Report 2: How real is global warming?
The Scientific Viewpoint
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
a.What does unbiased scientific research say
about global warming?
The vast majority of peer-reviewed scientific papers endorse the evidence of and concerns over global warming.
This finding should outweigh the small number of skeptics, many of whom have an unscientific agenda or are funded by interested parties.
Unfortunately the US press, in an attempt to remain unbiased on the global warming issue, has advanced the opinions of the few skeptics, who are not supported by the broader scientific community.
b.Is there a risk of global warming reaching a tipping point?
Yes. A number of scientists are now studying the probability that global warming might hit a tipping point (a calculated point of no return). Specifically, scientists are concerned about coral reef bleaching from warmer seas, a rise in sea level from the melt of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and shutdown in the earth’s thermohaline circulation.
c.Why did 11 National Academies of Science write to President Bush?
The National Academies of Science of 11 nations called on world leaders (targeting President Bush) to acknowledge that the threat of climate change is clear and increasing, to address its causes and to prepare for consequences.
d.Has the US government accepted the scientific community's findings on climate change?
No. Sadly, the present administration has backed away from any leadership on or support for global warming issues. Most recently, the NY Times headline article dated Sunday, January 29, 2006, cited James Hansen, one of the US government’s top climate scientists, and Leslie McCarthy, a government public affairs officer, confirming reports that political appointees in NASA have denied press access to Hansen.
In a similar vein, senior Bush environmental advisor Philip Cooney modified and softened dozens of global warming reports authored by government scientists in 2002 and 2003 before their publication.
It was only in the summer of 2005 that Bush first acknowledged that mankind had a role in global warming. For the past several years America has taken steps backwards or been obstructionist as the rest of the world has been trying to move forward on the issue.
e.Is everyone convinced that global warming is a reality?
No, there is a very small group of skeptics, mostly policy-oriented scientists and paid consultants, who have been objecting to the conclusions produced by the vast majority of mainstream scientists. (See Asher Siebert's clear-headed editorial on this issue, below)
In nearly every instance those skeptics are connected to or funded by interested parties, including oil companies and energy producers.
FULL REPORT
a.What does unbiased scientific research say
about global warming?
In 2004 Naomi Oreskes, a UC San Diego professor, conducted a broad and unbiased survey of 928 published papers on the topic of climate change over the last 10 years. She found that 75% explicitly supported the idea that global warming, due to human activity, has already begun. The other 25% of the papers focused on topics of methodology. Not one article argued that global warming did not exist.
The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Naomi Oreskes
b.Is there a risk of global warming reaching a tipping point?
Yes. A number of scientists are now studying the probability that one or more elements of global warming will reach, or already have reached, a tipping point. A tipping point is a metaphor for adding sufficient weight to one side of a scale such that the scale tips the other direction. In science and economics, the tipping point metaphor implies strong initial inertia, such that once tipped the new state is irreversible. The Washington Post published an article in January 2006 which summarized the tipping point debate between scientists and White House policy advising scientists.
In the debate about the tipping point, three processes are being studied. The first, the bleaching of coral reefs, is a consequence of global warming. The second two, the melting of ice sheets and the alteration of the thermohaline circulation, both may be a consequence of global warming and may play a role in feedback loops.
First, widespread bleaching of the world’s coral reefs can substantially damage the world’s fisheries. A further rise of just 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit is expected to cause wide-scale coral bleaching, which would destroy important fish nurseries in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. Second, if the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets continue to melt there will be a dramatic rise in the sea level. These two ice sheets contain 20% of the earth’s fresh water. If the ice sheets completely melt, sea levels could rise as much as 20 feet, which would inundate one-third of southern Florida, and Manhattan up to Greenwich Village, and it could take tens of thousands of years to reverse. Third, the north Atlantic thermohaline circulation could conceivably shut down, which would result in substantially colder temperatures in northern Europe and other unknown effects. The thermohaline (heat-salt) circulation is the vertical conveyor belt flows in the ocean which mix nutrients and impacts surface currents. These last two points are discussed in Report 3, Question b.
Evidence for these tipping points is already being observed. In the fall of 2005, a 2-degree rise in Caribbean water temperature led to the bleaching of coral reefs from Texas to Trinidad. One study has observed a slowing of the thermohaline circulation over the last thirty years, and projects a 50% probability it will collapse within 200 years.
A tipping point may have been reached 8200 years ago when a very sudden cooling shut down the thermohaline circulation and the temperatures in Greenland dropped more than 9 degrees Fahrenheit within 20 years. David Warrilow, a senior British climate science advisor, said, “we know there are ice bergs out there [that we might hit], but at the moment we are accelerating toward the tipping point.” Stanford University climatologist Stephen Schneider observed, “For Kiribati (a mid-Pacific nation of 33 atolls), the tipping point has already occurred.”
Debate on Climate Shifts To Issue Of Irreparable Change
Washington Post
c.Why did 11 National Academies of Science
write to President Bush?
In May of 2005, the National Science Academies of 11 nations wrote an unprecedented joint opinion letter to heads of the G-8 nations prior to the June G-8 Summit meeting. The letter pressed the leaders to put an urgently-needed focus on climate change issues. This joint statement stressed that there is enough evidence supporting the thesis that global warming is a serious issue. The National Academies of Science called on the leaders to acknowledge that the threat of climate change is clear and increasing, to address its causes, and to prepare for consequences. The letter stated that “a lack of full scientific certainty about some aspects of climate change is not a reason for delaying an immediate response.” The letter attempted to motivate the Bush administration to join the seven other already-engaged G-8 nations by suggesting the pursuit of cost-effective reductions of greenhouse gases. The eleven nations were: Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia, United States, Brazil, India, and China. The Bush administration has finally ceased its denial of global warming and acknowledged that it is caused by human activity. Although it is very unlikely that this administration will commit to emission targets, this is an important step towards bringing the US into the post-Kyoto process, perhaps under a future administration.
National Academies of Science
Letters to President Bush and Leaders of G8
d.Has the US government accepted the scientific community's findings on climate change?
No. Sadly, the present administration has backed away from any leadership on or support of global warming issues. Most recently, the NY Times headline article dated Sunday, January 29, 2006, cited James Hansen, one of the U.S. government’s top climate scientists, and Leslie McCarthy, a government public affairs officer, confirming reports that political appointees in NASA have denied press access to Hansen. As the long-time Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Hansen is a leading figure globally in climate research. Among other things, the Goddard Institute is used by the US and other governments to run the complicated computer simulations on global warming. As Hansen explained, “They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public.” Dean Acosta, the political appointee in NASA, counter explained, “We promote openness and we speak with the facts...This is not about...global warming. It’s about coordination.” In an entertaining turn of events, the Bush-appointed NASA individual, George C. Deutsch, who issued the internal press-gag order on James Hansen, resigned in early February when it was discovered that he falsified his resume by claiming he graduated from Texas A&M, when he in fact had not.
In July, 2005, the front page of the New York Times reported that Rick Piltz, the top official from the federal Climate Change Science Program, resigned to protest a White House official, Philip Cooney, overriding scientific conclusions about climate change in dozens of federal reports authored in 2002 and 2003. Before serving in the White House, Cooney had served as an oil lobbyist in Washington. The Bush administration's explanation for changing the reported conclusions of government scientists was that they were just effecting inter-agency review to coordinate language among various bureaucracies.
Moreover, after years of US leadership on the global warming front from Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the present Bush administration withdrew support late in the negotiations for the implementation of the Kyoto protocol--the international community's massive collective effort to address the pending global warming challenges. In contrast, the Chief Scientific Advisor to the British Government, David King, recently warned: "In my view, climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today--more serious even than the threat of terrorism."
Climate Ark - Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him
The New York Times
Bush Aide 'edited climate papers'
BBC News
Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him
New York Times
e.Is everyone convinced that global warming is a reality?
No, there is a very small group of skeptics, mostly policy-oriented scientists and paid consultants, who have been objecting to the conclusions produced by the mass of mainstream scientists. One of the books we read attempted to provide a balanced debate between these skeptics and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [see Report 4], the UN's blue ribbon panel of about 30 scientists). The views in this book are summarized in this linked table. Separately, we searched on-line for backgrounds on those individuals publishing skeptical views. Not surprisingly, the majority of the skeptics appear to be funded by or consulting for factions within the energy sector. In addition, certain web sites also express skeptical views. Again, where possible we searched on-line for the funding or principals behind these sites and found, in most cases, they too were linked to factions within the energy industry.
How ExxonMobil Funds The Climate Change Skeptics
BALANCE VERSUS TRUTH, SCIENTIFIC UNCERTAINTY VERSUS POLICY UNCERTAINTY
Editorial by Asher Siebert
It is truly unfortunate that the notion of a climate change ”debate” continues to persist in public media, when no such debate really exists within the scientific community. This trend in media coverage highlights the difference between “balance,” which should be used on matters of opinion, and objective truth, which should always be used when dealing with scientific reality. Not only do the “scientific skeptics” have questionable funding sources in many cases, but they also simply lack a legitimate scientific argument. While the temperature record does behave in a complex manner and depends on many factors, the concentrations of all major greenhouse gases produced by industrial emissions have risen very significantly during the historical record and it is absolutely known (by reproducible, verifiable lab experiments on the physical properties of these gases) that these gases cause warming by absorbing the outgoing radiation from the earth. The skeptics have not produced any evidence that this rise in the greenhouse gas concentrations occurred by some natural process and they have also failed to explain how all the industrial emissions could have been absorbed by some natural process during the recent historical period. In short, there is no way to explain the observed greenhouse gas concentrations without human interference, and there is no credible way to claim that the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations has not caused a warming of the Earth’s surface. While there are other natural processes at work and while the climate system is highly complex, trying to discount the role of human involvement in recent climate change is speculation and opinion, not science. We do not understand all the complexities of the climate system and have not resolved all of the uncertainties in the science and we never will – scientists are always asking new questions, we will always have more to learn and there will always be uncertainties (and large, potentially irreducible ones on a topic as complex as climate change). But we do know enough to say that global warming is real and that on balance its consequences will be negative (while still creating some “winners”). The time to act is now - our common home and our children’s future is at stake. – Asher