Gregory Scheckler Artworks

Global Warming – it’s hotly debated (doh!) This is one of 3 articles I’m posting online about climate change.

As an artist whose artwork usually focuses on landscape and nature-related imagery, I’ve been following the debates, the science, and the media reports surrounding climate change since the early 90’s. Throughout this study, I’ve become quite skeptical of the idea that humans cause global warming, [[UPDATE: I've updated some of the conclusions in this post, updates linked here.]]although I am not at all skeptical of the larger science of climate change.

Some excellent, comprehensive articles are now available online at Skeptic.com Precisely why it’s scientifically unreliable to claim that human activity and CO2 are responsible for global warming can be found in avery well-written article, A Climate of Belief, by Patrick Frank. A somewhat good article (but flawed by incomplete charting and bad use of time scales) regards how we know global warming exists is by Tapio Schneider, with followup articles discussing various plans to combat global warming, or whether or not a hydrogen economy is viable. All in all, a great issue of The Skeptic. [For another decent overview article, check this executive summary at ClimateScience.gov -- somewhat large file, but some good charts showing differences between observed vs. modeled climate readings.]

In the last decade and a half, climate scientists, economists, and other researchers have developed new data, a variety of refinements and corrections to earlier data sets about the weather, new methods for collecting global temperature information, and much better computer models that attempt to predict future climate change. One recent story in the news caught my attention: NPR reported that the ARGO results are puzzling – ocean temperatures remaining the same, not going up at all. Another that’s hit the major press is this, from the New York Times: A Shift in the Debate Over Global Warming, which tells the story of scientists and economists who wager that market-based cap-and-trade systems for controlling carbon emissions really won’t produce results, contrary to what our three main presidential candidates all claim.

Both news stories hint at a big problem: if global warming isn’t as severe as politicians claim, and if proposals for how to fix it are likely not to produce reliable results anyway, then why should we do anything about global warming? Why shouldn’t we instead focus government attention and resources on easier to verify environmental problems that we can fix, such as reducing air pollution or water pollution?

The ARGO project involves thousands of robotic buoys that measure water temperatures at many different depths. Its report are interesting because they fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is that global warming is happening fast and that it’s an impending disaster. Interestingly, the ARGO results show no change in global ocean temperatures over the last half decade. Scientists don’t yet know why, and it will take a lot more study to figure this out – predictions were that the ocean temperatures would change. But they haven’t, so global warming might just not be quite as dire as some predicted, or at least significantly more complicated than was thought twenty years ago.

The ARGO results reminded me of a few stories that were circulating back in the 1998, written by Dr. Roy Spencer regarding the satellite temperature readings from weather measuring satellites that he and his colleague Dr. John Christy had launched: that after thousands and thousands and thousands of temperature readings, they at first found a slight global cooling trend. Their satellite readings had been corroborated by others’ weather balloons, and their later 2005 data has continued to show some decreases and some increases, all much lower than those predicted by most computer models, with global temperature averages ranging between about half a degree below and above averages.

Spencer and Christy also haven’t found global warming to be all that global, with some regions like the equator holding stable ever since they began their measurements, whereas some regions in the northern hemisphere warming, and some in the southern hemisphere only minimally warming. Meanwhile no locality and no global average temperatures overall, however, are higher than temperatures during the Holocene Maximum, when the Earth was warmest, after which there was the Little Ice Age and since then a general warming trend that topped off in 1998. We could be on a warming trend that will exceed the Holocene Maximum, but we could also be at the beginning of a cooling trend, since global average temperatures have been holding fairly steady since 1998 (2007 and 1998 both about .6 degC average — see more info at this link). And even then we cannot deny the data, and must recognize that temperatures around the equatorial regions haven’t increased or decreased since 1979 – the warming is only top and bottom of the planet, not the middle. Spencer and Christy have refined their methods and corrected some errors over the years, their relatively recent findings are nicely summarized here as a pdf file

Their summary report includes some pretty good reminders of the complexities of climate change, such as that “a recent Harvard-Smithsonian study of more than 240 paleoclimate research papers published in the past four decades concluded that the 20th century was neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1,000 years for specific regions,” and the more basic understanding that “There is no scientific evidence to support the belief that Earth’s climate is stable and will not change if human activity does not intervene. To the contrary, paleoclimate data indicates that Earth’s climate is constantly changing and has never been stable.”

What does this imply for public policy regarding global warming? In fact Spencer and Christy have been asked that question numerous times, even in testimony to US congressional hearings. They recommend this: first do no harm.

“This is the simple, fundamental environmental fact of life: change is the norm. We must find ways to adapt to a changing climate.”
Over the long term we see that all species die out, evolve, morph and alter – our ability to watch this process today in regions undergoing the more severe climate changes (such as with the Pika, a small rabbit-like mammal in Alaska) may indicate the normal processes of species change related to climate change, rather than a disaster spelled out by humanity’s hubris and global warming. The position of global warming fearmongers is that species would remain the same and never die out. But the fossil record shows that almost every species that has ever existed in fact has already died out – change is normal, stability is not. Stability is the illusion – both of many kinds of environmentalism, as well as my own concern, the painting.

In the upcoming Presidential elections let’s not forget the strategic and viable option: do nothing about climate change. Don’t tax anyone. Don’t create a burdensome secondary market of cap-and-trade credits. Don’t even bother to try to fix global warming. Instead, we could find viable ways to adapt to climate change, because what we can establish without doubt is that the climate historically has changed (either warming or cooling) and therefore we can reasonably predict that fifty years from now will not be exactly the same as now. Another part of the problem is that given that the earth’s climate has been constantly changing, that human intervention in the climate may not have any effect, may not have the desired effect, or may be trumped by massive natural changes such as a large volcano eruption. We could spend billions of dollars on trying to prevent global warming when noted economic studies suggest that doing so will not significantly alter the environment at all. That would be a huge waste of precious resources. And I hope you agree that in the real spirit of environmentalism one ought to want to preserve resources rather than use them up. It may well be more environmentally healthy to refuse Obama’s, Clinton’s, and McCain’s cap and trade proposals than to support them.

Here’s my basic conclusions, based on readings of climate change studies:

• It’s much more precise to discuss ‘climate change’ than it is to presume that global warming is people’s fault. Climate Change is a fact, and we can reasonably expect that the future of the earth’s climate is in flux, just as it has been for millennia. Global Warming is by no means the entire picture, and is a subset of the many possible ways in which the climate can and will change.
• Many important environmental issues that are not related to global warming are currently eclipsed by severe fears about global warming and the hype surrounding global warming. One real disaster may just be that we fail to take practical, easy to implement action against various kinds of pollution, focusing too much instead on global warming. Smog, auto pollution, acid rain, home heating, water pollution / water quality, poverty, agriculture and relationships with pesticides, inefficient energy production, deforestation, overfishing – there’s many, many areas of environmental concern that are considerably more threatening to humans and to environments than global warming.
• We have been in the last century been in a global warming trend. Although global warming exists, it’s not a disaster. The evidence is straightforward, with global average temperatures highest in 1998, and cooled since then. In recent years, there has been a slight cooling trend, although overall there’s been a warming trend since the Little Ice Age.
• Even if you think global warming is a hoax, there’s plenty of reasons to support energy policy changes, targeted research, and investment in renewable resources regardless of global warming, such as:
  • National Security: wouldn’t you rather trust your heating and electricity to local, verifiable, peaceful sources within the US than imports from countries that do not have free press, human rights, democracies, etc. (even Texas is significantly more peaceful, cleaner, and better than most of the MidEast, Venezuala, Sudan etc.);
  • Renewability. it may take a very long time (2,000-5,000 years) but we will eventually run out of fossil fuels, which will be seriously bad economic news if we aren’t at the same time finding other energy sources; but, some alternative energy sources are worse for the environment than oil – the production of ethanol is contributing to massive deforestation in Brazil, Indonesia and other countries. Renewable energy sources require careful research and development. We should not rush their development simply out of fears regarding global warming. Its far more important to carefully develop functional technologies that are affordable and clean than it is to rush their development.
  • Reducing Pollution: global warming or not, some methods for using fossil fuels still produce smog, acid rain, atmospheric dust, etc.; all of these problems are horrible for human health, and horrible for many types of non-human environments. Even if pollution cannot be shown to cause global warming or any other kind of climate change, pollution is still horrific, unnecessary, and unsupportable. Pollution means valuable resources are being wasted – and just why exactly would anyone wish to waste any resource? Landfill technology can help, recycling can help, no-waste and sustainable business models can help, smog and water pollution technologies can prevent pollution almost entirely. We should and can push for the implementation of technologies that prevent air, water, and solids pollution.
  • Efficiency and Technological Innovation: it makes basic economic sense to push for increased efficiency and less waste with every energy-producing technology – investing in technologies that produce more electricity, more cleanly, and for less cost produces far more profit than investing in energy productions that are more polluting, less efficient, and more costly. Same with producing electrical appliances that use less electricity to get the good results (example: compact fluorescent light bulbs).
  • Disease Prevention: wastewater problems, sewage problems, heavy metals poisoning, air quality problems, etc., can all be prevented with good civil engineering, interior and exterior architectural design and building practices, and modest health education. Solving these environmental problems has nothing to do with climate change, and yet nevertheless these are critically important problems to solve in order to improve the conditions of all humanity.
• There’s a lot of good news. A wide variety of climate and environment related issues are far better today than they were in the early 90’s. Worldwide, many water sources are cleaner. While we are losing some animal populations, others are thriving. Overall, contemporary farming practices are more efficient and less polluting. In the U.S., there’s more trees, more solar power, more wind power, and cleaner air. Extremists on both sides of climate change debates (‘we’re all going to die!’ versus ‘global warming is a big hoax!’) want you to only accept the very worst or the very best news, and not the complex mixture of real facts which includes both bad news as well as good news – but neither the bad nor good news is as bad as or as good as what the extremists want you to believe. We probably can’t have serious, informed public debates about climate change until fearmongers admit that it doesn’t appear we’re destroying the planet, and hyper-optimists admit that there really are some environmental problems that do affect us all.