I was checking on the latest news about the Creationist Museum [1], and found myself browsing a conservative blog site, Townhall.com. The hot issue of the day is debunking the whole Al Gore Global Warming issue. Try this post [2], for a taste.
What truly bugged me is that, among the innumerate and sometimes marginally literate responses, there was a kernel of actually reasonable doubt. Those who follow the actual science (a minority on that site) know that there is no doubt about the present warming trend, nor about the unprecedented rise in fossil CO2 in the last century. However, there is no certain model for the causality leading to or spawning from these facts.
Doomsayers love the fantastic, sudden, apocalyptic models of global warming that Hollywood likes to portray. It’s quite dramatic, and cannot be ruled out. However, most models show that the big and civilization-altering changes that are likely to occur will take generations to notice. The present conservative movement is more interested in the next fiscal quarter than the next generation. Therefore, this is not a “real” problem.
The real problem with the Gore campaign is that it is covered as a binary issue. Either Global Warming is a big and serious and immediate problem that requires drastic solutions, or it an imaginary scare tactic. The truth is somewhere in between. Fossil atmospheric carbon dumping is (and will be) a tiny blip in history. Maybe three centuries total out of the almost hundred centuries (so far) of human civilization (or 46,000,000 centuries of geological record).
What scares me is the total ignorance expressed of what Global Warming really is. Everything I read talks about the average temperature rising. Most people hear this and assume that a degree of temperature rise means adding a degree to every reading we now have. In practice, it means adding energy to the weather system, which means wider spreads from highs to lows. Sharper warm and cool fronts. Bigger low and high pressure systems. Faster transitions from one to the next. Bigger winds. Bigger storms. Heavier winters and harder summers.
Before a hundred centuries ago, weather was much more severe than it has been since (if you believe all the separate ice core studies). The average temperature didn’t change much at that time. What changed was the ocean currents [3]. When the polar ice caps melt, these currents will likely be changed, and we’ll likely lose the weather-calming effects of some of the boundary currents.
But the main question raised by innumerate climate-change doubters is whether any of the warming can be attributed to human activity. After all, they argue, climates changed many times before we discovered fossil fuels. This is easily addressed by a simple analogy. People died long before there was random gunfire in crowded places. Why should we believe that this gunfire causes death?
They argue that CO2 variations existed before fossil fuels, and that a rise in CO2 preceded most ice ages. Well, historical variations were never as fast as in the last century, and a northern ice age may well be a symptom of global warming.
They argue that two thermometers in the same town give different readings, that two adjacent thermometers in a dollar store bin give different readings. So how can we possibly know the average global temperature? Well, send these people to a remedial statistics course. Then to a primer on how to calibrate instruments, and how to tell an instrument from a wall decoration. Then give them a crash course in modern meteorology. Yet I still doubt they will see the point.
They argue that, even if “we” cut back on emissions, the rest of the world will continue to make up for it. Analogy: They’re shooting each other over there, so shouldn’t we keep doing it over here to speed up the process?
They get to the bottom line: But it would affect my media-driven, market-pushed lifestyle! Duh. The bottom line is money. They claim that Gore, the VP who actively worked to cut Government size and inefficiency, is in it to make Government bigger. Unlike “W”, who presided over the biggest increase in Government size and intrusiveness since the New Deal (that latter country-saving measure was later ruled unconstitutional).
But the bottom line is that people don’t want to change. Especially if the change means taking personal responsibility for the quality of their own environment. Serves me right for trying to listen to the other side.
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