A CASE AGAINST CLIMATE ALARMISM

Editor's Note: Our charter to report on clean technology and the status of species and ecosystems seems to always bring us back to one overriding distraction - global warming alarm - and small wonder. We are in the midst of one of the most dramatic transformations of political economy in the history of the world - and nobody is watching. "The debate is over on global warming," goes the consensus, and even if that were a healthy or accurate notion, why has this consensus translated into hardly any vigorous debate over what would be a rational response?

Despite ongoing rhetoric to the contrary from virtually every environmental nonprofit in existance, the United States has been an extraordinarily responsible nation. We listened to our environmental movement; we institutionalized it. On every front there has been huge progress over the past 30-40 years. Our air and water are orders of magnitude cleaner even though our population has doubled. Our landfills our ultra-safe. We have set aside vast tracts of wilderness, rescued countless endangered species. Our food supply is scrupulously monitored. And every year our technology and our prosperity delivers new options to eliminate more pollution and live healthier lives. So what happened?

In the rest of the world there is also reason for great optimism, despite some discouraging challenges that continue to grip humanity. Human population is voluntarily leveling off, so that within 25-30 years the number of people on planet earth will peak at around 8.5 billion - and every time the projection is revisited, that estimate drops. At an even faster pace, humanity is urbanizing - and this voluntary movement is taking people out of the vast and potentially endangered forests and other biomes faster than population increase replaces them. Land is becoming abundant again. So what's wrong?

Technology promises abundant energy within a few decades, using clean fossil fuel as we systematically replace it with solar, nuclear, run-of-river hydroelectric, enhanced geothermal, wind, possibly biofuel. Technology promises abundant water within a few decades, as we learn how to recycle every drop of water used in the urban environment, convert many crops to drip irrigation, and develop massive desalination capacity. So why don't we get to work?

The reason is because of global warming alarm. The bells of warning are ringing so loud that CO2 is all that matters anymore. Want to stop using petroleum? Then burn the rainforests for biofuel. Want to stop using coal? Then forget about installing affordable scrubbers to remove the soot that billows from coal fired power plants across burgeoning Asia - why clean up something that needs to be shut down? Want to save allegedly scarce open space? Then cram everyone into ultra-high density "infill" and destroy every semi rural neighborhood in the western world. Make housing unaffordable, then mandate taxpayer-subsidized affordable housing. And do it all in the name of reducing CO2 emissions.

Today, after reading two documents from the website of the Attorney General of California, "Mitigation Measures," and "Global Warming Contrarians and the Falsehoods they Promote," I became so alarmed at what we are willingly, blindly bringing upon ourselves because of all this CO2 alarm that I contacted Dr. Richard Lindzen, who has already contributed two lengthy articles to EcoWorld, "Current Behavior of Global Mean Surface Temperature," and "Is There a Basis for Global Warming Alarm?" I asked Dr. Lindzen if he still held the views he does. He replied emphatically in the affirmative, and sent me the article that follows. Dr. Lindzen, along with Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr., with whom EcoWorld recently published the exclusive "Interview with Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr.," are both internationally respected atmospheric scientists. And both of them, in somewhat different ways, are quite concerned about the overemphasis on CO2.

Anyone who is championing extreme measures to reduce anthropogenic CO2 should attempt for themselves to understand the science. As Dr. Lindzen wrote me earlier today, policymakers such as Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger "can be excused given the degree to which the environmental movement has taken over the professional societies."

"Science" has become the trump card that drowns out reason - what great irony. And the scientific establishment itself has become politicized. And if you read the mitigation measures being proposed, just imagine if there was nothing we could do to affect global warming - which even some of the lead authors of the IPCC studies themselves acknowlege - and see if you want to live in the brave new world we are leading ourselves into by our own gullible noses.

Dramatic and positive global economic and technological developments, along with voluntary and irreversible global demographic trends, are about to deliver us a future where we enjoy unprecedented environmental health, abundance and prosperity. But to do this we need to preserve our economic and personal freedoms. Will the measures being proposed - especially in trendsetting California - fruitlessly combat a problem that doesn't exist, crush economic growth and trample on individual freedom, and rob humanity of this hopeful destiny?
- Ed "Redwood" Ring

The Fluid Envelope - A Case Against Climate Alarmism
by Dr. Richard Lindzen, February 2008

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations.

Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the Goebbelian substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well.

Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and previous warm periods appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages.

Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we dont fully understand either the advance or the retreat. For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century. Supporting the notion that man has not been the cause of this unexceptional change in temperature is the fact that there is a distinct signature to greenhouse warming: surface warming should be accompanied by warming in the tropics around an altitude of about 9km that is about 2.5 times greater than at the surface.

Measurements show that warming at these levels is only about 3/4 of what is seen at the surface, implying that only about a third of the surface warming is associated with the greenhouse effect, and, quite possibly, not all of even this really small warming is due to man. This further implies that all models predicting significant warming are greatly overestimating warming. This should not be surprising. According to the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from man made greenhouse gases is already about 86 % of what one expects from a doubling of CO2 (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons and ozone), and alarming predictions depend on models for which the sensitivity to a doubling for CO2 is greater than 2C which implies that we should already have seen much more warming than we have seen thus far, even if all the warming we have seen so far were due to man.

This contradiction is rendered more acute by the fact that there has been no significant global warming for the last ten years. Modelers defend this situation by arguing that aerosols have cancelled much of the warming, and that models adequately account for natural unforced internal variability. However, a recent paper (Ramanathan, 2007) points out that aerosols can warm as well as cool, while scientists at the UKs Hadley Centre for Climate Research recently noted that their model did not appropriately deal with natural internal variability thus demolishing the basis for the IPCCs iconic attribution. Interestingly (though not unexpectedly), the British paper did not stress this. Rather, they speculated that natural internal variability might step aside in 2009, allowing warming to resume. Resume? Thus, the fact that warming has ceased for the past decade is acknowledged.

Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) strongly suggests that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such warming is similarly diminished.

However, the really important point is that the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc. etc. all depend not on some global average of surface temperature, but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind.

The state of the ocean is also often crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal. Yet, each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe actually occurring is almost zero. This was equally true for earlier forecasts: famine for the 1980's, global cooling in the 1970's, Y2K and many others. Regionally, year to year fluctuations in temperature are over four times larger than fluctuations in the global mean. Much of this variation has to be independent of the global mean; otherwise the global mean would vary much more.

This is simply to note that factors other than global warming are more important to any specific situation. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.

Given the above, one may reasonably ask why there is the current alarm, and, in particular, why the astounding upsurge in alarmism of the past 2 years. When an issue like global warming is around for over twenty years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue.

The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power and influence are reasonably clear. So too are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of CO2 is a dream-come-true.

After all, CO2 is a product of breathing itself. Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted because it is necessary for saving the world. Nations have seen how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. But, by now, things have gone much further.

The case of ENRON is illustrative in this respect. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, ENRON had been one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to over a trillion dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions. Hedge funds are actively examining the possibilities. It is probably no accident that Gore, himself, is associated with such activities . The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to ones carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant.

The possibilities for corruption are immense. Archer Daniels Midland (Americas largest agribusiness) has successfully lobbied for ethanol requirements for gasoline, and the resulting demand for ethanol is already leading to large increases in corn prices and associated hardship in the developing world (not to mention poorer car performance).

And finally, there are the numerous well meaning individuals who have allowed propagandists to convince them that in accepting the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue For them, their psychic welfare is at stake.

With all this at stake, one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed.

About the Author: Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(http://web.mit.edu). This article is reprinted here with permission from the author.

Ug. What we have here is a failure to communicate.

We are indeed miscommunicating. I was not disagreeing with your point, simply elaborating.

I agree, a starving person will eat the last Bald Eagle or Spotted Owl without a pang of guilt. Only when people are living well above the survival margin will they have the "altruism" to give a damn about nature. In fact, only wealthy societies have the luxury to see nature as a wonder to be preserved as opposed to nature being the enemy that is trying to kill them.

My point was that some have moved so far beyond that margin that they have the desire to 'preserve nature at all costs' even if those costs aew to the detriment of their fellow humans -- not themselves, mind you, but only to their social inferiors. They do it only for their enjoyment, hence, the King's hunting preserve analogy.

Example. They become convinced DDT is 'bad' and if a few tens of millions of poor black kids happen to die for the lack of DDT --- well, too bad.

WHY DO EVEN CONS THINK EARTH NEEDS CARING FOR?

Excuse me, but I do habitat restoration, nearly full time. I can show you deserts created by neglect, where once they had been three feet deep in grass when they were grazed. We have 140 million acres of Forest Service land alone, at risk of catastrophic fire, which will result in watershed degradation. We have 50 million acres Forest Service land alone consisting of decadent chaparral ready to blow up. We have thousands of square miles of desert where once there was savanna, resulting from grazing restrictions. We have 22 million acres of starthistle drying out the ground in California alone. All are due to neglect, and if you think it doesn't matter economically, I give you the fires in San Diego and San Bernardino Counties in only the last five years.

Some of us know how to couple the commands of Genesis 1 with the strictures of Parashiot Behar Sinai and B'chukotai (Leviticus 25 & 26). Some of us understand that a healthy rural economy is dependent upon healthy habitat, the core of national defense. Apparently you don't.

You said “Without people on the land, it can’t be cared for. It’s a huge problem.” I still disagree. So long as there aren’t people on the land, there is a good argument to let fires and other catastrophic natural disasters run their course.

First of all, you clearly have no idea that I've written an entire book dealing with this topic in detail. Had you even taken the time to check out my page, go to my site and read the reviews, your post would not have been so flippant. Thus my conclusion is that you are both opinionated and lazy regardless of how much you think you know. I am not going to spend much time educating you.

Second, you obviously haven't dealt with the aftermath of catastrophic fire, as I have on a small scale. You haven't witnessed the erosion and weed infestations common after such events. The latter is NOT reversible on a large scale and can be terribly destructive.

Third, you seem to prefer to believe the eco-drivel of groups funded by the tax-exempt foundations of corporate wealth with big investments at stake and the government agencies beholden to them laden with bureaucrats looking for a cause to milk.

Fourth, you ignore the opinions of those who have spent their lives in the forest believing your preferred cadre to be somehow interested only in its benefit. Such is hardly the case. Only if things are going bad does your gang of thugs gain the justification to socialize ever more private property. From what I've seen, the admitted disaster that is government land fits that description perfectly.

Finally, when a real disaster hits this country, one so big that an incompetent FEMA is easily overwhelmed, you probably expect those same rural landowners to care for you. They'll be gone. You and your craven, shallow, and ignorant ilk will have destroyed them with your covetousness. It could be different, but you don't care about them either.

Wow what an obnoxious blowhard. You have been hanging out with to many tree huggers. You have adopted the tactic of the enviroweenies who flip out the moment anyone says anything that doesn't fit their orthodoxy. You called me flippant? What a thin skin. I suggest you find another forum if my being flippant sends you around the bend. Either way, you are so offensive that any attempt for us to have any meaningful dialogue is lost. Take your vanity book and shove it up your ass.

I've read a lot about it. Your argument that I haven't dealt with it first hand is the same tired illogic that lefties use to attack people who supported the Iraq war but had never served. The aftermath of fire is part of a recovery process called forest succession. After a fire occurs the forest will go through predictable stages of regeneration. But regenerate, it will.

Will you please take the tinfoil hat off when you post. You ascribe beliefs and motivations to me out of whole cloth. You take the position that depopulation of ecosystems is a bad thing and that fire is bad for forest ecosystems. Those are two positions that go against everything I've ever read. Granted I am a layman but it seems to me that you are the one going against the accepted position of most environmentalists and ecologists. More people interfering in a forest ecosystem bad. Less people interfering in a forest ecosystem good. Got it?

Again with the tinfoil hat talk. I have no gang of thugs you loon. Socialize private property? What the heck are you talking about? That is the last thing I would propose to do. I started this thread with an article that supports free market solutions to environmental issues and reduced governmental intervention.

What an idiot. For one, disasters are disasters by definition because they do massive damage beyond our abilities to prevent them from happening. They have happened before and they will happen again. You can't stop disasters from happening. You can only limit the damage. I am all for reasonable precautions and preparations for the next disaster that comes down the pike. Yes FEMA displayed gross incompetence during Katrina. That was after the disaster happened. What about before? How much money should tax payers had paid to reduce the casualties to say 1/10th the casualties that occurred and that's assuming no incompetence on the part of FEMA and everyone else? For a hurricane that might not have happened at that exact spot for another 50 years or more. And wouldn't we have to allocate recourses not only for New Orleans but also every other major city susceptible to hurricanes as well? Hey don't leave my little Delaware out. Hurricane Hugo kicked our butt because it violated massive odds and traveled right up the Chesapeake Bay to mess with us. Rural farmers helping us out? Give me a break. That would be a drop in the bucket compared to what we urban dwellers yearly pay to help out our rural countrymen for disaster relief. Read a few things by this guy William F. Shughart II. I think he knows a bit more about resource allocation and disaster relief than you or me.

"Katrina's main lesson ought to be that, no matter how much money and how many resources it commands, government is institutionally incapable of foreseeing and mobilizing prompt responses to crisis conditions. While privatizing some of the functions of FEMA merits serious consideration, at the end of the day people who choose to live and work in disaster-prone areas must learn to rely more heavily on themselves. Self-help, not government help, is the surest route to preparedness, relief, and recovery."
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17876

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