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The Flipping Point (global warming conversion of skeptic Michael Shermer)
Scientific American ^ | June 2006 | Michael Shermer

Posted on 05/25/2006 9:02:16 AM PDT by cogitator

The Flipping Point

How the evidence for anthropogenic global warming has converged to cause this environmental skeptic to make a cognitive flip

By Michael Shermer

In 2001 Cambridge University Press published Bjørn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which I thought was a perfect debate topic for the Skeptics Society public lecture series at the California Institute of Technology. The problem was that all the top environmental organizations refused to participate. "There is no debate," one spokesperson told me. "We don't want to dignify that book," another said. One leading environmentalist warned me that my reputation would be irreparably harmed if I went through with it. So of course I did.

My experience is symptomatic of deep problems that have long plagued the environmental movement. Activists who vandalize Hummer dealerships and destroy logging equipment are criminal ecoterrorists. Environmental groups who cry doom and gloom to keep donations flowing only hurt their credibility. As an undergraduate in the 1970s, I learned (and believed) that by the 1990s overpopulation would lead to worldwide starvation and the exhaustion of key minerals, metals and oil, predictions that failed utterly. Politics polluted the science and made me an environmental skeptic.

Nevertheless, data trump politics, and a convergence of evidence from numerous sources has led me to make a cognitive switch on the subject of anthropogenic global warming. My attention was piqued on February 8 when 86 leading evangelical Christians--the last cohort I expected to get on the environmental bandwagon--issued the Evangelical Climate Initiative calling for "national legislation requiring sufficient economy-wide reductions" in carbon emissions.

Then I attended the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Monterey, Calif., where former vice president Al Gore delivered the single finest summation of the evidence for global warming I have ever heard, based on the recent documentary film about his work in this area, An Inconvenient Truth. The striking before-and-after photographs showing the disappearance of glaciers around the world shocked me out of my doubting stance.

Four books eventually brought me to the flipping point. Archaeologist Brian Fagan's The Long Summer (Basic, 2004) explicates how civilization is the gift of a temporary period of mild climate. Geographer Jared Diamond's Collapse (Penguin Group, 2005) demonstrates how natural and human-caused environmental catastrophes led to the collapse of civilizations. Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006) is a page-turning account of her journeys around the world with environmental scientists who are documenting species extinction and climate change unmistakably linked to human action. And biologist Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006) reveals how he went from being a skeptical environmentalist to a believing activist as incontrovertible data linking the increase of carbon dioxide to global warming accumulated in the past decade.

It is a matter of the Goldilocks phenomenon. In the last ice age, CO2 levels were 180 parts per million (ppm)--too cold. Between the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, levels rose to 280 ppm--just right. Today levels are at 380 ppm and are projected to reach 450 to 550 by the end of the century--too warm. Like a kettle of water that transforms from liquid to steam when it changes from 99 to 100 degrees Celsius, the environment itself is about to make a CO2-driven flip.

According to Flannery, even if we reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by 70 percent by 2050, average global temperatures will increase between two and nine degrees by 2100. This rise could lead to the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which the March 24 issue of Science reports is already shrinking at a rate of 224 ±41 cubic kilometers a year, double the rate measured in 1996 (Los Angeles uses one cubic kilometer of water a year). If it and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melt, sea levels will rise five to 10 meters, displacing half a billion inhabitants.

Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: change; climate; co2; emissions; globalwarming; gore; movie; skeptic; warming
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To: Right Wing Professor
the problem is the right doesn't believe the science at all

I think that's a bit too broad, and not terribly accurate. Much of "the right" believes science. What is in doubt here is the validity of the conclusions, the veracity of the methodology, the interpretation of the data.

141 posted on 05/25/2006 12:18:26 PM PDT by Sicon
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To: cogitator

Bring it I shall. Dow Chemical's stock is about to go up.


142 posted on 05/25/2006 12:19:32 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback (Try Jesus--If you don't like Him, the devil will always take you back.)
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To: denydenydeny
The global warming alarmists need to explain why annual human emissions of CO2 in the 656-ton range are going to destroy civilization, while a CO2 emission of 42 megatons from Mount Pinatubo in 1991 accomplished exactly nothing except giving us a couple of very cold winters.

Which is the point I made earlier. In the grand scale of things, human caused CO2 emissions are just the rounding error.

143 posted on 05/25/2006 12:19:39 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: JustDoItAlways
Nice scenario and summary (in #132, for reference).

The main problem is the pace at which climate change-related effects could happen over the next couple of centuries. The faster the pace, the harder it would be to adapt to the changes (and a faster pace implies a higher likelihood of abrupt and unanticipated effects).

We certainly were not built for the 180 ppm of CO2 that resulted in the last 4 ice ages. We are a naked Ape for example.

Well, pre-historical humans managed to muddle through the glacial epochs. They may not have enjoyed it.

144 posted on 05/25/2006 12:22:12 PM PDT by cogitator
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To: cogitator

From your example on why temperature leads CO2 readings:

"The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data."

Let's analogize using newspaper as the atmosphere, fire as temperature, smoke as CO2 and ash as ice cores.

Why does smoke lead the fire as the first sign of burning in the five minutes it takes for newspaper to burn after ignition?

The reason has to do with the fact that the burning takes about 300 minutes to be complete. The lag is only 60 minutes. All that the lag shows is that smoke did not cause the first 60 minutes of burning, out of the 300 minute trend. The other 240 minutes of burning could in fact have been caused by smoke, as far as we can tell from this ash data.


145 posted on 05/25/2006 12:25:45 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: epluribus_2
We should be checking other planetary objects to check this.

I think you are refering to recently observed warming of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

146 posted on 05/25/2006 12:27:13 PM PDT by DrDavid (Is this a rhetorical question?)
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To: Wonder Warthog
The "5-7 degree" difference you are talking about was anything BUT catastrophic for life.

That's in the tropics; the difference was more like 18 degrees on average world-wide. No one said it was globally catastrophic, although it may have been catastrophic for life at the equator and in the deep oceans. But if you think a 18 degree Fahrenheit change isn't 'significant', you're speaking another language besides English. That's around the average annual difference between New York and Miami.

The point is that all the "Global Warmers" assume that a SMALL amount of warming will translate into some kind of "unknowable climate flip/catastrophe". The historic record doesn't support anything like that.

I agree. On the other hand, an average climate equal to that in the Cretaceous really would melt the polar caps, and flood most low-lying areas of the earth.

147 posted on 05/25/2006 12:28:54 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor (...founder of African Amputees for Pat Robertson)
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To: HamiltonJay
HamiltonJay, if you don't mind, I'd like to defer a longer reply to this until tomorrow. You raise a lot of separate questions.

One thing for now.

More fresh water will be available and not trapped in solid form... (not a bad thing)....

Not necessarily. For quite a long time there has been a pretty good balance between glacial accretion and glacial melt, i.e., stable or slightly-growing glacial masses provided a constant (reliable) source of freshwater. There are a lot of people, globally, dependent on glaciers as a source of freshwater. Most mountain glaciers are receding (not all, but MOST) -- this trend could significantly diminish freshwater resources for a large percentage of the world's population. I think that this is one of the most significant current concerns of global warming, and in fact the CIA recognized water resources as having a very high likelihood of causing security instablity and conflict in their "Global Trends: 2015" report.

148 posted on 05/25/2006 12:29:47 PM PDT by cogitator
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To: redgolum
In the grand scale of things, human caused CO2 emissions are just the rounding error.

Nonsense.

149 posted on 05/25/2006 12:30:02 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor (...founder of African Amputees for Pat Robertson)
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To: cogitator

So a misguided liberal environmentalist starts to believe Al Gore, thus becoming more misguided.

This is not a flip.


150 posted on 05/25/2006 12:30:27 PM PDT by kidd
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To: cogitator
No, that's certainly not all. The warming trend that climate scientists are most concerned about, the one that is seen as the salient indicator of human effects on climate, is the one that started in the mid-1980s. Because of a slight cooling mid-century, the full global warming increase in the 20th century was 0.6 C. Since the mid-1980s, the global temperature has increased about 0.4 C. I believe that six of the 10 warmest years in the 20th century were in the 1990s. All of this (and more) is seen as the human effect "signal" emerging from the climate variability "noise".

It could just as well be that obscurants from burning rain forests, (and cities in WW-II) as well as general "soot", put a blip in what would otherwise be a general warming trend, as shown in the historical record that you posted above.

151 posted on 05/25/2006 12:30:49 PM PDT by El Gato
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To: Old Professer; All

I just wanted to call everyone's attention to this article I just posted:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1638263/posts

It describes an unexpected partial solution to the CO2 "problem". I read it this morning, and started thinking about it while reading this thread.


152 posted on 05/25/2006 12:31:57 PM PDT by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
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To: redgolum
One good volcano (not a big one, but an "average size" one) puts up more particulate matter into the air quicker than we could if we ground up all of our trash and dumped it into the stratosphere.

Yes, but ash doesn't stay aloft long. SO2 stays aloft a bit longer. The climate effects of one major volcanic eruption won't last more than 3-4 years. (This does not address supervolcanoes.)

153 posted on 05/25/2006 12:32:44 PM PDT by cogitator
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To: Sicon
Much of "the right" believes science.

You must be reading a different site from me. Leaving aside the denial of even the broadest consensus scientific opinions on global warming, this site is chock full young-earth creationists, quack energy cultists, etc. etc..

154 posted on 05/25/2006 12:33:19 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor (...founder of African Amputees for Pat Robertson)
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To: Binghamton_native
When the consecutive day streak finally broke at about 28 days, we learned that the record number of consecutive days of 95 or over was some number in the 40s, and had been set 20-30 years earlier.

1980. The year my younger daughter was born in a northern Dallas suburb. In mid August no less. I believe that summer also set a record for most total days over 100 degrees.

155 posted on 05/25/2006 12:34:03 PM PDT by El Gato
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To: Right Wing Professor
Nonsense.

Glad you said that.

156 posted on 05/25/2006 12:34:11 PM PDT by cogitator
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To: Right Wing Professor
this site is chock full young-earth creationists, quack energy cultists, etc. etc.

Hey, I said "much", I didn't say all. You're right, there are plenty of the aforementioned quacks, cultists, etc., etc., on this forum and elsewhere.

My point remains that the problem with global warming theory is that it is essentially wild speculation and shoddy analysis of scant data.

157 posted on 05/25/2006 12:39:41 PM PDT by Sicon
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To: Right Wing Professor
"But if you think a 18 degree Fahrenheit change isn't 'significant', you're speaking another language besides English. That's around the average annual difference between New York and Miami."

And people live and thrive in both places quite nicely, don't they. What I mean by "significant" is something that threatens life on the planet. The historical observed warming doesn't support that. I'd one heck of a lot prefer to see the planet get a bit warmer than head back into another ice age

"On the other hand, an average climate equal to that in the Cretaceous really would melt the polar caps, and flood most low-lying areas of the earth."

True, but the actual warming that is likely to occur is nowhere near that order of magnitude. I just get sick and tired of the "global warmers" hyping the situation as if it was some kind of monumental eco-catastrophe. It isn't.

158 posted on 05/25/2006 12:40:01 PM PDT by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel-NRA)
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To: cogitator

I won't argue that resources will change.. just as they always do, but the total available will increase.

Warmer temps = more evaporation no?

More evaporation means sooner or later more condensation.

The interesting thing about humans and animals and plants.... They migrate toward resources..

If water suddenly becomes scarce in one part of the world, they will either adapt or move to where the resources are. This will cause conflict, no doubt, as it always has in the entire history of humanity.. but the idea that 1-2 degree celcius increase is going to destroy the planet is hogwash.


159 posted on 05/25/2006 12:48:02 PM PDT by HamiltonJay
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To: El Gato
It could just as well be that obscurants from burning rain forests, (and cities in WW-II) as well as general "soot", put a blip in what would otherwise be a general warming trend,

SO2 from rapid re-industrialization is also blamed.

160 posted on 05/25/2006 12:52:47 PM PDT by cogitator
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