http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/earthshastra/entry/is-climate-change-for-real
Is Climate Change for Real? Amit Bhattacharya Monday December 14, 2009, 12:30 PM The hard talk is on at Copenhagen. In the huddle are negotiators from more than 192 nations, trying to forge a common plan to save the planet. At last count, 110 world leaders were slated to gather in the Danish capital for end-of-summit declarations that may well lay the ground for a fundamental retooling of the global economy. Beyond the hope, hype and bickering about who pays how much to whom, lies a plain fact - there's near-total consensus among governments of the world that fossil fuel emissions have been leading to a critical rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases, which in turn is causing global temperatures to rise and changing the Earth's climate patterns. Ironically, this consensus totally breaks down when civil society begins to talk about climate change. The Internet is replete with assertions of climate change being the "biggest scam of the century". Okay, you may argue that internet is also full of accounts from victims of alien abductions and creationists who denounce evolution. Society's loony fringe often has exaggerated presence on the Internet. Except, with the climate debate, it's not exactly the loony fringe. Consider this: Of the top 12 bestselling books on climatology in Amazon.com, only three - one by Al Gore and two by leading climate scientist James Hansen - present the mainstream scientific view on the subject. As many as five other books deny human induced climate change in some way or the other. Look at opinion polls. A survey conducted in the US by the respected Pew Research Center in October showed a 14% drop in the number of Americans who thought there was solid evidence that the Earth was warming from 71% who had said yes to the question in April 2008, to 57% in October 2009. Only 36% of the respondents thought humans were causing it, down from 47% last year. Then there is the "climategate"episode, in which leaked emails of British climatologists proved at least to some people that scientists were cooking data to fit their models. That the Earth is steadily warming has itself been denied by some experts. They point out that the global temperatures haven't really gone up since 1998, and the graph has been more or less flat since then (despite the 2000-2009 decade being the warmest on record). There are others who say that the warming trend of the last century is part of a natural cycle and not human-induced; that human activities haven't reached the critical scale to impact climate. Many of these experts point to waxing and waning of solar activity to explain temperature variations on Earth. All this brings us to the point of this post: Governments of the world are convinced about the warming effects of greenhouse emissions, but are the people? Is the science of global warming settled? During the course of a climate change fellowship I attended in the US last month, leading climatologists spoke on the subject. The insights we got were both revealing and troubling. To answer the second question first - yes, the science behind what's causing the Earth to heat up seems pretty settled. A few notable dissenters aside, an overwhelming majority of climatologists believe there's strong evidence to show that fossil fuels are causing the warming. It's not just about individual scientists. The study of climate change is a multidisciplinary system science. Like any science of this nature, there are things that are well established and areas which aren't as clear, that is, where competing explanations exist and some parts that are yet speculative. Understanding is built and unbuilt through accumulated evidences over decades. As Stephen Schneider, professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University and a preeminent climate change expert put it, understanding climate is like understanding the world economy: it's never solved by one new piece of information. And the answers are never in plain yes or no, but in degrees of certainty. For instance, to understand whether human activity was leading to a rise in global temperatures, scientists had to build climate models based on observed data and make predictions. These models predict an overall warming trend. Temperature data of the last 100 years, and the last 50 years, bear this out. Since there are two possible outcomes in the data set "warming or cooling" there's a 50% chance that this prediction was random. There's more. The models also predict that middle of the continents warm up more than middle of oceans. Again, observations show that's the case. Models predict stratosphere cools, lower atmosphere warms. Right again. Models predict the stratosphere cools because of ozone depleting substances and relative damping. They also predict that there's more warming at night than the day. Yet again, the models get it right. Put together, these models leave a statistical possibility of just 5% that all these correct predictions were arrived at by pure chance. In other words, the statement that humans through fossil fuel emissions are warming up the planet has a scientific accuracy of around 95%. That's a very high degree of certainty. No other competing explanation of the observed data's natural cycle or solar activity comes anywhere close to the robustness of this theory. (Of course, there's still a 5% chance that the warming is being caused by a factor that's yet unknown; but can we risk our planetary future on this basis?) To return to the first question: Why are so many people not convinced? There are two main reasons why this is so. The first one is obvious: There are strong vested interests in letting people believe that warming is a myth; or that the issue is far from settled. It's no surprise that a lot of climate change deniers get funds from multinational oil conglomerates. There are websites that carry lists of who gets funded by whom. (There would, of course, be some genuine non-believers in the mix, but oil funding is the ugly, predominant truth.) The second reason is the way the science works and the way scientists communicate it. Climate science is all about probabilities, not certainties. And scientists are careful about throwing in all the caveats while making their points. On the other hand, people who are cherry-picking facts to suit their slant are forceful and definitive. No guessing which set of speakers would leave a more lasting impression on primetime TV. There's no denying that climate is the most politicized and contentious science of our times. But on one side is method and rigour, and on the other, half-truths and slant. At stake is a planet called Earth. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB.
