Public Eye
February 21, 2006 4:20 PM

Temperature: Fair?

By
Brian Montopoli
Topics
CBS News Issues
This Sunday, "60 Minutes" aired a piece on global warming. The piece, which featured correspondent Scott Pelley, largely took the existence of global warming as a given. But there are those who claim that global warming – and, specifically, the notion that humans are responsible for it – is a myth. I asked Pelley why the voices of the skeptics were not heard in the piece.

"There is virtually no disagreement in the scientific community any longer about global warming," he says. "The science that has been done in the last three to five years has been conclusive. We talked to the chairman of the National Academy of Sciences (NOTE: This word was incorrectly transcribed and has been corrected), Ralph Cicerone. Jim Hansen at NASA, who's considered the world's leading expert in climate change. The people in the story, who are well respected in the field. There's just no longer any credible evidence that suggests that, a, the earth is not warming or, b, that greenhouse gasses are not the cause. What you do see in the data again and again and again is this almost lockstep increase between the levels of CO2 and the rise of temperature in the atmosphere. And the climate models that predicted these things happening 15 years ago have proven to be accurate."

"It would be irresponsible of us to go find some scientist somewhere who is not thought of as being eminent in the field and put him on television with these other guys to cast doubt on what they're saying," he continues. "It would be difficult to find a scientist worth his salt in this subject who would suggest this wasn't happening. It would probably be someone whose grant has been funded by someone who finds reducing fossil fuel emissions detrimental to their own interests."

Pelley cites the Michael Crichton novel "State of Fear," which suggests the dangers of global warming are unproved and overstated, as driving the "popular myth" around the issue. Crichton reportedly met with President Bush last year after the president "avidly read" the novel, "fueling a common perception among environmental groups that Crichton's dismissal of global warming…has undermined efforts to pass legislation intended to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide," according to the International Herald Tribune.

But Bush has talked in his State Of The Union address about reducing greenhouse gasses, and the administration spends $5 billion per year researching climate science. The White House's official line is that Bush believes that it is necessary to confront global warming, though the president questions humanity's role in contributing to it.

The Reagan administration, Pelley points out, was initially dead set against acting to reduce chlorofluorocarbons, but as the evidence that they were damaging the environment became overwhelming, it came around. He believes the Bush administration might be reaching a similar "tipping point," thanks to the "remarkable unanimity" among scientists on the impact of global warming.

Still, skeptics remain.

"A favourite ploy by [Anthropogenic Global Warming] alarmists is to repeat ad infinitem that the science about AGW has been settled and that there is consensus among scientists that it is happening and that it will have cataclysmic consequences for our planet," writes Gerrit J. van der Lingen in the National Business Review. "People using these consensus arguments forget that scientific truth is not determined by consensus."

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by sumyunguy February 24, 2006 4:08 PM EST
Read this: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0222-27.htm Then shut up.
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by pjh_az February 23, 2006 4:29 PM EST
<<Actually, global warming has been taking place -- for thousands of years, since the end of the last ice age. Mankind may add icing to the cake, but nature will do the main job. >> And I suppose that because we are all going to die, it is irrelevant that we might eat a monster greasy burger and fries, with a half-gallon of diet soda for lunch each day? Frankly I find the popularity of this kind of reasoning among reactionary conservatives extremely self-serving, selfish, and short-sighted: Who cares about the world we leave to our great-grandchildren... As long as I can afford to burn a gallon of gas in my SUV as I drive to the local convenience store to buy a gallon of milk, then I'm OK. Of course when there is a buck to be made in the process, the 'inevitability' argument is conveniently forgotten by conservatives so we don't hear the argument "it's inevitable that terrorists will attack the US, so we shouldn't spend money on security."
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by griggs1947 February 23, 2006 2:46 PM EST
BUSH IS AGINST SCIENCE, SO OFCOURSE, HE IS WITH THE POLLUTERS.HE BELIEVES IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN. HE IS FOR VOODOO ECONOMICS. HE HAS FAITH. I DON'T.
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by scribe35 February 23, 2006 2:30 PM EST
Commentators should be wary of omitting contrary evidence because a great majority of "experts" agree and they should be heeded in the interest of "accuracy." Through history, vast majorities have been proven wrong. An overwhelming majority of scientists agreed that Louis Pasteur was not only wrong but perhaps deluded when he proposed that minute organisms cause milk to spoil. If that debate were to take place today, no doubt some commentators would omit Pasteur's theory in the interest of "accuracy." In the same vein, consider Albert Einstein when he proposed his theory of relativity. Actually, global warming has been taking place -- for thousands of years, since the end of the last ice age. Mankind may add icing to the cake, but nature will do the main job.
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by sumyunguy February 22, 2006 9:13 PM EST
>>If there is more heat coming from the sun, therefore more heat fed to your feedback loop, your GHG and fossil fuels may make the problem somewhat worse, but only by an insignificant purportion. << Not sure what a "purportion" is, I assume you mean proportion? Nobody is claiming that GHG and fossil fuels are what make the planet hotter - at least, nobody with an understanding of the underlying science. CO2 traps heat, preventing it from radiating out into space, and the burning of fossil fuels results in an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. If the sun's activity increases, and causes it to generate more heat, an Earth with excessive CO2 in the atmosphere will retain more of that heat, causing a raise in overall temperature. Your points about Asia are well-taken, but if the nations of this planet don't get together and reach a consensus about this issue it's only going to hurt us in the long run. I don't think anyone is claiming that life with higher sea levels is impossible, but it's not solely a matter of higher sea levels. There are all kinds of implications that come from a hotter planet. For example, more severe hurricanes. Or hotter summers in Europe. More severe droughts. Alteration of the jet stream, which could significantly affect the northern UK. Humans are smart - we should be able to figure out alternative fuels that don't produce so many greenhouse gases.
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by pjh_az February 22, 2006 8:54 PM EST
<<4. The elements are going to win in the end. The sun will get hotter, the Earth will freeze a few times, bake a few times, and there is nothing you or anyone else can do about it. >> This reasoning is absurd. Yes, they probably they will win in the end, but whether they win on a timescale of millions or billions of years as opposed to hundreds or thousands, is a pretty important question that you are either glossing over or fail to appreciate. Since mankind seems to have made a substantial contribution to CO2 levels in only 50 years, then Man can perhaps make choices that mitigate this contribution. Again, a person might be diagnosed with heart disease or cancer. According to you, they should make no effort to survive the disease since it will inevitably get them. This is ludicrous. Even worse, as a voter, you are playing the role of an insidious spoiler since you try and block the possibility of attempting a fix.
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by pjh_az February 22, 2006 8:25 PM EST
<<2. There is no way to reverse the consistency of the atmosphere. >> Says who? You? The ecosystem is perfectly capable of absorbing CO2 and creating it. The problem is that it appears to be overwhelmed by fossil fuel burning. By reducing fossil fuel burning, it might be possible to let nature absorb the current excess over time and thereby reduce the greenhouse effect. As for: <<Slowing the release of GHG only slows the problem...>> what's wrong with that? It's a man-made problem, so we know man can have an impact, perhaps for the better. Try telling someone with cancer or heart disease they shouldn't bother getting treated for it since it's only delaying the inevitable.
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by journotlist February 22, 2006 7:07 PM EST
Let's go a step further, here. Let's say you find a way to reverse the GHG so it lets 80% more heat out of the atmosphere, and you have some magic machine that can then stop it. At some point the sun is going to significantly calm. Less heat will reach the Earth. At that point, we'll be losing more heat than we retain causing global freezing. What are you going to do then, promote muscle cars and open oil fires? You're talking about a system that can't be controlled. Scientists can talk all the junk they want. They also said calcium would keep old ladies from breaking bones. They were wrong. Again. Weather is the most complex molecular system that has ever existed. You're a damned fool if you think anyone on the planet adequately understands it enough to change it in a positive manner.
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by journotlist February 22, 2006 6:58 PM EST
Dismount your attack &@?%@ and you might learn something, I'm not disagreeing with your premise, only your total tally. You and 60 Minutes claim that GHG "trap" heat in this feedback loop of atmospheric heat, no? So where does this heat originally come from? The sun. If there is more heat coming from the sun, therefore more heat fed to your feedback loop, your GHG and fossil fuels may make the problem somewhat worse, but only by an insignificant purportion. Here's the problem with your (and thereby 60 Minutes') science. 1. Molecular collisions return the energy from heat depending on air density and other properties. What you're claiming caused the problem actually is only a sliver of a fraction of the sustaining properties of the problem. You're not wrong, but you're a very long way from right. 2. There is no way to reverse the consistency of the atmosphere. Slowing the release of GHG only slows the problem, it will never fix it. So even if it were the cause, there is nothing you can do about it short of destroying every human on the planet to stem the flow of CO2 and production of GHG. 3. No one tells China what to do. That's 1/6 of the world creating the vast majority of pollution. So you could have a far greater impact on the environment by taking your sermon to China. 4. The elements are going to win in the end. The sun will get hotter, the Earth will freeze a few times, bake a few times, and there is nothing you or anyone else can do about it.
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by pjh_az February 22, 2006 5:39 PM EST
<<Well then you've come to a conclusion where NASA has not. The fact of the matter is that the sun is delivering far more heat today than at any recorded time in history. Argue with that if you like, but the sun controls the temperature of the Earth far more than gases above it or ice below it.>> The logic isn't that hard. The silliness of your position is that you are the one who should be upset about pollution since you are the one asserting increased solar intensities are to blame all the while you refuse to ignore the well established evidence that CO2 levels are a major player. You're cherry-picking your science in order to avoid seeing the elephant in the room.
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