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.
Even if all the corn grown in the U.S. were converted into ethanol, it would not even come close to solving our vehicle energy needs. As far as environmentalist predictions are concerned, they have been amazingly and consistently wrong. Mount Pinatubo alone should have wrecked our ecology according to them.
Of course, but this means we can use their fear and trepidation about GW in order to get them into advocating Nuclear energy, which would be a good thing for the US anyways.
Well said. "We're going to exhaust all fossil fuels by 1999, aren't we?"
It's 4.6 Billion. It makes your point even more true.
Pardon me if I'm somewhat unimpressed by the fact that the declaration of a bunch of evangelical preachers (I am one, BTW, also a former research chemist), was a major factor in his flip.
I am also unimpressed by the subtle disappearance of the word "anthropogenic" after its only mention early in the article.
Don't want to be a cynic, but there's lots more $$$ in being a faithful witness to anthropogenic global warming than there is in being a skeptic.
I remain skeptical, and poor.
In other words, what he is saying is like a seminar caller, "I used to be a [skeptic, Republican, conservative] but the failure.... blah, blah, blah.
| Document Type: | Presolicitation Notice |
| Solicitation Number: | HR0011-06-Q-0001 |
| Posted Date: | Nov 15, 2005 |
| Original Response Date: | Jan 03, 2006 |
| Current Response Date: | Jan 03, 2006 |
| Original Archive Date: | Jan 18, 2006 |
| Current Archive Date: | Jan 18, 2006 |
| Classification Code: | R -- Professional, administrative, and management support services |
| Set Aside: | Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned |
| Naics Code: | 541611 -- Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services |
| Description The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing an plan to decrease the temperature in the United States of America. Winner gets 1 Billion dollars. Point of Contact Doug Pollock, Contracting Officer, DARPA Contracts Management Office (CMO), Phone None, Fax (703) 696-2208, Email dpollock@darpa.mil Place of Performance Address: Off-site from DARPA |
Martians are have the same global warming problem. How do the lefty crisis mongers explain that?
There is not enough proof that this 'episode' is any more human-related than those were.
For all our species' egomania, we are just along for the ride.
For the global socialists, this is the boogeyman to ride to world domination, if they can.
It is the one excuse to get all nations marching in lockstep, and subjugate them to a world government.
Note, that from a policy standpoint, (Kyoto) the issue is not one of whether or not there is pollution, but one of who is allowed to pollute.
IF the models were valid, they would not only explain this episode of warming but the others as well. They do not.
But is still operating as a so-called biosphere? Or, is it just a museum to a failed experiment?
We live on a "hot" planet. If space is -450.67F (5 degree Kelvin) and the sun is responsible for +33K. of warming of the atmosphere, where does the other 417 degrees come from?
Assuming the crust of the earth is 3.1 miles thick and the Mantle under is 1600 degrees Fahrenheit, how can one ignore a 1600 degree heat source just 3 miles away?
Assuming the crust of the earth is 3.1 miles thick and the Mantle under is 1600 degrees Fahrenheit, how can one ignore a 1600 degree heat source just 3 miles away?
Thank god for global warming. Other wise a typical day in Sothern California would be -337 degrees.
According to the GW theorists/advocates even if their preposterous theories were true, (slight change in size of gnat on ass of atmosphere to destroy life on planent) all we would need to do according to their data and reports, is burn increased amounts of cheap, plentiful high sulfur coal, which they note has the ability to measurably reduce the temperture increases wrought by AGW.
The land-based temperature records are an artifact caused by urban heat islands.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.