The Flipping Point (global warming conversion of skeptic Michael Shermer)

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

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.

Lots of mistakes were made with Biosphere II -- the most serious (and unforgivable) being cheating by pumping in fresh air.

Despite the mistakes (or maybe because of them) some valuable lessons were learned. One of the purposes of Biosphere II was to be a prototype for an extraterrestrial colony (e.g. on Mars). We now know all sorts of things about how not to build a colony on Mars.

BTW -- Biosphere II is still standing -- and open for tours.

Just a four meter rise in sea level would cause my house on a hill in San Diego to become ocean front property. It would also inundate our inadequate airport, and we would finally be forced to build a new one. I say accelerate carbon emissions. Let's get this process going. I could use the extra equity in my home and a decent airport. Of course, getting into my office building downtown might be a little awkward, but with my new home equity, I could retire. Come on, guys, buy some SUV's, put in some pools, and have more children, I could use some help here.

So... based on a whole 7 years worth of "data", you actually feel comfortable in suggesting that this represents a significant "warming trend", and even further, that human activity is somehow responsible?

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".

Yes, and back in the 1970's, a "decent amount of opinion in the scientific community" told us that we were heading into another ice age,

That was based primarily on some media overhype and had very little scientific basis. I can give you references on that if you want. Aw heck: Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the '70's? No explains it well.

Nuclear is a pretty conservative cause, and it can help solve the problem of global warming, assuming there is one. Its a win/win.

That's what I'm thinking.

Other conservative ways to fight global warming by lessening CO2 emissions would be to:

1. Modernize West Coast ports to make them more efficient (hee hee)
2. Ban toll roads and bridges (fewer gas wasting bottle necks and fewer tax wasting gubmint workers)
3. Speed highway improvements in congested areas by via streamlining environmental studies and waiving prevailing wage and affirmative action regulations.
4. Exempting the home offices of telecommuters for OSHA regs and indemnifying employers for accidents that happen in the home offices of telecommuters.

Now let's see if the left signs on :-)

If it doesn't hurt our economy or curtail our freedoms, and reduces our vulnerability to terrorism, I'm fine with it. But I think the environmentalist agenda of scaring the daylights out of people is intended to render them psychologically prepared to place environmentalist concerns ahead of security and the free market.

You may call my stance a "do nothing" approach, but it isn't. It simply suggests that it is possible to cope by trying to adapt rather than cope by trying to prevent. Particularly when, according to this very article, it's not preventable. Remember? Even if we reduce carbon emissions by 70% by 2050...? Up to nine degrees warmer by 2100, regardless? We can try to prevent the unpreventable or we can adapt. Sounds to me like adapting is actually much more rational.

Perhaps when every little thing stops being hyped as evidence of global warming, the cause will become more believable.

Case in point: two summers ago we were informed of the number of consecutive days that the temp in Dallas was 95 or more. Each day's report had the not so subtle hint about global warming. 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.

Just a four meter rise in sea level would cause my house on a hill in San Diego to become ocean front property.

And think of all the cities that would become just like Venice! To heck with arks, I'm building a gondola! I don't know how, but hey, I've got 95 years to learn. Oh wait... 94! My how time flies when the sky is falling...

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.

Thanks for that link. I'd never seen a number for the amount of CO2 released by the Pinatubo eruption.

Your question is self-answerable. The reason for the cold winters was the SO2, which acted as an aerosol in the stratosphere and blocked some incoming solar radiation until it dissipated. 42 Mt is 6.4% of 656 Mt, and Pinatubo was the second-largest eruption of the 20th century -- annual normal volcanic CO2 emissions are much less. I quote a Web site frequently ("Gases: Man versus the Volcanoes") that estimates normal volcanic CO2 emission are 150x less than human (fossil fuel) emissions. Those emissions are why atmosheric CO2 is increasing. (And it won't destroy civilization but it will affect it, I think.)

OK, but you're still talking about data covering a few decades, or perhaps the last century. This is still an absurdly small sample, in comparison to the whole of climatic history spanning millions or billions of years.

It also makes the huge assumption that human activity is the cause, when there are many, many other possible causes. As someone else mentioned, volcanic activity and changes in solar activity/radiation, just to name two. CO2 levels are dependent on many things besides just how many cars we're driving around, or how many lumps of coal we're burning. That's the point I am trying to make: that no one can say that human activity is responsible, and to start trying to change our behavior to change CO2 levels is absurd.

Perhaps when every little thing stops being hyped as evidence of global warming, the cause will become more believable.

Not to mention some of the activists lie their *es off. I remember Ross Gelbspan, author of “The Heat Is On,” in a column for the Boston Globe telling people that two feet of snow had fallen in Los Angeles because of global warming. I live in Los Angeles. We did not see a flake of snow. Oh, later on it turns out he meant up in the mountains, 60 miles away. I think there's a ski resort up there so presumably the snow wasn't a big shock...

When environmentalists stop thinking entirely in terms of reducing emissions and start thinking in terms of more practical solutions, like how to increase the removal of CO2 greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, nuclear power, and alternative fuels that recycle carbon, I'll believe that they are anything other than Luddites masquerading as people who care about the environment.

Absolute bullshit. The CO2 level has been FAR HIGHER than 550 ppm, and yet global temperatures weren't signficantly higher. The dinosaurs seemed to thrive during the period.

Absolute bullshit. Global temperatures were much higher during the Cretaceous. The poles were forested, for heaven's sake.

This is still an absurdly small sample, in comparison to the whole of climatic history spanning millions or billions of years.

The relevant period is the last 10,000 years, a period of unusual climate stability. And I've also indicated, in this thread, the CO2 range of variability over the past 640,000 years. We are 30% out of that range (on the high side) now. Otherwise, understanding paleoclimate helps scientists understand current influences on climate, but is not directly comparable.

CO2 levels are dependent on many things besides just how many cars we're driving around, or how many lumps of coal we're burning. That's the point I am trying to make: that no one can say that human activity is responsible, and to start trying to change our behavior to change CO2 levels is absurd.

There are multiple lines of evidence indicating that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is due to human activity. Look at post 91, and you can even calculate the ppm annual change due to 656 Megatons annual CO2 emissions (but be careful because there may be unit conversions). There are other ways of proving it -- the Suess effect, stable carbon isotope dilution, is one way.

I agree with your final sentence. But... I say that changing our behavior and our energy infrastructure to reduce the economy's dependence on foreign oil is NOT absurd. I think that it's the prudent and patriotic thing to do, just as you and I would have gladly rationed a host of commodities to support the war effort during WWII.

All this hooey ignores the number one reason for increase or decrease in global temperatures worldwide, which has NOTHING to do with anything humans are doing.

Its called the SUN which is the source of all warmth the earth receives. It naturally goes through warming and cooling trends giving off more and less energy... The sun is currently increasing its output... which means more heat for us... This trend will end and less energy will reach the earth daily and the planet will cool again...

Going around and looking at how overfarming the land in mesopotamia caused civilization to collapse there is hardly evidence of man caused world wide warming or cooling of the planet.

Water molecules in the upper atmosphere have more direct impact on global heat absorbed/reflected/retained than any C02 nonsense.

C02 is PLANT FOOD.. its not something that's going to turn the earth into an oven.

like how to increase the removal of CO2 greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, nuclear power, and alternative fuels that recycle carbon,

Read some more. From what I've read, the environmental movement is strongly behind alternative fuels, Patrick Moore recently wrote an op-ed in favor of nuclear power, and there has been serious technical discussion (and some pilot plant activity) on carbon sequestration. I don't know the enviromental "opinion" on the latter.

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