Heads Still in the Sand on Global Warming
Last Monday I had one of the my most dispiriting experiences in a long time. I accepted an invitation to attend a "luncheon forum" sponsored by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. The topic was "Keeping Our Cool on Global Warming," and the speaker was James Manzi, a senior fellow at the institute. The large room in New York's Harvard Club was packed, mostly with middle-aged to elderly white executives and professionals of one sort or another. I didn't notice any people of color, except among the waiters. As a former TIME science editor who had produced several "alarmist" cover stories about global warming, I felt out of place, but I used to be friends with a former director of the Manhattan Institute, and I guess my name has somehow survived in the organization's database.
As conservative commentators on climate change go, Manzi was pretty reasonable. He didn't say that "global warming is a hoax," like Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. To the contrary, he accepted the disturbing predictions of the hundreds of scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He just thinks that society can adapt nicely to the predicted amount of warming. Manzi did, however, acknowledge that the future could be even tougher than the scientists predict.
The problem, said Manzi, is that the cap-and-trade legislation just passed by the House, riddled as it is with exceptions and concessions, will be ineffective in reducing carbon emissions and not worth the cost to the economy. He probably has a point there. Congress would do better to pass a simple, stiff carbon tax, while reducing payroll taxes.
But Manzi doesn't want any mechanism that raises the price of carbon. He said that if Congress enacted a carbon tax, the same parade of lobbyists would be lined up on Capitol Hill to demand tax abatements. Manzi's bottom line is that no anti-global warming policy will be effective enough to offset the damage done to the economy. He knows because he's studied many studies of the effects of climate legislation on GDP. We would be better off, he said, spending the money to fix problems created by global warming in the future when we know what the problems are. We'll have a higher GDP in the future to use as a war chest, his argument goes.
Now I admit that I am not a practicing economist and am not an expert in a science that is known to be very exact and always right (though I did get an undergraduate degree in economics many moons ago). Therefore I am not qualified to have an opinion about my future and the fate of the earth. And on some facile, theoretical, by-the-numbers level, Manzi can make a case that convinces many. Eminent economists like Yale's William Nordhaus have made similar arguments.
But this ivory-tower logic defies common sense. To me, a similar argument in the 1950s would have held that we can't introduce computers because it will reduce the growth in the adding-machine business. The whole idea is to stimulate growth in cleaner industries while we penalize polluters. As a society, we have always made choices about the kind of growth we want to pursue. For my part, I would like to see fewer shopping malls and more schools and alternative-energy plants. Manzi says that transforming our energy system will reduce our GDP in the long run. I don't see how he can know that, no matter how many macroeconomic models he's studied. I think the current energy system is choking our quality of life and mortgaging our future.
Manzi did suggest that the Government should spent a fair amount of money doing research on alternative energy sources just in case global warming turns out to be worse than expected. Thank you for that, Mr. Manzi.
The general nodding of heads indicated that most of the audience agreed with Manzi. During the question and comment period, one guy asked what could possibly motivate people like Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore who made such a big deal about global warming. Another guy asked why the media won't accept "the facts" that we can't do anything about global warming and it's probably nothing to worry about anyway.
Finally, I stood up to show myself as an enemy in the midst of this gathering. Revealing my former TIME connection, I said that "some of you probably used my cover stories as dart boards." I explained that people like Gore and Pelosi are very worried about the future of their children and grandchildren. I explained that the media didn't print "the facts" this group wanted to see because 90% of "the facts" this group has heard are part of a two-decade campaign of disinformation financed by the oil and coal industries. Manzi denied being financed by the oil and coal industries. But I can assure you that these industries helped create the ideological world that has nurtured his career.
That's what's so scary. These rich old white men live in their own isolated, ideological world. They watch Fox News. They read the Wall Street Journal editorial page. They read the output of conservative propaganda machines like the Manhattan Institute. They send e-mails to each other. They talk only to each other. They actually think they are right.
I guess they would say the same about enviros like me. But I came to hear what they had to say, and I found it very unconvincing. Will they ever realize that their ideology is a self-delusion used to justify their own selfishness? In my opinion, here's what their philosophy boils down to: Let me keep my riches now. Screw my children. Screw my grandchildren. If someday their grandchildren confront them about the effects of global warming, and they realize they have been wrong, I hope they feel really bad.
When the lunch was over, I hightailed it out of the room, not wanting to be accosted by indignant conservatives who want to conserve everything but the planet. But stopping in the bathroom, I was surprised to meet a couple of younger audience members who thanked me for what I had said and asked where my writing appeared these days. I replied that after two decades of trying to convince people to do something about global warming, I had pretty much given up writing about it. I was burned out. I mentioned that I occasionally put something on Huffington Post. "Don't give up," they said. "Keep writing."
So here I am, at it again, wishing that the Senate will produce a lot stronger bill than the House did. I guess there's still a little hope left in my weary soul.
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"If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. The denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion."
"Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless.
"They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress.""
http://www.newsweek.com/id/32482/page/2
"That's what's so scary. These rich old white men live in their own isolated, ideological world. They watch Fox News. They read the Wall Street Journal editorial page. They read the output of conservative propaganda machines like the Manhattan Institute. They send e-mails to each other. They talk only to each other. They actually think they are right."
So right! Even when shown data or studies that they are wrong deniers will never admit to being wrong. Instead, they will claim your evidenced is biased (they love the word "bias"), or just go on to the next talking point. I guess conservatives believe that their whole philosohphy is based on climate change science being wrong or else individual consumption may not be the highest good. They are not a crowd swayed by rational evidence, either. Like the author said, they are the Fox news crowd where believing somehting makes it so and shouting the loudest makes one right. As did the Bush administration, they think they can define their own realities, all objectivity tossed aside. When faced with some climate catastrophe they will be the first to demand government restitution.
"Screw my children. Screw my grandchildren."
Sounds more like Obama's budget plan to me...
Mr. Alexander needs to calm down. He argues that to do nothing about Global Warming is a terrible sin. He forgets that denying heat and cheap energy to poor people is a more terrible sin. In addition, he doesn't argue any of the factual data about Global Warming.
The global temperature has not increased since 1998, despite all the climate models that have predicted rising temperatures. The Pacific Ocean has stopped warming, and its sea level has stopped rising, since 1998. Mr. Alexander can check the NOAA tide station data on the internet. The lull in sea level increases is obvious by inspection.
In addition, the weather is trending cooler, especially in New York City. In Central Park, the temperature did not hit 85 degrees F in June. This condition last occurred in 1916. We are looking at weather which is similar to that of almost 100 years ago.
All of these signs of a cooling type of climate change seem lost on Mr. Alexander. He needs to get out of air conditioned office and take a walk in Central Park.
Richard2 wants Mr. Alexander to be as indifferent as he and then presents his usual litany of misinformation. He feigns a concern for the poor of the world, but is really concerned his own standard of living may be impugned on. Ironically, the world's poor will be affected most by climate change, although they have contributed to it the least. "Bangladesh, which may lose up to one-fifth of its surface area if sea levels rise by one metre, called for provisions in the immigration polices of industrial countries to accept "climate refugees" at the recent UN climate change talks in Bonn, Germany."
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85017
Ricard says, according to NOAA, Pacific Oceans levels are decreasing. Regarding sea levels overall, NOAA says, "The sea level has been steadily rising since 1900 at a rate of 1 to 2.5 millimeters per year. In fact, since 1992 new methods of satellite altimetry using the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite indicate a rate of rise of 3 millimeters per year." Richard before used to make the claim sea levels were not increasing based on the data from one tidal station in San Francisco.
http://sos.noaa.gov/datasets/Ocean/sea_level.html
Further, regarding the Pacific Ocean, "Shifts in ocean and atmospheric currents have created massive dead zones or changed migration patterns of whales and seabirds. In addition, decreasing pH levels due to CO2 acidosis are shifting the ecological balance of marine plankton and bottom dwelling species that form calcium skeletons."
According to NASA and other surface temperature stations, "In our analysis, 2008 is the ninth warmest year in the period of instrumental measurements, which extends back to 1880. The ten warmest years all occur within the 12-year period 1997-2008." Yes, despite a condition where the sun is seeing fewer sunpsots than it has in the last 50 years and thus giving off less energy, 2008 was still the 9th warmest on instrumental record.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
But, at least, Ricard takes solace from the fact that temperatures are relatively cool in Central Park.
Very informative links. I love the one predicting a total rise in sea level from now until 2100 to be .77m but the animations cover a rise in levels of both 6m and 150m! But your charts on temp change are even better. The global temp has risen .5 degrees! But thank you for setting me strait on just how long instrument temperature data has been taken. An entire 129 years. So I ask again, you've come to a scientific conclusion based on only 129 years of hard data, how? .5 degrees = panic? Crisis? Go ahead and keep worrying about those .5 degrees instead of worrying why (was it Patrick) Kennedy doesn't want that eco-friendly wind farm erected off the cost of Maratha's Vineyard. But I guess the argument is solved cause 2008 was still the 9th hottest EVER!! Well at least the 9th out of 129 which is out of, oh, I don't know let's say . . . A LOT MORE THAN 129! There, was that loud enough? Am I right? Maybe I'll just take the "moral" high road and cry about how you don't care about the poor or the children, then will I be right? What a dink. I bet you drive a prius cause it says "I care".
Okay one more then I'll breath. Could ANYTHING else even POSSIBLY be responsible for this INSANE increase in global temp and rising seas? ANYTHING???? No? What if, and I mean, what if, something is happening on the ocean floor that we're not seeing. Like, I don't know, maybe some crazy geothermal activity or magma vents. And maybe just maybe this super duper geothermal activity is heating the ocean which would cause the ocean to radiate more heat which would raise global temps .5 degrees and cause a rise in sea level of .77m over the next 100 freakin' years. No, not buying it? Gotta be humans and co2? Even though methane is 3 times as potent a greenhouse gas as co2? No? Nothing? Fine, I didn't want to say this but aliens from the planet Dingus are using microwaves from the moon to heat the ocean and therefore the planet to raise global temps 2 entire degrees so they can take over. I must go now. I'm not safe anymore. I've already said too much.
Ironic title .
The projection that "rich old white men" have the attitude towards their posterity : "Screw my children. Screw my grandchildren" sets a record in being arrogantly insulting .
The damage to the welfare of the living and in fact the "greening" of the Planet , these alarmists lust for in defiance of all science reflects Alexander's curse back upon himself :
"If someday their grandchildren confront them about the effects of global warming,
and they realize they have been wrong,
I hope they feel really bad."
But all the science points to man-made warming based on the burning of greenhouse gases, particularly co2. If not, show the peer-reviewed studies which point to some other cause for the warming.
CO2 is the powerful gas used in Keeling Windows..
those double-pane thermal windows filled with heat trapping CO2.
if everyone installed Keeling Windows maybe we could turn our furnaces down or even off..
Argon and/or Krypton are used by most major manufacturers - neither is a greenhouse gas.
The important features are low thermal conductivitity and higher viscosity to minimize convective currents that would move heat through the window. CO2 has a high thermal conductivity, so I would stick with Ar/Kr, but Keeling might have a reasonable design w/ CO2...
http://www.efficientwindows.org/gasfills.cfm
Also, the glass panes would absorb the wavelengths commonly attributed to CO2 greenhouse (~4.3 um and 15 um)
http://www.mellesgriot.com/products/optics/mp_3_3.htm
http://www.sunwind.ca/a_images/co2_water_vapour.gif
Venus surface temperature there is about 900 degrees fahrenheit. The pressure at its surface is enough to crush a car. Too much CO2 in the atmosphere isn't in the best interest for humans, although I'm sure someone would feel compelled to disagree.
Mars lost its atmosphere because its magnetic field died, allowing the Sun's solar wind to strip it over time. It has a very thin atmosphere. Venus is similar to Mars in that it has no magnetic field to protect it from the Sun's solar wind. Venus surface temperature is hotter than Mercury, even though Mercury is closer to the Sun and receives more solar energy than Venus. The difference? You guessed it, heat trapping CO2.
Even if you do have the occasional year that's cooler than the previous year, so what? You need to look at the bigger picture because that's what is important. If the majority of those 10 years causes the average global temperature to be warmer than the preceding 10 years, and so on, conditions we take for granted on the Earth will change and any living species will be forced to respond and adapt. We don't live in an controlled environmental bubble last I checked. Some fluctuations are inevitable. How do a few random years of cooling mitigate the overall and long term harmful effects of excess warming that we have helped to foster on this planet? It doesn't.
Welcome to the new and not so improved Earth.
It's the repetition of physical impossibilities like this Venus nightmare that reveal a total lack or disregard of scientific understanding by the alarmists . The more than century old Stefan-Boltzmann law shows Venus is more than twice as hot as any object in its orbit could be heated by energy from the Sun . It is therefore radiating 16 times as much energy as it is receiving . It MUST have an internal source of heat . It is not , and cannot be an example of a "runaway greenhouse effect" - which the classical Stefan-Boltzmann law says is impossible , period .
Incidentally , Mars's atmosphere is 95% CO2 , and it falls on the Stefan-Boltzmann/Kirchhoff calculation within observational accuracy as do Mercury and Earth .
To call Global Warming alarmism a fraud is too kind . It's downright scientifically illiterate .
You base some much of your answer on knowledge provided by science than claim a whole field of science, based on hundred of thousands of observations, is a fraud. You are funny!
"Will they ever realize that their ideology is a self-delusion used to justify their own selfishness?" This is conservitism and conservitives in a nutshell.
Whaaaaat?
Yes, it is!
Update: Irony
It would appear that there is actually a strong correlation between flying and gobal temperatures.
http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2009/07/airports-are-getting-warmer.html
It would seem the folks at NOAA and GISS have a lot of explaining to do!
Surface temperature stations are questionable...
http://www.surfacestations.org/
NASA controls for any heat island effect by comparing urban surface stations to rural stations to eliminate bias. That information is not told to you by your right-wing sites.
Quote, Charles Alexander: "Manzi says that transforming our energy system will reduce our GDP in the long run. I don't see how he can know that, no matter how many macroeconomic models he's studied."
I love the irony. Charles Alexander professes belief in climate models, but rejects others belief in macroeconomic models.
For the record. The current global cooling was not predicted by climate models. The current global recession was not predicted by marcoeconomic models.
To express faith in the skill of models, all models, to predict the future, even over the short-term, has been shown to be naive in the extreme.
It has been shown by staticians that flipping a coin to predict the upturn and downturn in global temperatures and the stock markets is a far better prediction method than any computer model. This reveals that both climate and markets are inherently chaotic, i.e. beyond prediction.
Next time some expert says "our computer models tell us" just butt in and say "I'll flip you for it!"
I like the global warming idea because it's serving to put attention on environmental issues. True? False? What do I know. I choose to think probably it's for real.
Where to go for the real poop? Climate is pretty complicated after all.
I suggest that few who are posting here really know much about what they're talking about.
Certainty doesn't indicate correctness.
There are those that are concerned that global warming is primarily a vehicle for wealth redistribution... I like to look at both sides of science:
www.realclimate.org (advocates of AGW theory)
www.climateaudit.org (opponents of AGW - pretty technical)
http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/ (opponent of AGW - less tech)
Another very useful link covers logical fallacies (this topic explores them all!)
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
Thanks for the links. I'll check them out.
It is the poor who are hurt most by the warming we are experiencing, which is usually the case. If anything, the wealthy of the world have increased their riches on the backs of the world's poor. Ask the people of Bangladesh whose fresh waters is being contaminated by rising sea waters.
define: ''correctness''
Define "define."
1970's Global Cooling, 1980's the ozone layer, 1990's Global warming, today . . . CLIMATE CHANGE. This isn't even a debate about global warming anymore because the wording has changed to something you can't even debate. Now, if the earth gets hotter, "told you so", if it gets cooler "told you so". The earth is what, about 65 million years old, right? Give or take. And the arguments for "climate change" are based on data that starts about 150 years ago right? That 150 years is 0.000230% of the total age of the planet. How can ANYONE make scientific reason using only 0.000230%? Understand that conservation is good, pollution is bad, clean energy is good, nobody is debating these things. The problem is jamming a "climate change" CRISIS down everyone's throat to move us in a direction that we're already headed in. The clean/alternate energy industry is coming along just fine without any crisis. Clean, reusable energy is the wave of the future but not because of any "crisis", not because we "need" to do it. It's the wave of the future because it is simply time to move on from technology that is rapidly approaching antiquity. Just as it was when the telephone surpassed the telegraph, or the motor carriage surpassed the horse and buggy, or the airplane usurped the ocean liner, people will find a faster, better, cheaper way.
The Earth is more like 4.5 billion years old, not 65 million. But some scientists have said the greenhouse gas accumulation is becoming similar to what happened around 65 million years ago. You're confusing recorded weather data and climate records. No, not 150 years, it's much more than 150 years. Climate records go back hundreds of thousands of years and more. You know, ancient samples of the atmosphere trapped in extremely old ice. And other methods of sampling the ancient climate conditions. The greenhouse gas levels are now higher than they've been for hundreds of thousands of years. I've heard some scientists say it's rapidly becoming similar to levels when the huge dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. That was over 65 million years ago when most of those beats became extinct. Oh yeah, there's climate change happening all right. Big time.
It's not scientific evidence or reasoning that's faulty in your assessment of the situation. Clean energy is not just about convenience or doing what makes sense, it's about necessity. The crisis is real and here, staring us in the face, whether we want it to be or not.
How can climate records go back hundreds of thousands of years? You can get temp readings from ancient ice samples? Atmospheric data yes. In fact from amber samples scientists can tell that there was more oxygen in the air back then, but they can't extrapolate a temperature. Thank you for correcting my numbers on the age of the planet, I understand I was confusing 65 million for the time of the dinos but actually recorded global temps only go back about 150 years. That is unless you think the ancient Romans or Greeks or Egyptians kept temperature data. www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalextremes.html. So once again on the temperature "crisis" how can you make a scientific assessment based on 0.0000033333333333333333% of the total information? But you did prove my point that it's not even about temperature anymore, it's simply about "change".
Nothing more irritating that someone invoking my children and (someday) grandchildren for their cause, especially when it's for an increasingly suspect cause. But it really reaches new heights when it's an increasing suspect cause (read: "hoax") that will burden my children and grandchildren with enormous debt and hardship.
Alexander has spent "two decades of trying to convince people to do something about global warming." Perhaps this investment has left him unable to notice that temperature for this decade have been declining--check GISS, Hadley, RSS, and UAH. Perhaps he hasn't noticed that, despite repeated and dire warnings of increased hurricane activity, such activity has been declining.
As far as the cap & trade bill, Waxman-Markey, leading global warming scientist/advocate James Hansen calls it a "monstrous absurdity" here on the Huffington Post--I commend him for being honest and candid in that regard.
Charles, what is really scary are ‘editorialists’, whatever age, color or sex, living in their own isolated, ideological world who watch MSNBC "news", read the New York Times editorial page and the output of liberal propaganda machines like MoveOn.Org. They only talk to each other and they actually think they are right!
Now, tell me, in your opinion, is Time magazine an objective source of information? Was it when you were writing for it? Can you be objective about the subject of ‘global warming’? Can you at least admit the number of scientists who disagree with the proposition is growing? Can you be objective enough to say that a large number, of glaciers on the planet are growing? Or is it easier for you to ignore?
Finally, what is the point of your comment on the makeup of the attendees vs the waiters? Is there some sort of r*a*c*i*a*l angle on global warming you’re trying to make us aware of? Are you implying that white males are somehow disproportionately inclined to think global warming is not happening?
See Charles Alexander's Profile
At TIME magazine we tried to take info from the best possible sources, like the National Academy of Sciences. We weren't perfect, but we tried our best.
My point about white men is this. A Republican administration took us into a war of choice and cost tens of thousands of people their lives with the inept, corrupt handling of that war. (They also let 9/11 happen on their watch.) During the same Republican administration the economy crashed, at least partly because of the Republican fervor for deregulation. Despite all this and much more, the majority of white men voted for McCain-Palin. I would say that the majority of white men are blindly trapped in their prejudice that any Republican, even an idiot like Palin, is better than any Democrat.
Since being against global warming legislation is part of the Fox News, conservative Republican line, most conservatives believe all the nonfactual nonsense they hear to the effect that global warming is nothing to worry about. Ironically, McCain was co-author of the first attempt at cap-and-trade legislation a few years back. Maybe he lost some white male votes because he wasn't pure conservative Republican enough.
Mr. Alexander, these articles on warming are very enjoyable. Unfortunately, they bring out so many posts by those who are still debating whether the earth is round and scream that our education system is really in deep, deep trouble!
Manzi "probably" has a point when he claims that the cap-and-trade legislation just passed by the House "will be ineffective in reducing carbon emissions and not worth the cost to the economy"??!!
Come clean. The legislation is designed to do next to nothing to stop the rise in world temperatures, but is designed to enrich all sorts of special interests.
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