Global warming: A lot of hot air

By HAROLD BROWN
Contributing Writer

The issue of global warming, which already is claiming an inordinate amount of attention, is well on its way to becoming the environmental movement’s rallying point over the next decade.

The central role of global warming in the movement is evident in an essay last fall by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, “The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World.”

Notwithstanding the title, the essay was less about the death of environmentalism than the movement’s need for changes in emphasis, perceptions and definitions.

The authors called for changes in strategy to increase political power, noting that, “[I]n their public campaigns, not one of America’s environmental leaders is articulating a vision of the future commensurate with the magnitude of the crisis. Instead they are promoting technical policy fixes like pollution controls and higher vehicle mileage standards, proposals that provide neither the popular inspiration nor the political alliances the community needs to deal with the problem.”

Visibly absent was any admission that global warming is a bad choice as the defining issue of the movement.

Global warming is doubtful and is in the future, not the near future, but 50 or 100 years from now. People barely believe weather forecasts for next week and don’t for next month. Why would they believe climate forecasts for the next hundred years?

Even if they believed it, would they sacrifice the good life and prospects for a better one to prepare for a specter that someone says is beyond the horizon? Why would they choose the unknown?

The theory of global warming is that increasing greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and forests, are trapping more of the heat that the earth normally radiates back into space.

The normal trapping of heat by greenhouse gases makes this planet livable, keeping temperature extremes from being as great as on other planets with little or none of these gases.

Temperature extremes in deserts such as hot days and cool nights are due to a lower level of one greenhouse gas, water vapor.

In fact, water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas on earth. While water vapor is apparently not increasing, carbon dioxide is.

The expectation that the earth will heat up is not based on reality. Global weather is complicated and notoriously unpredictable, but there is no demonstrable current rise in temperature despite a 25 percent increase in carbon dioxide in the 20th century.

Climate models are probably the greatest promoter of this “crisis.” Highly complex and complicated computer models are used to predict how much temperature will change if carbon dioxide rises by a given amount. The climate models predict that temperatures at the poles will rise fastest during global warming.

But no warming has occurred at the South Pole since measurements began nearly 50 years ago and, in fact, most polar regions are cooling.

For example, in 2003, researchers reported Greenland’s southern coastal areas cooled by 1.29 degrees Celsius. (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) in the previous 44 years, while a study of the Antarctic continent published in 2002 showed a net cooling from 1966 to 2000.

Widespread locations in the world show no clear trend. Some have warmed; others have cooled.

Average temperatures for the southeastern United States haven’t changed since 1895. Yearly averages were above 60 degrees F. 66 times in the 110-year period, 40 times in the first half.

At Dawson, in the Canadian Yukon Territory near the Arctic Circle, the first half of the 20th century was warmer than the second and had nearly twice as many yearly averages above 25 F.

Does global warming have benefits? Of course! If carbon dioxide doubles, photosynthesis and plant growth (including crops and forests) will increase greatly. If the world gets warmer, Arctic regions will become more habitable, the Arctic ocean navigable.

There are many facets to the global warming dispute, but there is a real shortage of answers. The most important question is: Even if the world is warming, did humans cause it? If humans didn’t cause it, or even if we did, how are we going to fix it?

Nobody talks about the results of the proposed fix, of what good the Kyoto Protocol and like proposals will do.

If, as Kyoto requires, greenhouse gas production is cut back to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels, what effect will it have?

Three separate analyses showed that this reduction would cut the projected increase in temperature by only 0.13 to 0.15 degrees Celsius (0.23 to 0.27 degrees F.) in the year 2100.

In other words, even if the world is warming and even if greenhouse gases are the cause, Kyoto restrictions make no difference.

Does it make any difference how much humans slow down the production of carbon dioxide? Fossil fuel will be used as long as it is the cheapest source of energy. Whether this century’s allotment is used in the next 100 or 500 years, will the temperature increase 2.1 degrees or only 1.9 degrees?

It’s imperative that this nation understand beforehand what, if anything, there is to gain in return for a given amount of cutbacks.

Anyone trying to sell you an answer to these questions now is selling you a load of hot air.

And if you’re buying it, you’re probably the one Georgian planning a summer picnic next weekend with confidence in the 10-day weather forecast.