-Caveat Lector- -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Global Warming Science vs. Politicians Date: 17 Nov 1999 21:11:59 -0000 From: "Common Courage Political Literacy Course" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: List Member <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Information about this email course appears at the bottom. Science, Public Relations and Global Warming Despite a hot summer of forest fires and drought, are warnings of global warming overheated? A string of apocalyptic false alarms counsels skepticism. Remember the 1980s anti-nuclear war movement? How about more recent apocalyptic writings like Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone" where the outbreak of a deadly germ threatens the world? Or the economic doomsday scenarios--remember Japan the juggernaught? Remember the federal-budget deficit? In the fall of 1999, even Y2K began to look like a bust for those head-for-the-hills enthusiasts. How do we know the fevered fretting over global warming isn't just more hot air? In "The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth's Threatened Climate," Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigative reporter Ross Gelbspan demonstrates why the issue stands apart from other crisis scenarios. As Antarctic ice shelves the size of Rhode Island crack and slide into the sea, with termites overrunning New Orleans in the wake of five consecutive winters without a killing frost, as El Ni�o's vast pool of warm Pacific Ocean persists into a 5-year existence that would naturally occur only once every 2000 years, global warming is as much a part of the present as it is a prediction of the future. "Global average temperatures have risen about .5 degrees celsius (about 1 degree fahrenheit) during the past 140 years," notes Michael MacCracken, director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Turning to the future, within a few short decades the 6 billion tons of carbon humans pump into the lower atmosphere every year will double the level of carbon dioxide in the air from its preindustrial levels. Global average temperature is predicted to rise between 1.5 and 4.5 C by the year 2100, with 2.5 degrees pegged as the best estimate in a 1995 report on Global Warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international group of 2,500 scientists. If correct, 2.5 degrees would be 6 times the rate of warming over the last century. Worldwide debate over global warming centers on issues of speed and impact under a consensus that the planet is heating up. Only in the United States and such pockets of self-interest as Saudi Arabia is the existence of global warming an open question. Arguments that global warming is either modest, nonexistent, or beneficial are not credible. Opposition to the fact of global warming comes not from distinguished scientists but from those who are often in the pay of industry, whose work doesn't pass muster of the peer review process to warrant publication in scientific journals. Take S. Fred Singer, a founding member of the European Science and Environment Forum, the European branch of skeptics. He was a central figure in a planned PR campaign to subvert the signing of the Rio treaty limiting greenhouse emissions. Singer attacked the IPCC report, noting that the warming "trend over the last 20 years is negative... In other words the trend depends entirely on how one selects the time interval." Singer further accuses the IPCC of having glossed over or suppressed data that suggests global warming hasn't been happening in recent years. Dr. Benjamin Santer, of the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and lead author of chapter 8 of the report, refutes this handily: "Singer's basic problem here is he does not understand the concepts of signal and noise." Temperature measurements over short periods of one or two decades cannot transcend the noise of natural climate variation to read the signals of human-induced changes. It takes a span of 50 years or longer for the human impact to be clearly measurable. If the skeptics' arguments are annoying, their warm reception in Washington will make any fair-minded reader's blood boil. Money's voice can silence science. In 1995, the chair of the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment Republican Dana Rohrabacher held hearings on "Scientific Integrity and the Public Trust," which he opened with a discussion of the growing ozone hole. He characterized it as "another basically the sky-is-falling cry from an environmental Chicken Little..." When confronted with the fact that Singer doesn't publish in peer review journals, Representative John Doolitte, another skeptic, demonstrated a total lack of understanding that such publication is a critical step to validating any scientific research. "[I]'m not going to get involved in a mumbo-jumbo of peer-reviewed documents," he preached, "...under this Congress, we're going to get to the truth and not just academic politics." If credibility just gets in the way in Washington, it's decidedly irrelevant for successful PR campaigns. In 1991, the coal industry, through their Information Council on the Environment (ICE), sought to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact." And it's worked. According to a December 1997 Gallup poll, in 1992 61% of Americans believed global warming had already begun. By 1997, those believing it had begun dropped to 41%. In 1992, 62% of respondents said they worried a great deal or a fair amount about the problem; by the end of 1997 it dropped to 50%. Only 48% think most scientists believe global warming is occurring, despite the strong consensus among scientists. Gelbspan shines an insightful light on the diplomatic morass likely to prevent any serious response to the crisis but points out there are some hopeful signs. It's clear that ameliorating global inequality is a critical step. Rich countries, which according to one estimate account for 80% of emissions, must take the lead in curbing output of greenhouse gases. Failure to do so is an invitation to other nations to ignore the emissions issue--if countries spewing the most don't pull back, why should the rest? The international diplomatic morass leaves little hope. While personal choice may not be the foundation of curbing greenhouse gases, it could well be that the activism and agitation of millions could turn the tide for change. Whatever it takes, we'd better get going. "[G]iven the long atmospheric lifetime of greenhouse gases," writes Gelbspan, "the destructive instabilities of the global climate will continue long after we reduce our emissions--as we finally must." These facts come from Ross Gelbspan's "The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth's Threatened Climate," available at a discount http://www.commoncouragepress.com/heat.html TOMORROW: Living Downstream This is the free Political Literacy Course from Common Courage Press: A backbone of facts to stand up to spineless power. Email 54, November 17 1999. Week 11: The New Math of Science + Corporate Power Homepage: http://www.commoncouragepress.com To subscribe (or unsubscribe) for free: http://www.commoncouragepress.com Chatroom: http://www.cartserver.com/bbs/a/3827/index.cgi Feedback/Title suggestions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Missed any? Course archive: http://www.commoncouragepress.com/politlitarchive.html YES! 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