Mike Riddle
2005-01-28 13:42:21 UTC
From the January 31th, 2005 issue of _National Review_
Cooled Down
The global-warming hype is running out of (greenhouse?) gas, as it
very much deserves
by STEVEN F. HAYWARD
The waves of the tsunami had hardly receded before environmental
alarmists linked the tragedy to . . . global warming! One newspaper,
the Independent, quoted a British environmental activist saying that
"here again are yet more events in the real world that are consistent
with climate-change predictions." On New Year's Eve, Sir David King,
Britain's chief science adviser and top climate-change fanatic, told
the BBC, "What is happening in the Indian Ocean underlines the
importance of the Earth's system to our ability to live safely. And
what we are talking about in terms of climate change is something that
is really driven by our own use of fossil fuels." It was almost as if
environmentalists were trying to vindicate Michael Crichton's scenario
in State of Fear, where eco-terrorists attempt to start a tsunami in
the Pacific to scare people about global warming.
Although a few environmental activists have attempted to back away from
these ludicrous and embarrassing statements, the predictability with
which climate change was linked to a geological event shows the
difficulty of taking climate change seriously. Climate change is a
legitimate issue, but between the shabby way environmentalists and the
Left exploit it, and the faulty record of so many past predictions of
the eco-apocalypse, deep skepticism remains the sensible default
position.
For climate alarmists, climate change has become what logicians call a
"non-falsifiable hypothesis." Every weather anomaly is said to be a
sign of climate change. After the near-record January 1996 blizzard hit
the northeastern U.S., Newsweek ran a cover story attributing the storm
to climate change. A year later, when an unusually warm winter led to
early snow melt and floods in the upper Midwest, Vice President Al Gore
and others attributed it to climate change. And the three hurricanes
that struck Florida in close succession last summer were a bonanza for
the climate-change chorus, even though serious climate scientists
readily admit that ascribing today's extreme weather events to global
warming is scientifically insupportable. In fact, the intensity of
hurricanes and cyclones has diminished slightly over the past 30 years.
Even the catastrophic scenarios painted by enthusiasts clash. In one
extreme case, the Greenland ice sheet and much of the polar ice caps
could melt, raising the global sea level by as much as 30 feet,
inundating billions in coastal areas. (Keep in mind, though, that such
a scenario would take decades to play out, unlike a tsunami.) But hold
on: A variant of catastrophe theory holds that warming might cause the
Greenland and polar ice sheets to thicken and bring on a new ice age --
the scenario of the movie The Day After Tomorrow. Incidentally, the sea
level would fall by several feet, creating new opportunities for
beachfront development.
These competing scenarios have some theoretical plausibility, but the
inability of the scientific community to assign a probability estimate
to either a temperature increase or the effects of such an increase --
regionally as well as globally -- shows how limited our climate
knowledge remains. Although computer climate models are being
constantly refined and improved, their compound uncertainties and blind
spots make it impossible to know the probability of any future outcome.
For all their sophistication, the models have not even been able to
"backcast" -- i.e., match up greenhouse-gas emissions with the climate
record -- for the last 30 years.
THE (BLACK) ART OF PREDICTION Precisely because the computer climate
models are plodding along, unable to deliver the goods,
environmentalists latch on to any event as proof that global warming is
well under way, even if the evidence is thin or is contradicted by
other evidence. Gregg Easterbrook's first rule of environmental
doomsaying is that predictions should be dated far enough in the future
so that no one will remember them when they fail to occur. Specificity
was the error of Paul Ehrlich's prediction that millions would starve
in the 1970s and Jimmy Carter's Global 2000 report, many of whose
specific predictions for the year 2000 were wrong by an order of
magnitude. Catastrophic global warming over the next 100 to 200 years
neatly solves this problem. It's the ultimate "for the children" issue.
But the hyping of every possible scare that comes down the road -- such
as melting glaciers, shearing polar ice sheets, flowers blooming
earlier than usual, animals migrating north, hurricanes, European heat
waves, northeastern U.S. cold snaps, and so on -- is backfiring on
environmentalists, and the issue is losing steam. The annual Gallup
Poll on the environment last spring found declining public interest in
global warming. "Last year at this time," the firm's Lydia Saad wrote,
"Gallup reported that global warming was 'a bit of a yawn' to most
Americans. Today, one might say the public is practically dozing . . .
Global warming ranks near the bottom of the list of specific
environmental issues for which Gallup measured public concern." Unable
to persuade the public, environmentalists are increasingly looking for
ways to file lawsuits to stop climate change.
What do we actually know? The earth's temperature has risen about 1
degree Celsius over the last 100 years. That's where the agreement ends
and the arguments begin. It is not clear whether this increase has
harmed anyone (in fact it may have had net benefits); the Inuits of the
Arctic north complain they have been hurt, but they drive their
snowmobiles and SUVs from their heated homes to the courthouse to file
their lawsuits. Some of the increase may be man-made, but much of it
may be a natural warming trend stemming from the "little ice age"
between the 14th and 19th centuries. Some scientists believe the
warming may have more to do with deforestation and other land-use
trends than greenhouse gases. There is no consensus on this point.
Evidence that the last few decades were the warmest in the last 1,000
years has recently been discredited. The so-called "smoking gun" of
man-made global warming was the famous "hockey stick" graph, which
showed a flat temperature record taking a noticeable upward bend in the
last generation. It has been demolished for statistical shoddiness. The
"medieval warm period" before the "little ice age" may have been as
warm as, or even warmer than, today.
The emergence from the "little ice age" explains why many glaciers are
retreating. It is usually forgotten that this retreat began in the 19th
century -- before the buildup in greenhouse gases began in earnest. The
phenomenon is not uniform; some glaciers are expanding. Glaciation
seems more closely related to regional precipitation patterns than to
global temperatures. Likewise, the recent reports on Arctic
temperatures and the polar ice caps display disturbing biases and
selective use of data. The Arctic is warmer today than it was 30 years
ago, but according to some records it is colder today than it was 70
years ago. If the recent studies had used 1930 instead of 1970 (an
especially cold period) as the starting baseline, there would be no
warming trend found. But also no headlines. So yes, there has been some
melting of ice near both poles, but other evidence shows places where
the ice is thickening. Most of the claims of sea-level rise are heavily
disputed, too.
BEFORE SPENDING TRILLIONS . . . In other words, we still don't know
very much about many things that the media report as fact. The basic
problem is that for all the heavy investment in climate research,
climate science is still in its infancy, roughly in the same spot that
genetics was in in 1950, when it was decades away from mapping the
human genome. The basic theory of global warming is right, but there
are huge gaps in our knowledge and we're a long way away from an
understanding of climate adequate to base trillion-dollar economic
decisions on.
Don't expect much progress from the international effort to get to the
bottom of the issue: the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), which is busy generating its fourth assessment report
("4th AR" in the jargon), due in 2007. The 4th AR aims to represent the
latest "scientific consensus" about the sum total of the world's
ongoing climate research -- an immense project.
The problem with the IPCC process, however, is that the scientists and
experts participating in each iteration have become increasingly biased
toward climate alarmism. It is getting harder to separate the
ideologically motivated alarmists from the honestly worried scientists.
Past assessment reports, especially the 2nd AR in 1995, were badly
politicized by U.N. bureaucrats, misrepresenting what the report
actually contained. Skeptics qualified to participate have found the
IPCC process too frustrating and have dropped out; for example, Richard
Lindzen, a participant and chapter author in the 3rd AR, is not
participating in this round. More and more, the IPCC is becoming an
echo chamber for just one point of view, and is closing itself to
outside criticism. Its members, in the fashion of environmental
activists, have taken to demonizing their reasonable critics.
The case of David Henderson and Ian Castles is a good example.
Henderson, the former chief economist of the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development, and Castles, the former head of the
Australian Statistical Bureau, noticed two years ago a serious
methodological anomaly in the IPCC's 100-year greenhouse-gas emission
forecasts that are the primary input to computer climate models.
Henderson and Castles made a compelling argument that the forecasts
were unrealistically high. Everyone recalls the first day of
computer-science class: garbage in, garbage out. If future
greenhouse-gas emissions are badly overestimated, then even a perfect
computer model will spit out a false temperature prediction. Since
Henderson and Castles's initial critique, the IPCC's forecasts have
been subject to withering criticisms from dozens of other reputable
economists, including a number of climate alarmists who, to their
credit, argue that this crucial question should be gotten right.
The IPCC's reaction to Henderson and Castles was startling: It issued a
vituperative press release blasting them for peddling "disinformation."
Some scientists and economists connected with the IPCC have said
publicly that the press release was a regrettable error. But it is
typical of the increasingly arrogant IPCC leadership. The IPCC's
chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, recently compared eco-skeptic Bj?rn
Lomborg to Hitler. "What is the difference between Lomborg's view of
humanity and Hitler's?" Pachauri told a Danish newspaper. "If you were
to accept Lomborg's way of thinking, then maybe what Hitler did was the
right thing." It is hard to have much confidence in an organization
whose chairman can say this and keep his job. Moreover, despite the
cascade of criticism of the IPCC's emissions forecasts, the 4th AR is
going to use the same set of emissions forecasts for its next round of
climate models, thereby assuring a garbagey result. The IPCC says it
would take too long to do a fresh set of forecasts. Pachauri waves off
all criticism, saying the science is "settled." Richard Lindzen notes
that the "consensus science" of eugenics was equally "settled" 100
years ago. The greens accuse climate skeptics of denying reality, but
it is the greens who have their heads stuck in a dark place.
--Mr. Hayward is resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute,
and author of the annual Index of Leading Environmental Indicators.
Cooled Down
The global-warming hype is running out of (greenhouse?) gas, as it
very much deserves
by STEVEN F. HAYWARD
The waves of the tsunami had hardly receded before environmental
alarmists linked the tragedy to . . . global warming! One newspaper,
the Independent, quoted a British environmental activist saying that
"here again are yet more events in the real world that are consistent
with climate-change predictions." On New Year's Eve, Sir David King,
Britain's chief science adviser and top climate-change fanatic, told
the BBC, "What is happening in the Indian Ocean underlines the
importance of the Earth's system to our ability to live safely. And
what we are talking about in terms of climate change is something that
is really driven by our own use of fossil fuels." It was almost as if
environmentalists were trying to vindicate Michael Crichton's scenario
in State of Fear, where eco-terrorists attempt to start a tsunami in
the Pacific to scare people about global warming.
Although a few environmental activists have attempted to back away from
these ludicrous and embarrassing statements, the predictability with
which climate change was linked to a geological event shows the
difficulty of taking climate change seriously. Climate change is a
legitimate issue, but between the shabby way environmentalists and the
Left exploit it, and the faulty record of so many past predictions of
the eco-apocalypse, deep skepticism remains the sensible default
position.
For climate alarmists, climate change has become what logicians call a
"non-falsifiable hypothesis." Every weather anomaly is said to be a
sign of climate change. After the near-record January 1996 blizzard hit
the northeastern U.S., Newsweek ran a cover story attributing the storm
to climate change. A year later, when an unusually warm winter led to
early snow melt and floods in the upper Midwest, Vice President Al Gore
and others attributed it to climate change. And the three hurricanes
that struck Florida in close succession last summer were a bonanza for
the climate-change chorus, even though serious climate scientists
readily admit that ascribing today's extreme weather events to global
warming is scientifically insupportable. In fact, the intensity of
hurricanes and cyclones has diminished slightly over the past 30 years.
Even the catastrophic scenarios painted by enthusiasts clash. In one
extreme case, the Greenland ice sheet and much of the polar ice caps
could melt, raising the global sea level by as much as 30 feet,
inundating billions in coastal areas. (Keep in mind, though, that such
a scenario would take decades to play out, unlike a tsunami.) But hold
on: A variant of catastrophe theory holds that warming might cause the
Greenland and polar ice sheets to thicken and bring on a new ice age --
the scenario of the movie The Day After Tomorrow. Incidentally, the sea
level would fall by several feet, creating new opportunities for
beachfront development.
These competing scenarios have some theoretical plausibility, but the
inability of the scientific community to assign a probability estimate
to either a temperature increase or the effects of such an increase --
regionally as well as globally -- shows how limited our climate
knowledge remains. Although computer climate models are being
constantly refined and improved, their compound uncertainties and blind
spots make it impossible to know the probability of any future outcome.
For all their sophistication, the models have not even been able to
"backcast" -- i.e., match up greenhouse-gas emissions with the climate
record -- for the last 30 years.
THE (BLACK) ART OF PREDICTION Precisely because the computer climate
models are plodding along, unable to deliver the goods,
environmentalists latch on to any event as proof that global warming is
well under way, even if the evidence is thin or is contradicted by
other evidence. Gregg Easterbrook's first rule of environmental
doomsaying is that predictions should be dated far enough in the future
so that no one will remember them when they fail to occur. Specificity
was the error of Paul Ehrlich's prediction that millions would starve
in the 1970s and Jimmy Carter's Global 2000 report, many of whose
specific predictions for the year 2000 were wrong by an order of
magnitude. Catastrophic global warming over the next 100 to 200 years
neatly solves this problem. It's the ultimate "for the children" issue.
But the hyping of every possible scare that comes down the road -- such
as melting glaciers, shearing polar ice sheets, flowers blooming
earlier than usual, animals migrating north, hurricanes, European heat
waves, northeastern U.S. cold snaps, and so on -- is backfiring on
environmentalists, and the issue is losing steam. The annual Gallup
Poll on the environment last spring found declining public interest in
global warming. "Last year at this time," the firm's Lydia Saad wrote,
"Gallup reported that global warming was 'a bit of a yawn' to most
Americans. Today, one might say the public is practically dozing . . .
Global warming ranks near the bottom of the list of specific
environmental issues for which Gallup measured public concern." Unable
to persuade the public, environmentalists are increasingly looking for
ways to file lawsuits to stop climate change.
What do we actually know? The earth's temperature has risen about 1
degree Celsius over the last 100 years. That's where the agreement ends
and the arguments begin. It is not clear whether this increase has
harmed anyone (in fact it may have had net benefits); the Inuits of the
Arctic north complain they have been hurt, but they drive their
snowmobiles and SUVs from their heated homes to the courthouse to file
their lawsuits. Some of the increase may be man-made, but much of it
may be a natural warming trend stemming from the "little ice age"
between the 14th and 19th centuries. Some scientists believe the
warming may have more to do with deforestation and other land-use
trends than greenhouse gases. There is no consensus on this point.
Evidence that the last few decades were the warmest in the last 1,000
years has recently been discredited. The so-called "smoking gun" of
man-made global warming was the famous "hockey stick" graph, which
showed a flat temperature record taking a noticeable upward bend in the
last generation. It has been demolished for statistical shoddiness. The
"medieval warm period" before the "little ice age" may have been as
warm as, or even warmer than, today.
The emergence from the "little ice age" explains why many glaciers are
retreating. It is usually forgotten that this retreat began in the 19th
century -- before the buildup in greenhouse gases began in earnest. The
phenomenon is not uniform; some glaciers are expanding. Glaciation
seems more closely related to regional precipitation patterns than to
global temperatures. Likewise, the recent reports on Arctic
temperatures and the polar ice caps display disturbing biases and
selective use of data. The Arctic is warmer today than it was 30 years
ago, but according to some records it is colder today than it was 70
years ago. If the recent studies had used 1930 instead of 1970 (an
especially cold period) as the starting baseline, there would be no
warming trend found. But also no headlines. So yes, there has been some
melting of ice near both poles, but other evidence shows places where
the ice is thickening. Most of the claims of sea-level rise are heavily
disputed, too.
BEFORE SPENDING TRILLIONS . . . In other words, we still don't know
very much about many things that the media report as fact. The basic
problem is that for all the heavy investment in climate research,
climate science is still in its infancy, roughly in the same spot that
genetics was in in 1950, when it was decades away from mapping the
human genome. The basic theory of global warming is right, but there
are huge gaps in our knowledge and we're a long way away from an
understanding of climate adequate to base trillion-dollar economic
decisions on.
Don't expect much progress from the international effort to get to the
bottom of the issue: the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), which is busy generating its fourth assessment report
("4th AR" in the jargon), due in 2007. The 4th AR aims to represent the
latest "scientific consensus" about the sum total of the world's
ongoing climate research -- an immense project.
The problem with the IPCC process, however, is that the scientists and
experts participating in each iteration have become increasingly biased
toward climate alarmism. It is getting harder to separate the
ideologically motivated alarmists from the honestly worried scientists.
Past assessment reports, especially the 2nd AR in 1995, were badly
politicized by U.N. bureaucrats, misrepresenting what the report
actually contained. Skeptics qualified to participate have found the
IPCC process too frustrating and have dropped out; for example, Richard
Lindzen, a participant and chapter author in the 3rd AR, is not
participating in this round. More and more, the IPCC is becoming an
echo chamber for just one point of view, and is closing itself to
outside criticism. Its members, in the fashion of environmental
activists, have taken to demonizing their reasonable critics.
The case of David Henderson and Ian Castles is a good example.
Henderson, the former chief economist of the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development, and Castles, the former head of the
Australian Statistical Bureau, noticed two years ago a serious
methodological anomaly in the IPCC's 100-year greenhouse-gas emission
forecasts that are the primary input to computer climate models.
Henderson and Castles made a compelling argument that the forecasts
were unrealistically high. Everyone recalls the first day of
computer-science class: garbage in, garbage out. If future
greenhouse-gas emissions are badly overestimated, then even a perfect
computer model will spit out a false temperature prediction. Since
Henderson and Castles's initial critique, the IPCC's forecasts have
been subject to withering criticisms from dozens of other reputable
economists, including a number of climate alarmists who, to their
credit, argue that this crucial question should be gotten right.
The IPCC's reaction to Henderson and Castles was startling: It issued a
vituperative press release blasting them for peddling "disinformation."
Some scientists and economists connected with the IPCC have said
publicly that the press release was a regrettable error. But it is
typical of the increasingly arrogant IPCC leadership. The IPCC's
chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, recently compared eco-skeptic Bj?rn
Lomborg to Hitler. "What is the difference between Lomborg's view of
humanity and Hitler's?" Pachauri told a Danish newspaper. "If you were
to accept Lomborg's way of thinking, then maybe what Hitler did was the
right thing." It is hard to have much confidence in an organization
whose chairman can say this and keep his job. Moreover, despite the
cascade of criticism of the IPCC's emissions forecasts, the 4th AR is
going to use the same set of emissions forecasts for its next round of
climate models, thereby assuring a garbagey result. The IPCC says it
would take too long to do a fresh set of forecasts. Pachauri waves off
all criticism, saying the science is "settled." Richard Lindzen notes
that the "consensus science" of eugenics was equally "settled" 100
years ago. The greens accuse climate skeptics of denying reality, but
it is the greens who have their heads stuck in a dark place.
--Mr. Hayward is resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute,
and author of the annual Index of Leading Environmental Indicators.