When Hot Tempers -- Not Temperatures -- Create a Harsh Climate: Part 2 of 2

Stuart K. Hayashi


Continued from Part 1.


Don Newman's Pants on Fire?

Todd Shelly, who is known for working as a USDA researcher and entomologist at the University of Hawaii's Center for Conservation Research and Training (CCRT), ha[d] come to regularly denounce Grassroot Institute writer Don Newman in Hawaii Reporter [back in December 2004] for expressing doubt that the potential dangers of global warming necessitate the ratification of the Kyoto Accord.

This Kyoto Accord, of course, has the expressed purpose of reducing the effects of global warming by mandating draconian decreases in the amounts of carbon dioxide that heavy industries are allowed to emit.

Newman cited a petition from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM), signed by 17,100 scientists, saying that there is strong scientific evidence that global warming will not be severe enough to bring about doomsday by 2100 if human beings continue at their present rate of emitting carbon dioxide. This petition was accompanied by an explanatory essay authored by OISM founder-chairman Athur Robinson and his son Zachary, as well as Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics's Solar, Stellar, & Planetary Sciences Division (where Baliunas and Soon interpret the measurements of earth's temperature from satellites that orbit our planet).

It is quite facile for Todd Shelly to present, as objective facts, putdowns of Robinson and his organization from Disinfopedia.com [now called SourceWatch.Org] -- an openly propagandistic corporation-bashing organization whereby
the radical leftists Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber smear
free-market advocates and think tanks by making the arbitrary
accusation that the primary reason why anyone would defend the free market is because dirty corporations paid him to.

Disinfopedia.com's message is that the information presented by free-market think tanks or individuals may be skewed and that they intentionally omit mentioning important facts that undercut their case, because they are paid to make corporations look good at expense of the facts. It is particularly illogical (though predictable) that Disinfopedia's blacklist categorizes the Cato- and Competitive Enterprise Institutes as "industry-funded" to imply that they always side with businesses in every controversy, ignoring that the priority that the Cato and Competitive Enterprise Institutes place on free-market economics over specific corporations has led them to vociferously denounce the
government's practice of using tax dollars to subsidize
multi-billion-dollar corporations (see here for the Cato Institute's case and see this for the Competitive Enterprise Institute's).

In any case, it is ironic that Shelly himself apparently assumes that it's wrong to consider the possibility that perhaps government-funded science agencies may be beholden to funding pressures similar to those that Disinfopedia insists exists within "industry-funded" think tanks -- that perhaps government-funded environmental scientists, too, may downplay some important facts and make some overstatements about the urgency of their endeavors because it makes them look important enough to warrant more tax funding for their agencies.

Don Newman says that scientists in government-funded organizations that specialize in studying threats to the environment may feel pressure to "play up" or exaggerate how much trouble the environment is in so that they can maintain funding. If these scientists said that the environment is in not much worse shape today than it was in pre-industrial times, Newman opines, then that might lead politicians and the public to feel that their work isn't as urgent any more -- and then reduce their funding. Funding reductions could lead to pay reductions or lay-offs.

But if the scientists at these organizations "puff up" the case that the environment is in a catastrophic crisis, Newman maintains, then that creates a sense of urgency in the politicians and the electorate, so that voters will let politicians know how important it is to continue funding these agencies. That would make cuts in funding less likely, which makes pay cuts and downsizing less likely. The scientists' jobs would then be more secure, Newman says.

Of course, some people at these agencies more than likely believe that they do not have enough funding as it is, and that the politicians holding the purse strings and dispersing their funds are still tightwads (Shelly has, for example, unfairly blamed the college football program for "depriving" the University of Hawaii's academic departments of funds, as you can Shelly bemoan this here, here, here, and here. What those letters ignore is the fact that the coach's high salary -- which Shelly publicly decried -- is paid largely by private donors and that the UH athletics department generates 92 percent of its own funds while the other 8 percent is appropriately by the Hawaii State Legislature for the specific purpose of promoting athletics Of course, I, being a free-marketer would prefer that the athletics department provide all of its own funding).

Shelly then derides Don Newman's point by saying that Newman is calling all of these scientists outright "liars." That is an equivocation; one ought to notice the difference between manufacturing a complete fabrication and stretching the truth.

Stanford Biological Sciences professor Stephen Schneider put it this way in the October 1987 issue of Discover magazine:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but -- which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This "double ethical bind" we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

I find Schneider's sentiment a bit questionable. Interestingly, this man was presented as a highly eminent climate expert in a 2002 issue of Scientific American magazine, wherein he somewhat famously pilloried a statistician for voicing dissent on the Kyoto Accord.

Newman was not calling anyone an outright liar (see the piece in question here). What he and other critics sometimes worry is that scientists in environment-related institutions may have come to place too much emphasis on "being effective" and not enough on "being honest" in the "balance" Schneider spoke of.

That is not a conspiracy theory. Just as the Left (including Disinfopedia-turned-SourceWatch) often posits that the profit motive inherent to private business has created an "institutional bias" among the corporate community against regulations, one may consider the possibility that the government's method of financing scientific projects has adversely affected the incentives of those who receive government funds, possibly creating among them their own "institutional bias" with major blind spots.

A recent case in point is meteorologist Chris Landsea's recent resignation from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the international body that has drafted the reports which the U.N. studied in its drafting of the Kyoto Accord -- out of protest in January 2005.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research's Kevin Trenberth, who is the lead author of the IPCC's reports on climate change, publicly stated in October 2004 that manmade global warming has increased the frequency of hurricanes.

Dr. Landsea of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who is one of the world's foremost authorities on hurricanes, observed that Trenberth had no real proof of this. In a letter of resignation to the IPCC (look here), he did not deny that global warming is a concern, but he clearly explained that Trenberth's announcements were a "misrepresentation" of known data and that the IPCC has "politicized" science.

What really needs to be discussed here is the real point of contention that the Kyoto Accord's supporters have with the scientists who oppose it -- Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, NASA weather satellite experts John Christie and Roy W. Spencer, and MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen.

Leftists of Disinfopedia's ilk often accuse Baliunas and company of denying that "global warming is real." What does that mean?


Is "Global Warming" Real? -- Both "Yes" and "Maybe Not"

If you ask, "Is global warming real?", the proper reply is, "How do you define 'global warming'?"

If, by "global warming," you are referring to an approximately one-Celsius-degree warming of the earth from 1900 to the present, then global warming is certainly real.

But, if by "global warming is real" you mean, "If fossil fuel emissions are not drastically cut within the next 30 years, then by 2100 the United States and everywhere else will be besieged by increases of floods and famines and malaria outbreaks unprecedented in human history," then "global warming" might not be "real."

Todd Shelly brazenly berates Don Newman for doubting "global warming" because Shelly, like many others, insists that there is doubtlessly a strong scientific consensus on this topic.

That, too, is a confused assumption, as it gives the impression that all climate researchers (or at least the vast majority of them) are so alarmed by the potential disastrousness of global warming's effects that they know that humanity will suffer immense casualties if the Kyoto Accord is not ratified as a first step.

Let us now clarify where there is a consensus on global climate change.

1. The earth's temperature naturally changes.

2. The average temperature in the year 2000 was more than likely higher than it was in 1900. The temperature has risen over the twentieth century overall, though it has fluctuated throughout.

3. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that has the ability to warm the earth.

4. Human beings, like trees and diatoms, do have the ability to significantly contribute to changing earth's climate, particularly because of the CO2 emissions that come from modern industrialization.


However, what is not as widely agreed-upon by all of these scientists is whether (1) global warming will probably become particularly dangerous in the next 100 years by causing arctic meltdowns and floods and famines and the advancement of disease vectors, (2) whether the implementation of the Kyoto Accord will have a significant impact on curbing global warming at all, and (3) whether ratifying the treaty is necessary to preserve mankind.

"It is extraordinarily unlikely," MIT meteorologist Richard Linzen says at this point, "that you would find agreement on something that complex."


Why Would Any Scientist Be Reluctant to Support the Kyoto Accord?

What is the main area of contention that the so-called "skeptics" have with those proponents of implementing the Kyoto Treaty?

One important point is the discrepancy that exists between measurements of earth's temperature that have been taken on the ground for the past 20 years, versus those that have been taken by weather satellite in the same duration.

If one believes that the most reliable data on climate change comes from ground thermometers, then it definitely appears that the earth has warmed over the past several decades at an alarming rate. By 2100, the earth will have warmed up by a margin that is closer in magnitude to 5.8 degrees Celsius than 1.4 degrees C. If this trend does not stop, that could pose a lot of difficulties for mankind.

Yet weather satellites yield different data; they have come up with temperatures lower than those taken at ground level. If the trend that they show continues, then global warming will not likely bring about disaster in the next 100 years, as the earth will probably warm by a margin closer in size to 1.4 degrees C than 5.8 degrees C.

One advantage that weather satellites have over ground thermometers is that the ground-level ones only accounts for a third of the earth's surface, while satellites glide swiftly above the ocean and measure temperature in the atmosphere -- where the greenhouse gases are actually at work.

One possible explanation for this divergence is that it is the satellite data that are correct, while ground-level measurements are so high because they are typically taken near urban centers where the pavement absorbs a lot of heat. Thus, the city heats up at a faster rate than the actual atmosphere. This is known as the "urban heat island effect."

Of course, there are some imperfections with weather satellites, too, while some of Kyoto's scientific proponents claim to have developed computer models that factor out the "urban heat island effect" from their estimated measurements. The sufficiency of the extent to which they factor it out, of course, is still subject to question.

That is a case sometimes made by "skeptics" -- translation: Richard Lindzen, Willie Soon, and Sallie Baliunas. Todd Shelly's arguments would sound a lot more credible if he cited evidence that there was something wrong with their methodology or data, rather than deriding their credentials and dismissing them without even so much as addressing their evidence.

For those actually interested in honest debate, it should be stated that what I said about ground-temperature measurements versus satellite measurements is in the paper authored by Soon, Baliunas, and the Robinsons -- the one that accompanies the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine's (OISM's) global warming petition.

In that paper, they state that they believe that the satellite data are accurate because they are very precise in corresponding to the measurements that have also been taken by weather balloons, so this is not some anomaly exclusive to either kind of device.

The paper also states that the pre-industrial Medieval Era, in the duration of 800 A.D. to 1300 A.D., was hotter than any point between 1900 and today, when industrialization has seen its greatest expansion. (Also see this.) That conclusion is obviously not drawn from weather satellites of ground measurements with thermometers, but from the rings in the trunks of ancient trees (the width of a tree ring may be partially determined by average temperature).

Shelly chastises Newman for allegedly making simplistic generalizations about scientists. Yet it is Shelly who has stereotyped scientists by writing as if his support for the Kyoto Accord is an opinion universally shared by those working in fields pertaining to climate change.

Actually, as Lindzen said, the opinions among such scientists are more varied and nuanced. I once e-mailed a geophysicist who wrote a book on global warming and asked him about this controversy. He replied that he did not see a strong likelihood of global warming horribly endangering humanity, but that he favored the Kyoto Accord anyway, just to be cautious.

He said that global warming could cause a lot of problems for the Third World but not as many for the West, as industrialization does more to protect a society from climate change's adverse effects than to worsen it. Then he added that he thought it was misleading for the media to imply that global warming has harmed the biodiversity of the fish population around Hawaii, as he has not yet seen actual concrete evidence of that.


Time for Don Newman's Spanking?

For all the reasons listed above, as well as the simply unnecessary tone he used, Shelly appears to going quite overboard in berating Don Newman over some rhetorical bluster that appeared in Mr. Newman's editorials. Apparently, Mr. Newman said that the environmentalist movement has shown "hostility" to "economic activity."

In reply, Shelly draws out a (characteristically) sarcastic rant:

A group of climatologists, some nerdy guys wearing lab coats and playing with computer models, have the will and the means to stop economic activity on the planet? And why would climatologists want to do this exactly? Are they Chinese agents? Cuban agents? North Korean agents? I didn't realize that climatologists were such a politically disruptive bunch, driven to create anarchy and chaos. Imagine the surprised looks on the faces of those British diplomats who signed the Kyoto Treaty when they realize their scientists tricked them into abandoning free markets and capitalism.

[I guess he didn't notice that sarcasm warms out its welcome when it goes on for that long.]

In his piece, Newman exhibited some hyperbole, which many editorialists are wont to do, for better or worse. (Some of my readers have told me that my own writings use overly dramatic language.) I guess some editorialists, as environmentalist Stephen Schneider put it in a somewhat different context, are trying to find a "balance" between "being effective" and "being honest."

I don't know of any critics of the environmentalist movement who literally believe that all environmentalists, or even most of them, consciously yearn for the eradication of all economic activity. In light of the rhetoric of some environmentalists in Disinfopedia's far-Left circle, however, one can argue that the radical environmentalists' explicit philosophy, if taken to its logical conclusion, would lead to a society that would possibly be largely de-industrialized and more than likely restrictive of free enterprise.

As far as cutting back on shrill overstatement goes, however, Shelly does not go one better than Newman, as can be seen in the sarcastic tirades. Instead, Shelly resorts to "spin" far worse than melodramatic verbiage. Hence we see Shelly derogate the credentials of scientists with whom Shelly disagrees while refraining from refuting their arguments.


Better Safe Than Sorry?

Todd Shelly concludes one of his letters by raising the point that, even if global warming not turn out catastrophic, it would be better to implement the Kyoto Protocol just in case. Now why would anyone disagree with that? As he put it:

One argument central to global warming is whether it's better (and cheaper) to take actions now that minimize climate change or to simply "roll with the punches" and cope with changes as they occur. Given the potentially catastrophic changes resulting from global warming, wouldn't it be prudent to err on the conservative side and take steps to minimize our impact on the environment? Why create false demons (deranged climatologists) to justify a "hope for the best" attitude when the stakes are so high?

The possibility that the Kyoto Protocol may be passed raises many risks of its own. Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (yet another organization placed on Disinfopedia's petty blacklist) estimates that ratification of the Kyoto Accord could cut U.S. energy use by 25 percent. Some economists estimate that America's implementation of the Kyoto Accord could reduce the wealth of the domestic economy by trillions of dollars' worth of purchasing power.


By the calculations of Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates (WETA), implementing the Kyoto Accord would destroy about 2.4 million U.S. jobs and shrink the Gross Domestic Product by 3.2 percent (about $300 billion) every year.

Domestically, the prices of housing could rise by 7 percent, while the price of food would go up 11 percent, medicine 14 percent, and electricity over 50 percent, while the real income of an average household with four members would be reduced by $2,700 in A.D. 2010 and then again every subsequent year.

And for what? After thoroughly studying this issue, Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg (also on Disinfopedia's incredibly long blacklist) has noted that if the Kyoto Accord is passed, that will delay the warming of the earth by only six years. That is, if the average temperature is expected to increase by 5.8 Celsius degrees by 2100 if the Kyoto Accord is not implemented, then the average temperature will still rise by 5.8 degrees by 2106 if the Kyoto Accord is implemented. Should Americans support a policy that could easily reduce their national wealth by trillions of dollars in purchasing power, so that they can derive such a miniscule benefit?

To this, a number of environmentalists reply that passing the Kyoto Accord is only a good first step; even more measures like it must be levied.

I would think that only a minority of the Kyoto Accord's supporters explicitly desire for some halt on America's economic activity. However, the passage of the Kyoto Accord may result in somewhat crippling the country's wealth, and for little return. That worry may not come to fruition, but it is a rational, valid concern and plausible scenario that deserves better than someone's angry brush-off.

As for Todd Shelly's letters, I hope that in the future he focuses more on rational evidence and less on the sarcasm and on denigrating other people's credentials.


Recommended links:

From NASA: Information on the atmospheric temperature measurements
from weather satellites
One; Two; Three; Four; Five

Was the Medieval Period really warmer than the present?
One; Two;
Three

Frequently-Asked Questions on Global Warming, Answered by Mark Bahner, M.S. in Environmental Engineering

Environmental engineer Mark Bahner's blog on global warming;
http://markbahner.typepad.com

Interesting speech by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)

Bjorn Lomborg, statistics professor and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, answers Stanford Biological Sciences professor Stephen Schneider and his other critics
One; Two