"Several times during the questioning, you could hear the witnesses, and the room, draw in its collective breath at some outstandingly bone-headed, ill-informed remark."
And that was without Maurice's testimony.
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I know that some of you reading this item may be under the mistaken impression that the world's atmospheric scientists have reached a general consensus that there might be something to this claim that humans are putting so much extra CO2 into the atmosphere that the planet is heating up.
Oh No! It’s Politics Again!
There was a hearing this week about the reality of climate change. One of the Republicans involved, Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY) was quick to deplore the controversies about climate change: "One of the issues about all this global warming is that it seems to be becoming immersed in total politics." Looking around the hearing room, Whitfield pleaded for comity: "As members of Congress, it's helpful if we all could be less emotional on this issue. If we can make this less sensational in any way possible then we all benefit from that."
Whitfield’s plea is what you do in Congress when your side has just taken a heavy blow. And there is no doubt that the Republican climate skeptics are reeling from the arrival at the end of February of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC has been studying climate change for quite some time. This year’s report is the 4th in a series. There were 152 lead authors, and another 400 scientists served as contributing authors. Not too shabby.
Here’s what this 600-person IPCC consensus report concluded about humans and global warming. I am presenting all of the main conclusions from the Executive Summary for Policy Makers. The language is a little stiff, but it's worth reading through once before you read about how the Republicans are distorting the IPCC's conclusions.
"Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years (see Figure SPM-1). The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land-use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.
The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has improved since the Third Assessment Report (TAR), leading to very high confidence that the globally averaged net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, with a radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] W m-2.
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.
At continental, regional, and ocean basin scales, numerous long-term changes in climate have been observed. These include changes in Arctic temperatures and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones10.
Paleoclimate information supports the interpretation that the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1300 years. The last time the polar regions were significantly warmer than present for an extended period (about 125,000 years ago), reductions in polar ice volume led to 4 to 6 metres of sea level rise.
Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations12. This is an advance since the TAR’s conclusion that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”. Discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns (see Figure SPM-4 and Table SPM-2).
For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected.
Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century.
There is now higher confidence in projected patterns of warming and other regional-scale features, including changes in wind patterns, precipitation, and some aspects of extremes and of ice.
Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized."
Republicans in the House of Representatives who serve on one of the committees with prime jurisdiction over climate change aren’t buying the IPCC’s conclusion. The Republicans mounted their counter-IPCC attack on Wednesday, February 7, 2007, at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality.
Subcommittee chair Rick Boucher (D-VA) gave the Republican climate skeptics a big opening by entitling the hearing, “Climate Change: Are Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Human Activities Contributing to a Warming of the Planet?”
Scientific Ignorance
Given the responsibilities of the committee, few of the Republican members who attacked the IPCC appeared to be deeply informed, based on their questions and assertions.
Here’s John Sullivan (R-OK): “I’m trying to learn a lot about it [climate change], I don’t know much about it, maybe someone could help me with some of these things.”
Sullivan struggled with the concept of estimating temperatures before the modern era. He asked, “1,300 years ago, what kind of meteorologists were on the planet, and what kind of thermometers did they use, and where were the weather stations?...” After a short pause, Sullivan relented slightly: “Let’s just say 500 years ago.”
Dr. Gabriele Hegerl (see list of witness and their affiliations below) patiently explained that in the absence of ancient meteorologists, scientists use indicators that follow changes in the climate, like tree rings, or independent indicators like the records of major volcanic eruptions in ice cores from the Greenland.
Sullivan, after noting that water vapor makes up 96% of naturally occurring greenhouse gases, asked “is there anything we can do to change that [the water vapor in the atmosphere].”
Showing great restraint, none of the witnesses tried to answer Sullivan’s question directly. After listening to a brief discussion about the role of water vapor, Sullivan wandered back into questioning mode. Was it possible for the models which scientists were using to study global warming to predict temperatures exactly?
Dr. Hegerl quickly said “No.”
Sullivan then addressed all the witnesses with this probing question:
“Would you agree that this is pretty complicated stuff? Would most of you agree with that?"
The panelists shook their heads in agreement with Sullivan’s blinding insight.
Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) had another bombshell question that I’m sure none of the witnesses, or any of the 200 people in the hearing room had ever heard. Shimkus said he had dinner with a classmate who was a NASA astronaut. His classmate told him how thin the atmosphere looked when you were up in space. Shimkus asked whether global warming could cause “the destruction of the atmosphere as we know it, the breakup of the atmosphere as we know it. Is Earth at risk of just being a rock plummeting through space?” [Emphasis added]
There was a slight but noticeable sucking in of breath as people in the room looked around at each other wondering if they had really heard what they just heard. The witnesses squirmed noticeably before Dr. Michael Oppenheimer finally choked out a short two-word answer: “Probably not.”
Kyoto Didn’t Make a Difference
Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY) raised another standard climate skeptic argument. There had been a great “hue and cry around the world about how catastrophic” life would be if the U.S. did not adopt the Kyoto Protocol. Yet Whitfield said that studies showed that even if all the nations had adopted and carried out their Kyoto obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the long term effect on global warming would have been very slight.
Dr. Michael Oppenheimer gently rebuked Whitfield, pointing out that everyone who took the Kyoto process seriously understood that the treaty was only a first very small step, and that everyone knew perfectly well that the treaty would not make much difference unless further more aggressive steps were taken.
Who Trusts Climate Models?
The Republicans also pursued the standard skeptic attacks on the adequacy of the computer models used to forecast the effects of global warming. This line of attack exploits the public’s misunderstanding of how scientists handle the uncertainties that are inherent in modeling the planet’s complex climate system. Decades of work and data have gone into developing today’s models to their current states. At this point, the best models provide a good approximation of the actual changes in the planet’s climate for the immediate past.
But as several of the witnesses noted, everyone in the field knew that the models were not perfect, and that the model-building process was a continuing one, as new data became available, and new opportunities arose to test the models against new data. Dr. Oppenheimer said he was particularly concerned about the weakness of modeling for the behavior of the Greenland and Antarctic ice shelves. In the worst case, if both ice shelves melt, sea levels could rise by 20 feet or more, although Oppenheimer emphasized that such a massive rise would still take place over a century or two, not in a few years.
Why were so many scientists more and more confident in the predictions of these models?
Dr. James Hurrell, Director of the Climate and Global Dynamics Division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, explained that if you took today’s models, and ran them without the “anthropogenic forcings” (i.e., the extra CO2 and other greenhouse gases released by human activities), the models no longer explained the changes in the climate since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Natural changes, like variations in sunspot activity, were not sufficient to explain the planet’s rising temperatures. Only when human activities are added in do the models produce results that agree with today’s temperature measurements.
Climate Skeptic-Lite
Dr. Roni Avissar presented what you might think of as a climate skeptic-lite critique. He attacked the climate models, but not head on. Instead, he cited studies that he and others had done of climate change on a regional level, studies which came to conclusions that were different than predictions from the global climate models.
Avasar said he was not disputing most of the results of the IPCC. He said he thought the global models did not account properly for the impact of land use changes, like the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon to grow sugarcane for ethanol production. He mentioned the need for better modeling of cloud cover, fires, and aerosols.
Oppenheimer, Hegerl, and Hurrell all agreed that Avasar was correct in calling for better models. But they insisted that the global models had demonstrated good results at the global scale for which they were designed, and that these models would be amended and altered as we learned how to do a better job modeling clouds or aerosols.
“Where there is no energy, life is brutal and short.”
The Republicans on the committee and one of the witnesses painted a very bleak picture indeed of any effort to tackle climate change. In the Republican view, nothing less than the survival of civilization as we know it is at stake.
Dr. John Christy, a professor at the University of Alabama and the Alabama state climatologist, delivered by far the most emotional views on the role of energy. (A short aside: a quick Google search immediately disclosed that Christy had been affiliated for many years with some of the leading right-wing anti-climate change organizations, including the George C. Marshall Institute, the Independent Institute, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Christy was the author of a chapter titled "The Global Warming Fiasco" in a book entitled Global Warming and Other Eco-myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death which was edited by Ronald Bailey, who career has been based on attacking environmentalists and major portions of federal environmental policy. Strangely enough, no Democratic member made many mention of Christy's extensive connections and work with organizations with long histories of denying the existence of global warming.)
Christy told the committee that he was both a missionary and a scientist, and had worked in Africa as a missionary before his science career. In Africa, Christy said (echoing the philosopher Thomas Hobbs), he had learned:
Where there is no energy, life is brutal and short."
Christy ran through some calculations about what he claimed was the relationship between increased energy use and the average human life span. In 1900, he calculated that there were 56 billion human life years. Today he said there were 426 billion human life years, “and some of these years are mine.”
“I’ve been allowed to become a grandparent,” Christy said, referring to the energy/increased life span numbers he had just offered. He talked about how the use of firewood for indoor heating and cooking in Africa was responsible for the deaths of more than a million people a year.
And he told a dramatic story about driving on a rough road and coming up on a woman carrying 50 pounds of firewood on her head. Suddenly she jumped into the road in front of his oncoming car. She was willing to risk her life, Christy claimed, to get a ride and relief from carrying her heavy load.
The expanded use of energy has brought the world “astounding benefits,” Christy said, and he predicted that “Energy demand will grow….How can we reduce emissions without raising energy costs, especially for poor people?”
Christy then repeated one of the oldest clichés in the climate skeptic book: “Helping people develop economically is fastest way to giving people the tools they need to adapt to climate change." (Note the choice of words carefully: we need economic development to help people adapt to climate change, not control climate change, or limit climate change.)
Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) strongly rejected Christy’s view that efforts to control climate change would be economically disastrous. He started by reading from Christy’s prepared statement:
“It disturbs me when I hear that energy and its by products are being demonized when in fact they represent the greatest achievement of our society.”
Citing Thomas Hobbes by name, Markey pointed out that Hobbes was actually arguing for the need to have government in place to fix problems that would otherwise occur in a state of nature. Markey disagreed with Christy’s characterization of concern about global warming as “demonizing energy.” Taking a gentle poke at Christy’s reasoning that identifying something as harmful was "demonizing" Markey said:
“Science has demonized tobacco. Science demonized excessive exposure to radiation. I think you understate the role that science played in giving us the warnings, …technologies can both do good and harm at the same time.”
Christie rose immediately to the bait:
"The basic point is that people like me are alive today, because of that CO2 that’s in the atmosphere now. In my experience in Africa, energy demand will rise tremendously. When you throw in the rest of the world, I don’t see how something short of a global depression would cause CO2 levels to fall."
Rep. Shimkus chimed in here:
"At risk of being defined as a Neanderthal, I’m a creationist. God calls us to be good stewards. Mr. Christy’s comments about life in a carbon world, and the benefits of a carbon world, the life we live as middle class Americans because of electricity and power, I’m one of 7 kids, I probably would have died in the Middle Ages. We can’t just throw that out in this debate."
After this faith-based testimony, Shimkus then asked another of those questions that left the witnesses and the audience sitting in silence:
"We hear the term balance, capping emissions of CO2. Is there a way to put a balance without capping CO2? My staff is going to have to give me the formulae….can we emit something up into the atmosphere, less costly than just destroying our ability to live in a fossil fuel society we benefit from?"
Taking a manful stab in the dark, Dr. Hurrell suggested that if Shimkus was referring to geoengineering, there had been very little discussion of the topic, and that any large-scale efforts could have major unanticipated side effects. Dr. Oppehenheimer jumped in and said that “In the end, CO2 has to be limited.”
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) was not willing to let Christy’s testimony go. He asked Christy, what would happen if we were willing to “sacrifice” and bring CO2 emissions down 60%.
Christy came back with the most chilling answer of all (to members of Congress): "I don’t think you’d be relected. The economy would be almost totally destroyed. The only way to do this would be with massive nuclear power.”
Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) then went after Christy’s effort to cloak his climate skepticism in religious garb:
"If I understand your working hypothesis, we’ll have to live in Stone Age, because you don’t believe that mankind has been given the intelligence [to find better solutions.]" Inslee cited the conclusion of a report by Christian Aid, which found that “climate change is the most significant single threat to development.”
Inslee then asked Christy if he had heard of a number of innovative companies, including Nanosolar Corporation, A123, and General Compression. Christy was not familiar with any of these companies, but he tried to sidestep Inslee’s rhetorical trap. “Americans are innovative, and I’m all for it, if I don’t have to pay twice as much.”
Throughout the hearing, the Republicans repeatedly attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's announced goal of voting on a climate change bill by July 4, 2007. The uncertainities were too great to act in such a short period of time; much more study was needed, better models, the same array of arguments that climate skeptics have been using for more than a decade to stall action. Over and over, the subcommittee's Republicans raised the spectre of massive economic dislocations.
But sitting in the hearing room, I came away with the sense that the Republicans knew they were fighting a doomed rear-guard action. The outlandish assertions and the scientifically ignorant blustering have begun to be embarrassing, the kind of language that grown-ups do not use in public. Several times during the questioning, you could hear the witnesses, and the room, draw in its collective breath at some outstandingly bone-headed, ill-informed remark.
Too many people are seeing the effects of climate change with their own eyes. I sit here typing, looking at my little front yard, where my daffodils lie limply, having popped up in early January, instead of late February. They were about to burst into bloom, when an icy snow blew in last week and knocked them flat.
Where did you see climate change today?
*****
Hearing Witnesses, March 7, 2007
Dr. Michael Oppenheimer
Professor of Geosciences and
International Affairs
Princeton University
Woodrow Wilson School
Princeton, NJ 08544
Dr. John R. Christy
Professor and Director
Earth System Science Center, NSSTC
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Huntsville, AL 35805
Dr. Gabriele Hegerl
Associate Research Professor
Earth and Ocean Sciences Division
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708-0287
Dr. James W. Hurrell
Director, Climate and Global
Dynamics Division
National Center for
Atmospheric Research
Boulder, CO 80307-3000
Dr. Roni Avissar
Professor and Chair
Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708-0287
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