After reading the excellent diary, It's official: climate change changes everything, I'd like to share an article I wrote this summer which was originally published in early July on the alt/progressive website gnn.tv. It was edited collaboratively by a core group of members from the fantastic community there.
There had been, upon cursory research, no direct web response that I could find to the neo-conservative punditry claims that there was a fundamental scientific debate surrounding the effects and, most importantly, causes of modern climate change.
I spent an afternoon researching the sources of the quotes used by an anti-climate change activist, Tom Harris, in an article he wrote that had been buzzing around the right wing blogosphere since Al Gore's fantastic film, An Inconvenient Truth was released.
My article sparked one of the most active threads on the site at the time, and I hope a similar dialogue might be achieved here on DailyKos as well.
Enjoy the full article, an interesting poll, and discussion in the comments section below the fold. Thanks for helping spread the word.
M.
A Climate of Convenient Truthiness
A recent op-ed article by Tom Harris has been
echoing throughout the right-wing
demosphere. The article,
Scientists Respond to Gore's Warnings of Climate Catastrophe, tears apart the conventional scientific wisdom about global warming, but reserves special criticism for Al Gore and his `must-see' documentary. Harris, a mechanical engineer and director of an Ottawa based public affairs and policy consulting firm, writes:
"Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it," Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film An Inconvenient Truth... With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the science of his movie?
Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."
Those are very serious charges, not only against Gore himself, but against the decades of scientific research drawn upon in the documentary. But who is Tom Harris and who is behind the "science" he relies on to attack Gore's global warming thesis?
According to the web site of the High Park Group, a public affairs and policy consulting firm, Tom Harris holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) from Carleton University and a Master of Engineering (Mechanical - thermo-fluids) from McMaster University:
Tom specializes in strategic communication and media relations and has 28 years experience in science and technology in the energy and environment, aerospace and high-tech sectors. He has worked with private companies and trade associations to successfully position these entities and their interests with media and before government committees and regulatory bodies.
Harris, obviously, isn't much of a journalist. But what about his research? Without citing any specific journals or publications, he positions claims made by seven scientists against An Inconvenient Truth. Let's meet them.
1. Bob Carter
Ignoring the strong correlation between carbon dioxide and global temperature, here is a scientist who misleadingly claims that "carbon dioxide is not a pollutant." While his statement is not categorically false, as the chemical is naturally occuring, a more truthful position is that we are polluting our atmosphere with it.
A well known anti-Kyoto activist, according to a list of his academic publications, most of his research focuses on pre-historic fossil records and geology that has absolutely no direct correlation to the volume of evidence supporting the likeliest causes of contemporary climate change.
2. Tim Ball
In 1996, Dr. Ball left his job at the University of Winnipeg for the more lucrative pursuit of scientific gun-for-hire ("environmental consultant"). According to the Center for Media and Democracy SourceWatch, he found a home at the American National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative front group supporting whatever initiatives their financial backers want them to endorse. Since 1997, one of their principal mandates has been to fight the environment movement in general and in particular, shoot down any regulation to decrease the emission of greenhouse gasses.
"CFCs were never a problem... it's only because the sun is changing" and, "What's wrong with global warming ? There are lots of positive benefits to global warming."
It seems as though Tim Ball traded his professional pride and ethics for easy money and an invitation to play with the big boys.
Here are some more facts on this `doctor' of spin.
3. Tim Patterson
A quintessential corporate activist, Patterson has associated himself with influential and notorious public relations firms, such as The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition and APCO Worldwide.
4. Boris Winterhalter
He attacks Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers falling into the sea by claiming that "the breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier."
That doesn't actually disprove anything that Gore claims. It's a logical fallacy to assume that An Inconvenient Truth asserts that glacier calving is not a natural occurrence. Of course it happens normally, however it's the rate at which glaciers are disappearing which is the problem, and not addressed at all by Winterhalter.
Moot point.
5. Wibj-rn KarlÈn
Considering he doesn't reference any research, his position that "some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like [they have] done back in time" is dubious at best.
Note that he is not even an atmospheric scientist, and not listed on the staff faculty list on the Stockholm University web site.
Regardless, Tom Harris goes on to say that the Swedish professor, "clarifies that the `mass balance' of Antarctica is positive - more snow is accumulating than melting off. As a result... there is an increase in the `calving' of icebergs as the ice dome of Antarctica is growing and flowing to the oceans."
But what he fails to acknowledge is that the disintegration of the Larsen ice shelves is completely unprecedented and not because of calving, according to a report by an international team of researchers, published for Nature magazine's August 4th, 2005 cover story:
"The disintegration of Larsen B is almost certainly a response to human-induced global warming," says Queen's geographer Robert Gilbert, the only Canadian researcher on the international research team. "Antarctic temperatures have increased more than 10°C in the last 25 years. By comparison, the world-wide temperature change during the entire post-glacial period has only been 2 - 3°C," he adds.
Larsen B's demise is likely the consequence of long-term thinning due to melting from underneath as well as short-term surface melting due to global warming. The "under melt" of a few tens of metres over thousands of years is caused by warming waters or currents flowing beneath the floating ice shelf. However, the surface melting has happened much faster over decades, the study concludes.
6. Dick Morgan
Outside references to Harris's stunning piece of op-ed journalism, I can't find any information about this man on the University of Exeter web site, and the university hasn't responded to my request for more information. Still, in the Harris article, he is quoted as saying:
There has been some decrease in ice thickness in the Canadian Arctic over the past 30 years but no melt down.
Regardless of what he claims for the Canadian arctic, the surface ice melting near both poles is again, unprecedented and accelerating. Dick Morgan's position flies in the face of evidence put forth by both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the 300 academic scientists behind the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.
7. Roy Spencer
While seemingly the most accredited scientist quoted in Harris' article, the University of Alabama professor's main critique against global warming can be found on the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance web site where climate change is referred to in Biblical terms:
People must ensure that their Biblical moorings are solid, before venturing too far in the endorsement of specific policies, particularly when the policies can have serious consequences for human life and well-being, Dr. Calvin Beisner emphasizes. This is especially vital in the case of policies that attempt to exert control over climate, by regulating how people everywhere can use energy.
An associate professor of social ethics at Knox Theological Seminary, Florida, and Founding Member of the ISA, Beisner presents a Biblical foundation for the moral approach advised by Paul Driessen and the prudent scientific caution advocated by Dr. Roy Spencer (below). He outlines seven principles to guide our decision-making.
One of which reads:
Our wise Creator has built multiple self-protecting and self-correcting layers into the world He gave us to use for our benefit, as responsible environmental stewards.
Spencer's critique is that the "thermometer coverage of the Earth is too sparse to calculate accurate global average temperatures for any period prior to 1950" which apparently, "makes valid comparisons of current and past temperatures and climate cycles nearly impossible, or at least subject to great uncertainty, since differences between years and decades are often measured in tenths of a degree (within the margin of error)."
Apparently, Dr. Spencer thinks that glaciologists used thermometers to get their carbon dioxide and temperature data from the Vostok ice core samples. Is it too much to ask that our public policy decision making in regards to something as catastrophic as climate change be guided by scientific principles alone, not faith-based mumbo jumbo?
Harris can't handle the truth
Not only does Tom Harris have no expertise in the field of climate research, but he barely stands a critical pass as a voice worth quoting. After a cursory examination of his article and his cadre of scientific consultants, it is simply incredible that they are commanding public attention.
There is a marked difference in consensus between a few dozen industrially-bankrolled environmental consultants and hundreds, if not thousands, of academic researchers climbing a journalistic mountain of peer-reviewed evidence. The fact is that there is no real scientific debate about global warming and climate change. As House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) said:
"There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change...or any doubts about whether any paper on the temperature records was legitimate scientific work."
There are, of course, long term cycles of heating and cooling that seem to be directly related to carbon dioxide levels, which "simmer" up and down every hundred thousand years or so. The problem now, at the peak of a natural increase in both carbon dioxide and temperature, is that we've put the "kettle to boil," more than doubling the normal carbon dioxide variation in our atmosphere. In the end, the media has an inherent public responsibility to help us separate fact from fiction and to prevent the doubt planted by industry front groups from distorting the public discourse.
[Update]: This article does not elaborate on the Bush administration's censorship of climate change scientists and their reports, but rather on the industry financed and christian-right backed propaganda 'spin' against Al Gore's film. Feel free to discuss government censorship in the comment section below.