Inevitably, when the weight of evidence starts to crush the ribcage of your opinion, liquifying its organs and causing massive internal hemorrhaging, opinion starts to cry for momma. That seems to be what’s happening now, concerning much of the U.S. opinion on the “reality” of human-induced global climate change. This week has seen a serious tilt of the boulder down on that springy but breakable bone surrounding the opinion that there is no (or a small) human component to warming. To display how to recognize weak arguments that attempt to promote a status quo while appealing to reason, I’ll take one opinion piece this week as an example of what’s to come. Get ready – this is what opinion sounds like when it cries for momma.
In a blog in “USA Today” (sorry for find a McPaper McOpinion, but hey . . . ) [USATodayLiveWithIt], Patrick Michaels comes out in favor of living with it. “It’s hardly news that human beings have had a hand in the planetary warming that began more than 30 years ago,” he writes, already mangling the facts. Our contributions to this warming trend started during the industrial revolution, thanks to the unmitigated use of coal and oil to fuel our development. We know now what the consequences of that choice were – we simply couldn’t have known it then, because the data didn’t yet exist that could tell us. It was only 30 years ago that the warming trend blossomed, thanks to the seeds we planted in the 1800s. And to be fair, **this is news**. This is because for years many news agencies have been on the side of skeptics rather than spending time understanding the scientific process that kept concluding there was evidence of the human correlation with the effect. That the media recognizes this as real is the news.
He goes on to posit that the warming trend is largely unstoppable now that we’ve got it going (might have helped to start the remediation process a few decades ago, eh Patrick?). He concludes that ” . . . the best policy is to live with some modest climate change now and encourage economic development, which will generate the capital necessary for investment in the more efficient technologies of the future.” He then goes on to make his final, sweeping pronouncement:
“Fortunately, we have more time than the alarmists suggest. The warming path of the planet falls at the lowest end of today’s U.N. projections. In aggregate, our computer models tell us that once warming is established, it tends to take place at a constant, not an increasing, rate. Reassuringly, the rate has been remarkably constant, at 0.324 degrees F per decade, since warming began around 1975. The notion that we must do “something in 10 years,” repeated by a small but vocal band of extremists, enjoys virtually no support in the truly peer reviewed scientific literature.”
I don’t know where he gets his numbers from, since he exhibits the extremely poor practice of failing to cite his sources. Rule number one of credible refutation is to **cite your damn sources**. Second, assuming he’s correct about the numbers’ central values (no errors on them, I note), he makes some conjectures that he doesn’t back up. Let’s list them:
* ” . . . our computing models tell us that once warming is established, it tends to take place at a constant . . . rate.”
* An implicit conjecture: warming is the only problem. That is, global warming only causes a rise in temperature, with no other consequences.
In fact, there is evidence that neither of these are fair assumptions or conclusions. First, it’s not clear what “our computer model” is, but the data on carbon dioxide absorption by biomass suggests that the warming **will accelerate**. For instance, in published work by Duke researchers the “free ride” of CO2 absorption by the earth saturates, thus forcing more CO2 to stay in the atmosphere and accelerate the warming trend [EurekAlert2002] [PolleyJohnson2002]. This work was cited dozens of times by other investigations, which investigated the effect of a “nonlinear response by the ecosystem to CO2 absorption” [CitesOfPolleyJohnson]. The number of independent investigations published in journals suggests that this effect isn’t isolated to the “Texas grassland” used in the original experiment, but applies to other sectors of the ecosystem.
There is real-world evidence that the linear assumption of CO2 input and temperature rise is false, regardless of what “our computer model” tells us. Second, the assumption that warming is the only consequence, one we can live with, isn’t proving to be very true either. Gross dramatazations (as in “The Day After Tomorrow”) aside, there are other real world effects that warming might initiate. The Earth is one giant chemical system, a system whose relative equilibrium state in the last 11,000 years enabled our species to (yes) evolve technologically and socially. Rocking ourselves out of thermal equilibrium also means that we might knock ourselves out of chemical equilibrium. That delightful 70% nitrogen + 20% oxygen + 10% other atmospheric situation that we’ve found ourselves in for so long is only by virtue of land and ocean chemistry. What happens if you change the conditions of the system?
NOVA’s “ScienceNow” news magazine explored this question this past week. In a story about ocean chemistry work that is ongoing, the program explored research into previous mass extinctions that weren’t triggered by external events (e.g. meteors). What researchers have discovered paints a more grim picture: an Earth which warmed, causing oxygen starvation in the oceans (warm water holds less oxygen). This allowed sulphur-breathing bacteria to thrive, and live closer to the surfac of the ocean. The by-product of their existence, hydrogen sulfide (smells like rotten eggs), is toxic to oxygen-breathing creatures. When these bacteria get too close to the surface, the hydrogen sulfide is released, poisoning plant and animal life across the Earth. A great example of this uncomfortable equilibrium between oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor water regions was explored using a deep lake in New York [NovaMassExinctions]. The question of whether this can happen again is unanswered, but should not be shunned or ignored.
Let’s review. *Cite your sources when you express opinions from authority*. I hope that I haven’t made the same mistake, and I hope that I have introduced whoever reads this to a world of real research by real scientists into all the consequences of the warming process. *When you read opinion pieces like Patrick’s, be critical*. Where did he get his information from? Is he speaking from authority, or is he falling back on a wealth of evidence derived from reproducible experimentation (i.e. what assumptions went into “our computer model”)? Are there unproven assumptions in his statements? Remember: real scientific opinion is based on evidence, the basis for the arguments are transparent, and the conclusions are absolute without being authoritarian.
.. [USATodayLiveWithIt] “http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/02/post_4.html”:http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/02/post_4.html
.. [EurekAlert2002] “http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-05/du-eo051502.php”:http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-05/du-eo051502.php
.. [PolleyJohnson2002] “http://www.uoguelph.ca/~maherali/nat279.pdf”:http://www.uoguelph.ca/~maherali/nat279.pdf
.. [CitesOfJohnsonPolley] “http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&cites=1928044462965753200”:http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&cites=1928044462965753200
.. [NovaMassExtinctions] “http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3318/01-susp-flash.html”:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3318/01-susp-flash.html
