George Will and Charles Krauthammer for President and Vice President of the Church of the Marketplace

CLIMATE CHANGE: SCIENCE VERSUS ADVOCACY

Charles Krauthammer (News and Observer, 6/01/08) and George Will (News and Observer 5/23/08) should team up and run for President and Vice-President of the Church of the Marketplace! Along the way they may want to brush up on their bible lessons, especially that admonition about not pointing out the splinter in your neighbor's eye before removing the log in your own.

In this case, one of the logs in their eyes is their lack of understanding of science and scientists. Well, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming it is their lack of understanding rather than outright deception that leads them to accuse scientists of being careless, compliant (presumably to the wishes of "the left"), and unscrupulous.

The first principle of science is objectivity, something every scientist learns making their way through a graduate education. This objectivity and a critical skepticism that goes along with it becomes an ingrained part of every good scientist. The scientist wants to understand the natural world, how it works. You don't find out how something works by deciding in advance the way you want things to turn out and then looking for ways to twist the available data to seemingly support your desire.

Yet Will, Krauthammer and other "climate change skeptics" seem eager to do just that. Sitting back in a comfortable office far removed from the messy natural world real climate scientists have to deal with, it is easy to make the science sound not just incomplete or inexact, but downright flimsy. Krauthammer ends a long harangue criticising atmospheric climate models as "entirely speculative." It is, however, the ability of such models to accurately reflect the natural world that has brought us modern jet aircraft, the space shuttle and space station, and a legacy of successful space exploration. When a test pilot guns the throttle of a brand new jet plane for its very first flight, computer models give him the assurance he is not likely to die at the end of the runway.

The real climate scientists undoubtedly laugh and cry at the purported mistakes or omissions in their studies and conclusions repeatedly and erroneously pointed out by climate change critics (see www.realclimate.org). Where do these hopeful skeptics get the idea that they are the only ones trying to think of alternative explanations like a warming sun or natural sources of greenhouse gases? The real climate scientists make a living out of trying to find these alternatives, they have thought of these and many others and tested each one against the reality of their data.

Are Krauthammer and Will, and the marketplace experts and fossil fuel advocates eager to preserve the status quo of the automotive and oil and coal industries also expert climate scientists? Do they bring the unbiased eye of the trained scientist and find chinks in the body of climate change evidence the professionals have somehow missed? Who would you trust if you really wanted to know what is going on?

Finally, dredging up the doubt-filled claims of a few hyper-critical scientists cannot invalidate the reviewed findings of professional scientific organizations and the mass of peer-reviewed publications used to back up their consensus statements. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the U.S. National Academy of Science, the American Meteorological Society, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change all agree burning fossil fuels is increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere, that this rising CO2 is causing global warming, and that this global warming is very likely to cause a cascading chain of climate changes, many of which are likely to cause increased human suffering, especially among the poorer peoples of the world.

Krauthammer and Will may legitimately debate what we collectively decide to do to limit future climate changes, how we will obtain and use energy. I agree with Krauthammer, for example, that the nuclear option bears careful consideration as a stopgap on our way to developing more renewable energy sources. And deciding on a carbon tax or a cap and trade system is a decision to be made by all of us and our elected representatives. Science cannot make these decision, only inform them.

But Krauthammer and Will and other skeptics cross the line into dangerous territory when they question scientists who have spent careers learning about the atmosphere. Challenging the science simply because it indicates that your cherished energy sources, large cars, and wasteful habits will likely cause all of us future havoc is a recipe for a return to the dark ages. We cannot afford to let self-interests and beliefs overrule science.

We all need to wake up!

This was published by the News and Observer on October 15, 2007, although the title was different in the paper.
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AN INCONVENIENT NOBEL TRUTH

Two of my neighbors share Rick Martinez's skeptical view of global warming, as they were happy to point out to me even before Martinez' recent column (Warming isn't our No.1 woe, 10/10/07). I wonder if the Nobel Prize awarded to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has caused them or Mr. Martinez to reconsider.

Skeptics will always be around, and that is good. Every scientist casts a critical eye on the findings uncovered by another. But in a matter involving important decisions, we must figure out what most scientists think about it, which in this case means especially the ones doing climate research.

A strong and growing consensus comes from professional climate research organizations and thousands of climate scientists, many of whom participate on the IPCC.

As any of these groups and scientists would admit, the consensus is neither complete nor perfect. Finding chinks in our knowledge of something as complex as climate change is expected. What is surprising in such a difficult field is that large groups of scientists would be able to agree on something. Yet the consensus exists, and it is growing. That is scary.

I have three very good reasons for hoping the consensus is wrong and that the minority of skeptics are right. Those three good reasons are named Kateri, Michaela, and Lizabeth, and although the youngest of them went off to college this year, I still worry about their futures. While I may hope the skeptics are correct, at some point common sense tells me we need to do something in case the majority opinion unfortunately wins out.

Consider the magnitude of the problem -- this is the entire planet! We are all part of an unplanned experiment that we and our descendents will live with for a very long time. And if we wait much longer to convince ourselves something needs to be done, it may be too late to change the outcome.

When it comes to making decisions on matters with any degree of uncertainty, a rational course is to use something called risk analysis. You estimate the likelihood of something bad happening, and the seriousness of the consequences if it does happen.

If the problem is very unlikely to occur, and the consequences even if it does occur are not too bad, you may safely decide to do nothing about it. If on the other hand the consequences are likely to be serious and damaging, you might consider taking action even if the likelihood of the problem happening is slim.

Finally, if the likelihood is not so slim and the consequences are dire, then indeed, immediate action would be wise.

The growing consensus among scientists makes me think global warming has at least a decent chance of happening, and the effects being talked about surely sound serious. You be the judge.

But factor into your judgment some of the actions we might take if we decide to limit carbon dioxide emissions into our atmosphere.

Reducing carbon emissions requires us to either burn less fossil fuel by increasing our energy efficiency (eg., driving smaller cars with higher gas mileage), or by using alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, hydropower, even nuclear power instead of fossil fuels. In either case, burning less fossil fuels has two additional positive outcomes:

• It reduces air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, mercury, hydrocarbons, and the products of these pollutants, ozone and acid rain.
  
• It reduces our dependence on oil at a time when oil supplies may soon begin to dwindle, and foreign suppliers may become increasingly expensive and dangerous trading partners.
  

Sound like a bargain? The bargain gets better when you factor in the "external" costs of finding and using fossil fuels - mountaintop removal and strip mining, water pollution, crop and forest damage, and health effects such as asthma, emphysema, lung cancer, and heart disease - all linked to the air pollution from burning fossil fuels.

Skeptics will always be with us. But I am afraid, truly afraid, they are wrong and even misleading us about this one. The scientists doing the research do not doubt that this is serious and that we can do something about it.

It is time to weigh the evidence and decide. The outcome of this debate has real winners and losers. Our daughters' and sons' and grandchildren's future quality of life will depend upon what we do in the next decade.