Will’s quote is clearly wrong but he has persisted in using it. Ignorance is no excuse as John Fleck, one of the authors of the survey, reported he sent Mr. Will an advance copy of the article in May of 2008.

The bears entered into this story because the Department of Interior had just put the polar bear on the threatened species list. That was simply a decision made by scientists who study bears and climate. The polar bear is uniquely adapted to live and hunt on sea ice and there is ample evidence that the polar sea ice is disappearing.³  But to George Will, this was a conspiracy between scientists, litigious environmentalists, federal judges and government officials to control everything in his life.  Using polar bears as a lever, he claims, the Endangered Species Act could be used to prohibit the building of a power plant in Arizona, driving a SUV, or leaving your cell phone charger plugged in overnight. Well, the bears are a threatened species, not an endangered species, and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne pointed out that the Endangered Species Act could not be used to limit greenhouse gases. However, George Will apparently believes in the power of exaggeration and the “slippery slope” theory.

 (1)  http://www.tulsaworld.com/TWPDFs/2008/Final/W_052308_A_18.

 (2)  Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, September 2008

 (3)  See, for instance, the before (1979) and after (2003) satellite pictures in National Geographic (September 2004, page 21). The pictures show about a third of the polar sea ice disappeared between 1979 and 2003.

During the last Presidential Election,  John McCain proposed a pragmatic national energy policy based upon good stewardship, good science, and reasonableness. George Will attacked the proposal in his “Questions for McCain”  in Newsweek (5/19/08).  As a preface to the question, George Will states  that “(the World Meteorological Organization says global temperatures have not risen in a decade)”. However, that quote cannot be found anywhere in the World Meteorological Organization’s reports. The Organization’s 2007 Summary Report for Policy Makers (http://www.wmo.ch ) says that the Earth’s mean temperature is rising, that it is causing changes in the environment, and that it is the result of man’s activities. That is just the opposite of George Will’s premise.

When I contacted  George Will for an explanation, he said that the hottest year on record was 1998 and no year since has been hotter; therefore, global temperatures have not risen in a decade. However, the World Meteorological Organization says that eleven of the last twelve years (1995–2006) rank among the twelve warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature (since 1850).  The graph on page six of the report shows a very clear upward trend in the global average temperature from 1997 to 2007. George Will’s clever statement was an attempt to mislead readers. NASA’s data shows that 2005 was the hottest year on record so George Will is clearly wrong. (See graph below.)

           http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/        Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS

 Next, George Will asked McCain about the potential high cost of measures proposed to reduce global warming – which George Will claimed were too great. However, he does not consider that the measures would also alleviate some of our pressing energy problems or that economic growth would certainly occur in sectors of the economy producing energy efficient products. He also does not mention the principles of good stewardship or personal responsibility involved.  Is it responsible to let other countries address the issue while we pretend it does not exist? Should we expect future generations to pay to clean up the pollution we are creating?

 Finally, George Will’s asks McCain  “… what is the Earth’s proper temperature, and how do you know? “ It was a trick  question – a reasonable answer to that question has been known for decades. The graph in the World Meteorological Organization report shows the Earth’s mean temperature was reasonably stable from 1850 to 1925 which is a  proper baseline to measure global temperature increases. More importantly, the proper temperature of the Earth is one at which we can live comfortably. We know that is true now, but will that be true for our children and grandchildren?

The global mean temperature has  now increased 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit and it is increasing each year. Is that a crisis? That depends on how long you plan to live. Every major scientific organization in the world has endorsed a statement that global warming is occurring and that it is caused by man’s activities.  John McCain was right. Our nation is in critical need of a pragmatic national energy policy based upon good stewardship, good science, and cooperation with other countries. We all share the same atmosphere.