J.C. Moore Online

Current Events from a Science Perspective

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 Satellite photos of the Artic region taken in 1979 and in 2003 clearly show that 30% of the sea ice has disappeared. 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.

You may nominate someone who has affected the environment through word or deed for either the Environmental Hall of Shame or the Environmental Hall of Fame. Please send an e-mail through the “Contact” link with a short reason that they should be included. A link or reference to their accomplishments or misaccomplishment  will increase their chance of being included. It will be assumed that your reasons are accurate and may be quoted with proper credit to you, unless you request otherwise.

Nominees will be listed and a  vote will be taken at the end of each year. The  year’s winner in the Environmental Hall Shame category will receive the “Ignoble Prize in Environmental Science” and a  suitable gift. For instance,  George Will might receive a case of CFL bulbs or the Robinson’s might each get embossed copies of  ” The Chemist’s Code of Conduct”.

The  winner in the Environmental Hall of Fame category  will receive the “Most Noble Prize in Environmental Science” and a  suitable gift. For instance,  John McCain might receive a framed picture of a trout swimming upstream.

You may suggest a suitable prize for your nominee

The article that claimed ” Global Warming Is a Myth” was a hoax.

In 1997 the Wall Street Journal proclaimed in a headline,” Science Has Spoken, Global Warming Is a Myth”. Ironically, the next year,1998, turned out to be the hottest year on record. The authors of the article were Arthur B. Robinson, a biochemist, and his son Zachary W. Robinson, a BS chemist. The main point of their article was that while the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air had been going up, the temperature of the Earth was actually going down. They claim their data proved manmade global warming was a myth. However, inaccuracies in their data and their methods made their proof meaningless. But, was it a hoax?  

 The Robinsons took their data from a paper credited to the Marshall Institute. Their graph¹ is copyrighted so the trend lines they use to prove their point have been drawn in on NASA’s graph below.  The blue line on the graph is Robinson’s projection of  what the greenhouse warming of the Earth would be if  it were caused by the increasing concentration of CO₂ in the air. That agrees rather well with NASA’s data. However, they claim the green line represents the actual trend in the temperature of the Earth from 1980 to 1996. You can see that the green line bears no relationship to what actually happened and their conclusion is clearly wrong.

Couldn’t NASA”s data be wrong? Not likely. NASA’s data agrees well with that published by the World Meteorological Organization and both take their data from works published by scientists and climatologists in refereed journals. It is curious that the Robinsons used data from the Marshall Institute, a lobbying group funded by Exxon Mobil. The Marshall Institute’s paper was an analysis of satellite temperature data of the upper atmosphere. The analysis had mathematical errors, assumed an incorrect relationship between upper atmosphere temperatures and those at the surface, and had never been subjected to review by climatologists.

 The article was clearly a hoax.  The authors claimed to speak for all scientists when, in fact, very few scientists then or now agree with them.² They took their data from the Marshall Institute, a lobbying group, while ignoring much better data from the World Meteorological Organization and NASA. They made sweeping conclusions about climatology when neither author had experience or credentials in the discipline. They did not submit their conclusions for review by other scientists as is customary. They violated, in several ways, the ethical standards set forth in the American Chemical Society’s Code of Conduct. ³ Sadly, the hoax has been continued by newspaper columnists, think tanks, “dissident scientists”, and many senators and congressional representatives who use ideas from Robinson’s article to this day. Its time to put this hoax to rest.

 References:

(1) See page 2 of the article at:   http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/RobinsonAndRobinson.pdf

 (2) Science organizations are now very clear about this. Every major scientific organization in the world has adopted a statement that global warming is occurring and that human activity is the main cause. For a list of  the organizations and their statements see:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Academies_of_Science

 (3) See:  http://temp.onlineethics.org/codes/ACScode.html   The Robinson’s held themselves  out to be chemists and were therefore subject to the ACS code of ethics adopted in 1994. It, in part, addressed the ethics of publishing science articles in the popular press – as in the case of Cold Fusion.

George Will, in his article “Perils of a Bright Idea” (4/2/09),  criticized the use of compact florescent light( CFL)  bulbs because they contain mercury. He has apparently not thought this through.  Would he rather have mercury in his light bulbs or in his fish?

 At a public forum, Stuart Jolly, a lobbyist for Americans for Prosperity said, “ if you break a CFL, mercury will spill out”.  Being curious, I went right home and broke one to see.  I could not find the mercury so I looked up the amount. It is about 4 milligrams per light bulb – an amount less than the size of the period at the end of this sentence.  

 Much of our electricity is produced by coal-fired power plants. Coal contains a trace amount of mercury- but considering that we burn 7 billion tons of coal each year –  50 tons of mercury is emitted into the air each year. The mercury is carried to the ground by rain and much of it ends up in our lakes and streams where it enters the food chain.  Some of it eventually ends up in game fish – even in areas that have no natural mercury sources. If you eat fish every Friday, by the year’s end, you’ll have eaten about four times as much mercury as there is in one CFL bulb.

 CFL’s are about four times as efficient as regular bulbs and last about 10 times as long. I cannot think of a company, school, or public building that does not use fluorescent light bulbs to save energy and avoid maintenance costs. CFL’s for home use are the same technology. Using CFL’s will actually cut the amount of mercury entering the environment by reducing the amount of coal burned.

 The mercury in fish should remind us that there are other concerns besides global warming in the debate on energy policy. We have large coal reserves but burning coal  releases sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, mercury, and radioactive isotopes of uranium and thorium that all end up in the air or the food chain. Whether you believe the Earth is getting warmer or not, you must agree that eating and breathing these are a bad idea.