Climate change is real. We have seen evidence of it.
Maybe climate isn’t all about us.
In 1837, Louis Agassiz proposed a profound theory to explain evidence that did not comport with the notion of a world created by God, changed once by Noah’s flood, then otherwise existing as it was created on the sixth day. He said there had been an Ice Age. Ice a mile deep extended deep into Europe and across all of Canada into the American Midwest and New England down to and below New York City. It explained the carved out valleys, the huge misplaced boulders dropped far from where that rock originated. It explained the bones of “megafauna,” the mastodons, giant bears and beavers, that lived in a cold environment but perished in the present warmer one.
The notion of Ice Ages is now well established in science. We see things on the ground that have no apparent explanation other than that the world’s climate is in flux, and was once much colder. We are in an “interglacial period,” and ice samples from Greenland and Antarctica suggest we have had them repeatedly over the past several million years. They last over a hundred thousand years, then we have an interglacial period of approximately twenty thousand years, then back to ice. Montana, Minnesota, Michigan, New England, and New York aren’t just affected; they will be obliterated. Florida is not exempt. Possibly the interglacial period will last long enough that the melting ice on Greenland and Antartica will make sea levels rise, and Florida will be submerged under water. Miami’s elevation is 6.5 feet; Tampa’s is 25 feet. But then, if and when the ice returns, much of the earth’s water will be stored covering the northern half of North America and Eurasia. Florida will be high and dry and much larger. Miami and Tampa would be well inland.
We see evidence of profound climate change in what appears to be ancient lake bottoms and places where alluvial soil was deposited during a very different climate era. The area around Phoenix, Arizona is desert now, but looks like a giant, flat lake bottom from an ancient lake, with deposited river rocks.
The earth’s orbit and tilt have long cycles causing the summers in the northern and southern hemispheres to be different lengths. Short summers in the northern hemisphere during certain cycles might be the cause of ice ages. Or it could be the sun. The sun is a variable star. Perhaps luminosity has 150,000 year cycles. We can measure an 11-year solar cycle and a sunspot cycle. The sun intermittently sends out giant solar flares sufficient that one giant episode heated telegraph wires and set papers on fire in telegraph offices in August, 1859.
Bottom line: There are giant forces of nature that take place that are orders of magnitude greater than anything humans appear to do.
Heads up to Democrats and people concerned about man-made climate change. The notion that climate change is settled science is an assertion, not a fact, and asserting it weakens their case. It attempts to shut off debate, and that backfires. Not everyone thinks that we are experiencing climate change beyond the variability that has taken place both during recorded history and over the eons.
Not everyone thinks that human-caused changes in CO2 levels are consequential in changing the earth’s climate, compared to the natural variability of tropical evaporation of water vapor and other greenhouse gases. Climate is so complex, with so many variables, moving in multiple directions, that describing the past with computer models has been unsuccessful. The projections of the future have been built around those same computer models of assumptions and projections.
“Climate crisis” is a matter of politics and religion, not reproducible science. That does not mean Americans should do nothing, but it means that climate change activists have more reason for caution than is comfortable to say aloud if one want to remain politically viable. The acceptable orthodoxy is that “the science is clear and settled.” Science is being silenced. That is a weakness for climate activism. Science need not hide from uncertainty, because science is about testing to find out what is untrue based on evidence.
Climate activists have every reason to doubt the motives and evidence presented by “climate skeptics.” Trump praises them; Fox News puts them on the air; Republican politicians from fossil fuel states quote them. What more proof does anyone need that they are wrong?
But that isn’t science. It is politics. They are using “uncertainty” to justify doing nothing, in a way reminiscent of the tobacco industry in claiming a link between smoking and lung cancer and heart disease was uncertain and unproven. People with a vested interest in absolving fossil fuels are not credible, nor intellectually honest. But science may work out to show they were right on some things.
Climate change activists need not over-sell the certainty of “science” to justify doing something. They, too, should avoid intellectual and moral dishonesty. Climate activists can trust the truth. There is a politically and morally sound reason be cautious with fossil fuels, with plastic in the oceans, with poisons in the air and water. Any Boy Scout or Girl Scout knows it. We have a moral obligation to our children and grandchildren to leave the campsite better than we found it, and when we are dealing with the unknown, it is best to be cautious and respectful. The Abrahamic religions teach God gave mankind “dominion” over the earth; we have a shepherd’s responsibility to care for what we manage.
Science can be falsified. Values cannot be. We should not risk trashing our home. The values are imperative and current. Meanwhile, we can continue to investigate the science with an open mind.
10 comments:
Then there was "Snowball" earth. That's when the entire earth was covered by mile high glaciers, even at the equator. Scientists say it happened 3 times. Luckily, there was lots of volcanic activity at that time, which darkened the glacier sheets and allowed the sun to heat and melt all that ice. The only thing alive back then lived in the oceans, possible by the hot vents we see today. We call the "smokers".
No one denies that climate has changed repeatedly over the geologic history of the planet. However, what we're witnessing now, Peter, is climate change on a time scale far far shorter than the changes that have occurred in the past. We know human activity has an impact and that human remediation can be effective. The threat to the ozone layer by PCPs and the abatement of that threat when the world banned their use is a case in point.
There is always room in science for discovery and revision. But your counsel to Democrats is, I think, unwise. Political leaders across the globe must continue to declare that the science is overwhelmingly persuasive, that we are in a crisis, that our time is short.
You argued in the past that part of Trump's political success is that he always doubled down, that he never expressed doubt about his positions, and thus he came across as a strong leader. Generally, such behavior leads to bad things actually happening in the world beyond short-term public perception. With climate change, I don't believe it will prove to be so, and therefore I think--contrary to your advice in this column--that Biden and others would do well politically to display an unshakeable certainty about climate change.
I agree with Herb. What you, Peter, seem to be implying, is that we progressives should assent to engaging in asymmetric warfare with the Right. They feel no compunction to ignore facts, eschew science, or flat out lie, We need to be careful and judicious in our trumpeting the alarm for our species’ future?
So our “brand” should be “Um…, we’re not sure?”
For a more rational cost/benefit based approach to whatever climate change is happening (the scale of which’ is very open to question), see the work of Bjorn Lomborg.
Bjorn Lomborg’s book on the “climate catastrophe”.
Here’s a link to the book, Unsettled, that Peter posted an image of.
I am not what people insultingly call a “denier” (with its implicit reference to “Holocaust denier,” this is especially annoying to Jews like me). I want the situation with CO2 emissions to be dealt with rationally, not out of an emotional moral panic fueled by folks who then turn around and fly private jets to Aspen and Davos to indulge in hypocritical virtue signaling.
Yes, climate has changed before, but the recent precipitous rise in greenhouse gases that are causing the warming of our planet just happen to coincide with the Industrial Revolution and its extensive use of fossil fuels. Not to be judgmental or anything, but you'd have to be an idiot to consider that a coincidence.
Don't equate pollution with climate change, and don't assume Florida will be underwater when the icecaps and glaciers melt.
Sure, Florida coastal areas might. But there are actual hills and plains farther inland that might become bluffs and beaches. I live both of Orlando, and the flatlands here are 75 feet above mean sea level.
Nice to see some reality about man's affect on climate in Peter's post; certainly some effect, but minor compared to natural earthly and solar causes.
I worry about pollution, not climate change.
Someone said it . It must be true. Tell me now as a gentleman farmer of sorts, more or less snow drifts, longer or shorter growing season?
Wild Plants that once grew on the valley floor are moving up slope? Climate crisis is not political; it’s inevitable. Who cares who is not believing or believing. It is too late. No one will wear the mask. It’s a hoax. No administration will respond. Only the children’s crusades will make noise. They can easily be silenced with a good job. Go back to sleep. The earth turns not with a bang but a whimper.
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