Commentary: Discouraging words from the scientific front on globa l warming

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Commentary: Discouraging words from the scientific front on globa l warming Thursday, 23 November 2000 22:24 (ET)

Commentary: Discouraging words from the scientific front on global warming By PHILIP E. CAPP

(The following is one in a series of commentaries from experts with varying perspectives who are attending the World Conference on Climate Change at The Hague.)

WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 (UPI) -- We should be grateful that diplomats and government officials from more than 160 countries are working feverishly to negotiate a treaty for reducing greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere, because the news from the scientific front is not good.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a definitive group of some 2,500 international scientists, are about to release their "Third Assessment" report concluding the outlook for the future is worse than they thought. Until recently, the scientific community concurred that a worst case scenario for global warming would bring an average temperatures rise of 6.3 degrees over the next century. New data and analyses, however, about to be released in the panel's latest report, indicate that previous estimates seriously underestimated the extent of warming likely to occur over the next 100 years.

New evidence indicates that the upper range of warming over the next century could, under the worst case, push average global temperatures 11 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they were in 1990. By comparison, average temperatures today are only 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they were at the end of the last Ice Age.

This discouraging news is due to a compounding of our problems. First, there is the world-wide dependence on fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide and other harmful gases during combustion and which trap heat from the Earth in the atmosphere. Since the advent of the Industrial Age, the concentrations of these gases have risen by 30 percent and the trend shows no sign of slowing as annual concentrations of greenhouse gases, especially from industrialized countries, continue to increase.

But now a second contributory factor has been identified. Until very recently, emissions of other pollutants from fossil fuel burning tended to cool the atmosphere, lessening the impact of global warming. It seems the thin layer of tiny particles of sulfates from the unfiltered burning of coal and oil which contribute to smog and acid rain also prevent some of the sun's heat from reaching the Earth.

IPCC scientists suspect that these sun-blocking particles have probably offset substantial warming. As clean air becomes a higher priority in more and more countries and air pollution from smokestacks and tailpipes is filtered out, however, warming from carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will increase.

Even if other explanations are included -- solar flaring or cyclic changes in the solar system -- the inescapable fact of global warming remains. This can be seen in climate data collected over the last few years, which have been substantially warmer than any similar period in many centuries. Other indicators of this warming are receding glaciers, thinning polar ice caps, and warmer nighttime temperatures.

To their credit, the delegates to treaty negotiations in The Hague, along with almost every nation on the face of the Earth, have stopped dithering over the last scientific details because the principal causes of climate change are now clear. Any country with coastal waters has already begun to feel the effects of rising sea levels from global warming. The rate of increase has been 10 times greater in the last century than the average rate over the last 3,000 years. Summer heat waves, too, are intensifying, and with them the incidence of health problems and heat-related deaths. Disease-carrying mosquitoes, once limited to tropical climes, now range freely as far North as southern Connecticut.

Although the short-term impacts from rising seas, melting glaciers and new insects are serious enough, these phenomena are the just the beginning of a trend that, once set in motion, will continue for the next century and beyond.

This explains why even the most vocal and articulate skeptics of mainstream science for climate change and its causes cannot deny the inherent reality: The human influence on the earth's climate is now established. No wonder negotiations in The Hague are proceeding in earnest.

(Philip E. Capp is the president of the National Environmental Trust in Washington, D.C.)

http://www.burstnet.com/cgi-bin/ads/ad8226a.cgi/2732/RETURN-CODE

-- Carl Jenkins (somewherepress@aol.com), November 24, 2000

Answers

Discouraging words from the scientific front on global warming sounds more like propaganda than a reasoned and rational discussion. The scientific front is anything but united on the matter. I would be more impressed by specific claims of qualified individuals than unattributed scare stories which appeal more to emotion than reason.

No explanation is given of from whom and on what basis the "new Evidence" comes to push average global temperatures 11 degrees higher in the next 100 years. Presumably it is the same computer models/simulations used in the past. The problem with these models is there is not enough known about the complex process atmospheric process to make accurate and reliable temperature projections.

It is interesting to note that James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was one of if not the first to make future temperature predictions using computer models (1). Being an honest man, he has since thrown in the towel when predictions based on his computer model did not come to pass. But, that's the way real science works. You observe, hypothesize and test. If the tests do not support your hypothesis. You observe some more and so on.

Richard Linzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, admits, as do many in the field, that here had to be a human component to climate change but that the important question is whether the influence is practically significant or not. His work suggests some of what is wrong with the computer models (1). It is to be published in the February issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorology Society.

Prof Fred Singer, meteorologist at U. of Virginia points out that according to tree rings, coral reef and ice core bore holes, the world has not warmed since 1940 (2). Further, satellite measurements three miles up show no warming. It is surface warming measurements which show some, which may be influenced by "heat islands" caused by urbanization. It is incumbent upon responsible scientists to resolve these not inconsequential matters before coming up with a solution for which there may not be a problem.

It is far from the case, as claimed, that climate changes are now clear. It is even less clear that summer heat waves are intensifying and with them them the incidence of health problems and heat-related deaths. Ironically, the disease-carrying mosquitoes once limited to tropical climes that inhabit Connecticut are the direct result of a junk science campaign just like global warming. Banning DDT which supposedly resulted in the softening of shells in the eggs of certain birds, lead to the revival of malaria fatalities on a massive scale.

-- Warren ketler (wrkttl@earthlink.net), November 24, 2000.


Oops! Getting forgetful in my old age. The following two references should have been appended to my earlier post: (1) (2)
-- Warren Ketler (wrkttl@earthlink.net), November 24, 2000.

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