Michael Graham is a conservative columnist in Columbia's local free weekly the
Free Times. He is best known for being fired for
calling Islam "a terrorist organization". In this weeks Free Times Mr. Graham decided to take on Al Gore and global warming. He gives no indication that he actually saw
An Inconvenient Truth, so you really can't call it a review, but it pretends to be. Below the flip I take on each of Mr. Graham's arguments and preview the letter I plan on sending to the Free Times.
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In this week's Free Times Michael Graham dedicated his column to Al Gore and the issue of global warming. Mr. Graham's arguments are intellectually dishonest at best and pure fabrications at worst. Below I have refuted his points one-by-one. My job was made easier because the majority of the column was filled with ad hominem attacks on Al Gore, baby boomers (which I'm not at 23), and environmentalists (which I am).
I could fill this column with statistics and studies from prominent scientific journals poking holes in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.
There is no truth to this claim, and it's odd that Mr. Graham doesn't cite any scientifically prominent statistics or studies in the entirety of his column. The fact is according to a study done by Science Magazine there hasn't been a single peer reviewed scientific paper written in the last decade claiming that global warming is not due to human actions, not a single one.
Even the whack jobs pushing the Kyoto treaty are only talking about a global temperature increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years. (We're doomed!)That will likely go up another degree or so in the next century, assuming we don't spend $400 billion a year implementing Kyoto. If we do spend the money, that increase goes down by a whopping 0.17 degrees. (We're saved!)
I won't even look into whether or not his claim about the last 100 years is true. It seems reasonable considering humans only really started burning fossil fuels at a significant rate in the last 100 years, and we've done so at an exponentially larger rate, so it's a pretty useless statistic. He also doesn't note that global temperatures have risen at an increasing rate with 10 of the hottest years on record occurring in the last 14 years. A useful statistic would then be how much temperature will rise in the next 100 years and beyond.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) estimates that temperatures will rise between 1 and 5 degrees Celsius (like how he low balled it?) depending on what is done to curb emissions. Other studies have estimated an increase of over 10 degrees if nothing is done. For reference, current global temperatures are only 5-8 degrees Celsius higher than the previous Ice Age. This also misses the point that global temperature isn't as important as regional temperature. Europe is likely to cool dramatically if the Gulf Stream slows down the flow of warm air to the region.
Mr. Graham's estimate on the cost of Kyoto is way off. The best and most recent estimates put it at $325 billion over the course of several decades. That's still a lot of money, but it's money well spent. Apparently, to Mr. Graham cutting temperature increases by factor of 10, by his own estimates isn't a worthwhile endeavor. Also, that money would go into the growing green industry and renewable energy sectors. This industries will be growing globally for the foreseeable future, and the US has already fallen behind other nations, so the expenditure would create a lot of work for a lot of Americans for a long time. That is obviously a good investment for our country's future.
And Gore is wrong about the angry Earth Mother sending unusually powerful hurricanes to kill us in her anger over the 2000 election scandal. Hurricane experts Max Mayfield and Bill Grey continue to explain (and Al continues to ignore) that hurricane activity is related to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, a steady pattern of warming and cooling waters in the Atlantic.
Mr. Graham's logic here is astounding. He seems to imply that hurricane activity is greater during high temperature times of the oscillation, but then he seems to ignore that pushing all temperatures up (as he admits will happen above) would lead to more storms in off years as well. This double effect would explain why 2005 was the most active hurricane season on record and not just a high-activity year like any other AMO peak year. A lot of modeling has been done to answer this question and it does appear that global warming is linked to stronger hurricanes, two studies by Purdue and MIT were the most recent.
And no, the polar ice caps are not about to melt away and no, global flooding isn't about to turn Tennessee into beachfront property. In fact, most of the Antarctic ice sheet got colder from 1966 to 2000, and while both poles have been losing some ice in the past five years on their edges, their interior ice and snow masses have been increasing. The net result? According to a study published in the Journal of Glaciology last year, if current trends hold the oceans will rise 0.05 millimeters a year. That means 1,000 years from now, the seas will have risen þ two inches! Head for the hills!
I could not find the study that Mr. Graham quoted, but I did peruse the annals of the IGS. A paper entitled NASA survey confirms climate warming impact on polar ice sheets
says The survey shows there was a net loss of ice from the combined polar ice sheets between 1992 and 2002 and a corresponding rise in sea level...All are signs of a warming climate predicted by computer models. The same computer models that Al Gore based his presentation, movie and book off of.
Mr. Graham's claim is also useless because as he says if current trends hold. Current trends certainly will not hold in an increasingly warmer planet. Also, glacial melting is only one cause of sea level rise. Sea levels also rise because water expands when it is heated (Above 4 degrees Celsius) and there is also apparently a mystery component because sea level change from 1992-2002 was higher than the combination of the known causes, but it is highly unlikely that a warming planet would subdue that mystery cause.
What rational people reject isn't climate change, but rather the baby boomer fantasy that, this time, climate change is somehow different and special. That's the fantasy of someone who believes "we're the most powerful force in nature!"
Ponder that arrogance for a moment. We puny humans are, in Gore's imagination, more important to the Earth's ecosystem than volcanoes or tsunamis. We SUV drivers and backyard grillers are a greater force than the lunar tides or even gravity. Why, we're more powerful than the sun!
This easily refuted again by the fact that not a single peer review scientific paper in the last decade has claimed that humans aren't causing global warming! So, unless "rational people" only listen to Exxon Mobile "science" they should believe that this period of global warming is special.
We are fairly large animals, and there are almost 7 billion of us. We have caused the greatest mass extinction since the dinosaurs died out, and we're not supposed to believe that we can alter the little layer of atmosphere surrounding this planet? Michael Graham arguments are just ad hoc bits and scraps that are easily refuted by the big picture.
Sincerely,
Jawis
Never let up, never give them an inch. They won the war of spin and smears, but we'll win the war of ideas because they don't have an arsenal.
You can send your own reply (Be polite, we're better than that.) to Mr. Graham at: suspects@aol.com
Posted to: Daily Kos Environmentalists.
Cross Posted at MyDD