Wednesday editorial: Global warming turns 20
Twenty years ago this week, a then-unknown NASA scientist named James E. Hansen ushered global warming from the realm of climatology into the hot house of public policy.
He did it in testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, delivered on a sweltering summer day.
Global warming is real, he told the senators. It is already underway, he said, adding that he was “99 percent certain” it was caused by humans.
Politicians and the public listened to Mr. Hansen’s message, and for two decades they’ve listened as a mountain of scientific evidence emerged to strengthen and confirm his conclusions. A few skeptics remain, but even President George W. Bush has become a convert.
Unfortunately, politicians have done little to actually address the problem. A bill to create a so-called cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions stalled in the Senate earlier this month.
Mr. Hansen now is director of NASA’s Goddard Institute. But he’s perhaps best known for the efforts of a Bush administration political appointee to keep him from speaking publicly about climate change. It didn’t work.
“Emissions are continuing, basically unfettered,” Mr. Hansen said this week. “We’re really running out of time.”
One of the prevailing counter-narratives to global warming, invoked to great effect by industry apologists and professional skeptics, is that the scientists now warning about warming were not so long ago worried about world cooling.
In fact, concerns about warming were first raised in the 19th century. As far back as 1859, scientists knew that carbon dioxide was an important greenhouse gas
But it wasn’t until about 50 years ago that they began measuring levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Since 1958, it’s increased 21.5 percent.
Carbon dioxide levels have grown by 8.4 percent since Mr. Hansen first addressed that Senate committee in 1988. The current level, 383 parts per million, is the highest in the past 650,000 years.
Evidence for warming now is “unequivocal,” according to a United Nations-chartered scientific advisory group on global climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that we can avoid the worst effects of global warming only if we act now.
Somehow, that message isn’t getting through. A survey released last year found that only 48 percent of Americans believe that most scientists agree about the cause of global climate change. Even fewer, just 40 percent, believe most scientists agree that warming is occurring at all.
Why the skepticism? Because change is going to be difficult and wrenching. Many folks would rather not bother.
These days, Mr. Hansen is pessimistic that we can stop burning oil to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. “You’re not going to be able to tell Saudi Arabia and Russia, the countries that have oil, that they’re not going to be able to sell” it, he told a Washington audience this week.
Instead, he wants to phase out the use of coal-fired power plants by 2030. That would pose a major challenge to states like Missouri; Missourians get about 85 percent of our electricity from burning coal.
That highlights an uncomfortable — some say inconvenient — truth about global climate change: Addressing it will require difficult choices and higher expenses. Mr. Hansen believes the best way to phase out the use of coal-burning power plants is to impose a carbon-emissions tax, with the proceeds going directly to citizens to offset higher energy prices. That idea isn’t even on the table in Washington.
Unfortunately, Congress isn’t likely to do anything about global climate change until next year, and then only if citizens send a strong message that they want action now.
We can’t afford to wait. The only thing more expensive than acting now to blunt the worst effects of global warming would be doing nothing for another 20 years.
Glacier calving photo by Angela Sevin via Flickr.
Climate scientist Michael Mann (famous for the hockey stick chart) once made the statement that the 1990’s were the warmest decade in a millennia and that “there is a 95 to 99% certainty that 1998 was the hottest year in the last one thousand years.” (By the way, Mann now denies he ever made this claim, though you can watch him say these exact words in the CBC documentary Global Warming: Doomsday Called Off).
Well, it turns out, according to the NASA GISS database, that 1998 was not even the hottest year of the last century. This is because many temperatures from recent decades that appeared to show substantial warming have been revised downwards.
One of the most cited and used historical surface temperature databases is that of NASA/Goddard’s GISS. This is not some weird skeptics site. It is considered one of the premier world temperature data bases, and it is maintained by anthropogenic global warming true believers. It has consistently shown more warming than any other data base, and is thus a favorite source for folks like Al Gore.
Government scientists using taxpayer money to develop the GISS temperature data base at taxpayer expense refuse to publicly release their temperature adjustment algorithms or software (In much the same way Michael Mann refused to release the details for scrutiny of his methodology behind the hockey stick). The data, though, made a compelling case that the GISS data base had systematic discontinuities that bore all the hallmarks of a software bug.
The GISS has quietly admitted that this is correct, and has started to republish its data with the bug fixed. And the numbers are changing a lot. Before, GISS would have said 1998 was the hottest year on record (Mann, remember, said with up to 99% certainty it was the hottest year in 1000 years) and that 2006 was the second hottest. Well, no more. Here are the new rankings for the 10 hottest years in the US, starting with #1:
1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, 1939
Three of the top 10 are in the last decade. Four of the top ten are in the 1930’s, before either the IPCC or the GISS really think man had any discernible impact on temperatures.
So how is this possible? How can the global warming numbers used in critical policy decisions and scientific models be so wrong with so basic of an error? And how can this error have gone undetected for the better part of a decade? The answer to the latter question is because the global warming and climate community resist scrutiny. A recent Newsweek article and statements by Al Gore are basically aimed at suppressing any scientific criticism or challenge to global warming research. That is why NASA can keep its temperature algorithms secret, with no outside complaint, something that would cause howls of protest in any other area of scientific inquiry.
Considering Jim Hansen’s antics and rhetoric in light of these facts casts him (and Al Gore) in a highly unfavorable light.
Hansen and Company are the ones who should be prosecuted.
It’s high time to think seriously about what the next President and Congress will do about this evident problem. We have to cut the use of fossil fuels. That means more wind, solar, nuclear power and fuel cells for stationary service, supplemented by hydroelectric, geothermal and even ocean wave power where practical. We need fuel cell and battery powered vehicles. We need more reforestation, we need more building insulation, and we need to stop waste by other means. We need a better rail system and more electical distribution capacity. We need to begin shipping via the arctic sea. Most of these changes have been supported and ongoing under the present administration which, for politcal reasons, has received little credit.
Both presidential candidates support a lot of this, but John McCain alone is pushing nuclear power, the practical way to replace coal for electric power and #6 residual oil for large scale building and process steam. The U.S. Navy taught McCain that years ago. Obama doesn’t understand it yet.
“Mr. Hansen believes the best way to phase out the use of coal-burning power plants is to impose a carbon-emissions tax, with the proceeds going directly to citizens to offset higher energy prices. That idea isn’t even on the table in Washington.”
There is a distinct possibility that the proceeds of a carbon-emissions tax would be subject to the whims of a liberal majority on the Supreme Court and go directly to enemy combatants held in and around Tshabong, Botswana, to be used for their comfort, convenience and legal fees.
This global warming issue may finally be the trigger that causes another American Revolution. As emmissions caps, carbon offsets, consumption taxes, and other schemes are used to transfer wealth from the USA to second and third world countries the backlash will be overwhelming. When the new world order begins starving and freezing Missouri children in the name of global survival at the direction of a United Nations-chartered scientific advisory group the political landscape will change quickly.
Those who are unfamiliar with the “hockey stick graph” that LSMFT is referring to can find it here: http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-platform/599/
Since he questions the validity of the graph, you may also want to see the assessment of Dr. Mann’s work, which was performed at the request of Congress by the National Academies of Science. They concluded that the graph was accurate as indicated. In other words, it’s “likely” (specifically, there is a 66 to 90 percent chance) that the 20th century was the warmest in the past 1,000 years. You can find that full report here: http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=1
LSMFT calls attention to a statement about 1998 being the warmest year on record as a way of questioning that global warming is occurring. In fact, 21 of the 22 warmest years on record have occurred over the past 25 years. 2005 was the hottest year on record around the globe. The second hottest? A tie between 2007 and 1998. I’ve added a NASA chart illustrating the trend here: http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-platform/599/
Here’s a link to the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, the GISS that LSMFT is talking about: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/
You may have to cut-and-paste those links into your browser window. Sorry for the inconvenience.
This must mean that global COOLING should almost be turning 40. Remember in the ’70s when these “experts” were using the same arguments to predict global cooling, they also said we would be out of oil in 20 years. YAWN.
The human race is part of nature. Common sense dictates that we should make every reasonable effort to minimize the negative impact of our global presence. Individually and collectively we need to be doing a better job in conserving, recycling, preserving, and optimizing. We shouldn’t, however, use the environment as a tool of global social engineering and feel good activism. A meteor shower or series of volcanoes could drastically change the world climate at any time. If so, we will have to find ways to deal with it or perish. If human activity is the cause, we will also have to deal with it or perish. If steady and gradual changes in human behavior aren’t sufficient, then the effects of global warming will determine and dictate the necessary changes.