In
a column in Sunday's Washington Post, George WIll spout misinformation about global climate. At this point, it should be an embarrasment to the Post that it allowed his column to be published without correction or, at least, a response from a scientist.
Will writes:
While worrying about Montana's receding glaciers, Schweitzer, who is 50, should also worry about the fact that when he was 20 he was told to be worried, very worried, about global cooling. Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation." Science Digest (February 1973) reported that "the world's climatologists are agreed" that we must "prepare for the next ice age." The Christian Science Monitor ("Warning: Earth's Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect," Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers "have begun to advance," "growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter" and "the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool." Newsweek agreed ("The Cooling World," April 28, 1975) that meteorologists "are almost unanimous" that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that the New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said "may mark the return to another ice age." The Times (May 21, 1975) also said "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable" now that it is "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950."
RealClimate responded to this urban myth when Will started dealing it back in December 2004. Will places an out-of-context quote from the peer-reviewed scientific journal Science on top of a string of quotes from newspapers, many of which may, in fact, have been exaggerating in order to promote a story. Will claims that the Science paper, by James Hays and colleague, "warned of 'extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.'" The quotation is accurate; Will's choice of verb is not, for the actual statement is that "the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years is towards extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and cooler climate."
Over the past million years or so, ice ages have come and gone at cycles driven by variations in the Earth's orbit and rotation, and -- assuming human activities are not so drastic as to melt the polar ice caps entirely -- they will most likely continue to do so. That says nothing, however, about the conditions facing humanity in the next millennium. There was no "global cooling" scare among scientists thirty years ago; there was a major advance in the understanding of the orbital forcing of climate.
Humans are pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide levels are higher now than they have been in at least 650 thousand years (as far back as current ice core data go). Carbon dioxide (and some other gases humans emit) trap heat, and we have a clear record of increasing temperatures to match the carbon dioxide record. All these are facts. The current debate among scientists is over how strong the effect will be.
Will claims that global warming might even be beneficial.
In fact, the Earth is always experiencing either warming or cooling. But suppose the scientists and their journalistic conduits, who today say they were so spectacularly wrong so recently, are now correct. Suppose the Earth is warming and suppose the warming is caused by human activity. Are we sure there will be proportionate benefits from whatever climate change can be purchased at the cost of slowing economic growth and spending trillions? Are we sure the consequences of climate change -- remember, a thick sheet of ice once covered the Midwest -- must be bad? Or has the science-journalism complex decided that debate about these questions, too, is "over"?
About the mystery that vexes ABC -- Why have Americans been slow to get in lock step concerning global warming? -- perhaps the "problem" is not big oil or big coal, both of which have discovered there is big money to be made from tax breaks and other subsidies justified in the name of combating carbon.
Perhaps the problem is big crusading journalism.
Some basic understanding of Earth history would help him here. Our climate over the last ten thousand years has been unusually stable, and this stability has fostered the growth of civilization. It is extremely risky to tamper with this stability. To be sure, people in some regions will likely benefit from global warming -- farming might, for instance, become more favorable in parts of Canada currently unfarmable. But tell that to the people of low-lying regions of Louisiana, Florida, and Bangladesh, who will suffer ever more frequently from floods even if sea levels do not rise enough to flood them permanently. Tell that to the people of drought-susceptible regions like the American West and Darfur, whose water supplies will dwindle. And remember to tell your grandchildren of the rich diversity of life the Earth once sustained -- under business-as-usual scenarios, ecological models indicate that climatic changes will drive more than half of all species extinct.